> To close this out, let me just see whether I can summarize my position
> (really my intuition) and then we can move on with our lives. I don't
> think its either ethically defensible or tactically useful to draw a
> distinction between "respectable" reactionary organizations e.g. the DLC,
> the mainstream Catholic Church, the Council on Foreign Relations, Yale
> University advocating wholesale repression, racism, social and economic
> violence and "pariah" organizations and figures such as Buchanan, the
> militias and the John Birch Society, who engage in retail versions of the
> same basic enterprise.
>
> Best,
> John
John, what you don't understand, is that if you actually bothered to read what I have written for 20 years (and what Ken Lawrence has written for over 25 years) is that this is our position, and it is your failure to actually read what we have written that leads you to the false (and insulting) conclusion that Ken and I have the same liberal analysis as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL, which we do not. That is what is lazy on your part.
You are repeating what the far right and Birchers say about people like Ken and me (uncritically picked up by Alexander Cokburn) without any proof. I have twiced forced the Nation magazine to make Cockburn apologize for making this claim, which in his own irritable way he has been ethical enough to do in print.
Can you cite a specific article of mine that illustrates your point? Or do you just make up these claims based on stereotyping of "watchdog" groups?
-Chip