A revolution of, by, and for the people

A patriotic, anti-colonial reframing of the discourse of the US Left

     In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Left in the USA was a voice in defense of the just causes, a voice against racism, poverty, and war.  It was spearheaded by youth, who belonged to a generation that had learned, through the insightful critiques of the civil rights, black power, and anti-war movements, that the United States of America was far from being the democratic society that it claimed to be.  The white youth of the late 1960s had experienced childhood during the period of the golden age of capitalism and the zenith of U.S. hegemony.  Experiencing in their daily lives the economic benefits that pertained to the nation at that historic moment, they had fully internalized the American claim to and promise of democracy.  Insightful critiques of the historic omissions and hypocrisies of the American claim, the truthfulness of which could not be reasonably denied, shocked and angered white middle class youth, who became active in the student anti-war movement, often forming…