Monday, June 24, 2013

Liberating the People

Never trust a person over 30. All you need is love. Hell no, we won't go. These were the slogans of the last great manifestation against the system. That great flower power movement of the '60s, where American youth were burning draft cards and putting flowers in the rifle barrels of national guardsmen on college campuses.

It got intense at times. Four students killed at Kent State. The self-immolation of Norman Morrison underneath Secretary of Defense McNamara's office window. Anger and hatred mounting on both sides of the Vietnam War debate.

But slowly, as the war ended and the protestors got older and the lure of big money in Reagan's "let the bull loose" economy, the protest dwindled away.

But the ideals worth fighting for never really disappeared. And now, they're back in full flower in Arabia and Greece and Turkey. And, perhaps most interestingly, in Brazil.

In a resurgence of democratic idealism many thought lost, the youth and concerned people worldwide are marching. Liberating the People, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

Click here to listen to this episode.

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