Return to letter

Return to Index

  

From: Gavin Coles - Penarth
GvnCls@aol.com
Re: Summer of love: The ethos of the 1960s has nothing to do with today's youth culture
Date: 18 April 2001
 
SIR - From what obscure closet of prejudice do you dig up people like Theodore Dalrymple? [Why Asians have adopted this culture of violence, Comment, 17 April 2001].

He writes about how young "Asians" have adopted the macho youth culture of today - tattoos, shaven heads, drug taking, violence and so forth. So far so good. But then he concludes by saying it is all the fault of modern youth culture based on 1960s "liberation".

It is a classic example of the saying "if you can remember the 1960s you weren't there". What has any of today's youth culture to do with pot-smoking hippies going to rock festivals and saying "Peace and love, man"? If anything it is quite the opposite, and probably based on a childhood growing up watching American movies full of guns, blood, violence, car chases, wooden sex, and bogus sentimentality.