"If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain."
Winston Churchill, maybe. Or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw or Bennett Cerf. Or nobody.
Wide awake in 2021
The $1.9 trillion COVID bill and the $3 trillion Infrastructure-and-more bill are the most consequential tax and spending bills of the century, and Republicans are talking about Green Eggs and Ham. And about Major League Baseball. And about how terrible "cancel culture" is-even while former president Trump urges a cancellation of his own, a boycott of Coke, Delta, and other "woke companies."
Liberty and justice for all. Democrats have a cause to pursue. This goal requires Americans to continue our civic journey toward toleration and inclusiveness, a country "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Achieving it requires not just changes in laws but also changes in customs and attitudes. That is why the culture war is so potent a political wedge for the GOP; people like who they are. Change is hard. The issue divides the religious from the less-religious, the less-educated from the educated, the rural from the urban, the traditional from the cosmopolitan. It has worked to allow Republicans to punch above their weight politically, with majorities in state legislatures and the U.S. senate.
The culture war also divides inside the left. Historically liberalism is about toleration and respect for differences in people and opinions. But what about tolerating people who have deeply-held opinions of prejudice--prejudice they have but may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge? Voices inside the left say that silence is consent and requires intolerance of intolerance.
So we have a second front in the culture war in a struggle over the meaning of true liberalism.
This internal battle within the left shows up most sharply in academic settings. Jim Stodder is a college classmate. We were part of a cohort of post-war babies brought up in middle-class homes in the 1950s who found ourselves at college during a time of political turmoil exacerbated by an unpopular war in Vietnam. Jim got deeper into that turmoil than did I, as he describes below. He is an economist and a visiting professor at Boston University. He has a blog of his own: http://www.jimstodder.com
Guest Post by Jim Stodder
I was in the student New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when to be called a “liberal” was an insult. Liberals were wishy-washy and saw two sides to every question; not that one was right and the other wrong! They were always going on about democratic process but not The Oppressors vs The Oppressed!
Stodder In the Spring of 1969, I was part of a mass meeting of Harvard students that voted to occupy the Administration offices if they did not meet our demands to close ROTC and provide affordable housing in Cambridge. But a small (they would have said, ‘elite’) group of Maoist students within our ranks, affiliated with the Progressive Labor Party, decided to take over the administration the very next day – before Harvard’s administration even had time to consider our demands.
They wanted to provoke a crisis. And they succeeded – beyond their wildest dreams. I and about 150 other students decided to join them after they occupied the building. We were reluctant, but it was a case of “Which side are you on?” As expected, the Cambridge Police drove us out of the building, busting our heads with billy-clubs. I have the scars prove it – but I’m not proud of them.
That was the jackpot for Progressive Labor. Seeing their classmates bloodied by the police enraged most students. Several thousand gathered for a mass meeting in Harvard’s Soldiers’ Field Stadium and voted to close the university until the original demands were met. ROTC was forced off campus and there were some efforts made to improve housing. It was in headlines all over the world.
Although our movement was ‘successful,’ I now regret the takeover. Today I wouldn’t abolish ROTC; better-educated officers are a good thing. But mostly I regret it because we gave in to a small anti-democratic ‘vanguard’ party. We knew this at the time, but didn’t think it was so important.
Today I do. In the intervening years I learned to speak Russian. I studied there and have visited many times. I have also spent several months in China. And I’ve had friends in both countries who lived in constant fear of their government – of disappearing at any time and for any reason.
I am still moved by the injustice of a few people having so much more opportunity than the majority – and I am one of those privileged few. I had to work hard to get into the best schools – Harvard for undergrad and Yale for my PhD -- but I had the best preparation of a great private-school education and two highly educated parents.
In my public and professional life as an economist, I have worked for a world in which such educational opportunities would be available to all. But we can’t forget what education is for – to freely investigate the truth and make your own decisions. Without liberal values, equal education means equal indoctrination.
There is part of the Left, as there was back in my student days, that has contempt for those values – for open debate, for considering all objections, and for a full review of the facts. I see this contempt in higher education and our (formerly) liberal media like the New York Times and NPR. I know people in or about to enter the academic job market who say they live in fear that their smallest statements will be denounced as racist, sexist, or transphobic – even though they consider themselves highly liberal. Perversely, their desire to survive in this woke environment has rendered them apolitical.
When I raise these issues with my fellow progressives in academia, they will admit that yes, some activists can go too far, but there are bigger enemies – the forces now running the Republican Party. I agree that today’s hard right is more dangerous than a resurgent hard left. After all, the former has more political power. But Democrats are making gains, and I hope they make more with a “Green New Deal.” But here’s the thing -- the more powerful we Democrats become, the more our hard left will be emboldened. The Left’s own success will awaken its sleeping demons. And some are already awake.
