such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!

[Terrance]

Advocating what they proudly called participatory democracy
and armed only with enthusiasm, idealism, youth, SDS set out in the
summer of 1962 like St. George en route to slay the dragon. 

The dragon, then, was first and foremost a dragon of racial inequality
and segregation. 

We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled
capacities for reason, freedom, and love. In affirming these principles
we
are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the
twentieth century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is
inherently incapable of directing his own affairs. We oppose the
depersonalization that reduces human being to the status of things--if
anything, the brutalities of the twentieth century teach that means and
ends
are intimately related, that vague appeals to "posterity" cannot justify
the
mutilations of the present. We oppose, too, the doctrine of human
incompetence because it rests essentially on the modern fact that men
have
been "competently" manipulated into incompetence--we see little reason
why men cannot meet with increasing the skill the complexities and
responsibilities of their situation, if society is organized not for
minority, but
for majority, participation in decision-making.

Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction,
self-understanding, and creativity. It is this potential that we regard
as
crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potentiality for
violence,
unreason, and submission to authority. The goal of man and society
should
be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with
finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic; a quality of
mind not
compulsively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which
unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats
to its
habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past
experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal
history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and
unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active
sense
of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.

This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism--the
object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is
one's
own. Nor do we deify man--we merely have faith in his potential.

"such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"

--Whitman