At a recent party top-heavy with college instructors, the issue of “the kids” came up, as inevitably it would. Where was that rebel spirit that college-age people are supposed to storm the world with, generation after generation? Was it computer games and ipods that had brought such depressing complacency among the current crop? Or were they—gasp!—actually more mature? Everyone in the room could remember the 1960s, of course, the standard by which all youth rebellion will from now on be judged.

But when I look for today’s analogy to the 1960s youth rebellion, I keep in mind the frequent mass police arrests, the riots, the brutality of army deployments, and the abject fear in the faces of the middle aged white folk reading in their newspapers about the thorough rejection of prevailing values, the break down of social standards of behavior, communist party meetings, massive illicit drug abuse, people living in the forests, talk of communes, and even marches for revolution.

There is something out there that is equivalent today: the group of young people arrested in Toronto recently on charges of terrorism. They had been writing emails to each other about making bombs with which to blow up Parliament and cutting off the head of the Prime Minister.

Everyone was shocked. The newspapers were full of editorials about how Islamism didn’t belong in Canada, how our young people, even of the Muslim faith, were prosperous, brought up well, and had no reason to follow Osama bin Laden. Yet here they were, thoroughly rejecting all our Western values, proposing to recast social behavior, holding meetings at “terrorist” training camps north of Toronto, and talking of toppling the government and turning the nation on its head—revolution, in other words.

Just like in 1968, there are similar rumblings heard overseas, in Paris, Sydney, London and Frankfurt. And just like in 1968, all the governments, the middle-aged white folk, and the newspaper columnists are freaked out and calling for the heaviest hand of reaction possible.

Is it the same thing? Consider how it must have been for 50-year-old white Christian parents in Coquitlam in 1968 seeing on the news massive confrontations between police and youth outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Ohio State University, scene of four deaths of protesting students at the hands of Ohio National Guardsmen, wasn’t the only scene of army troops quelling “disturbances” on campuses. It was happening all over the place, from Berkeley California to Columbia University in New York and every campus in between.

Armed militias, like the Black Panthers, released manifestos calling for the violent overthrow of the government. University buildings were bombed and burned down. All social structures, from the family to the church, the school, and the factory, were attacked and ripped apart. Young people left their homes en masse inspired by lyrics in songs by the The Doors and The Beatles to live outside civilization and consume massive amounts of unknown drugs like LSD. Leaders like Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman urged young people to turn on, tune in, and drop out, by which was meant, take drugs, get high, and leave society.

We laugh about it today. The Kitsalano business community , scene of Vancouver’s inner-city commune in the hey day of the times, celebrates that past with psychadelic street banners hanging from light posts. “Revolution” came to mean a new kind of chicken sandwich at MacDonalds. The “New Society” is just a second year course at college now.

But no one knew this would be the outcome at the time. I know people who borrowed as much money as they could from the banks, counting on a revolution to erase all debts (and property ownership, too). It was no laughing matter then: Presidents and Prime Ministers had hushed meetings to talk about how to confront and defuse the threat. The FBI kept huge files on the likes of John Lennon and even Peter Paul and Mary. Conservative leaders today still talk of the fatal damage done to the whole of Western civilization by the transformations wrought by the leaders of the 1960s.

And what do we hear today? So-called Islamists, chafing against the harshness and hollowness of modern capitalist society, talk of bombs and government attacks. It’s all, I suggest, the usual youth rebellion. In 30 years, you’ll be able to buy an Osama Fried Chicken Fajita, drive a Kia Kandahar, and sip wine and eat cheese with the Mayor at a swank downtown opening of new “Islamist Suicide Bomber” art.