P.J. O’Rourke admits that during the 1960s he took a lot of drugs, edited an underground anti-war newspaper and took part in a number of riots that involved the police. In 1987 he spoke at a conference in Washington where, along with a number of other former 1960s radicals, he admitted that much of what he got up to in that period was wrongheaded. Below I copy an extract from his speech:
What I believed in the 60s
Everything. You name it and I believed it. I believed love was all you need. I believed you should be here now. I believed drugs could make you a better person. I believed I could hitch-hike to California with 35 cents and people would be glad to feed me. I believed Mao was cute. I believed private property was wrong. I believed my girlfriend was a witch. I believed my parents were Nazi space monsters. I believed the university was putting saltpeter in the cafeteria food. I believed stones had souls. I believed the NLF were the good guys in Vietnam. I believed Lyndon Johnson was plotting to murder all Negroes. I believed Yoko Ono was an artist. I believed Bob Dylan was a musician. I believed I would live forever or until 21, whichever came first. I believed the world was about to end. I believed the Age of Aquarius was about to happen. I believed the I Ching said to cut classes and take over the Dean’s office. I believed wearing my hair long would end poverty and injustice. I believed there was a great throbbing web of psychic mucus and we were all part of it. I managed to believe Ghandi and H. Rap Brown at the same time. With the exception of anything my parents said, I believed everything.*
It seems like he had a good time. I assume it is a coincidence that when the stock markets re-opened after this weekend conference that they took the biggest one day fall in history.
*Source
P. J. O’Rourke, “The Awful Power of Make Believe,” in Peter Collier and David Horowitz eds., Second Thoughts: Former Radicals Look Back at the Sixties, (Madison Books, 1989) p.203.
