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Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the 60's

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As far as I know, this is a unique book. It is an important document for those who want to understand the politics of the Sixties and what has happened since. It is also an antidote to the romanticized versions of the period that are all too common in books, movies, and personal storytelling.

At its best, when the authors provide reportage on the events of the period--and keep their commentary to a minimum--it is a devastating indictment of the nihilism and recklessness of some of the leading actors. The chapters on the Black Panthers and Weatherman are particularly strong.

In the later chapters, the sweeping statements about "the Left" become too broad and tend to condemn too many for too much. Not everyone who protested the Vietnam War was a Stalinist or endorsed terrorism. And not everyone who views the period differently than the authors is motivated by dishonesty and moral cowardice.

To the authors' credit, they include a telling annecdote: t! ! hey confront the writer Susan Sontag at a book festival, and finally, she refuses to talk to them any further, expressing frustration with their "Manichaean" view of politics. A fair-minded reader can appreciate Sontag's comment, even agree with it, without dismissing the book.

By the time they wrote this book in the late 1980s, Collier and Horowitz had a lot to get off their chests: "second thoughts" about their radicalism in the Sixties, disgust with the refusal of former comrades to critically examine their own political involvements, and a need to settle scores with those who had shunned them since they broke ranks with their radical friends.

That striving for vindication, and the need to be listened to, has an obsessive quality that comes through in this book. Many readers will not be persuaded to embrace conservative Republican politics, as Horowitz (at least) has done. (I, for one, see more shades of gray than do these authors.) Nonetheless, t! ! his book is one that anyone who cares about the subject sho! uld read before drawing conclusions about the Sixties.

In Destructive Generation, Peter Collier and David Horowitz put together an account of 60s radicalism that acts as an excellent antidote to the songs of U2 or Howard Zinn's chic People's History of the United States. The book goes a long way toward discrediting the fantasy of the 60s as a time of idealism and harmless rebellion, and resurrects the nearly forgotten "dark side" of the 60s.

At times, the book reads almost like a latter-day version of Dostoevsky's classic, the Devils. Like the Devils, the radicals portrayed in Destructive Generation -- notably Huey Newton, Bernadine Dohrn, Billy Ayers and Tom Hayden -- seem to behave the way they do not because they believe in revolution, but because they hate the system and they seem to be fascinated by nihilism and violence. The chapters on the Panthers and the Weatherman are the most instructive, while Horowitz's "letter to a political friend" is the most moving part of the book. If you are looking for the antithesis to Noam Chomsky, you will find it here.

The only drawback to the book is the way in which it uses sources. Footnotes are sparse, and paraphrases are often vague. Because of this, the book reads like one long editorial, rather than a work of history. One hopes that Collier and Horowitz will return to this work and create a second edition, with better notation.

How does it feeeelll... To be on your own... no direction known... like a rollin' stone...

This Dylan lyric depicts the disarray in which the intellectual Left finds itself in the aftermath of voluminous setbacks over the past century. David Horowitz and Peter Collier recount their personal intellectual metamorphoses' as they wend their way through the chapters of "Destructive Generation."

They begin with a particularly heartfelt portrayal of a Leftist attorney, Fay Stender, trying to do good for poor black victims of a racist society. What Stender fails to comprehend, which leads to one of the purported victims shooting her in a bizarre ritual of hatred for all white people, is that these victims are thugs who prey on the very people she presumes she represents. Her actions are borne of a fatal miscalculation of murderers like Jonathan Jackson and his friends. This story, skillfully related by H&C, shows that the law of unintended consequences always seems to prevail, and often fatally, when put to the test by Left-Liberal nostrums. They next visit the rise and fall of the Weather underground, Huey Newton, and the Black Panthers, all grisly stories with a less than savory end.

The Second section of the book deals with how the Left-liberal press poses as a 5th column for America's Marxist intellectuals. It shows how their intellectual allegiance to the social policy concepts of Marxist regimes leads them to conspire to deceive the American public. Their goal is shown to be undeniably subversive to America's national interest. Prominent public figures of the Left mentioned here include man of the cloth William Sloane Coffin, former Democratic congressman from Oakland Calif. Ron Dellums and his aide Carlottia Scott, NYT journalist Anthony Lewis, and former Dem. Cong. woman from Denver, Patricia Schroeder, with a host of lesser light attorneys and enablers achieving minor notoriety.

They next romp through the Left's portrayal of Joe McCarthy. History has absolved McCarthy even though his method for outing U.S. government Communists was reprehensible. This chapter is followed by a marvelous piece on the Left's takeover of the city council in Berkeley California. All the familiar antics of Leftist rule are on display here and the chapter provided me with many belly laughs. In another way it's just plain sad that these people seem to learn nothing from history. They act like an intellectual version of the mindless Kudzu weed that if left untended continues to grow and expand over any and all obstacles until it consumes the landscape. All Communist-Socialist governments end up creating shortages and a vastly reduced standard of living for all people, but these idealists never seem to get the message. H&C hope to help them. Perhaps a 12-step program will be forthcoming.

In chapter eight H&C reveal their assumptions which have led to their transition from Radical innocence to Radical guilt. They do a wonderful job of dissecting the American-hating propagandist from MIT, Noam Chomsky. They also take apart Tom Hayden and his ilk, showing them for what they are and what they stand for; it's not a pretty picture.

The final section of the book deals with their growing up and beyond the Leftist mythology that held them in its thrall in their early years. They also explain the reason that former comrades must treat them with such disdain as they recount the smearing administered at the hands of these old friends, who remain continuing Communist sympathizers to a man/woman. Their views are recapped in a series of letters and other correspondence.

