Mention the year 1968, and you’ll send a thrill through lots of folks now hitting the age of arthritis and the afternoon nap. Back then, the world seemed new—we bold youth set out to reinvent politics and social mores, and to overturn the ossified institutions of authority. Or so it seemed at the time.

Forty years on, some of the shine has worn off. True, the ‘60s produced some great tunes, but the celebration of “freedom” was often just code for running from responsibility towards a mirage of pseudo-pleasures. The result? The beginning of a decades-long surge in marital breakdown, rates of unwed children-bearing and drug abuse.

We Boomers still quiver at a Rolling Stones anthem and relish telling tall tales about the “streets of Chicago” during the notorious 1968 Democratic convention. But a mention of the real revolutionary stuff—efforts to “politicize the workers” or set up communes—prompts a quick change of topic. We all remember how working people scoffed at the young pups who tried to “raise their consciousness,” and we recall that communes quickly disintegrated over petty jealousies and personal hygiene issues.

But there’s one place where 1968 did usher in a revolution of a sort. Forty years ago this month, young people in France took to the streets and convinced millions of workers to launch strikes that shook the country to its core.

It started the old-fashioned way, as the New York Times reminds us. Students wanted more time together in their dorm rooms:

The events (or movement) of 40 years ago began in March at Nanterre University, just outside Paris, where a young French-born German named Daniel Cohn-Bendit led demonstrations against parietal rules — when young men and women could be together in dormitory rooms — that got out of hand.

When the university was closed in early May, the anger soon spread to central Paris, to the Latin Quarter and the Sorbonne, where the student elite demonstrated against antiquated university rules, and then outward, to workers in the big factories.

May 1968 produced events of the sort we still wax nostalgic about in the U.S.:

Scenes of the barricades, the police charges and the tear gas are dear to the French, recaptured in every magazine and scores of books, including one by photographer Marc Riboud, now 84, called ‘Under the Cobblestones,’ a reference to a famous slogan of the time from the leader-jester, Mr. Cohn-Bendit, now a member of the European Parliament: ‘Under the cobblestones, the beach.’ [The quote refers to paving stones that protestors tore up to hurl at police.]

Mr. Cohn-Bendit, known then as ‘Danny the Red’ for the color of both his politics and his hair, is also thought responsible for other famous slogans of the time: ‘It is forbidden to forbid’ and ‘Live without limits and enjoy without restraint!’ — with the word for enjoy, ‘jouir,’ having the double meaning of sexual climax.

Is “Danny the Red” embarrassed by this now? The Times does not say.

As in America, it all eventually fizzled. But it also left scars:

Raphaël Fonfroide, 22, an art-history student with a ponytail and a beard, said the real impact of 1968 was personal, not political. ‘All this for us is pretty abstract,’ he said. ‘We grew up in a world where most of our parents are divorced,’ and the children bore the brunt of the new liberalism.

The year 1968 ‘changed our parents, but the world was supposed to change, and it didn’t.’

Paradoxically, young people in France still march through the streets today, but their agenda is the opposite of that of May 1968. According to the Times:

Forty years ago, French students in neckties and bobby socks threw cobblestones at the police and demanded that the sclerotic postwar system must change. Today, French students, worried about finding jobs and losing state benefits, are marching through the streets demanding that nothing change at all.

Do today’s young Frenchmen admire the bold vision of their elders? Not according to Virginie Mullet, a 21-year-old history student. “All this is a little overdone,” she told the Times. “It’s all these old people celebrating themselves.”

A flood of tears were shed last week for Sara Jane Olson, the former St. Paul resident who is serving time in a California prison for the attempted murder of police officers and participation in a fatal bank robbery. Olson recently obtained early release after serving six years of her sentence, but was re-arrested and returned to prison only days later, after authorities determined that they had miscalculated her parole date.

Olson must now serve one additional year. The complaints that led to her re-arrest, according to the Star Tribune, may have come from individuals affected by her crimes—the Los Angeles police union and Jon Opsahl, son of the woman murdered in the bank robbery.

Olson’s chorus of St. Paul supporters is up in arms. They have condemned her re-arrest as some kind of crime against humanity. A friend in local theater, Wendy Knox, laments that “to put her and her family through that is one more unconscionable act,” according to the Star Tribune. Think Again commentator MOI adroitly responded to that yesterday: “Wendy Knox—when was the first unconscionable act? When your friend almost blew up scores of people or when your friend helped murder someone?”

Supporter Peter Rachleff adds his condemnation, calling the treatment of Olson “torture” and “outrageous,” according to the Star Tribune. “We should be ashamed that anybody should be treated like this.” Olson’s attorney, David Nickerson, provides the usual lawyerly understatement: “This is like the Gestapo picking up somebody off the street.” (Nickerson might want to brush up on his Third Reich history.) “This action is illegal,” he adds. “They will be sued.”

We first heard this kind of posturing in 1999, when Olson was first arrested in St. Paul. At the time, I was incredulous that Olson had so many fans, and that they raised her million dollar bail in about a week. I visited Olson’s church – Minnehaha United Methodist in Minneapolis — which spearheaded the bail effort and (as I wrote in the Wall Street Journal) discovered that church representatives seemed to believe that her crimes had been “cancelled out” by her good works as a community volunteer.

Power Line added that Olson had prominent supporters in Twin Cities’ political circles, and noted that attorney Keith Ellison had demanded she be freed at a fundraiser for her in February 2000.

