>Now a good question is: what follows from our knowledge that Clark
>Kissinger made these statements in the past? Or that he is in the RCP,
>or that the RCP is, in the view of some, a cult and full of fanatics?
>Carrol suggests that, since the RCP has extremely little power and
>influence in the U.S., it is a butterfly. So why bother with this
>attack on Kissinger and the RCP? Is there some other motive for this?
>Is the attack on Kissinger an attack on Mumia and the movement to free
>him?
I think that there are at least four different strands of American politics with regard to the issues in question here.
1. There are those who are, like Cooper, tired of being associated with unpopular causes (e.g., defending a politicized black man accused of killing a cop, opposing a "humanitarian" bombing & "peace-keeping," etc.). Cooper's article showed him to be just an opportunist, with no particular political principle.
2. And then, there are those who actually favor death penalty, like Max. Some like Nathan, Chris, & Max in fact thought that the NATO war on Yugoslavia should be supported. For them, NATO was the lesser of two evils, compared to the Serbs. While I disagree with them and think of their positions (on death penalty & NATO respectively) as profoundly mistaken, at least I have to say that their political stands are clear and coherent.
3. Now, there are those who think that their brand of left politics might be more popular if only a Ramsey Clark, a Clark Kissinger, the WWP, the RCP, Serbian nationalists, a Milo, a Saddam, etc. dropped dead. During the Cold War, there probably were leftists who thought that their brand of left politics would not have had to be saddled with the charge of Stalinism, Red Fascism, Totalitarianism, etc. if only the USSR had not existed to begin with. Well, they got their wish, and the USSR is no more. No more Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, whatever in power (there are still Cuba & North Korea, but they are so tiny that even the U.S. government can't rely on them for being credible Official Enemies), but the Left is weaker than ever, unable to resist the evil Third Way. Therefore, I'd say that if the RCP, etc. now disappeared off the face of the earth, their critics' political fortune wouldn't change for better, but probably they don't believe me -- it's easy to blame someone else for your political failure. (Though Justin thinks I'm in principle against morality, I'd say they can use some "personal responsibility" here.) Anyhow, I think of this trend to be not so much opportunism as wishful thinking.
4. Chip's criticism of Clark (regarding Clark's reticence about LaRouche's use of his prestige) seems principled, in that he takes care, by criticizing red-baiting itself, to make the reader understand that his criticism is not the same as red-baiting.
Yoshie