The left’s new challenges to the Establishment

Back in the Sixties, the tendency was to bust up in any way possible the authenticity and cohesion of the elder generation, as heroic as it might have been barely 20 years before.

Bumper stickers then, like Twitter today, would focus the mind Zen-like on a singular, annoying declarative sentence, like “Support your local shaman.” (Although we knew him to be actually the colorful, but not-so-bright, pot dealer who hung around on campus after he had flunked out earlier on — when it was still possible to flunk out of college.)

{mosads}And this bumper sticker was intriguing: “Do you take money from the CIA?” That would be aimed at virtually any politician, even, as comedian Lenny Bruce suggested, anyone who wore a uniform, like the mailman. All were considered “fascist” back then, a word you would hear about every 20 minutes from the “freaks,” as hippies preferred to be called. But it would also suggest just anybody; one never knew who was taking money from the CIA. The thing was, there were no barriers to keep the random thinking in the margins and off the playing field. Certain assumptions that would not be challenged were suddenly challenged.

What was annoying about the onslaught of hippie thinking was that so very much of it, it might have been suspected, was accurate. In such conspiratorial times, maybe everybody who was not a freak was taking money from the CIA. Maybe nobody. Still, you didn’t know if they even did that, but you knew they — the older generation — could not be trusted, which would lead you to believe just about anything. And again today, the walls are breaking down.

Students today have demanded that Washington and Lee University, one of the very best colleges in the United States and one of the oldest, remove Confederate-themed battle flags from Lee Chapel, where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and his legendary steed, Traveller, rest eternally. It is only moments away when the other shoe drops and students will demand that Lee’s name be removed from the name of the school. Probably Washington’s as well, since George Washington was a slave owner, just as they have decided to take down statues of Confederate-era warriors and politicians from the Civil War period this past week in Louisiana.

And it is not only the Southern schools and places, which bear a burden of history, but the Yankee victors, as well. Harvard and Yale Universities are both called out today for connections to money earned or invested, according to reports, by the blood and toil of African slaves.

This was well passed over back in the day, as most of the Sixties leaders, or those who have profited as icons of the generation, went to those schools; Bill and Hillary Clinton met at Yale when it was going through an almost revolutionary period. And where do you think most every Supreme Court justice went to law school? Vice President Al Gore even had a famous novel, “Love Story,” use him and his roommate at Harvard, Tommy Lee Jones, as inspiration for the lead character, and no one thought to bring up slave money issues then.

The so-far unsung genius of the day, Malcolm X, went right to the quick by putting an X in place of his “slave name.” Malcolm X’s time may still be ahead.

Last week, The Daily Telegraph reported on Ntokozo Qwabe, a Rhodes Scholar studying at Oxford University who wants the statue of Cecil Rhodes, the archetypal British imperialist, taken down. According to the paper:

An Oxford student who is leading a campaign to remove Cecil Rhodes[‘s] statue has been bullied online after revelations that his education has been funded by the scholarship set up by the colonial politician.

Ntokozo Qwabe has been accused of “disgraceful hypocrisy” over the weekend because he has been funded by the scholarship set up by the man whose statue he wants removed.

The South African student responded, “Rhodes did not have a scholarship. It was never his money. All that he looted must absolutely be returned immediately.”

As this generation rises, we won’t be asked, “Did you take money from the CIA?” But, maybe, “Did you take money from Cecil Rhodes?”

It will indeed be awkward to get rid of Rhodes and keep his money. And it is quite possible that we get rid of the Founding Fathers altogether once this string unravels. Already there are calls to remove the pictures of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from the money. That they could be removed entirety now from our American legacy is distinctly possible in a generation or two. And as such accusations come today against Oxford, so too they will advance against Yale, Harvard and other great institutions.

I don’t see this necessarily as a bad thing. The solutions offered first will be self-serving and generational and patricidal; it is the way of all generations. This challenge ostensibly comes from the left, as other challenges to the Establishment today come from the right. It is the task ahead that they both be satisfied and the responsibilities and pain and suffering be collectively absorbed if we are to go forward together on an even keel.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.