^ WPT, Sorry but this will be a long post in reply as the matter is a serious one. TLDR is fair response
I don't think it is "simplistic" to consider that the root causes of so many of the forces breaking down our society and making it more miserable have their roots in the revolution that began in the 1960s and carried through the 1970s and beyond. In fact, I'd say it is quite a complex position to take. I suspect you find it "simplistic" because you disagree with it, and that is of course your right.
It seems to me that we are suffering from the rise of libertinism, both the amoral economic libertinism of the right and the social libertinism (often authoritarian and intolerant) of the Left. These two orthodoxies of our age are manifest in the collapse of the self-supporting family and its replacement by the state, in widespread crime, drug abuse, increasing rates of mental illness, loss of respect for teachers and education, and the rise of terrorism and political violence in our fractured society. From your posts over many years, I suspect your employment puts you on the front line of many of these.
This social and economic libertarianism is quite different from the old (and dare I say it, British) idea of liberty, which Australians inherited. Liberty is a compact of limitations between power and the subject. This compact was built on the basis of a shared set of evolved values and traditions which were consensual enough to underpin the idea of a common law. However, once you degrade and dilute the shared meanings and traditions, common law liberty and consent decays, replaced by fragmented and arrogant individualism which must be checked by authoritarian state-led curbs on free speech and coercion, all plastered over with high state spending. That seems to me where we are now.
If I seem more focused on the Left it is because I think the modern Left is more at the root of this decay than the Right. The libertine/libertarian Right would be relatively easy to tame because its economic libertinism is ultimately subject to government and policy. Moreover it is fundamentally amoral about our society and what it represents, not reflexively opposed to our system of economic and social organisation, and to the authority which sustains it. So I think it is more tractable, and reversible.
The social libertinism of the Left, however, has taken deep roots in our "do what you wanna do" culture, and I think it is more intractable. When the poor in our society were far, far poorer and more insecure than they are today, we did not have the levels of crime and drug abuse, teacher and health worker stress, misogynistic pornography, social immobility, terrorism and sheer ignorance and contempt for our history, laws and culture that prevail now. These things are the products of cultural and moral poverty, not mere economic forces. And I think that has much to do with the hedonistic, me-first society which began in the 1960s, and which has been greatly abetted by the fragmenting and liquefying effect of mass immigration since the 1990s.
The economic libertines certainly played their part in this, but social fragmentation largely results from the capture of education, media and popular entertainment by the Left. I see it in my own children, as they are late teens and young adults now. Their starting assumption is that Conservatives and ancient institutions are just a defence of money or moth-eaten brocade, and that the paid actors of the state are the good guys. It takes a lot of work to make them see that there is another point of view, and they are intelligent enough to stretch their minds to admit the possibility ; but their caked-on assumptions are culturally left, and they know that it would be very uncool (not to mention grade-reducing) to suggest that continuity and shared cultural experience matters, or that human beings are not necessarily happiest when subjected to rapid social change.
Youth have always been prone to this, but today the shows they watch and the music they listen to, and the education system they attend, all point them in this direction. The intellectual case for Conservatism (and any intelligent person knows that there is one, just as there is for the political Left) - that case is left unmade.
I should add that I am thinking of the so-called "new Left", which has always had as its starting premise that the familiar and trusted and solid must be inferior to the foreign, alien and subversive. The roots of this tendency are interesting, but I suspect it arises from the natural self-aggrandisement of intellectuals, whose dearest wish is to stand above their own herd. In our age, only self-ascribed victim status trumps this position for moralising, self-affirming glow.
The old Left, built upon non-Communist manufacturing trade unions, made a far more positive contribution to social progress and happiness for many years. However, these unions are no longer significant actors in modern society, and they too lost their way as they became modern corporations, lost their old community and Methodist roots, and then retreated to the public and monopoly sectors, away from the discipline of competition.
I do not think this is a simplistic position, though I know it is an unpopular and difficult one - easily and frequently caricatured and misrepresented as "reactionary", "authoritarian", "anti-reform", "racist" or just nostalgia for days that never were. If the cultural elites continue to ignore and mock and smear it, however, they will ultimately have to deal with forces that are far nastier than the moderate right, and I think we are beginning to see that. So it would be well to take it slightly seriously.
On another note, I deal with unions in Singapore a lot as we have major plant there. I do not recognise the picture you paint, as they are assertive and responsibly tough. Our workers in Singapore are among the highest-paid plant workers we have in our global business.
