>It seems to me to work best to assume that political figures
>intend the results they achieve. Any other assumption seems
>to involve guessing at their subjective state of mind on
>inadequate evidence. So I tend to see him as deliberately,
>in a principled fashion, serving the interests of major sectors
>of the u.s. ruling class.
>
>As to the Nation, I prefer to think of it (i.e., its owner/editor)
>as achieving precisely what they intend. Their task is to prevent
>the development of significant political activity on the left
>outside the limits established by the Democratic Party. The
>readers they aim at, then, must be precisely those who would
>be apt to move into opposition to the Democrat Party, and
>those readers must be kept within the Nation fold. Hence the
>opposition (merely intellectual) to the more outrageous foreign
>policy moves of the Clinton administration (e.g. Kosovo) and
>hence their publication of socialist and other leftist writers. And
>of course even on Kosovo their main (overall) message was that
>it was a debatable issue. And from any principled left position,
>Kosovo was not debatable. Even allowing a page (even allowing
>letters to the editor) supporting Clinton gave unacceptable
>legitimacy to that criminal assault on Serbia. There really are
>not two sides to all issues.
>
>Carrol
I'm sorry but its quite absurd to critize the Nation for allowing debate on the Kosovo matter while editorally they opposed it. Many "leftist" saw reason in military intervention. Debate is important if only to discuss under what conditions and in what way intervention might have been justified and implemented, even if the actual intervetion was criminal.
As far the Nation having the goal of preventing "the development of significant political activity on the left outside the limits established by the Democratic Party" I doubt it. See the recent supportive article on Ralph Nader and the Green Party.
Dogmatism in political debate is never attractive.
Jacob Segal