"Much of what we associate with the Aquarian sixties was in fact old hat,...but if the pattern was visible to those with a sense of history, it wasn’t to the New Left, which,...'imagined itself radical pioneers, discovering a new world of ideas that had eluded all who had lived until the present.' Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) founder Tom Hayden, like many of the members of MoveOn.org today, exulted in his dismissal of all that had come before. 'In formulating our vision and ideas,' explained Hayden, 'it was most important to draw lessons from that same experience instead of relying on the textbooks of others.' There was no past, just a glorious future. In short order, the New Left had created its own version of the Nazi-Stalin pact by embracing both the leather-clad fascist thuggery of the Black Panthers and the Maoist version of Stalinism.
The sixties ended with SDS’s morphing into the violent Weathermen, leftists with wealthy backgrounds who tried to 'smash monogamy' through group sex and 'smash capitalism' with pipe bombs. It was all very nineteenth-century,..."
-- From Fred Siegel's review of A Conservative History of the American Left, by Daniel J. Flynn, in City Journal.
