Looking Back.

Is it wrong to look back with nostalgia to a time when young people still had faith in the future?

FIFTY YEARS AGO the world was still fine.

Oh, sure, Nixon had severed the connection between the US dollar and gold, a decision with huge global consequences – very few of them good.

But Nixon had also brought the Vietnam War to an end, recognised “Red” China, created the Environmental Protection Agency and, thanks to Watergate, been forced to resign the presidency.

So, all good.

Then again, for reasons best known to himself, God had put most of the world’s oil reserves under the feet of Middle Eastern peoples. A fact which, since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, they had begun to exploit in a seriously irritating way.

And then there were the Brits. They didn’t help.

After many failed attempts to join the European Economic Community, Great Britain finally succeeded in becoming a member on 1^st January 1973.

Bummer. As Britain’s farm, New Zealand had grown fat and happy. What were we supposed to do now?

Big challenges.

Even so, life in Godzone remained pretty sweet.

Which is why I had to laugh the other day when the Director of the right-wing New Zealand Initiative think-tank, Dr Oliver Hartwich, tried to paint the New Zealand of the 1970s as some sort of hellhole.