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Visions of the Seventies: The Rise And Fall of a Cultural Challenge

Victor Bockris, Gadfly, January 2001

The 1970s were America's low tide. Not since the Depression had the country been so wracked with woe. Never—not even during the Depression—had America's pride and self-confidence plunged deeper. But the decade was also, paradoxically, in some ways America's finest hour.....

For a short time Americans behaved foolishly, and on one or two occasions even disgracefully. Then they recouped. They rethought. They reinvented. They rediscovered in their own past the governing principles of their future. Out of the failure and trauma of the 1970s they emerged stronger, richer, and—if it is not overdramatic to say so—greater than ever.

—David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse)

Total word count of piece: 8041

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