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As someone who grew up among the latter categories, I wondered for a long time when the contentious debates over 60s and 70s politics would stop being an essential part of national campaigns. I thought that having candidates who were too young to fight or protest the Vietnam War would usher in a new era. Well, Chicago 10 is the cover story in the Reader this week and Bill Ayers is front page news again, so apparently I’m wrong.
It’s not going to go away. It’s not ever going to go away, because it’s timeless. I’m sure that Ayers and David Addington would deny it, but the Weathermen and the 24-watching waterboarding brigade are part of the same malignant, patriotic idealism and exceptionalism. Whatever other strange motives they might have–the romance of violence, authoritarian fantasies, pure sadism–it can’t be discounted that they were trying to do the right thing, to protect human beings from acknowledged evil. Why should law be a hindrance to the path of the righteous? Why should they have it easier than us?
Really? Yeah, well, no shit. Some of us think that’s how progress happens.
