Jack Hammond: Students For a Democratic Society: To Change The World

Source:The Daily Journal

I actually believe as a current affairs blogger that todays Occupy Wall Street movement was born in the 1960s as part of what was called the New-Left. Because if you look at where Students For a Democratic Society were for back then and what they are trying to accomplish then and today, the end of war and that basically means all war, this movement is exactly what a person whose called a dove looks like and is. A dove is someone who tends to take a soft approach when it comes to areas like national security and foreign policy. Law enforcement, areas where government sometimes involves itself in the personal lives of individuals.

Doves were around pre-1965, but they really came alive in the 1960s with the Baby Boom Generation. And some of their kids today that is part of the New-Left who actually grew up, are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement today that’s again anti-war period. But also believes in things that Social Democrats call social justice. Creating an economic system that of course is government based that would work to see that there’s economic equality throughout the country. That no one has too much and no one has too little.

Pre-1965 or so even Progressives in the Democratic Party were cold warriors. People who were anti-communism and authoritarianism across the board. But progressive to socialist on economic policy. President’s Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson all come to mind. And there were the so-called doves in the party that became the New-Left. The Henry Wallace’s of the world, but they weren’t as vocal and didn’t have the numbers that the Liberals, Social Democrats and Conservatives even back then.

The Democratic Party did have a right-wing, but this all started to change in 1965-66 and so did the Democratic Party. The New-Left emerges and became what I and others call the Far-Left of the Democratic Party. People who are more socialist on economic policy, but non-interventionist across the board when it comes to national security, foreign policy and law enforcement. “That force and violence are never an answer and can never be a replacement for reason and understanding.”

Today thanks to the New-Left the Democratic Party is still a very diverse political party. And one of the reasons why we are the largest political party in America if not the world. Because we represent so much of the country, but we are a mixture of Liberal Democrats such as myself, Social Democrats, people who tend to be called Progressives, socialist on economic policy, but again dovish or soft in areas like national security and law enforcement to use as examples. And then we have Centrist Democrats, or people who are Moderate Liberals and that all happened as the New-Left emerged in the 1960s. That makes up what we see from Occupy Wall Street today.