But what is interesting is that like, what is it, about a third of America's young adults at the time (mid-late 60's), she went new left/hippie. And she is still a progressive, as some news reports indicated at the time of Mark Felt's outing - a member of the Adidam cult. Like any other progressive organisation, they need money, and her outing of her father will help generate some.
But here's the relevent part, in understanding why so many young Americans at the time turned on their own country. She is quoted as saying:
"'I didn’t want to be around gringos,' she told the magazine. 'I wanted to immerse myself in the culture....Since I was my father’s daughter, I thought that we were the good guys and the Communists the bad guys. But when I began to frequent theaters and artists, I discovered that the sensitive people were all on the left or outright Communists. All of my friends were, and they were fantastic. That experience shook me—I had to let go my past views and open my mind to new ideas.'"
If part of the contemporary conservative movement's goal is to roll back the influence of Leftism, it's important to know what went wrong back then. Joan Felt's words are representative of many others in her world.
First, there's the contrasting of racial blocs. It's not that she wanted to get away from a nation dedicated to the pursuit of happiness or liberty; rather, it was to get away from a certain people, or culture. A certain self-loathing element.
Second, what attracted her to Communism, which she discovered once she got to Chile, was the *sensitivity* of its proponents! Isn't that what it's all about for today's white progressives? A world with a more feminine sensibility? If the sensitive will inherit the earth, then the knuckle-dragging conservative realists must be the problem; must be the roadblock to a new social order.
What's funny is the she admired President Allende for being manly, being a good leader:
"He was very pleasant with me, a very impressive person. You could see by his manner that he was a leader, a person of strong self-confidence. He was always surrounded by people who admired him, but he never treated me as a lesser being."
I can't help but see this kind of unfolding of an era being the result of two things: real, specific economic and policy goals (radiacal economic redistribution, disenfranchising of pre-existing social instutions such as the church) being pursued by authentic revolutionaries; and those who want to bring about a change in how we think about each other, based on a more passive model, so that those with that kind of personality can rise to places of higher prominence in the social hierarchy.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, and the persistent success of relatively free-market/quasi-libertarian societies, the first type of person in the above mentioned coalition is being gradually turned towards our type of society. That Spain has taken less a role in Latin Amerca also opens up the south to more influence by free societies.
The second type of person, however, is still very much out there, still trying to force us to think along specific lines. For the social progressives, nothing has changed. No historic event has shown them the error of their ways.
I don't mean to be a bastard by saying this, but it seems like the rise of the second type of person had to do with the enfranchisement of the women's vote and the fallout from that. And if that is so, how do you fix things without revoking the right for women to vote and be active contributers to society?
If half of a population is freed to vote and shape society (a relatively new development in the course of human civilisation), is it unsurprising that the same society loses it's previous composure, and starts to take the outlook of the new members in the elite?
Too ashamed of his past to come forward.
Only when 'the family' figured it better make a buck while it can off old pops, was the truth learned.
Great family.
Ex Hippie Commune girl has decided to cash in before the body goes cold.
Leni
Well, isn't that special.
I got stopped right there.
She is just plain stupid. Her stupidity is matched only by her arrogance.
So LEFT, so Marxist.
notice too that when she returned to America - she took on the challenge of "being a hippie." I am amazed at how leftists want change as long as most of the heavy lifting is done by workers, while they have wine and cheese to explain the role of change for the worker.
This is a common error on the left. Many equate the quality of "sensitivity" (Someone's crying, Lord, Kumbaya) with the far more difficult task of accurately assessing, understanding and providable workable solutions to the dilemmas of politics and economics. Quite often sensitivity is an outright obstacle to finding such solutions, in fact, because it emphasizes tendentious emotivism over objective analysis.
Nope! Not me. Never did.
I was a Goldwater man (or boy) in '64. I knew my politics, I knew the difference between capitalism and communism, the USSR and the USA. What do I want, a medal? No! But since my high school days, whenever I have met a leftist, liberal, socialist, communist, or a Democrat, I would know them by their views and opinions. And they were always wrong.
bump