Responding to Extremists: From Brown’s California in 1965 to Obama’s America in 2011

Chamberlain,J. (1965, November 30). Democratic extremists. The News and Courier, p. 8-A.

For all the talk of how “unprecedented” the Occupy Wall Street Movement is, a brief review of recent history demonstrates that the Left has been coddling actual extremists almost as long as they’ve been applying that label to people who favor smaller and less intrusive government.

In November 1965, John Chamberlain wrote a column on the internecine warfare facing California’s democratic governor Pat Brown.  The most glaring problem, according to Chamberlain, was Brown’s ineffectual handling of the abrasive California Democratic Council (CDC) and its firebrand president, Simon Casady.  Quoth Chamberlain:

Though the CDC was brought into being by National Committeeman Paul Ziffren, a Beverly Hills attorney, and other Democrats of “progressive” persuasion, it was babied along to success by Gov. Pat Brown through many a crisis of rather kooky leftist opinion-making. Brown passed lightly over CDC demands to abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or to withdraw American soldiers from South Viet Nam, or to sanction trade with Red China, or to back teachers in the right to strike. His attitude could be summed up in the phrase, “This is dialogue.”

From the vantage point of 2011, of course, we can see that the CDC-types have been successful not only at fully coopting the Democratic Party, but have largely succeeded in leading America down the path to slow national suicide.  This should be a valuable lesson to any who would wish to claim the GOP mantle in 2012.  You cannot have “dialogue” with revoutionaries.  You must either defeat them, or be defeated by them.