"I think that we're obligated to play by those rules, because they do allow us to disseminate the kind of message we want to disseminate, and that the need to sort of circumvent them or in some sense subvert them, it seems to me, is self-defeating," he said.
"[T]here are enlightened publics in this country, but there's no concerted general movement which can profess to represent a large body of opinion that's opposed to these kind of developments," he said.
The task of the revolutionist is to create organizations whereby "ordinary people and their power can be brought to bear in ways that will deter and dissuade those who are in a position to influence these decisions, because time, as we all know, is running out," he said. "If we continue along the same course, I'm afraid the result is not simply going to be environmental disaster; it's also going to, I think, feed ... an outcry for really forceful government, and not in a necessarily democratic way."
"I think that for [Max] Weber, the truly important civic virtues were just exactly the ones that would assert themselves at a time when basic institutional values were at stake and human values were at stake, and that you don't win, or you win rarely, and if you win, it's often for a very short time, and that that's why politics is a vocation for Weber," he said. "It's not an occasional undertaking that we assume every two years or every four years when there's an election. It's a constant occupation and preoccupation. And the problem, as Weber saw it, was to understand it not as a partisan kind of education in the politicians or political party sense, but as in the broad understanding of what political life should be and what is required to make it sustainable. He's calling for a certain kind of understanding that's very different from what we think about when we associate political understanding with how do you vote or what party do you support or what cause do you support. Weber's asking us to step back and say what kind of political order and the values associated with it that it promotes are we willing to really give a lot for, including sacrifice. And I think that it's that distinction between the temporary and the transient and what's truly of more enduring significance that sets Weber off against the group he hated, the relativists."
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Here are a few of the revolutionist groups working in the United States, along with links to their websites.
Popular Resistance, https://www.popularresistance.org/
Fight for the Future, https://www.fightforthefuture.org/
Backbone Campaign, http://www.backbonecampaign.org/
Rising Tide North America, http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/
United Workers, http://unitedworkers.org/
Vermont Workers' Center, http://www.workerscenter.org/
Veterans for Peace, http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
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