Some of this has come from self-conscious apostates, like New Republic contributing editor Paul Berman. A Columbia SDSer in 1968, Berman later condemned the group’s “degeneration into violence and irrationality  . . .  its final embrace of totalitarian doctrines.” The later SDS should have, he quips, been renamed “Students for a Dictatorial Society.” Even those less gleeful about skewering their former comrades have aired regrets about late-sixties radicalism. James Miller became “profoundly skeptical of the assumptions about human nature and the good society held by many radicals.” Mark Rudd, a member of the Weatherman faction of SDS, muses that “we played into the hands of the FBI. . . .  We might as well have been on their payroll.”

Of course, on one level it’s difficult to argue with these assessments. Picture a convention of students, split between two sides, one chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!” and the other “Mao, Mao, Mao Zedong!” SDS really did degenerate into a caricature of leftism.