Althouse: "I really believed that the revolution was coming."

August 23, 2010

"I really believed that the revolution was coming."

"And then, when that happened, we just said, 'Oh no. Oh, no no no.' Everything came to a grinding halt. No one could do anything for a while. It was just the end."

42 comments:

MadisonMan said...: I am always tempted to ask: What would the revolution have looked like that these people were fighting for?

When I read in that article -- I think -- that the author's Mom took her somewhere (Mifflin St?) where they were tear-gassed, my opinion of the Mom took a bit of a nose dive (A similar thing happened today as I read of a Dad from WV who drove -- with his 9-yo son -- to the GZM protest). Children do not belong in a protest. Parents should be protecting their children.; 8/23/10, 9:59 PM
Palladian said...: "I am always tempted to ask: What would the revolution have looked like that these people were fighting for?"

The Obama Administration?

New boss, old boss, you know.; 8/23/10, 10:03 PM
Wince said...: I used to subscribe to The Progressive magazine as a teenager, back when "I really believed the revolution was coming."

Speaking of bombs, Mom flipped-out when the "H-bomb secret: how we got it -- why we're telling it" issue arrived.; 8/23/10, 10:11 PM
Expat(ish) said...: Morons. Even for kids, just dumb as rocks.

That is how every revolution has always started - with innocent people being killed and the stupid betrayed.

Then the killing really starts. Ask Mao's people or Stalin's people or Pol Pot's people, ....

-XC; 8/23/10, 10:11 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: I did not know about any of this so I read the linked story with great interest. Then the author lost me at The CIA torture techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan, like waterboarding, are hardly an improvement on the nasty business of pushing people out of helicopters in Vietnam

Orly? Please explain how that equivalency works, I'm all ears. <-- Lie. I stopped listening.

In other news, I learned at a party on Saturday there are two medical marijuana outlets two blocks from my home. Is that the revolution of which is spoken?; 8/23/10, 10:14 PM
David said...: From the article:

The most compelling reaction to the Sterling Hall bombing, to me, is still my mom's visceral response.

She used to tell me the story of when I was a baby, and she was alone on Mifflin Street, holding me in her arms, when the police drove by and tear-gassed us both.

I call bullshit on the mom. 15 year penalty (about what the bombers got.)

Plus loss of down for narcissism.; 8/23/10, 10:18 PM
chickelit said...: From the Isthmus article:
As the late Howard Zinn often pointed out, the anti-Vietnam War movement was, by and large, peaceful. The Sterling Hall bombing was the exception. And even there, the bombers planned their attack in the middle of the night, when the building was supposed to be empty — a far cry from the deliberate murder of 3,000 World Trade Center workers nine years ago.

Bullshit. This probably got hashed out at their respective trials, but Armstrong and Fine gave unsupportable evidence for their motivation. Their carelessness towards life was just not just Sterling Hall but an earlier attempt too: linkage; 8/23/10, 10:21 PM
William said...: The writer sounds like she was indoctrinated rather than raised. Her mother did a fine job. It's rare that you see a young person with such a thorough belief in all the liberal positions. On Christmas eve, Daddy used to dress up like a cop and steal all the presents to drive home the lesson.; 8/23/10, 10:35 PM
Unknown said...: "As the late Howard Zinn often pointed out, the anti-Vietnam War movement was, by and large, peaceful. The Sterling Hall bombing was the exception."

Sure it was. Non-negotiable demands, rock and bottle throwing, sit-ins.

Give us everything we want and we won't trash your campus and maybe we won't harass anyone who disagrees. But don't count on it.

The Soviet model of peace.

When things like this happened, they should have executed the bastards.; 8/23/10, 10:57 PM
Anonymous said...: And if you want to recapture the stentorian, belligerent, demanding tone of the lunatic left of the 60s, all you have to do is read the comments of our very own brain dead zombie, OmegaLiberal.

It's all right there.; 8/23/10, 10:59 PM
sunsong said...: I didn't know about this. So much I've learned about Wisconsin this year :-)

Speaking only for myself, in 60's and 70's I had an intuitve gut-level-feeling kind of knowing that peace was a worthy ideal. Something that is worth working for.

However, I had no idea that *I* needed to be peaceful in that working :-) I hope that makes sense. I was angry and wanting to *fight* for peace. Pretty mixed up, really.

It is sad that this happened. And it is also sad when anyone - (either side) is killed or maimed in war.; 8/23/10, 10:59 PM
Anonymous said...: I am always tempted to ask: What would the revolution have looked like that these people were fighting for?

