Young Americans For Freedom Analysis

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Recommended: The movement of the 1960s

The 1960s was a time filled with much revolution and movements in America. Upon these revolutionaries, existed youth movements. A deep difference of ideals and thoughts stirred upon the minds of many youth. In particular, the youth associated with the left wing movement compared extremely different to the youth movements of the right wing. Two documents that expressed these differences are, The Sharon Statement, from the Young Americans For Freedom dated in the 1960s and Mike Klonsky’s article “Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement”, dated December 23, 1968. The Young Americans For Freedom pushed for a conservative future, keeping hold to traditional values and the support of constitution. The national secretary of SDS Mike Klonsky, leaned toward a more radical left movement, even going as far as identifying as a revolutionary communist. The two documents show deep ideal differences in communism and who the enemy is, yet with all these differences shows a similarity in the reason they fought for. To start off, is the deep contrast when it comes to the …show more content…

Klonsky explained that in the universities, the students and oppressed workers were victims of the public school system. In other terms, Klonsky states the government as the enemy in an indirect way. Also the downfall of capitalism the Klonsky pushed for correlates to a direct pose of threat, to the system intact by the government which is stated that takes advantage of the people. Other than capitalism, the document also exposes the government evils regarding war. The war mentioned is the Vietnam war, which itself stirred much controversy with the American people. The writing compares the Vietnams fight against imperialism to the struggle the youth America are experiencing at home. The leftist SDS and the conservative Young Americans For Freedom have deep differences but have similarities in why they exist in accordance to the

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