Summer of Peace & Music, Now the Winter of Our Despair

It was 1969, Woodstock, the summer of Peace and Music a coming together to make a statement. What was that statement? For all I could tell, by reading about and listening to what my family told me, it was 500,000 or so of this nations children that refused to grow up and take responsibility for anything. They came together promoting love(with anyone), peace(even if it meant unconditional surrender to our enemies), drugs(society stability be dammed), and music(the music was not bad).

Listening to the music of the times and that which was played at Woodstock, made statements of ant-war, anti-establishment. Somewhat of a libertarian mish mosh of views not very well spoken, more of a selfishness in that, it was all about them no matter what the consequence. Was it a liberal view of the Tea Party of today? Hardly, there was really no clear message other than they wanted all war to end but, they expected our enemies would stop fighting when we did. They wanted to do their drugs and expect that no harm would come to them by their neglect of their families, jobs, or health, with a large amount of deaths by overdoses at Woodstock, with celebrities, and with others who would partake in drug use around the country. The only message that was well received was, they did not want to take any responsibility for their actions. A Tea Party, they were not.

Now we have come full circle and the "Woodstock Generation" has achieved positions of power in the media, in the government, and the Democrat Party. This generation, with its spend now pay later, class warfare, redistribution of wealth, and any and all schemes to give government more of our freedoms, have cost us dearly. It is time for those children to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives and leave others alone to theirs. It is time to come down from the high, back from the trip, and discover that real world problems can not be solved with sugar coated candy ideas but with, tough choices and individual responsibility, only with this can we make it through to the next year as a free people. I can only hope, for our children's sake, that the generation after mine will defend freedom and not use government as a means to an end but, as a way of ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed without limits or judges to tell them, they have made too much.

- M. Garry