Agreed. If there's not tear gas at an absolute minimum at your revolution, then it's not much of a revolution. At best, you'll get some bullshit incremental, negotiated change like England's So-Called Glorious Revolution or the Magna Carta (and even for the Magna Carta there was a half-fledged coup).

Morons. What? Are the cops going to come down the street with free bong hits and lemonade for the revolution?; 8/23/10, 11:23 PM
JAL said...: ... 15 year penalty (about what the bombers got.)

Sad to say, not.

They got seven years. Served THREE. (One never got caught ... disappeared in Canada?)

The brothers went back to Madison and the surviving one, Karleton owns a deli there? (Is that right Professor?); 8/23/10, 11:23 PM
J said...: "As the late Howard Zinn often pointed out, the anti-Vietnam War movement was, by and large, peaceful"

No, the success off that movement resulted in the deaths of millions of people. The movement was not peaceful, and it certainly wan't anti-war. Hippies really are murderous, racist scum.; 8/23/10, 11:40 PM
Anonymous said...: I am always tempted to ask: What would the revolution have looked like that these people were fighting for?

The Paris Commune, the Reign of Terror, May 1968 in France, Great October Socialist Revolution or the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Pick one or more.; 8/24/10, 12:15 AM
John Cunningham said...: Obama's mentor, the murderous Bill Ayers, once told an FBI undercover agent that after the revolution, huge segments of the population would of course go to re-education camps. Ayers added that he expected that 10% or so of the population woulod be resistant to the new order, and would have to be liqudated. that is 10% of 250 million people, or 25 million...quite a great guy, no?; 8/24/10, 12:49 AM
Revenant said...: They thought it would be the special kind of revolution where nobody died, I guess?; 8/24/10, 12:57 AM
Anonymous said...: "As the late Howard Zinn often pointed out, the anti-Vietnam War movement was, by and large, peaceful."

The same justification is used to excuse radical Islam today.

All the people killed by the former SDS/WeatherU/Symbionese bombs or today's crazed Major Hassans are still as dead.; 8/24/10, 12:58 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: It's like revolutions are bad and should be avoided at almost any cost!

Revolutions are only justified by success. If you ain't got a plan, don't bother. You'll just waste time and lives for nothing.; 8/24/10, 1:03 AM
BJM said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/24/10, 1:31 AM
BJM said...: @Expat

Or Jean-Paul Marat's people.; 8/24/10, 1:32 AM
former law student said...: What would the revolution have looked like that these people were fighting for?

Who are "these people"? The bombers?

The pure anti-war protestors were largely satisfied when we pulled out of Vietnam. Eighteen year olds freshly granted the vote did not sweep McGovern into office. Mass student protests did not take place for decades. In 1974 some of my classmates even outed themselves as Republican.

The peace movement was mostly peaceful because of the cognitive dissonance produced by simultaneously rejecting and embracing violence.

Children do not belong in a protest. Parents should be protecting their children.

When was this teargassing? Conniff was born in late September, 1968. Had it happened in response to the bombing, Conniff would have been almost two years old. Would her mother still have spoken of her as a "baby"? More likely they would have been teargassed in 1969, not later.

Now I think of Madison as a tolerant, laidback place, so it's hard for me to think that - even after the Democratic convention of 1968, and the King assassination riots across America -- things would get out of control to the point of needing to be subdued with tear gas, and maybe Conniff's mom thought so, too.

What was the state of campus unrest in Madison in 1969? How had police been responding?; 8/24/10, 3:12 AM
former law student said...: Or if you mean Conniff's mom's revolution, it was peace, love, and dope. Babies in snuglis and big dogs on porches with bandanas for handkerchiefs. People doing jobs they loved rather than working in accounts receivable for Oscar Mayer. Maternity leave.

Basically, Althouse's life.; 8/24/10, 3:20 AM
former law student said...: Minus the dope.; 8/24/10, 3:21 AM
Moose said...: I like how the writer emphasizes the peaceful nature of the bombing and trots out Howard Zinn as support for it.

Yaaaahhh.; 8/24/10, 5:26 AM
Michael said...: This leftie writer is so immersed in leftie prop that she believes that across America people are standing outside Mosques railing against Islam. Dumb. Hippie. chick. Apple close to the tree.; 8/24/10, 6:11 AM
KCFleming said...: Fact is, they still want us dead.; 8/24/10, 6:42 AM
Fen said...: The peace movement was mostly peaceful because of the cognitive dissonance produced by simultaneously rejecting and embracing violence.

Like at Kent State?

