>On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 at 16:17:21 -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi
><furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
>>Why are so many LBO-talkers obsessed with finding fault with "the
>>left"? If leftists themselves don't like "the left," why should
>>anyone else? Self-flagellation and self-deprecation are
>>unattractive. It makes sense to flog "the left" ritually once we
>>cease to consider ourselves leftists, but, otherwise, it's
>>self-defeating. Suppose we are interested in winning friends and
>>influencing people, as everyone here says we should be; then it makes
>>sense to stop saying that "the left sucks," which is like a salesman
>>saying, "Never buy this product -- I won't use it myself."
>
>I think there is (or ought to be) a difference between
>self-flagellation and self-criticism. The former is saying "the left
>sucks"; the latter is saying calmly and rationally, "Are we
>achieving the results we want? No? Then what can we do differently?"
Leftists today, however, don't always have even the shared short-term goals (just as leftists in the past didn't always have the shared short-term goals -- the "left" is a very loose and broad term), especially when it comes to foreign policy (though disagreements exist concerning domestic policy as well). For instance, Michael Berube, who sees himself as a leftist, wants the following: "The challenge, clearly, is to learn how to be strenuously anti-imperialist without being indiscriminately antiwar." Why? Because he thinks the war on Yugoslavia was, and the current one on Afghanistan is, just and necessary. I'm sure a number of leftists agree with him, though I don't know how many. I disagree, as do a number of leftists. There is no coherent "Left" that want the same results even in the short term. As for long-term goals, differences become larger. What works for one faction doesn't work for another. Given the differences and even contradictions between factions, we should refrain from speaking of "the left in general" (although I sometimes lapse into the habit of doing so, as many leftists do). What works for Hitchens doesn't work for Chomsky, and so on, and so forth. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>