nationalism & imperialism (jim o'connor)

[Brad De Long]

>
>
>Perhaps I should read Max more often. This is a thing of beauty and
>a joy forever, taking me back to my very first baby steps in politics.
>Back in 1965 someone collected signatures from college faculty for
>a full-page ad in the Chicago Daily News objecting to the Vietnam
>War. (I don't recall the text, but I think it was fairly gentle.) The
>Chicago Tribune devoted an editorial to the principle that amateurs
>shouldn't monkey in foreign policy. I learned about the editorial
>when a fellow faculty member (from the philosophy department),
>not knowing I was one of the signers, went on and on about how
>the signers of it must feel so embarassed by being so foolish in
>public. Then someone asked the Chair of the university's board
>of governors (or whatever it was called then), he was also the
>Chairman of John Deere, what he thought of college professors
>signing such an ad, and he growled that he thought it pretty awful
>but he would honor academic freedom (or something like that),
>and that pissed me off, so I wrote a letter to the the local paper
>saying (as rudely as it was possible to in a family newspaper)
>that I didn't need that asshole's permission to sign an ad against
>the war.
>
>That was more or less the start of the road that in another five
>years led me to Lenin in my 40th year.

Lenin. A noted advocate of free speech and dissent.

Do you realize how... strange... that paragraph sounds?

Brad DeLong