View Single Post
Old 05-04-2013, 11:37 AM   #135
spence
Registered User
iTrader: (0)
 
spence's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: RI
Posts: 21,181
Quote:
Originally Posted by detbuch View Post
Spence, do you believe that someone who is truly anti-war would resort to violence to stop war. How does that look to those who you're trying to convince against the war.
Would someone who was anti-abortion because it was murder kill someone to stop it? I can't believe they would either.

Quote:
Those in the 60's counter culture who were truly against war were the hippie types. The so-called and self-labeled flower children. They believed in "flower power" not guns and bombs. Not violence. They flashed the peace sign not fists. Their "protests" were expressed in pot, free sex, and music. The more serious formed communes or groups in which they shared their stash, their bodies, and their food (usually "natural" and home cooked). They didn't engage in political movements or agendas. Their view on violence and the war was expressed as "make love not war," or by sayings like "fighting for peace is like f--king for virginity."

The ones who resorted to violence did so for a larger purpose. They did have a political, social agenda. And yes it was a leftist-Marxist-socialist-communist agenda. Sorry, but that is the truth. Marx was on lips of all from the Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, SDS, Weatherman, Ayers, Boudin, Dohrn, etc. Marxism was a revolutionary method/philosophy they embraced, rationally or irrationally, intelligently or stupidly, to achieve racial or societal liberation from capitalist pigs, especially the white wealthy ones. And their pitiful attempts at violence were just foolish lightweight imitations of what they thought was necessary in a Marxist revolution. Their goal was not merely to end a war. It was to transform society to their liking--war or no war. And they had to convince the masses to join them. The war was actually just another grievance they could add to their lists, and one which could appeal to the greater society more than what their true agenda would. Making a big issue of the war and then tacking on, by-the-way, the inequities and injustices of capitalist, imperialist, racist America it was hoped would persuade the masses to follow their vanguard to social justice.
I don't think I've ever said they weren't motivated by socialist philosophy. There are a lot of parallels to the Occupy movement today. Then as now there's a vein of truth to the perceived injustice...I don't think this makes them less American.

And just because hippies eschewed bombs for fornication doesn't mean that a mass of the entire generation wasn't swept up in counterculture. It's all related...

Quote:
Though they have been "rehabilitated" from their violent ways, they also understand that the violence became counter-productive and that, now, it is not at all needed. Society has been turned. Most of the rhetorical wedge issues with which the great "middle" might sympathize have been ameliorated so it would be difficult now to persuade by radical, violent means. And it was no longer necessary. Enough of the "working class," and the unions and poor and unemployed, and the academic elites, and even of the top echelons of the political class had shifted in their direction. And the former radicals have been given the opportunity to help shape the very transformation they originally wanted--without violence. They are no longer "radicals." They are mainstream. But their philosophical, political agenda has not changed.
Is Ayers considered more "mainstream" because of his radical views or because of his moderated social work? I think people are judging his position based on his recent work product rather than past actions. Or are you implying that giving credibility to his educational work is a defacto endorsement of his radical past?

-spence
spence is offline