I am a part of the first wave of Baby Boomers. When my generation was in high school in the early 1960s, we were taught that the history of the 20th century was centrally concerned with the triumph of liberal democracy, from the Progressive Era of the 1910s to the New Deal and the defeat of fascism and then to the ongoing struggle for civil rights. We were given every reason to belief that the remainder of the century would continue this trend towards greater inclusiveness and social justice — and until about 1965 events seemed to bear out that expectation.

But then everything changed. The United States became mired in war abroad and domestic repression at home. The push to enact additional New Deal-style reforms petered out. By the end of the 60s, it seemed that society was flying to pieces in every direction — and when things settled down again a decade later, it was with a far more conservative and anti-progressive bent.

The question this raised for me at the time was why things had gone so wrong after 1970. But the harder I looked for explanations, the more I came to realize that things had actually gone wrong a great deal earlier — or perhaps had never been “right” to begin with.

American foreign policy never did live up to the standards of justice and tolerance that Americans espoused at home, a fact I had been painfully aware of even during the Kennedy years. America, it seemed, had always been run for the benefit of the banks and corporations, with only a limited and temporary exception carved out to create a prosperous middle class for as long as that was in the best interests of business. Even the liberal heroes of my childhood had largely subscribed to the corporate agenda. And the tools of outright repression were always close at hand when demands for genuine democracy and equality grew too urgent.

It now appears that we Boomers were fed a series of lies as we were growing up. The myth of liberal democracy was a cruel hoax, one that left us unprepared to cope with the world in which we have actually lived. And yet it was a myth with a kernel of truth, one that pointed hopefully towards the way things might be, if not the way things are.

Even though the world as it was described to us was a fraud, something like that world — or even better — may yet come to exist. It’s just not possible to get there as long as we adhere to current methods, subscribe to current assumptions, and continue on the road to disaster.

The objectives of this site are threefold. First is to recall and honor the highest ideals that were passed along to me by my parents and teachers and have since been so badly degraded. Second is to explore the lies and deceptions that have kept us imprisoned. And third is to point to possible ways out of our current state of darkness and despair.

April 30, 2013