What Have Liberal Protesters Ever Accomplished?

As a veteran of many Grateful Dead shows (I remeber most), I've met my share of hippies. they usually wax nostalgic about the incredible changes they brought about in the sixties, man. They made a difference, man and changed the world.

What did they really accomplish? They talk of ending the war in Vietnam or the craziness of the 1968 Chicago convention. They just know that because of them, Tricky Dick was forced to resign. And they...well, they accomplished mostly nothing.

They didn't end the war in Vietnam, they joined with the media and turned popular opinion against it. They also used the media to declare a military victory--the Tet Offensive--into a military defeat. The only president they ever forced out was Lyndon Johnson.

All the 1968 convention did was force people to see the absurdity of the whole socialist movement and elect a man who was not at all likeable and give 12.9% of the vote to a racist named Wallace. Humphrey was creamed in an electoral landslide.

But what of 1972, they surely would get their candidate elected in that cycle. Again, the vast majority of Americans said to themselves; if this is the guy the hippies like, I'll go with Nixon again.

Perhaps this is why the liberals of today can't back the revolutionaries in the Ukraine, Lebanon, Iraq and other nations, they have never been on the winning side.