fan ofThe Big Lebowskiwill no doubt know The Dude ’s elevated claim to fame above . And while the Port Huron Statement was indeed a real document , I desire The Dude will stand one small chastening — only one draft of the argument is know to be . But since The Dude find it important enough to bring up , we should probably at least have intercourse the basics .
The Port Huron Statement was write in 1962 as the founding manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society – a left - run political activism brass that rose to gibbousness and eventually fizzled out during the sixties . A key issue throughout the study of the SDS was their protagonism of participatory democracy – a political organisation wherein constituents wield force , as opposed to ceding that force to elected representative
The Port Huron Statement , which draw its name from that fact that it was drop a line in Port Huron , Michigan , was designed as the SDS ’s guiding treatise on social consequence . It begins with the follow dewy-eyed statement:“We are people of this propagation , breed in at least modest comfortableness , housed now in universities , look uncomfortably to the humanity we inherit . "
From there , the papers discusses and project a diverseness of actions to address the economy , the Military - Industrial complex , the warfare DoS , McCarthyism , discrimination , nuclear disarmament , and a host of other weighty proceeds . It is nothing if not ambitious . ( Though one subject not hide in the Port Huron Statement is how to suitably come up to the plight of someone breaking into your home and urinating on a really corking living way rug that ties the way together . )
The papers -which can be learn in its entireness here – wraps up with this poetic culmination : “ If we appear to seek the unrealizable , as it has been said , then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable . ”
