>Dont' wanna make you cross, but I agree with most of this, and with
feeling.
>So even David Horowitz gets it right once in a while ... one has to feel
>one's politics intensely to keep left ... the demands we tend to make of
>ourselves, in the name of 'solidarity', are just too narrow, too irksome,
>and too bloody tyrannical.
Yeah, not turning your buddies over to a Jesse Helms-appointed Torqemanda - damn, we leftists have such unreasonable standards for political friendship.
Look, this self-serving piece of crap by Horowitz tries to confuse two issues - demands for political conformity and demands that one's allies not betray you to the state repression apparatus. No one thinks Hitchens did anything wrong by writing articles about why Clinton should be impeached, or even if it would have been a betrayal, if nasty, to call for his buddy Sidney Blumenthal to be jailed. Horowitz makes an analogy of Hitchens actions to the Right turning on Bill Safire for calling for Oillie North to be jailed during Iran-Contra.
But the comparison is bogus.
Yeah, there are sometimes demands to tow the party line, but big boys and girls can ignore that quite well, but that exists in every political culture on earth. That is totally separate from handing one's allies over to state repression. That Horowitz compares Daniel Ellsberg's actions in exposing the Pentagon Papers to Hitchens revealing private discussions with Blumenthal just shows how fucked in the head Horowitz's analogies are.
If anything, it is Hitchens decision to betray Blumenthal that fits Horowitz's description of ideological intolerance. In Hitchens view, apparently, Blumenthal's ideological defection to Clintonism was so loathsome that Blumenthal had forfeited all right to normal friendship - such as the confidence of a friendly meal. That is exactly the disease of blind ideological intolerance leading to betrayal that people condemn in Clinton - and, notably, condemned in Horowitz who chose not to just change beliefs but to accuse every variety of former friend not just of mistaken belief but of criminal activity.
It is precisely because most leftists want a community that can tolerate dissent and ideological variety that betrayal to the state is such a crime. Otherwise, every political deviant has to be considered a danger if it is okay to use snitching to the state as an ideological weapon in taking out fellow leftists in inter-mural fights.
I'm sorry...most of those who talk about political correctness like Horowitz are the promoters of ideological rigidness. Hitchens pissed me off as a writer because he carried that "holier-than-thou" roundhouse condemnation of all who did not agree with him politically.
Hitchens did not snitch to fight ideological rigidity, but as an example of it.
--Nathan Newman