Showing posts with label radicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radicals. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Radical chic

(Pic left: Ken Kesey's bus)

QandO has a good go at Bill Ayers, an education prof who once led the violent radical underground Weathermen movement (and is married to a former member). For those who want to know about one strand of the Baby Boomers, Ayers (born 1944) may be a touchstone.

The connection between radicalism and education is a very old one; modern mass communications also come under this category of vectors of revolution. Readers might like to consider how many other Ayerses there are, not actually getting their hands dirty anymore but getting well-paid and respected for influencing the agenda in classrooms, TV and the print media.
I'm not quite going to take the simplistic guntoting redneck line on them. People like this meant well, but they thought in abstracts, always dangerous with earthbound Man. If there is one thing we must learn from the past 40 years, it's that meaning well isn't enough. But they always wanted to do well for themselves out of doing good to others, and have fun doing it - isn't that human.