In case anyone needs a reminder of the real “outrage” here, let’s recall the chain of events: In 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. In 1975, pipe bombs were placed under two Los Angeles police cars, but the bombs failed to detonate. That same year, the Crocker National Bank in Sacramento was robbed and a customer, Myrna Opsahl, was gunned down and killed in the robbery.

In 1976, Olson was indicted on charges of murder conspiracy and explosives for placing the pipe bombs under the police cars. She became a fugitive from justice, eventually moving to St. Paul. She married a physician, studied cooking, ran marathons, and built a reputation as a prominent community activist.

In 1999, Olson was arrested in St. Paul and was sent to California to face charges in connection with the pipe bomb crime. In October 2001, she pleaded guilty. In addition, the investigation of the bank robbery and murder of Myrna Opsahl was reopened. Olson and three others were charged in connection with Opsahl’s murder. Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a combined 14 years in prison for her crimes.

The outrage is not that Olson must serve another year in prison, but that she was released after serving only six years. No doubt she’d like a second chance at life, but she forfeited that opportunity when she and her accomplices brutally ended Myrna Opsahl’s life, and when she attempted to do the same to police officers.

I’ll give Opsahl’s son, Jon Opsahl, the last word. In his court testimony at Olson’s sentencing, he described her and her co-defendents as “monsters,” according to the Star Tribune, and added that they were “a group of pathetic, deranged revolutionaries who simply decided one day to make my mother instantly and permanently expendable.”

Amen.

Last Friday, I inadvertently found myself in the midst of the opening salvo of a battle to turn the Twin Cities upside down next year.

I was driving home at rush hour from downtown Minneapolis, when several hundred bicyclists blocked the street leading to Interstate 394.

My fellow motorists and I sat obligingly for several minutes, missing green light after green light. Finally, folks began angrily honking their horns. If two police cars hadn’t moved the riders along, people might have leaped from their cars to take on the bicyclists themselves.

Later, the protest ride turned ugly. Two officers tried to arrest several riders who covered their faces with hoods while blocking motorists. They resisted, and about 30 protesters surrounded the officers, chanting “Let them go! Let them go!”

Forty-eight law enforcement personnel from six agencies responded to a police call for help, and chemical spray was used to control the crowd. Nineteen demonstrators were arrested.

Get ready, Minnesotans. The protest was “a kick-off” for a “weekend of organizing against the Republican National Convention” to be held here in September 2008, according to the RNC Welcoming Committee, a local anarchist group.

Across the country, similar groups have announced their intention to cause havoc in our cities next year.

Annette Meeks has seen these tactics before. In 2004, she was a delegate to the GOP convention in New York City.

Meeks, my former colleague at Center of the American Experiment, said that many of the protesters in New York differed markedly from their predecessors.

“It used to be peaceful ex-hippies with placards — they’re almost quaint by today’s standards,” she said. “In New York we saw a professional class of protesters, with an angry, violent mob mentality. Their goal is not to be heard. Their sole purpose is to create anarchy in our streets.”

Meeks saw protesters use burning trash bins in an effort to shut down Manhattan’s theater district. Swarms of bicyclists blocked traffic, crowds of protesters harassed delegates at their hotels.

“They screamed obscenities — any way they could conjugate the F-word,” she said. “Then they grew weary of yelling and started spitting and throwing things at us.”

Meeks saw the tip of the iceberg. During the convention, demonstrators rampaged through Midtown Manhattan, throwing traffic cones and other objects at cars and windows. A policeman was kicked unconscious. Protesters attempted to take over hotel lobbies.

‘Direct action’

According to published reports, their plans included shutting down Wall Street, sealing off subway stations with police tape, using mobile infrared transmitters to change traffic signals, and carrying out “direct action” against businesses like Chevron and the Rand Corp.

The New York City Police Department — hard-nosed and highly organized — prevented the situation from deteriorating into chaos.

“The city was a security fortress like I’ve never seen,” Meeks recalled. “The protesters were very well organized, but the police were even better organized. When police confronted them quickly and calmly, it destroyed their plans.”

Twin Cities officials expect the 2008 Republican National Convention to be a public-relations bonanza. A major party convention should showcase a city — its entertainment venues, its cultural institutions and its leaders. Organizers estimate that the convention will bring $150 million to $250 million to the metro area.

But if chaos erupts in our streets, the publicity could take a very different turn. About 15,000 members of the news media are expected here — from Germany’s Der Spiegel to CCTV, China’s main TV network. They’ll all be searching avidly for excitement to report.

“If we have mayhem, the good will that accompanies a well-presented convention will be instantly erased by acts of domestic terrorism,” Meeks warned.

Signing up in droves

In such a situation, our first impulse is Minnesota Nice. Twin Cities lawyers are signing up in droves to aid what they may naively view as old-fashioned protesters. St. Paul is reportedly exploring the possibility of helping protesters find campgrounds.

But Minnesota Nice isn’t likely to dissuade determined anarchists. When demonstrators converged on Seattle in 1999 to protest a World Trade Organization conference, the mayor welcomed them and police backed off. Protesters trashed the city so thoroughly that, within hours, the mayor declared an emergency and asked the governor to call in the National Guard.

In New York City in 2004, former Mayor Ed Koch implored residents to be civil, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered shopping discounts to peaceful protesters.

In the end, in what has been widely hailed as a triumph for police, New York controlled an estimated 400,000 protesters with remarkably little violence.

Even so, the city is still facing more than 600 protest-related lawsuits.

The Big Apple had 37,000 cops to contain a perfect storm of civic turmoil. Will we be up to it here, with perhaps 3,000?