Yesterday I heard Geoffrey Garin, Hillary’s new strategist, on MSNBC, using the Rev. Wright controversy to question whether Obama is out of touch. (The link’s not up yet, or I’d quote him). He made similar comments in the Times re Pennsylvania voters.
I knew Garin in college more than 30 years ago when we worked at the Harvard Crimson newspaper. He was a special guy–softspoken, funny, brilliant. He was also a radical. In 1973, on an anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Garin called for violent revolution in the United States:
To commemorate the symbolic significance of the Tea party without acknowledging the significance of the commitment to violence is to miss the point altogether. Boston did not win its "Cradle of Liberty" name because of a special intellectual quality of its leaders but because of a special leaders were willing to resort to violence under conditions they thought to be oppressive… Samuel Adams and the South End Mob were the first to understand Tom Paine’s admonition, "Moderation in principle is always a vice."
…America and much of the world is living dangerously close to oppression. … Whether Americans will soon become steadfast in their resistance to oppression depends on their coming to understand what resistance is all about. The way we celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party will gauge the depth of that understanding…. Freedom is on the wane in this country and repression is on the rise all over the world. We can no longer sit back and swap stories about the good old revolution. We have to start worrying about the present. On this anniversary we must recognize that the patriots of Boston acted wisely in overthrowing their oppressors and the time is come to express our confidence in what our forefathers did by doing it ourselves. [my emphasis]
Here, following Agnew’s resignation in 1973, he says that the government will fall, and again spoke of revolution:
The government in Washington can not survive under these circumstances, and under these circumstances the government should not survive…. America will be governed in any case, but the question is by whom. If not by the people, then by a strong executive. These are revolutionary times, and we must decide now whom we want to win the revolution.
Yes, Geoff Garin was 20 years old when he wrote these pieces. (A mature 20, I must say). I’m sure he stopped calling for revolution after college, probably because he grew out of the ideas– maybe too because you can’t make a living as a leftist. But I knew Garin well enough to be sure that his political impulses, ones of fairness, respect for oppressed peoples, live on somewhere in his thinking to this day. Those impulses once made him call for violent revolution.
It is helpful to read his writings because they demonstrate: how much people grow, how common revolutionary statements have been in the left (even in the Jewish meritocracy, of which Garin and I are members). But mostly because they show that the continuum of left-center ideas, which are now coming back into American life, includes Wright, Garin, and Obama.
I will be "looping," to use Rev. Wright’s words, more of Garin’s firebrand writings later.
Related posts:
- Hillary’s Strategist Once Sought Full Accounting for Vietnam War Decision-Makers (Will Hillary Ever Apologize?)
- Reagan Revolution, Meet Obama Revolution
- Hillary seems stuck in ’shop-worn’ paradigm of Fatah only
- A self-interview by Mohammad with Mohammad on the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution
- Protesters aren’t about ending the Islamic Revolution, they’re about getting back to it
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"Freedom is on the wane in this country and repression is on the rise all over the world." — Geoffrey Garin, 1973
Garin wrote BEFORE federal laws against money laundering; mandatory mininum sentences; federal sentencing guidelines; the incineration of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco; the PATRIOT Act; the attack on Iraq; the Military Commissions Act; and I could go on and on. He was right that freedom is on the wane, and it kept on waning. Even habeus corpus has been compromised.
We all grow, but love of liberty isn't an idea that one should grow out of; nor does it necessarily have to be associated with leftism. If the Geoffrey Garin of 1973 had been time-transported to 2008, he might have supported Ron Paul, if he'd been willing to support any candidate.
I'm sorry, but working for Hillary, who advocates "obliterating" Iran and expending America's "blood and treasure" in the Middle East, is an abandonment of principles for expediency.
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Other remarks of Garin's were chillingly prescient:
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THE attempt to centralize power in the executive and the use of illegal and quasi-legal means to achieve that centralization is not unprecedented. As power increasingly becomes the property of the executive, Americans become increasingly alienated and isolated from their government. They feel that government is out of their hands, and quite rightly they conclude that it doesn't matter a damn what they think or do about the course of American politics.
AMERICA'S low tolerance for turmoil and its self-generated alienation from politics may well cause the trend towards one-man rule to accelerate so that executive rule becomes accepted in name as well as deed. One cannot afford to overlook the possibility that the illusion of republicanism will be dispensed with and that the United States will set out on the road of dictatorship and autocracy.
America will be governed in any case, but the question is by whom. If not by the people, then by a strong executive.
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Plenty of mainstream people, from all across the political spectrum, lament the rise of the "unitary chief executive," secret government, secret renditions to secret torture prisons, and the collapse of Congressional overnight.
