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Comments

• [1] Laura Miner from NYC November 06, 2007 - 12:10AM

  Coming of age in the '60s, I most value how we were inculcated with the highest values and aspirations post-WWII: That the Ends do NOT justify the Means.

  I am most proud of our accomplishments for human rights and dignity....Civil Rights, Consciousness Raising, and the open discussions about things that used to be whispered about (family and personal problems like alcoholism, mental illness, cancer......and the facts of life: sex).

  I most regret the assassinations of JFK, MLK JR., and RFK. I most regret that there was no clear path to take action about what Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner taught. If only!!!

  
  
• [2] Dabney Braggart November 06, 2007 - 12:16PM

  I'm pretty firmly on the "pro-'60s" side of the divide: I think we'd all be better off working less than we do, I reject the right of Society to enforce personal grooming tips or send me to war, and still can't wrap my head around the idea that rock-climbing, bungee-jumping, and religion are legal but marijuana isn't.

  However, I find in the current administration's refusal to be bound by convention in the pursuit of power and its self-righteous, antinomian view that whatever they do is right because their hearts are pure, an echo of the worst of the student protest movement of the '60s.

  They're very keen to claim that they're acting within the law, and that only timidity and the stale weight of custom are offended by their actions. They never seem to consider that they are going beyond the bounds of common decency and the useful knowledge accumulated in custom. (Examples: signing statements, excessive classification, military tribunals, torture, the attempt to destroy the Filibuster.)

  A canting "I don't have to follow your rules, OLD MAN, it's a new world," and "Your objection to our methods is bourgeois moralism," sound even less pleasant coming out of the mouths of pasty-faced middle-aged white guys (and the women and minority group memebers who can act like them---progress![?]).

  
  
• [3] TM November 06, 2007 - 12:24PM

  There was no more than a five-year difference, in some cases, between my parents and the student protestors of the sixties, and a persistent memory of my childhood was my parent's disgust with them. My parents were staunch, long time labor and civil rights workers who were horrified while the students' actions turned the whole country against the left and shut the entire cultures' ears to them for the next thirty years.

  It was a classic case of what the civil rights workers used to call "ruining it for the rest of us."

  
  
• [4] Eric from B'klyn November 06, 2007 - 12:26PM

  During your interview w David Crosby a few months ago, you asked why the politica/cultural goals of the counterculture were not realized. He said that we had underestimated the inertia in society... what does TB think?

  
  
• [5] Victoria Zunitch from Queens November 06, 2007 - 12:37PM

  Note that Tom sees great progress in Atlanta...he was impressed that he lunched in a room of mostly black businessmen. businessMEN. MEN.

  Things haven't improved for women as much as many think. There is still a long way to go.

  
  
• [6] chestine from NY November 06, 2007 - 12:41PM

  Tom Brokaw - i hope you do not imply in your book that boomers started the drug industry!!! Please!! - go back a few hundred years - don't blame us! We weren't savvy enough to build a drug industry! No no you know better than this, and who the drug industry benefits

  
  
• [7] Linda Young from St. Petersburg, Fla. November 06, 2007 - 12:48PM

  I am most proud of the Civil Rights movement. Although I was too young to go South, I did what I could as a junior high and high school student in my hometown 60 miles southwest of Chicago, as others did. I'm proud of my generation for taking a stand against senseless war, including taking to the streets to protest being at war instead of having used diplomacy. I'm proud of my generation for all we did to begin protecting our environment.

  I have many regrets. I regret that we didn't do more to become an integrated society and really ensure civil rights for everyone. I regret that we didn't manage to end senseless war as U.S. policy. I regret that we didn't manage to stop our environment from being ravaged. I regret that we didn't do a better job of forcing municipal and state governments to plan so that every part of each of our cities was walkable and so that every city had viable public transportation. And there I will stop listing my regrets.