In praise of decadence

by Jeff Riggenbach

The legendary 1960s were the seedbed for many of the social changes evident all around us today. In this book, Jeff Riggenbach takes a long, hard look at that fabulous decade and sees something a bit different from anything anyone has ever seen there before. The members of the sixties generation, he argues, were never devoted to left-wing or progressive ideals in the first place - so, contrary to conventional liberal and conservative wisdom, they never had to fall away from any such ideals in order to wallow in the self-actualizing, acquisitive seventies, eighties, and nineties. Politically, the members of the sixties generation - the famed "baby boomers" - have always been more libertarian than anyone expected. In the end, he maintains, the sixties was a seminal decade because it ushered in a period of spreading and deepening cultural decadence which still shows no sign of abating. It is easy to find fault with the turbulent sixties in America, and many do - focusing on such themes as