What if a group of young idealists cast off the shackles of "the system" and built a community all their own. No police or agents of control to be found — anywhere.
They wouldn’t be needed.
After all, if food, medicine and drugs were open, free, and available, no one would need to steal, and crime would evaporate. This would prove once and for all that the racist police force was, not just unnecessary, but causing more crimes than it prevented.
See?
"The cops are the real criminals, man," "It the criminals who are the real victims, man."
In this "autonomous" zone, the new world would come to be.
"Imagine what that world would look like . . . man."
Well, it turns out we don’t have to imagine.
After two weeks, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is finally sending police back into the "autonomous zone," the area once labelled as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), now called the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP).
Turns out the summer of peace was 14 days of murder, mayhem, and misery.
The utopia facade could last through the day, but the nights were filled with roving armed guards in black masks, and, at least, three deadly shootings.
If you think this will lead to the mayor’s downfall, think again.
Her romantic appeal will be lionized by the left.
But what was this magical age she was invoking?
Thus, what was the real "Summer of Love?"
The summer of 1967 came during a time of great social unrest in our country’s history.
There was the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggle, but there was also the famous mass gathering of the "counterculture" movement taking place in the Haight-Asbury neighborhood of San Francisco.
It was a messy mosh pit of hippies, yippies, wanderers, thieves, vagabonds, and ne’re-do-wells that modern liberal "historians" love to idealize through rose colored glasses as a gathering of love and peace.
It was dubbed the "Summer of Love," and it’s been romanticized to the point of mythological into a gathering of enlightened beings who discovered radical truths about human understanding.
No, it was not a Shakespearean gathering of philosophers and intellectuals under a tree to talk of fallen kings. No, King Richard II was not at the Summer of Love, despite the Seattle’s mayor’s ignorant description of the tawdry events of 1967.
Dizzy Jenny Durkan should just shut up read a book.
Here’s the reality. This is all a lie.
The Summer of Love was a tasteless excuse for confused and selfish young people to abandon responsibility, live like bums for a few months, and have wanton, meaningless rutting sex while saturating their bodies with illegal and dangerous drugs.
Flower Children? Not likely.
History has a habit of repeating itself, and we’re now seeing a similar scenario playing out in Washington State.
Much like the hyper-woke "protesters" who cordoned off several city blocks in Seattle in the past weeks, the lost souls who trekked over to San Francisco in 1967 arbitrarily decided to occupy a neighborhood and make it their own.
They just plopped down and declared, "This is ours now," without bothering to wonder what the local homeowners or businesses had to say. Never mind the short term, and probably long term, economic damage that’s was done then, and is likely being done this very moment in Seattle. But whatever, because "lives are more important than property," — or something. As we all know what has happened to San Francisco.
It's mostly a cesspool of the worst of humanity.
Another disturbing parallel seen today between the hippies of then and the thugs running CHOP now is that, already, it's being romanticized by the media (if they bother mentioning it at all).
We’ve been shown photos and videos of concerts and urban gardening in CHOP that are supposed to make us feel really warm and fuzzy, but there are also some other crucial details to consider. Namely, the folks in CHOP have put up a wall around their territory (no small irony there), they have armed guards with guns (even more ironic), and they’ve spent a great deal of time and energy harassing police officers trying to keep the peace.
And, now, they have murder. Rape and pillaging are not far behind.
Revisionists are alive and well across the globe.
They’ve already rewritten the Summer of Drugs into the Summer of Love, and they’ve begun rewriting CHOP from a story of rampant anarchy into a quasi-second American Revolution.
Laughable.
American collectivism destroys. American collectivism is a cancer on the body politic.
Children today need to learn hard truths at an early age.
Telling kids that drugs and going without showering is virtuous or that building an illegal fort in a metropolitan area is righteous ultimately harms our future leaders the most.
Craig Shirley is a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian. His books include, “Reagan’s Revolution, The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All,” “Rendezvous with Destiny, Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” "Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years," and “ Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan." He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, “December, 1941” and his new 2019 book, “Mary Ball Washington,” a definitive biography of George Washington’s mother. Shirley lectures frequently at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch. He has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater and will teach a class this fall at the University of Virginia on Reagan. He appears regularly on Newsmax TV, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.
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