Forty years after the protests of 1968, Students for a Democratic Society is back. The radical organization that single-handedly tarnished Columbia's reputation for well over three decades held its first meeting last week, and while members of Columbia's extreme left hail its revival, the student majority rightly looks on with shame.

As any observer of history or contemporary politics will admit, SDS might champion "democracy" as an end, but it uses extremist action to advance its agenda. The history of SDS is replete with radicalism and consequent failure. What began as an organized movement fell into disarray as the '60s progressed. Egalitarian fiat replaced traditional nationwide SDS leadership positions and offices, feminist "male chauvinism" doctrine replaced standing anti-communist provisos, and the quest to stop America's war became a war on America.

The "Columbia Student Revolt" in 1968 marked the zenith of SDS activism. Students protested both Columbia's ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses because of its affiliation with the Department of Defense and Columbia's proposed expansion into Morningside Park. Oh, how things change! Soon protest turned to occupation, and occupation to riots, as student radicals stormed Low Library, the seat of administrative power. We've heard the stories countless times, but never have we been so close to a relapse. As national and international tensions flare, students-intently bound on saving the world-organize and reappraise their options.

When teach-ins and posters don't work, what next? When the Columbia University College Democrats are too far to the right and too "pro-Israel," with whom do you co-sponsor anti-war and anti-imperialist events? The only place left for these students to move is to the left. However, neither now nor 40 years ago would it be fair to typify every SDS member as fanatical. The majority were young, idealistic, and arrestingly naive, but all things considered, they were also well-intentioned. Yet as Friedrich Hayek argued some 60 years ago, this matters little. The most dedicated, vicious, and extreme ideologues tend to consolidate and hold power. History, as it usually does, proves Hayek correct.

By the late 1960s, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, a branch of SDS, spawned into the Weather Underground Organization, commonly known as the Weathermen, an allusion to Bob Dylan's seminal "Subterranean Homesick Blues." What began as an idealistic student movement quickly evolved into a terrorist organization. Following through on its pledge to "bring the war home," the Weather Underground Organization declared war against the United States government. In preparation for a strike against Fort Dix, an accidental explosion killed three Weathermen bomb makers at their Greenwich Village safe house. Rumor has it that Alma Mater was one of the Weathermen's potential targets. Luckily, when the organization went underground, membership dwindled and radicals dispersed to join other revolutionary brigades. Contemporary SDS activists have not yet reached such extremes, but if the past year means anything, they're not too far from storming buildings and raiding military facilities. In fact, authorities have arrested SDS members at the Times Square Recruitment Center and at protests for various crimes, including incitement to riot.

Again, this is not to say that Columbia's SDS reincarnate will necessarily begin with such radicalism. It is, however, a brazen affront to the Columbia community when students take such pride in an organization that has done only harm to the University. A Web post advertising the event wistfully boasts, "SDS is a decentralized, radical student organization ... with the name and a little input from the SDS of old [The SDS of old being the reason the desks in Hamilton are nailed to the floor]." It should go without saying that this is not a history to be proud of. The post goes on to emphasize the merits of direct action, commenting in broken English, "SDS does actions against the Iraq War," and the equally confusing, "SDS wants to think and act. It wants you to think and act. It wants real autonomy for everyone, thinking and acting."

While ideological critiques are unlikely to sway folks on the left, the ineffectiveness of such organizations should. The great "protests of '68" that today's activists idealize had little effect in stopping the war. Student radicalism did more to undermine Democratic campaigns and hoist Nixon, Agnew, and Kissinger to power. No good comes of this "direct action" and campus radicalism. Columbians, of all people, should know this.