1969 SDS Mole Learns of an Even More Dangerous Organization: The U.S. Government

Brian Doherty | November 30, 2009

A great bit of libertariana is reproduced at Mises.org: longtime libertarian activist Don Meinshausen, who in the late 1960s served as a House Internal Security Committee spy on Students for a Democratic Society, wrote this statement to the Committee about a real threat to American liberty: the American government. Excerpt:

Today I am to be the House Internal Security Committee's major witness to testify on the workings of a "dangerous organization": the Students for a Democratic Society. During my membership in SDS, I learned of a much more dangerous organization, which has seized and destroyed more lives and property than SDS ever could. I am speaking of the United States government. Under the guise of relief and urban renewal, the government has destroyed the black people's pride and any chance to form a stable community. In the cause of the defense of freedom, it has aided tyrants in Greece, Spain, and Vietnam — and has exploited and oppressed people at home and abroad.

I did not receive my ideas from Marx, nor did some that I met in SDS receive their ideas from Marx but, rather, from the revolutionary American tradition of liberty as expressed by Jefferson, Daniel Webster, Thoreau, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Twain, and others.

Five years ago, I worked for the election of Barry Goldwater for president. That work and working for a student insurrection are not contradictory. Both seek to return power to the people....

I am against conscription, the war, the taxation which is bankrupting our people, and against laws governing consensual moral behavior. I am not alone in such views, and there are many in SDS and in YAF (a right-wing organization to which Mr. Ashbrook and Mr. Watson [members of the Committee] are advisors) who agree with me. Both of these organizations, and not SDS alone, suffer from authoritarian leadership. If these authoritarians ever reached power they might be worse than our present power holders, but, with both liberals and conservatives, labor and big business, the military and the state today maintaining power for their interests, there seems to be little choice.

Much, much more on libertarian movement history, including Meinshausen's role in a draft card burning at a Young Americans for Freedom convention in 1969 that helped split off a self-consciously libertarian countermovement to the conservatives, in my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

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¢|11.30.09 @ 7:08PM|#

In regards to SDS, I admit that there is a growth of Stalinism, but it is noted and criticized by the noncommunist Left.

Crazy talk.

Otherwise good, though.

Old Mexican|11.30.09 @ 7:21PM|#

If these authoritarians ever reached power they might be worse than our present power holders[...]

Too late.

2999|11.30.09 @ 7:29PM|#

Off topic: Any other reasonoids against fiat money?

Old Mexican|11.30.09 @ 7:36PM|#

I'm not a reasonoid, but I am against any form of fiat (i.e. mandated from above) currency.

|11.30.09 @ 7:46PM|#

If you want to buy a car from a corrupt Italian corporation, that's your business.

|11.30.09 @ 7:54PM|#

Hee hee. I've never been able to work that pun in successfully- well played.

|11.30.09 @ 7:59PM|#

It's frightening that you have pondered how to make a fiat money pun. Very frightening.

Yakov Smirnov|11.30.09 @ 8:23PM|#

"When the 'Czech Engine' light came on, Tony realized his Yugo wasn't in original condition after all."

Heh heh! Is funny, yes? What a country!

G Mc|11.30.09 @ 10:38PM|#

In Soviet Russia, banks bail you out!

|12.1.09 @ 3:38AM|#

Actually, I would think that would be more appropriate for a Skoda.

|11.30.09 @ 8:06PM|#

Does that mean when the monetary system breaks down we ask Tony to fix it again?

|11.30.09 @ 9:49PM|#

Sooooo Racist....

tOnY|11.30.09 @ 7:31PM|#

I'm not buying it. Government is ALWAYS good.

As long as my party is in 100% control.

MGN|11.30.09 @ 7:44PM|#

Well it's good to see at least one libertarian has seen that liberals and libertarians are really fighting for the same things!

The Libertarian Guy|11.30.09 @ 8:22PM|#

Please name all liberals who agree with this part:

"the taxation which is bankrupting our people"

anarch|11.30.09 @ 8:37PM|#

With our referring to the plutocracy, all of 'em.

The Libertarian Guy|11.30.09 @ 8:47PM|#

My point was, liberals LOVE that kind of taxation.

Of course, it's "okay" for liberals to be millionaires... hell, ol' man Joe Kennedy sure found a way to hide the family fortune.

Robert|11.30.09 @ 9:26PM|#

I didn't know Don then, but I did by a little over 10 yrs. later. He specializes in playing more sides than you even thought the street had.

Paul|11.30.09 @ 10:27PM|#

Of course the response would be that Meinhausen was simply suffering from Stockholm Syndrome...

|12.1.09 @ 5:21AM|#

"If these authoritarians ever reached power they might be worse than our present power holders[...]"

So true, and so very very late... Take the whole privacy issues, or rather the /lack of it.

Alice Bowie|12.1.09 @ 10:45AM|#

Under the guise of relief and urban renewal, the government has destroyed the black people's pride and any chance to form a stable community.

This is a bunch of bla bla bla bla !!!!

I can speak for someone who was raised in a ghetto. Things are much much better for us latino/blacks/poor whites...Thanks to the great society.

You people are just pissed off because u r so stingy that you don't want to help anyone out.

|12.1.09 @ 10:56AM|#

Do you know any dope dealers? I need to launder some money - that's concealing the source of money through an intermediary. Or are you just selling magazines?

Xeones|12.1.09 @ 10:50AM|#

Alice, may i purchase some drugs from you? You've apparently got access to a doozy of a mind-altering substance there.

Alice Bowie|12.1.09 @ 11:08AM|#

U guys are hilarious. Of course I grew up with dope dealers.

Art-P.O.G.|12.1.09 @ 1:19PM|#

WTF? I'd think the ghettos, barrios and trailer parks would be the last places people would use as examples to defend the Great Society.

Xeones|12.1.09 @ 2:01PM|#

Of course I grew up with dope dealers.

Were they the ones who dropped you on your head as an infant?

|12.3.09 @ 7:46PM|#

It's a nice statement, and I'm glad he made it, but I also have to wonder what type of person befriends people for the purpose of informing on them. It's hard to reconcile anti-police state arguments with pro-police state activities such as spying on political groups for the federal government.

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