[garinda]

Originally Posted by Wynonie Harris

The double standards displayed towards those regimes is practiced by governments and big business for economic reasons. The double standards over various repressive regimes displayed by students in the 60's/70's were down to which ones it was fashionable to protest against. A telling indicator of just how deeply those convictions were held. I don't know what present-day students get up to, but if they get on with their studies instead of shambling through the streets mouthing cliched slogans, they're doing themselves and us a favour.

And another thing about students in my day - despite professing to be revolutionary individualists, they were the most stultifyingly conformist set of sods I've ever come across - far more so than the "straight" society in the big world outside whom they looked down upon. If you didn't fit into the long-haired, rock-loving, Marxist mould, you were nowhere...and just try telling them that Mao Tse Tung was a murderous dictator! As I say, I don't know what students are like these days, but I would hope that they think for themselves, rather than just blindly following the fashions of the day, both sartorial and political, unlike the bunch of sheep that I went to college with.

If you'll notice, nowhere in this long and rambling thread have I said that the students in the 60/70's were right. I merely pointed out their attitudes towards political causes, compared to the students of today.