The Revolutionary as Little Boys Railing Against their Fathers

Last night, Mrs. PolyKahr and I were watching the History Channel.  This being football season, and living as I do in the mid-Atlantic region where college football is a religion, nothing much was on.  We were watching the Tom Brokow piece on the events of 1968.  Now, I am not given to keen insights often, and when I thought about this one, I realize that I had actually gained the insight 40 years ago, but just now realized what it meant.  Enough mystery?  Read on.

In 1968, the anti-Vietnam war groups (for then as now, the Left changed names like you and I change clothing) had finally gathered enough people to bring their incessant demonstrations, street theatre, and rallies to the attention of the government.  I remember watching the events unfolding at the Democrat National Convention that year, and so I saw the news coverage of the riots outside the convention.  Now, the insight that I had at the time was that the members of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the other rioting groups were first and foremost, revolutionaries.  What I mean is that these people would be rioting, and causing trouble no matter if a war was going or not-they would find a cause.  If the Kingdom of God suddenly came to the earth, they would be on the other side railing against it.  The anti-war pose,was a cause they could latch onto, but they were revolutionaries first.  Al Capp summed it up best, as he usually did, with the creation of his hippy characters calling themselves SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.)  The name said it all.  But for forty years, I had taken their various causes seriously.  Thanks to that insight, provided by Al Capp, I don't any more.  Al Capp, for those too young to remember, wrote the satirical cartoon L'il Abner in the daily newspaper.

Now, rebellion against one's parents is the natural way of things.  As you grow older, you become more independent.  It is how you eventually gain the courage to leave home.  But most of us realize at some point, as we begin to make our way, that our parents actually knew whereof they spoke, and acquire a new found respect for them.  But people like Bill Ayers never quite grew up.  He is still raging against his parent.  It makes me more sad than anything to realize this-though I also realize that people like him are a great danger to the republic.