They conclude the book by citing how the Cold War caused comrades, from their legions of the Left, to leave the faith in the face of mountains of lies and policy failures resulting from the Fatal Conceit of Communist-Socialist Utopians.

This is a great book for anyone, especially disillusioned post-graduates who sense that something is awry in their worldview. They should read it two or three times just to make sure they retain some of its wisdom.

I was growing up in California while this was all going on and somehow I was pretty much oblivious. David Horowitz and Peter Collier are remarkable authors and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read this book. Why isn't it used as a history text in highschools? The drivel that's out there dispensed in all it's liberal bias glory is perverse in it's politically correctness. I just hate it when history is distorted so that we can pretend things happened to acommodate feminist or liberal rhetoric. After reading this book (and others by these authors)I have a deeper understanding of modern US history and appreciate the candor with which the books are written.

Must read for anyone who overslept and missed the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. If you always wanted to know what it was like to hang with the Panthers, but couldn't find the Ramparts office, get a peek inside those romantic days of yore. Of course Horowitz and Collier may not remember quite the way you heard it on the street back then, but, hell, what do they know? huh? If you figure the millions massacred after the US left Nam got what they deserved, this book is not for you. But if you're willing to take an honest look at the consequences of the 60's and more, plug in the coffee pot, unplug the phone, and dive in. Very, very thought provoking

We tend to think of the sixties as being filled with cuddly and earnest activists. We applaud their struggles and imagine their innocence and naivete. This book puts a stop to such foolishness. The real story of the sixties is laid out by two people who were there - and immersed in the thick of things.

What is astonishing about the text is that it relates intimate stories - one after another - concerning people who were involved in the sixties' struggles. The authors don't rudely talk about or lambast these characters. They don't have to. Their actions speak for themselves. You'll hear about the self-absorbed anarchy of the "Weathermen", or the self-absorbed violence of the "Black Panthers". You'll feel like you were there, watching each of these groups operate in an America that not only stepped back from, but actually pandered to such groups. One chapter describes how Berkeley went from being one of the nicest towns in California to one of the silliest. And you'll read an excellent essay on how the actions of Joseph McCarthy have made America vulnerable by limiting criticism of anyone actually involved in anti-American activities.

So the next time you put on that Grateful Dead album,( oops, CD ) you might want to also pick up this book.In the end you may feel as silly as the last time you went through your music collection and saw those K-tel albums sitting in the back.

These essays are priceless and they tell a tale that many have never heard. We are presented with the personal impacts of radicalism on human relationships and also on communities that sponsor it. Progressivism and its sympathizers practically imploded the city of Berkeley and still exert a noxious influence upon that locality today. The life of Fay Stender, a lawyer/groupie of the Black Panthers, teaches the reader just how much ideological blindness can bring a person down. The Weatherman Underground is given its own (pathetic) chapter length treatment. Believe me, you'll be horrified by the specifics of their pseudo-struggle and laugh when you discover that they viewed sex as being an ideological statement. The anti-Americanism of the New Left has long been denied but Horowitz and Collier reveal much about them that has been hidden by the sixties. If you're appalled by what the country's become, read this back and learn the causation of our cultural decline.

I graduated HS in '64 and attended college during the late 60s. I sood on the side lines in awe of the convulsions in the country. You could not be a 60s product without having some reverence for the committment of the radicals even if you had reservations about their cause.

I saw great things coming by the upheavel in the area of civil rights behind ML King, so I became disposed to believe that other revolutionaries probably possessed the same admirable goals and ambitions for the country. Yet when I looked around I didn't see anything really bad. I saw democracy and open debate, and an unpopular war. (Can any war really be popular even if it is necessary?) I was made to feel guilty about my lack of committment to upheavel and revolution even when my friends were going off to war.

This book, especially because it was written by insiders in the radical movement, has finely lifted that guilt. Had the radicals really achieved their goals, a book such as this would have never been written, and to me that is the strength of our democratic society.

This book will head my gift list for a long time to my friends and family. Yesterday I had to purchase a book for a family friend who was heading overseas to fight the war in Afganistan. I had to find it in the Politics section. Clearly this deserves the status of History. I'm sure this book will inspire him with the knowledge of what he is really fighting for and how vigilant we all must be, whether at home or abroad, all the time, not just during times of open assult on our country.

Russ Gardiner, Alexandria, VA

The seeds planted in the Sixties are in full bloom today, and this extraordinary book illustrates just how our current messed-up values got to be accepted as "politically correct" thinking. Many of the 60's radicals documented in this book are today highly respected members in our body politic, and it's almost scary to think they still harbor that same destructive leftist ideology under a modern veneer of centrist-Clintonism.

Having lived through the '60's as a college student,I was profoundly affected by it. Like Mr.Horowitz,I began having second thoughts & reevaluating my political opinions as I became older & became exposed to previously undisclosed information. I do admire Mr. Horowitz's candor & self disclosure greatly,but I can't help but feel that much of his vitriol directed toward that decade (& after) reflect his sense of personal betrayal by communism & socialism. This is understandable but unfortunate as it exposes his insights to dismissal by critics as psychological reaction formation-to use an outdated Freudian construction. A very valid criticism,I feel, is his lack of documentation & a biblography. He extensively uses undocumented quotes to bolster his conclusions. Also he fails to acknowledge many valid criticisms of that era's issues. He fails,for example, to acknowledge that we lost 58,000 men in a "police action" and that he coincidentally was not subject to the draft due to the fact that he married young & fathered 4 children. No harm,no foul per se,but the families of the young fallen soldiers & airmen certainly earned the right to protest without being accused of nacent communists sympathies. That said,this is a very important & thought provoking book written by a man who was in the thick of what he describes.