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SARGENT SHRIVER
Sargent Shriver
"Maximum feasible participation," as Congress puts it
-"participatory democracy," as the Student Movement puts it-is
not a new radicalism. It is the old American radicalism, as old as the
American Revolution, as old as the idea of self-government.
What then is the contribution of the New Radicals of the Move–
ment of the sixties to the old cause of democracy? First, the words
are new. "It's hard to write poetry in a late age," said Gertrude Stein
in defending her line about a rose:
Can't you see that when the language was new- as it was with
Chaucer and Homer- the poet could use the name of a thing and
the thing was really there? He could say
'0
moon'
'0
sea'
'0
love'
and the moon and the sea and love were really there. And can't
you see that after hundreds of years have gone by and thousands
of poems have been written he could call on those words and find
that they were just worn out literary words? ...
For too long and too often the words "freedom" and "democracy"
have been hortatory and honorific. They have been invoked in situa–
tions where freedom and democracy were not really there. To many
they sound like the worn-out words of worn-out politicians. To others,
especially in other parts of the world, they sound suspect, words meant
to cover and defend the status quo. So until we have a better slogan,
participation
will do. It raises the old questions in the new contexts,
and
in
both posing and pressing them in a fresh way, the Movement
of the sixties has made a significant contribution.
Second, the Movement has helped get a new generation moving.
There
has
been a lot of front-page coverage of the draft card burners
-all five or six of them. And considerable attention has been given
to marches of protest, or to other direct actions such as the Freedom
Rides and the sit-ins. But
this
is only part of the story. Thousands of
students went South last summer to register Negroes, and went into
the slums of our cities to tutor children, and volunteered for other
community action. 180,000 people have offered to serve in the Peace
Corps overseas.
Cutting through ideologies, traditional partisanships and the con-
