10-23-2005
I have just finished reading the "republicofdogs" blog referrenced in McE's last dictum. Since I clearly fall into the category of "old school" activist I am currently feeling underappreciated for our achievements in the '60's and a little pissed off at a 31-year-old whose generation sits around spilling ink, not blood, and lets a bunch of good old boy conservatives run our country into the ground.
First, lets consider the word "activist"as it applies to present-day liberal-progressives. Strict definition would denote that some "action", preferably physical, would actually be taken at some point.Apparently,this interpretation of the word doesn't apply to "new school" thinking. In the early 60's, when faced with the obviously illegal, immoral, and unethical institutional perpetration of racist policies in the deep South, a bunch of us,mostly college kids, charged down to Mississippi to remedy the situation by trying to register black voters. We certainly understood the risk of personal injury, even death. Most of us were either shot at, harassed by the local police, beaten up, or at the very least threatened by idiots wearing sheets. The upshot of all this is that a few hundred of us changed a policy of institutionalized racism that had stood for over 300 years. Tell me what's "old school " about that.
Further, I got my head bashed in at Berkeley in 1965 protesting unfair educational practices and a war that the vast majority of people under 30 knew was immoral and ,worse yet, impossible to win. You will note that we were physically opposing these policies, being dragged away by police, not gently, from our positions in front of the admin office, not from the vantage of a safe, comfortable blogspot as our supposed liberal firebrands do today. By the way, the governor of California at the time of the riots , Ronald Reagan, was made to look like a total imbicile during interviews then. It would behoove those of you revisionists who want to deify this man to revisit tapes of that time. You'd be embarrassed.Also, by the way, Mario Savio, the chief organizer of the riots and a very strong anti-war voice, was drafted a few weeks after,along with several of his close associates (I was one). None of us , to my knowledge, ran to Canada. Oppositionists, not traitors.
The point of all this is that I agree that there is a distinction between "old school" and "new school" liberal activists. I wish I still had the energy to man the barricades, because no one from the "new school" has the guts to do anything more than blog away at windmills while our personal freedoms are being whittled down by a bunch of politicos whose main rationale seems to be "aw, shucks" followed by "amen".
This blog has gotten too freaking long. I don't want to be accused of "Mannioning". If you think this subject irritated me, wait 'til you hear what my view is on what these troglodites have done to the separation of church and state. Later.
I have just finished reading the "republicofdogs" blog referrenced in McE's last dictum. Since I clearly fall into the category of "old school" activist I am currently feeling underappreciated for our achievements in the '60's and a little pissed off at a 31-year-old whose generation sits around spilling ink, not blood, and lets a bunch of good old boy conservatives run our country into the ground.
First, lets consider the word "activist"as it applies to present-day liberal-progressives. Strict definition would denote that some "action", preferably physical, would actually be taken at some point.Apparently,this interpretation of the word doesn't apply to "new school" thinking. In the early 60's, when faced with the obviously illegal, immoral, and unethical institutional perpetration of racist policies in the deep South, a bunch of us,mostly college kids, charged down to Mississippi to remedy the situation by trying to register black voters. We certainly understood the risk of personal injury, even death. Most of us were either shot at, harassed by the local police, beaten up, or at the very least threatened by idiots wearing sheets. The upshot of all this is that a few hundred of us changed a policy of institutionalized racism that had stood for over 300 years. Tell me what's "old school " about that.
Further, I got my head bashed in at Berkeley in 1965 protesting unfair educational practices and a war that the vast majority of people under 30 knew was immoral and ,worse yet, impossible to win. You will note that we were physically opposing these policies, being dragged away by police, not gently, from our positions in front of the admin office, not from the vantage of a safe, comfortable blogspot as our supposed liberal firebrands do today. By the way, the governor of California at the time of the riots , Ronald Reagan, was made to look like a total imbicile during interviews then. It would behoove those of you revisionists who want to deify this man to revisit tapes of that time. You'd be embarrassed.Also, by the way, Mario Savio, the chief organizer of the riots and a very strong anti-war voice, was drafted a few weeks after,along with several of his close associates (I was one). None of us , to my knowledge, ran to Canada. Oppositionists, not traitors.
The point of all this is that I agree that there is a distinction between "old school" and "new school" liberal activists. I wish I still had the energy to man the barricades, because no one from the "new school" has the guts to do anything more than blog away at windmills while our personal freedoms are being whittled down by a bunch of politicos whose main rationale seems to be "aw, shucks" followed by "amen".
This blog has gotten too freaking long. I don't want to be accused of "Mannioning". If you think this subject irritated me, wait 'til you hear what my view is on what these troglodites have done to the separation of church and state. Later.
posted by Papa Bill | 4:19 PM
2 Comments:
Try to make a link back to Res P. so he can 'sense' it via Technorati or sitemeter.
Right on Bill. People seem to be using the internet nowadays as an excuse for inactivity, thinking their blog protests will somehow change things. People definitely need to put the word "act" back in activism.
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