> shag is right, I believe, with one qualification. She has not, so far
> as I know, experienced a movement being torn apart by the likes
> of Weatherman. A woman that I had first recruited to SDS, and
> then (using the Alinsky principle that the ear rather than the tongue
> is the chief organ of agitation, sat and listened to her talk herself
> into socialism. Then I financed her to go to an SDS conference in
> Texas, and she rode down with a number of people from Chicago
> -- and came back wedded to Weatherman. A year later she was
> arguing that socialism in the U.S. would require a lengthy
> occupation by PLA forces! ***U.S. workers were simply lost in
> racism, etc. Now I think the movements of the '60s were grinding
> to a halt at that point anyhow, and if so she was, as shag suggests,
> harmless. But it is worth noting that heavy-handed moralists,
> contemptuous of people, don't always stay on the sidelines.
I am not familiar with that personal experience either. Now, if you're offended by the righteousness of braggarts or -- worse -- hypocrites, I totally share the feeling. I'm in no way in favor of those behaviors. But, shag's argument is this:
> "it's looking for a subject of history at all that's the problem."
So, as it reads, your endorsement of that argument amounts to this: "I was once cooking and burned my house down. Therefore, people should stop cooking." That is not a serious argument against cooking.
That the Weather Underground "looked for the subject of history" and engaged in certain sectarian practices and mistreatment of people is no argument against "looking for the subject of history."