"Hicks' more diplomatic tone is a special challenge to the left. It's the left, after all, that lays claim to independent and critical thinking. It should welcome Hicks' polemics as one more invitation to reflect and rethink. Not to run up a white flag and surrender to the right, nor to whip out a sledgehammer and try to beat Hicks -- or Horowitz for that matter -- into the ground. But rather to rise to the debate and confront some of the thornier issues raised by Hicks' apostasy. Must the narrative of the left remain rooted in victimization? Can race politics be transcended without abandoning a critique of racism? Can the left, in short, get past the dusty cant of the last 30 years and conjure a proactive vision with popular appeal?"
> http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/27/cover-cooper.shtml
Good questions not only for LA leftists (whose world I briefly inhabited in the mid-80s), but for members of this list -- especially the last question.
DP