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selfri[s85,jmc]		Self-righteousness and 1960s

	It looks like the dismal campus events of the 1960s
may recur.  They began with non-violent protest and ends in
murders.  The present stage of blocking the trustees' cars is an
intermediate step.  The more "advanced" protesters probably hope
that this will provoke some police action that can be called
a "police riot" in the Stanford Daily.  This will justify more
confrontational methods and perhaps trashing.

	I see that Angela Davis is a speaker at the "Mandela
University".  No doubt the Daily has reported what she said
publically, but what she said privately would be more interesting.
In the early 1970s she supplied guns to a teen-aged kid who
raided a court room and shot someone in the spine, paralyzing
him for life.  She was caught at the SF Airport waiting for
the arrival of the escapees and their hostages.  As befitted
the times, she was acquitted.

	Before things quieted down again there had been about
40 political murders in this area including one for which the
daughter of a Stanford professor spent four years in prison.

	I suppose the best fundamental explanation of this is
sociobiological.  It is in the nature of young men to be recruitable
to fight wars.  However, people who will fight with no provocation
whatsoever are rare.  A self-righteous cause of some kind is
very helpful, although something rather tenuously related
to the lives of the potential fighters will often do fine.

	The Dutch rioters with their slogan "We want to kill
the pope" are a purer example of sheer combativeness than any
I have seen recently.  So far as I know, until the present
papal visit was announced, the pope was not at all an issue
in Holland, and it is doubtful that the rioters are particularly
interested in the issues separating the pope and the liberal
Dutch Catholics.