Who Will Tell the Movement Activists to Go Home?

July 2, 2019 By Christopher Chantrill

Back in the day, I remember reading, the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat had a problem. What to do to cool off all his guerrilla fighters once they were ensconced in a camp in Lebanon? The answer: get them wives.

He was facing the problem with all political movements, especially lefty movements, once they have reached their goals. How do you get the activists to go home? What about the black civil-rights activists after the 1960s civil rights acts? What about the feminists after girls became the majority of college students? And now, what about gays, what with gay marriage and all?

I suppose that movement leaders are all alike. Remember the ageing general in The Four Feathers refighting the Battle of Balaclava with salt-and-pepper shakers after dinner? “You young people are soft,” he’d say. I dare say that ageing leaders of the Battle of Grant Park in Chicago in 1968 like to bore their progressive pals with tales of their Sixties activist derring-do.

Movement leaders like their activism so much that they never go home. And after they’ve won there’s no need to be nice and get the squishy moderates on their side, so they often turn nasty..........To Read More....