Clinton Chief Strategist Geoff Garin, Once Called For Violent Revolution

[malik flavors]

April 29, 2008

Hillary's Top Strategist Once Called for Violent Revolution

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.

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.

More:

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/04/called-in-essen.html

The Articles:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=130714

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=119465

[Avalux]

1. This has already been posted today. Move along......

:eyes:

[Fovea]

2. K&R

From your lips to the media's ears.

[splat]

3. Most of the older media (and most thinking kids) were briefly radicals then too

So what?

[Fovea]

8. I was one.

But if we are demonizing radicals like Ayres, we should demonize all radicals.

[splat]

9. You can't demonize older voters and get their votes, can you? Did they bomb anything?

[Apollo11]

4. Hillary should ask Garin to take back those words and apologize to America

We don't want any double standards when it comes to tolerating violent radicals.

That would not be compatible with a leadership position in The Democratic Party.

[MyNameGoesHere]

6. But who will then condemn Thomas Jefferson? n/t

[splat]

7. But did he bomb anything?

[Apollo11]

10. This guy was advocating violent revolution in 1973. Not 1773.

The Democratic Party is about working within the system of government and respecting the rule of law.

[MyNameGoesHere]

5. Wow what a radical statement. He should be hung just like the

founders of this great country were. Oh wait they weren't, well not all of them. Maybe Thomas Jefferson should be vilified now as well? After all he didn't think a little revolution was a bad thing. And believe me having lives during that 1973 era, many thought the country was in imminent danger of becoming a police state, and revolution was not a alien concept for some of us.