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<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"><< One of the more dispiriting spectacles to which we are subjected in this
<BR>curiously weightless-seeming commencement de siècle is that of the apostate
<BR>left-wing radical taking revenge on his former self or selves. >>
<BR>
<BR><< Everywhere about us we see young wrinklies in their 50s who a mere few
<BR>decades ago were burning flags and burning bras but who now burn nothing
<BR>more than the occasional Montecristo in celebration of the latest sewn-up
<BR>software deal or stitched-up soft-hearted rival... >>
<BR>
<BR><< Christopher Hitchens, known to his friends as The Hitch, and, come to
<BR>think of it, probably to his enemies also, has kept the socialist faith
<BR>with conviction, energy and high style. He is, as he tells us, "mainly
<BR>English", the son of a navy family based in Portsmouth, but he has lived
<BR>for a long time now in America, where he is, unlikely as it may sound,
<BR>Professor of Liberal Studies in the Graduate School at the New School, New
<BR>York. >>
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<BR>Apostate left-wing radicals is a long story. Truth be told, great numbers of
<BR>what are serious, weighty right-wing intellectuals started their careers as
<BR>left-wing radicals. It is almost as if you can't think original thoughts on
<BR>the right, so you have to bring them from the left. The New Left generation
<BR>follows in a well-established pattern: the Trots of the 50s turned
<BR>neo-conservatives; the socialist, Partisan Review type intellectuals of the
<BR>30s turned conservative; and so on. Only the hard core Stalinists even been
<BR>spared this ignominy, since the CP and the various Maoist groups couldn't
<BR>produce an intellectual to begin with. Genovese is about as close to a
<BR>Stalinist turned conservative intellectual one can find.
<BR>
<BR>But about Christopher Hitchens... Well, I know George Orwell, I have studied
<BR>George Orwell, I have even quoted him on occasion, and Hitchens, you are no
<BR>George Orwell.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
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