I just had a funny experience I’d like to share. I mean “funny” as in strange, not “funny” as in humorous.
Some background, I was a B-school doctoral student in the late 1960s, studying organizational behavior (OB) and organization theory (OT) at the University of Oregon. An often-cited thinker in OT at the time was sociologist Amitai Etzioni. He was one of the heavy hitters whose work we read.
Fast forward to today, slightly in excess of 50 years later. I’m scanning Lucianne.com and up pops a link to a new article by Amitai Etzioni in City Journal. I’m all “there can’t be two dudes with that strange name” so I check it out and it’s him, the one I studied in my late twenties.
Now I’m puzzled, how could an established leading scholar 50 years ago still be working? I check Wikipedia and it turns out he’s 91 and still writing. At 91 “still breathing” is an accomplishment.
His current topic, how it’s hard today for progressives to also be patriotic, something he wants very much to be. He isn’t certain he will be allowed to be both liberal and a patriot.
I wish him well, patriotism shouldn’t be limited to us on (in?) the right. The US. has much to admire whatever one’s politics.
Etzioni’s politics currently are communitarian ... a sort of idealized latter-day New England town meeting approach to governance, very face-to-face. Perhaps it’s ”essence of kibbutz“ OT. Once a sociologist, always a sociologist, eh?