Hillary does not want to abolish the unitary executive; she merely wants to be in charge of it.
Geofrrey Garin, at least, cannot claim ignorance. He saw this coming as clearly as anyone. And he's doing his part to help the process along.
Haygood is astute.
I don't have much hope.
Where I live, nobody cares.
Except about the cost of gas for their vehicles.
Now, if a voice arose loud and clear how that is tied into
American domestic and foreign policy…
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Instead of pounding on Rev. Wright, why doesn't Geoffrey Garin address the explosive allegation on the cover of this week's Globe (a tabloid publication that's at least as credible as the Slimes and the WaPo): that Hillary has a lesbian lover.
According to the Globe, which published several photos on its inside pages, Hillary's squeeze is a smokin'-hot 33-year-old named Huma Abedin, who's Muslim and was raised in Saudi Arabia. Check out this photo; you'll see what I mean:
http://tinyurl.com/2b4yk3
If Hillary's sapphic (as has long been suspected), I don't have any problem with that. Hell, Eleanor Roosevelt blazed the way decades ago. But shouldn't the American people know whether Hillary's a "bottom" or a "top"?
Seriously, though … as Ron Rosenbaum asks in the link posted below, should the L.A. Times be sitting on this story? After all, Hillary's already been outed. Again quoting from the link below: "On p.41 of Flowers’ autobiography "Gennifer Flowers: Passion and Betrayal," Gennifer asked Bill if there was any truth to the rumor that Hillary was having an affair with another woman. Bill laughed and said (referring to Hillary): "Honey – she’s probably eaten more p***y than I have."
http://tinyurl.com/2xt2qu
LOL, Bill! So … she didn't have 'sex' with that woman!
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Attention Geoff Garin: how do you respond to Luke Ford?
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I’m placing my money on the lesbian-Hillary angle.
If you examine the candidates connected by the gossip columnists to current sex scandals, Hillary leads the way with her Huma [Abedin] connection.
My dialogue with my sources left me with no doubt … that Hillary’s made passes at women and that Muslim Huma Abedin is Hillary’s most likely source of romantic and sexual love."
http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=1031
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I may have to swallow my political objections to Hillary, so we can have the lovely Huma as First Lady:
http://www.lukeford.net/Images/photos4/huma3.htm
I have a friend in the media who has been feeding the right wing media information on Obama. He is a Hillary guy but hates Obama with a passion I find strange. He seems to hate him much more than he deplores McCain. I am curious about this and wonder if anyone has any ideas about why. He says it is because he doesn't believe Obama can win the election but that doesn't feel right. He actually wanted to write a book about how bad Obama is and thinks that will be a big hit when Hillary gets elected. Any clues anyone? Is there some liberal hawk secret handshake I don't understand?
At least Hillary has better taste in women than her husband has. I just have to wonder if she is going to be tarred with the sleeping with a Muslin brush? It's a good thing that Huma doesn't rhyme with Obama.
I am amazed that you would find this anything other than praiseworthy. This man quoted and upheld the very ideals of American Revolutionary spirit and for that you are damning him?
The founding fathers knew that government was and always will be an instrument of oppression unless kept closely in check. When allowed to grow as it has, we end up with secret courts and secret prisons.
Can anyone imagine Jefferson or Washington supporting the idea of Homeland Security where you can disappear into a jail without benefit of law?
If any of these great men of your past were alive not only would they be agreeing with armed revolution against this abusive state, they would be leading it.
Right up until they were all arrested and thrown into Guantanamo forever and without benefit of trial. You know of course that the criminals in the current administration have made it illegal to plan, discuss or attempt armed revolution.
Whenever a state makes armed revolution a crime it is only because they know they have created a situation where the possibility of it is real.
No doubt about it. The founding fathers were most concerned
about any government that would make them mere slaves. Over the centuries, slavery always comes in the name of what we will do for you. The cost, slowly becomes obvious; then a revolution.
God and Guns is not all red-neck BS. Those in gated communities have their own, the local police. It's the difference between having money and not. Pretty simple. The Fed Reserve
is a debt system. A gun in your house is your real credit.
I was a friend and housemate with Geoff Garin during those years. Phil Weiss was on The Crimson with me then too. Phil Weiss told his classmates he would NEVER earn more than $15,000 per year. So, Phil, let's release the income taxes dude!
didnt i say real 1976 dollars? its looking good so far this year….
tho yes in other years im a stinkin hypocrite. and for another thing: married
Well, Phil, at least you are not Richard Witty. Your dirth of son
will not be adding to the early death toll. Sorry.
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