>what country does have a sophisticated political culture? I am not
>defending the U.S. I was fairly impressed with Cuba -- just talking with
>people on the street, but my Spanish is beneath rudimentary.
Probably no country's political culture is as sophisticated as it should be, but in America red-baiting is much more relentless than is in Japan. And Japan's political culture is quite rotten, as you know. I think that there is something in the nature of living in the belly of the beast that makes even smart people like Brad curiously obsessed with by-now-non-existent worshippers of Stalin. Maybe if Brad can forget ghosts of Stalinism long enough, he can get on the "Central Committee of the Bourgeoisie." :) While he's happily wasting time on LBO making Tim Shorrock, etc. waste their time, however, he's operating below the level of David Horowitz, since there is no money in defending the necessity of the Korean War on LBO, unlike Horowitz's gig. My advice to Brad is that such is the job that should be left to lesser Cold-War liberals & conservatives and that he should take the high road to post-Keynesian stardom instead. Why Paul Krugman on the New York Times? Why not Brad De Long instead? Make money, be happy!
Back to American culture, I'm struck by how often even a meekest proposal for a mildest reform gets labeled "socialist" here. With the end of actually existing socialism, I thought, maybe, just maybe, ideologues will lose their bogeyman, but hell no, we still can't get any political discussion going without a dose of Stalin-baiting every now and then even on lists like LBO. Baiting works because baiters on some level know that objects of baiting aren't really worshippers of Stalin; if the objects of name-calling were actually worshippers of Stalin, baiting wouldn't work, because then the term Stalinist couldn't function as a bad name -- real worshippers of Stalin would be proud of being Stalinist and identify themselves as such.
When we no longer see Stalin-baiting on LBO, maybe we'll acquire political culture in which Hilary Clinton, Brad De Long, Justin Schwartz, Chuck0, Carrol Cox, the Venceremos Brigade, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization of Women, Al Sharpton, etc. won't get conflated into One Big Red Union.
Yoshie