Ezra Klein, now blogging for The Washington Post has a great general-purpose social theory point about social movements he picked up from, of all people, former Reagonomics architect Bruce Bartlett!

Imagine a hungry person who comes up with the good idea that he should eat something. Midway through eating something, he finds himself full. Should he keep eating?

Probably not. But political movements have a tough time recognizing when they’re full. After all, eating worked so well last time. Elections were won on a pro-eating platform. Supporters were convinced of the virtues of eating. This movement is now about eating.

He said it here.

I remember learning about natures of goal-oriented vs. movement-oriented activisim early in college. If your purpose is to, say, abolish slavery (or, I guess, impose it) or end a war (or, I guess, start one) or to overturn prohibitions on gay marriage, or to win equal pay for equal work, or overturn laws against abortion you can marshall extraordinary resources and effort to achieve your goal, yes, but assuming you achieve it the activists who worked towards the goal can congratulate themselves and go home. Meanwhile movement-oriented activism can get a little tricky because the goals tend to be more open-ended, and therefore even measurable success can be perceived as failure… and as a call for redoubling of effort.

See, for instance, the “pro-life” movement that, not content with its imposition of a near stranglehold on abortion rights in most of the country has turned its sights on contraception as well. Which brings up another problem more common to movement activism as opposed to goal activism. There’s usually a point in movements where most people start to feel “full,” in Ezra’s parlance, and start to drop out… with the result that a) fanatics who will always be hungry and b) opportunists who just enjoy life on the gravy train tend to rise to the top.