The Syndicated News Articles

 In this book of Eric Hoffer's news articles, on Page 187 is these paragraphs: "The middle aged came into their own with the advent of the middle class during the 19th century. Even now the young men of both the aristocracy and the working class are more in touch with the realities of power than the young of the middle class.

Thus the present revolt of middle class adolescents is an attempt a social pattern which had been disrupted by the industrial revolution."

The title of this news article is: Our Future Might Be In The Past (September 21, 1969). What Hoffer is writing about here is that the radical revolt on the Left was a hankering by intellectuals and Progressives to return to the totalitarian past, medieval and feudal, if not the ancient river-valley civilizations.

Hoffer is alerting us to the wondrous novelty of the great American experiment that was so exceptional because the 19th century arrival of the rising middle class, the Industrial Revolution, and the middle-aged adults that gave us capitalism, constitutional republicanism, wealth, liberty and civilization. Note that adults of moderate age and moderate class are the workers that gave us this remarkable culture and civilization.

The sons of the extremist classes, the rich and the working class, want revolution the overthrow the American status quo to return to totalitarian, poor, stratified society. They are evil and extremist and are now effective because they are converting the middle-class sons--and daughters--to betray the middle class. With all the young becoming woke revolutionaries, America could well fall.

The middle-class young were moderate and good, and these are qualities that Hoffer admires. He has little use for hierarchies and class society.

When he refers to the sons of the rich and working class knowing about power, he is referring to their allegiance to overthrowing society violently, and when they convert middle class kids, we are in a world of hurt, and the latter learn to go after collective and state power, not the person power exercised in liberty as each youngster maverizes, grows up and amounts to something.