Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s

by Peter Collier, David Horowitz

Argues that sixties radicalism was basically destructive and its main legacy is the common belief in America's untrustworthiness

Genres: History, Politics, Cultural, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, Sociology

400 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

Founder of Encounter Books in California, Collier was publisher from 1998-2005. He co-founded the Center for the Study of Popular Culture with David Horowitz. Collier wrote many books and articles with Horowitz. Collier worked on the website FrontpageMag. He was an organizer of Second Thoughts conferences for leftists who have moved right.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Gene · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book had a fairly strong start and finish, but the central half or so was just a matter of slogging through it for me. The account of Fay Stender gave the book a strong start, and further looks into the Black Panthers and the Weatherman served to paint a vivid picture of the violent nature of the 60s and 70s. But the departure from reporting into analysis was dry and wordy. It seems these former leftists were bitter and whiny about the empty vision they abandoned, and it makes for joyless reading. The end had good moments of personal reflection, but the sardonic tone throughout became oppressive. I've twice read Whittaker Chamber's Witness, which is much longer, but it was so much more touching and insightful. I think it is because Collier and Horowitz were rejecting something without embracing anything that they come across so different than Chambers with his love for life and faith.

This is also the second book I've read bewailing this era's political ways, and twice now I've been stunned at the way in which the authors don't really seem to be able to admit that there were reasons why young people were revolting and wanting to change society and America's influence in the world. Just because you may reject their solutions does not mean that the hippies had not diagnosed something very sick about our society.

[Heather Denigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. What a book. The series of historical vignettes perfectly captures the individuals bursting with schizophrenic ideals, inconsistencies and contradictions. Because of their closeness with most of the players, the authors haven't flattened out the characters or simplified the cause-effects, confluences or implications of their actions or ideas. They are compassionate towards their former friends (and present enemies) and while fully accepting the ironies in their account. Collier and Horowitz are able to reach the paradoxical, while the people you encounter here, such as Fay Stender, Bernadine Dorhn, Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, Huey Newton, etc, etc, never resolved their contradictions. They are very human in this respect. An instructive book in many respects.

Keep your internet search engine handy.

Collier and Horowitz have a website called "Discover the Networks" to help you keep track of the individuals and their various intertwined and overlapping biographies: unfortunately the site is clunky. Once I have more skill with graphics, I'd love to make an infographic of all the Panthers and Weathermen and SDS and where they came from and where they ended up.

[JoséMaría BlancoWhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern classic. Collier and Horowitz were part of those crazy nut Leftists of the 60s and 70s. Only they were honest enough to recant and be converted to common sense middle age. They take us through the whole weird mess of riots, crimes, sit-ins, orgies, provocations, revolts, and what have you that characterize those rage-filled Oedipus times. The stories of all those crackpots are here: their ways of life, their proclaimed and real motivations, their words and their deeds. This is not an intellectual lecture; this is people applying their beliefs to life, and making those of their neighbors nightmares. It is thousands of prodigal sons and daughters feeling guilty for their privileged lives and taking it on their benefactors in the name of the poor and oppressed. The truth is not one of them ever did any good to anybody. There are no records of poor people, or oppressed, expressing their appreciation and gratitude for any of those progressives did for them.

It's a comprehensive book, dealing with all aspects of the 60s. If ideas have consequences, this book deals as much with those ideas (rather those who had those ideas, and their lives) as with the consequences of those ideas. The terrible contrast between self-appointed messiahs of the masses and their deeds affecting the lives of others around them comes out remarkably clear.

This is a mandatory read, for those interested in recent American history and specially to young people lacking in character, so prone to be co-opted by the first trend in town, and so vulnerable under peer pressure. There is no "essay on" socialism of leftism, this is a warning with historical implications, filled with facts that truly make up a lesson for right living. Thank God that one does not need to be a Ph.D or even a very intelligent fellow to see clearly how crazy and dangerous Socialism is, making the experiences the authors went through unnecessary. In any case, better to be a prodigal son and be back home, than be gone for good.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting book, but ultimately one of these two authors (probably Collier) is too in love with the sound of his own voice. His quasi-novelistic style gets old quickly, and he offers way too many mundane details that distract from his points. I couldn't finish it.

[Craig Werner · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the 250th book I'm filing on my "Sixties" shelf, and of them all, it's the very worst. Pause here for co-authors Collier and David Horowitz to complain that my response is the result of my mindless commitment to hating everything American.

Back to the task at hand: both authors were prominent members of the New Left during the Sixties, editing Ramparts magazine, which among other things exposed the degree of CIA infiltration and funding of college political organizations. Both saw the light and converted to the Neoconservative faith; both have been very very well paid front men traveling to college campuses hoping to provoke the kinds of responses that reveal the left to be opposed to freedom of expression. (It doesn't help that the students were too often willing to play their assigned role.)

All of which wouldn't matter so much if the book wasn't so rhetorically repugnant and intellectually dishonest. Collier and Horowitz participate gleefully in the type of overblown name-calling we've come to consider standard on right wing radio. That they do so while claiming the high ground of reason and value is borderline nauseating. Beyond that, they devote a radically disproportionate amount of their screed to attacking the most radical of the Black Panthers and the Weathermen at their most extreme. Neither of those groups, at their worst, is really defensible, but neither embodies the spirit of a generation or a decade. The authors never acknowledge the more restrained and sober elements of the movement and they avoid any real discussion of the cogency of the left's criticism of Vietnam, white supremacy, and economic injustice.

And, in the preface to the revised edition, they go out of their way to blame AIDS on the sexual revolution. I wonder how they're managing to trace Coronavirus to the radical left....

Self-righteous and solipsistic, Horowitz and Collier betray every democratic and rational ideal they pretend to hold dear.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a few years since I read this book, but it still resonates in my mind. Finally, somebody had the courage to speak up and talk about the way the Sixties *really* were, not the myth. They were a very frightening time, thanks to the New Left and the Black Panthers, and many of us were literally wondering whether or not the U.S. would survive...because those groups, and their fellow travelers, didn't want it to. Romanticism of that era set in around Watergate, but it shouldn't have: we elected Nixon to do something about the Destructives, and he did. But the terrors of that time have been hushed up, as it was. We who were there will never forget them.

[Andrew]

One of the most engrossing books I've ever read about American political culture.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

He just seems so bitter.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

will post a review shortly.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's alwaystroubling to rethink your most chersihed beliefs

[Rod Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written in 1989 and updated in 2006 - and sounds like it was written this year. Every conservative should read Chapter 10. "Credo quia impossibile" (Latin - review won't recognize italics).

[Steve Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a unique book with great anecdotal information and some very strong observations/conclusions from reexamining the 1960s counterculture. That said, I found the book to be a slog at times and battled to remain engaged though some passages. I'm not sure if it was a product the layout or just the inherent anomalies of a co-authored book. However, I found the effort to be worthwhile, as for whatever issues I had with it, it is an informative book.

[Jeannette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second reading of this book in the last 10 years. There's much in these essays that rings true for me; including much that I was witness to in my undergraduate years at University of California Berkeley 1967-1972. The events chronicled are important and I feel renewed conviction to review many of history's lesson to better understand today's dilemmas and decisions.