I guess the peaceful protestors didn't set buildings on fire

I guess the peaceful protestors didn't break shop windows of thise who didn't display their protest signs

I guess the peaceful protestors didn't drag people out of cars and beat them

I guess the peaceful protestors didn't hurl concrete bricks at police officers

I guess the peaceful protestors didnt surround national guard troops and shout "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

These people aren't peaceful. They use the 1st Ammendment as cover for their violent goals. They deserve to be shot down in the streets.; 8/24/10, 6:45 AM
KCFleming said...: Aside from the 100 million dead in the 20th century, the communist revolution was mostly peaceful.; 8/24/10, 6:57 AM
Anonymous said...: Instead, they are targeting ethnic minorities: Latino immigrants...

They always forget that one little word.; 8/24/10, 7:43 AM
MadisonMan said...: and the surviving one, Karleton owns a deli there?

That shop closed down a good while ago, and its footprint is now part of the Overture Center.; 8/24/10, 7:52 AM
former law student said...: Fen, amazingly, tries to justify the Kent State massacre.; 8/24/10, 9:10 AM
Big Mike said...: I had a hard time reading all the way through the article without puking. "Utopian vision of peace" my ass. Another hippie POS who never grew up.

Professor, you should apply for a position at some other law school and get out of a city where people take stupidity pills with their morning latte.; 8/24/10, 9:16 AM
Scott said...: AlphaLiberal ought to be offering his comments to this thread, since apparently he is a stooge for the Progressive Labor Party. As such he should offer us all an opinion on the utility of political violence.; 8/24/10, 9:22 AM
KCFleming said...: "Fen, amazingly, tries to justify the Kent State massacre."

fls doesn't seem aware what things were like at the time, i.e., the local citizens were seeing anarchy take place all around them. In retrospect, it's sheer luck that more weren't killed. The leftists were hoping for it, that's a certainty, for they were trying to spark a revolution.; 8/24/10, 9:30 AM
former law student said...: Pogo, amazingly, thinks the Ohio National Guard killed too few students.; 8/24/10, 9:43 AM
KCFleming said...: Remarkably few and too few are not the same thing.

But you knew that, employing as you do the usual lefty bullshit in discussions. Just your typical dishonest liberal thought process at work.; 8/24/10, 10:01 AM
former law student said...: Just your typical dishonest liberal thought process at work.

Like deliberately conflating peaceful protestors with anarchists and arsonists? If you want me to up my game, first, up yours.; 8/24/10, 10:24 AM
KCFleming said...: "Like deliberately conflating peaceful protestors with anarchists and arsonists?"

** 3 days before the shooting, in downtown Kent, a roving mob of earnest antiwar activists, hard-core radicals, curious students and others smashed 50 bank and store windows, looted a jewelry store and hurled bricks and bottles at police.

**Four officers suffered injuries, and the mayor declared a civil emergency. Only tear gas dispersed the mob. The FBI determined that the riot was planned.

**This same group burned the ROTC headquarters on the Kent State campus, which triggered the deployment of the National Guard there.

**the FBI developed credible evidence suggesting that there was a sniper and that one or more shots may have been fired at the guardsmen first.

**FBI informant and part-time Kent State student Terry Norman was armed with a snub-nosed revolver that FBI ballistics tests concluded had indeed been discharged on that day.

**Before the fatal volley, the ROTC cadet told the FBI, he "heard one round, a pause, two rounds, and then the M-1s opened up." ..."the first three rounds were definitely not M-1s. He said they could possibly have been a .45 caliber."

**The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices "used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths."; 8/24/10, 10:48 AM
Big Mike said...: @FLS, point of information. You couldn't have been there and still call the demonstrations "peaceful." I was there. I remember.

The normal mode of operation was to have guys in front throwing things at the police and goading them into action -- then they'd yell "chicks to the front" in the expectation that the police wouldn't hit a woman.

My pont being that the leaders -- the Mark Rudds, the Jerry Rubins, the Tom Haydens, the Abbie Hoffmans -- deliberately set out to cause a violent confrontation, then they'd let someone else (a chick, preferrably) get their skulls cracked.

Hey, Althouse! Were you ever one of those chicks who were supposed to dutifully move to the front of the demonstration so you could take the brunt of the police batons?; 8/24/10, 11:03 AM
chickelit said...: @Pogo

FYI there was a new "undiscovered" audio recording of Kent State released a couple years ago. I believe it's on YouTube

wv "borkpi" How about a tasty slice of fresh borkpi? or a borkpi hat?; 8/24/10, 1:58 PM
KCFleming said...: Thx, El Pollo. I found it. Difficult to tell what the hell was being said, who said it, whether it was the people who actually fired, etc. etc.

Another Rashomon.; 8/24/10, 2:23 PM