Thanks. It actually makes me feel rather sad than angry. I wish we could find a way to save the idealism of the Left from its idiocy...
Sent from my iPhone > On Aug 28, 2017, at 09:43, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical > Centrist Community <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Real Clear Politics > > > > > > The Old New Left and > the New New Left > By Charles Kesler > August 28, 2017 > > The “Summer of Love” turns 50 this year. The hippies who flocked to San > Francisco with flowers in their hair are now aging boomers who have long > given up LSD for blood pressure pills. Today’s youth couldn’t tell a hippie > from a Yippie, and today’s campus protesters bear little resemblance to the > idealistic radicals of the early 1960s. > > Although the hippies played an important part in the ’60s Kulturkampf, > promoting free sex, drugs, and other groovy alternatives to virtue, they did > not lead the way politically. In the political vanguard marched the > self-described New Left, and at its head stood not flower-children but the > Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a group of radical student activists. > > As the name suggested, the New Left defined itself against the old left, > meaning both dogmatic Marxists and mainstream American liberals. The movement > landed on the map with its 1962 manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, which > caught on immediately as the best account of student grievances in its time. > > There was something ingenuous and almost admirable about the SDS’s early > manifesto that is lacking in today’s post-Obama radicalism. The early SDS > wanted to overcome “the decline of utopia and hope” by showing that young > people could make history rather than wait patiently for progress to find > them, or for the millennium to arrive in God’s good time. Authored by a > 21-year old Tom Hayden, the Statement quoted the Declaration of Independence > and Abraham Lincoln, accusing the country of not living up to its own > principles. It assailed American hypocrisy, and the apathy and alienation > that went with it. > > No such Americanism, however vestigial, remains in today’s campus protestors, > who celebrate only victims, not martyrs, and who have been taught to believe > that America, and the West as a whole, are oppressors and nothing but > oppressors, six ways from Sunday—racists, sexists, imperialists, homophobes, > xenophobes, transphobes, etc. > > The crucible of the old new left was the universities. It was from there that > the SDS vowed to “reinsert theory and idealism” in politics. Indeed, the > early SDS regarded the university as the essential locus of the new politics, > because despite its faults it stood as the “only mainstream institution…open > to participation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint.” The radicals > honored the university as “a community of controversy”—no safe spaces or > trigger warnings for them—and championed “the personal cultivation of the > mind” as over against the rampant, value-free specialization of the > bureaucratized academy. > > The old new left hated being treated as children by professors and deans who > claimed to stand in loco parentis. Nothing offended Hayden more than American > universities’ “endless repressions of free speech and thought, the stifling > paternalism that infects the student’s whole perception of what is real and > possible and enforces a parent-child relationship until the youth is suddenly > transplanted into ‘the world.’” > > Nowadays, student protestors demand that colleges protect them from > adulthood, from humanistic debates and political disagreements. “It is not > about creating an intellectual space!” a Yale student shouted in 2015 at > Professor Nicholas Christakis, then master of Silliman College, one of Yale’s > residential colleges. “It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating > a home here!” She added, not exactly maturely, “You should not sleep at > night. You are disgusting!” At home, apparently, she is always a child. > > The original new left drew its critiques from Herbert Marcuse and C. Wright > Mills and indirectly from Marx, Freud, Thoreau, and others. The new new left > has no comparable philosophical grounding or intellectual foundation, and > authentic or strong individualism seems far from what it is seeking. Today’s > radicals nod to postmodernism but draw most of their polemics from the > shallow wells of radical feminism and the 1970s’ critical legal studies > movement. They raise their voices almost always as members of groups, whose > relevant identity is more collective than personal: students of color, the > marginalized, victims of microaggressions, who seek protection by and from > the white power structure–and compensation to boot. Group-think and > group-guilt are their daily bread. Far from being idealists, they are deeply > cynical about America and higher education. > > On their own, apart from the group, today’s protestors often seem emotionally > fragile. No one would have called Hayden and his peers “snowflakes.” > > SDS collapsed in 1969, paralyzed by schism and by its own descent into > violent extremism. But its spirit and many of its leaders moved into the > academy. Though in some ways out of sympathy with today’s P.C. radicals, the > old new left and its successors on and off campus find it difficult to oppose > them. It was always their fatal weakness that they could imagine no enemies > to their left. > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
