July 7, 2013 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Back in the 60s, we had the “New Left” and the “Counterculture.” Those were mostly self-aggrandizing terms for a loose amalgam of forces that vaguely resembled a movement that wanted to see itself as more important than it was. Fortunately for said movement, the president was Richard Nixon, a man cursed with a paranoid sense of victimization that could be counted on to inflate, in his own mind, the weakest enemy into the gravest of national threats. That the Director of the FBI at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, was of exactly the same turn of mind only added to a situation that was ideal for leftists. By themselves they were a threat to no one, but with Nixon’s and Hoover’s vivid imaginations helping out, they managed to think of themselves as a force to be reckoned with. As any rational observer at the time could see, the New Left and the Counterculture were populated almost solely by privileged white college kids who turned, in their own minds, simple opposition to the war in Viet Nam into a critique of all of U.S. governance, foreign policy, history and much of Western culture. As an intellectual matter, much of that was sound and revealing; as a plan of action in the hands of “the movement,” it was a joke.
I was 19 when I told a deeply concerned older man that all of these threats of revolution would go away in an instant if the idiots in the White House would just end the war. He was skeptical, but, years later, I turned out to be right. The only people who were serious about revolution back then were a few Black Panthers; the rest were college kids playing at it. Sometimes that play turned deadly, as in the case of the Weather Underground, but only the paranoid could seriously believe the American Left of the time to be a threat to anything except possibly their own sanity.
In truth, the New Left, with its emphasis on Marx/Lenin/ Mao/Che/fill-in-your-favorite-name-here, and the Counterculture, with its emphasis on pot, LSD and an array of animal tranquilizers masquerading as “THC,” had next to nothing in common. To pretend that the grim-faced Stalinists of the “Progressive Labor” wing of the SDS shared anything at all with the “back-to-the-land-and-acid” nutcases of the Counterculture is to strain credulity considerably. About the only things they agreed on were a vague disaffection with American consumer culture and an antipathy for the police.
In the case of the political left, that mistrust of cops was based in real issues. The police riot at the Democratic convention in 1968 was a good example, as was the slaughter of Black Panthers by the FBI, its Cointelpro operation, and countless instances of Hoover’s infiltration of perfectly legal organizations working for social change. Hippies, by contrast mostly resented the police for their odd habit of trying to enforce the drug laws.
Of course at the time, the many excesses and downright stupidities of the American Left spawned their own opposition. Vast swaths of the American people remained doggedly unimpressed by privileged white kids preaching to them about the need to throw off their chains. Those same people, many of whom had been raised on farms and often enough during the Great Depression, could hardly contain their contempt for 20-somethings hymning the glories of “the land.” Did those children have any idea of what farm work entailed? If they did, they kept it carefully hidden.
To many Americans, hippies were a joke. So it was no surprise that jokes came to be made about them. One of those came in the form of a bumper sticker that said something like, “If you don’t like the police, next time you’re in trouble, call a hippie.”
I’ve thought about that bumper sticker many times in the ensuing years and even updated it periodically in my own mind, to suit the needs of the particular time. Of late I’ve thought about it in terms of radical feminism, its contempt for men and its blithe insistence that women don’t want or need them. So, based on this remarkable and entertaining video, allow me to offer this update to the bumper sticker: “If you don’t like men, next time your house is being broken into, call a feminist.” (Conservative Videos, 7/4/13).
It seems that Denay Houston awoke at 6 AM recently to the sounds of glass breaking in her daughter’s bedroom. Someone was trying to break in. She nudged her sleeping husband who didn’t seem overly impressed by the fact, but who reluctantly dragged himself up and went to see what the problem was. Not finding anyone outside, he headed to their barn where he heard noises. Sure enough, there was the would-be burglar, one Robert Cole. Houston’s husband picked up a rope he used in training horses, grabbed Cole, bum-rushed him to the ground and hog-tied him with the rope. With Cole lying in the middle of their yard, hands tied to feet behind his back, Houston’s husband went back inside, told his wife to call the police and went to work.
That was it. No fanfare, no fireworks, just find the guy, tie him like a rodeo calf, dust off your hands and get along with the business of life.
Unfortunately, Denay Houston seems to have not gotten the numerous memos radical feminism has been sending over the years. You know, the ones that told her that men are useless and a danger to her. In the video, the nine-months-pregnant Houston is almost giddy with pleasure at her sense of her and their daughter being protected by her husband. When the reporter asked what she was thinking as she watched her husband go about the business of securing the family, house and property against the invader, Denay said with pride and pleasure “That’s my man!” Now that’s politically incorrect! Doesn’t she know she could just as easily called a feminist?
Meanwhile, Houston’s husband isn’t on camera; he’s at work. He plainly is one of those guys who’s “just doing my job, ma’am.” He doesn’t want notoriety, he just wanted that sumbitch tied good and tight and the police alerted so he could get on with his day. To me he sounds like a heck of a guy, the type of man a daughter can grow up to adore and a son to emulate, the type of man about whom a wife can glow with pride and admiration, tell her friends and the TV reporter.
But that of course would be a wife like Denay Houston, who hasn’t gotten those memos radical feminism has been turning out for so many years. But come to think of it, maybe she’s gotten all of them and just put them where they belong – in the dustbin of history. Maybe she’s one of the 80% of Americans who reject feminism while embracing gender equality. Maybe she’s one of the smart ones, the caring ones, who know that men and women are in this life together and won’t be separated by hate-inspired claptrap that claims we’re natural enemies.
Whoever Denay Houston is, I’m glad to meet her. As much of a stand-up guy as her husband is, at least she’s woman enough to recognize it, appreciate it and say so. She may have known she could call a feminist and that person would have gone right to work, forming committees and petitioning the state legislature for special laws with sumptuous funding vehicles and, in five or ten years, probably would have had her own non-profit organization living off that government largess. She then could have set up a multi-faceted training program to teach Denay about how the patriarchy created Robert Cole and that feminism is her only defense against him.
Or she could just stick an elbow in her husband’s ribs and say “Honey, I hear breaking glass.”
Funny, she did the latter. Looks like feminism has a lot of work to do.
The National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization
The National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Want to get involved? Here’s how:
- Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team. Link to our join us page
- Join our Facebook Page.
Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting. Thank you for your activism.
#feminism, #hog-ties, #Nixon, #hippies, #Houston, #Cole, #Denay