Chomsky News Network

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 07:11 PM 5/31/2002 +0000, Justin wrote:
second day of the battle, then charged with bayonets with they were out of 
ammo, probably saving the Union. I was surprised as anyone. I guess that 
makes me a patriot. Course I was also choked up when I saw the flowers in 
the Museum der Widerstand in Berlin, in the old Wermacht HQ, heaped on the 
site where the Nazis executed von Stauffenberg and the main July 20 
conspirators.

I would add to this list visiting the Casa de Leon Trotsky in Mexico City 
and seeing the book cases filled with books and journals, a Spartan bed, a 
work desk, Earl Grey tea on a table.  Or a dust-covered statue of Lenin 
inside the dilapidated Vitebsky Vokzal train station in Leningrad (now 
Sankt Petersburg) - one of the last remaining ones - and someone placing a 
bouquet of red carnations under it.

We may disagree with their politics, or point out their errors, but at 
least they pursued a heroic vision of a just society - regardless of where 
that society may be geographically located.  That is what makes me "choke 
up" - especially in the era whose heros are sycophantic corporate nullities 
concerned only about lining their own pockets.  As Nietzsche said "The 
errors of great men are more venerable because they are more fruitful than 
the truths of little men."

wojtek