SDS Lurks Behind UNC Student Protest

The recent student activism at UNC has not gone over well. Based on what they hear in class from the radical scholars, the demonstrators who disrupted a talk by Tom Tancredo on immigration are probably surprised their antics were not embraced by the school’s constituencies. Instead, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp has displayed a rather terse-lipped demeanor, indicating he is not amused as he wades through highly critical letters and e-mails.

It may have passed everyone by that the ruckus was kicked up by students and outsiders associated with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a blast from the past most thought was dead and buried. Alas, SDS was resurrected in 2006 during the “grass roots” movement culminating with the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.

It is synchronistic timing indeed that the autobiography of Mark Rudd, one of the chiefs of the student revolution, hit the shelves at the same time as the UNC incident. Underground: My Life with SDS and the

Mark Rudd

Weathermen seeks to re-energize SDS and rally students and fellow travelers to the ramparts.

Rudd is best known as the headliner associated with the Columbia University riots of 1968-69 — where, incidentally, Erskine Bowles, president of the UNC system of colleges and universities, played the role of mediator as student president of the Columbia School of Business. Rudd had joined SDS — formed by activist Tom Hayden with the incoherent Port Huron Statement of 1962 — and went on to assist in the establishment of the Weathermen, later the Weather Underground — and even later the Weather Organization. His indoctrination included a long trip to Cuba, where we now know the Soviets trained American activists in the arcane arts of revolution. Castro’s enclave was a handy offshore staging ground for mustering the troops to bring down America.

From D.C. to N.C.: Ships of State on Collision Course

Fools, unfortunately, do not know they are fools — such as the Barack Obama worshipers who ran down to the boat and jumped on not knowing where they were going — or asking if the captain knew how to steer. No matter, the ship of state has sunk in port. 

As usual, the job of raising the submerged American economy will be left to the small business people and their employees who continue to get up and go to work because they have to. The business of America is not, nor has it been, General Motors. Over 90 percent of businesses in the US do less than $1 million in annual revenue and hire more than 85 percent of the work force. All this theoretical posturing by economists and central bankers is, in the final analysis, meaningless. No matter how they screw up in Congress, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, the little guy struggling to survive will raise all ships.