8 comments:
The Left’s own success will awaken its sleeping demons. And some are already awake.
Those demons are already awake. They are “woke.”
I would invite Jim to join organizations like Heterodox Academy and FIRE, which have been fighting those woke demons for years.
I have always been part of that fight. We need all the help we can get to keep these new Red Guards from destroying important institutions like academia and the media.
"unable or unwilling to acknowledge..."
Yep, that's at the heart of it. No real consequences for bigotry, misogyny, racism and homophobia...or Caucasian Class Snobbery, otherwise known as "white privilege".
Those that benefit from a corrupt system are the last ones to abandon it and the loudest defenders. Their arguments reek of patriarchal condescension and a jaw dropping lack of imagination.
But hey, that's just me...
Two points come to mind.
One, that back in those days, as of now, there were agent provocateurs who infiltrated the leadership in some of the leftist organizations, including SDS. They led a lot of the sit-ins and other illegal activities.
Two, The Winston Churchill-Bertrand Russell quote is, to me, wrong, as it is often true that one's economic status helps define one's political stance on things. If you have not made it big in the capitalist system, you might be much more likely to still be a liberal after age 40, even if you have a big brain.
Insightful post Jim - appreciate the transparency and honesty. What first struck me is the how you made your choices in the light by which you saw things and of course, your inexperience at the time. Who among us can guess how history will judge us or by what rules we will be judged?
To add my two cents to Diane's point: one might be more liberal after 40 because of a big brain - at least one that is humble and curious enough to reexamine beliefs formed in one's youth.
An apt description of myself, although I'm hesitant to crow about my brain size. I was in my early 50s when I began to realize how skewed my perspectives were, and not in a good way, and as a consequence left the R Party after a lifetime of voting for them. The real topper for me was 43s bogus invasion of Iraq. Immoral, based on blatant lies, and still a problem today, as is our presence in Afghanistan.
If you don’t live it, you can will always stand to the side, never enter in the pain of being the minority that is never ever American, never accepted by the white power down at the supermarket. Ideals in youth never go away, they become quieter. A big scream can lose your pension or send you to the Siberia of your job’s opportunities. At 40 you learn who butters your bread, you still undermine with remarks, sneers behind cupped hands, and loud rants in the bathroom. But when the climate is right, too old to give a shit, or so full of pain and guilt for
Being silent too long ( I came from the silent generation, where picket fences and marriage were finally were kicked over and mustaches grown and neckties loosened) you write letters to the editor, smart phone video street people and upload their plight, there are now so many liberating ways to attack the smug, well heeled, self satisfied whiners who feel beset by the “woke fad”., of shopping at REI, TRADER JOES AND GOOSEBERRIES. The idealism of your youth was not a fad..it was the terror of seeing slaughter nightly and the killing of young friends.
Hi, Jim. I lived nextdoor to you, in Dunster C(as in Catch)-22, and remember vividly the events of April 9, 1969 and their aftermath. Initially relieved that the night before a majority of SDS had voted against the occupation, I had mixed emotions when it took place anyway. I remember encountering in the Yard Marty Peretz, for whom I had immense respect, learning from him in his course on Power and his dynamite address at the memorial to Dr. King. He was furious about the occupiers. "What about the idea of a vanguard?" I asked him. "Vanguard? Nonsense! They're thugs!" he replied. I think that was the beginning of the end of his support for the New Left, as well as the split between the Maoists ("Progressive Labor") and the November Action Coalition, which I supported, and which supported me, in my DAYS OF THE COMMUNE premiere at Sanders Theatre, WGBH & Yale, Mar.'71.
Hi, Jim. I lived nextdoor to you, in Dunster C(as in Catch)-22, and remember vividly the events of April 9, 1969 and their aftermath. Initially relieved that the night before a majority of SDS had voted against the occupation, I had mixed emotions when it took place anyway. I remember encountering in the Yard Marty Peretz, for whom I had immense respect, learning from him in his course on Power and his dynamite address at the memorial to Dr. King. He was furious about the occupiers. "What about the idea of a vanguard?" I asked him. "Vanguard? Nonsense! They're thugs!" he replied. I think that was the beginning of the end of his support for the New Left, as well as the split between the Maoists ("Progressive Labor") and the November Action Coalition, which I supported, and which supported me, in my DAYS OF THE COMMUNE premiere at Sanders Theatre, WGBH & Yale, Mar.'71.
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