Memories I'd just as soon not have.

It was about 1975. I was having a conversation with a young TV sales Rep, recently out of college. The conversation turned to the activities of radical young people, like the SDS (Students For A Democratic Society). The Viet Nam War had wound down in what I believed then and now to be disgraceful policies of the United States Government. Our conversation ranged over some of the influence the young radicals may have extended on politicians.

The U.S. Military was working toward the extraordinary state they enjoy today... a well-educated, all-volunteer force of top rated professionals. The college R.O.T.C. was an important building block toward that goal. This starting point for training future officers began with young people obtaining a college education. The military was then suffering from an ill-deserved reputation and building a corp of better educated officers should have appealed to everyone. Not so. Earlier, at the University of Kansas, an important ceremony in the progress of R.O.T.C. training had been interrupted, and in fact abruptly ended, by a rowdy group of protesters carrying pro-North Viet Nam posters and shouting a chant that contained the phrase "Ho Chi Minh will win, win, win!"

I am loathe to express hate. But I freely admit I hated the SDS. Again, my unchanged belief is that they inflicted great harm on this country I love. Most of these young radicals were from affluent families. Few had ever done an honest day's work. They truly were reaping all the luxurious benefits of the country their parents and grandparents had built, and which they chose to destroy. As part of their protest, they were largely unwashed, long-haired - perhaps with a flower in their dirty hair - weirdly dressed, drug using bums... demonstrating their difference from, and indifference to, society. Of course, they felt they were hip, and we called them hippies.

The Bob Fosse film "Cabaret" had been out a couple of years but was still being widely viewed. This story of a bawdy girl (brilliantly played by Liza Minelli) was set in pre-World War II Germany, and chronicled some of the rise of the Nazi's Third Reich. There was a scene in the movie that was set in an outdoor beer garden. A large number of patrons were quietly enjoying their evening when suddenly a teenage boy, clean-cut and washed, wearing a simple brown shirt, stood up and began to sing, in a loud clear voice, a song stating that "Tomorrow belongs to me." So infectious was his singing, adult patrons began to join him. Soon the entire crowd was on their feet singing with the Nazi youth.

Meanwhile, in 1975 America, there was widespread and deep felt disdain for the young American hippies. Remembering the beer garden scene from Cabaret, I told my friend that these young Americans were fools. If they wanted to sell their philosophy, they should learn from the Nazi youth of the late 1930s. Boy, do I regret that thought. Maybe the hippies had seen Cabaret. More likely, they learned from the same tutors as did the Nazi brown shirts. They did bathe. They did cut their hair and go back to school. They became college professors. They became the architects of much of what is happening in our government today. Can I say Bill Ayers? Bernadine Dorn?

I still hate them. And they are still hell-bent on destroying America.