I’d just like to point out that the slogan “don’t trust anybody over 30″ was originally “don’t trust anybody over 35,” and it didn’t mean what everyone now thinks. It was coined in the very early Sixties when the nascent New Left was trying to find its own way, free of the orthodoxies of the past, and it was a warning against getting involved with the older radicals who liked to hang around college radical circles in the hope of dragging our generation into sectarian quarrels dating from the 1930s and 1940s.
Of course, the “new way” we eventually settled on was the ruthless, opportunistic fanaticism of the Old Left, but without the discipline of a party line. The New Left turned out to be preening, self-indulgent, virtually nihilistic pretend Communists. Now “don’t trust anybody over 30″ suavely took on the meaning it has today.
