When ultraLeftists cite 'John Brown' to disparage 'wimpy' socialists:

So I just read some silly ultra-Left critique about how folks going to Left Forum aren't *real* radicals because none of us are planning a raid on Harper's Ferry.

The dumb thing about evoking John Brown as a *real* radical and regular old American socialists/Marxists as wussies is that it ignores the decades of abolitionist and anti-slavery politics that came before it, including the development of three political parties, one of which actually had--you know--sitting congressmen, the third one being just a year away from winning the presidency.

In 1859, no one could say, as someone could most certainly say now about socialism, that "there is no real anti-slavery movement in the country."

These ultras honestly believe that if some Baader-Meinhoff wannabe went out right now and went all Harper's Ferry on some bank that it would, what, set off a revolution? A Civil War?

Check out the picture below. That's what the streets of Boston looked like as troops marched fugitive-slave Anthony Burns over to the wharf to return him to the south. That's 1854. Buildings are draped in black. The American flag is hanging upside down. Church bells ringing a funereal dirge.

Would Boston or New York look like that today when the Feds inevitably arrived to haul the next Bill Ayers off to prison?

How did that even happen? Hell, in 1835, William Lloyd Garrison barely escaped a public lynching in the same city.

It happened because a small group of folks spent decades building up a political movement. Giving speeches, writing pamphlets and newspapers and--yes--even building political parties. You know, all that boring stuff.

This vainglorious ultra-Left shit is so tired.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/images/4rend46b.jpg

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