Nadir

I have long considered the 1970s to be the nadir of human civilization. That decade was the outcome of Hitler's Reich, rather than a crescendo of liberation. In a larger article about the retirement of Justice Kennedy, R.R. Reno makes this pithy observation that so closely echoes my own:

The worst of the 1960s was actually the 1970s. In that decade, idealistic hedonism gave way to a hedonism that was cynical and me-centered. Roe was a landmark of that slouching decade, and it remains a stain on our national heritage, a festering wound in our body politic.