>On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> If I were not a leftist
>> already, reading the passage cited above (which makes it sound like
>> being among leftists is bad for health) certainly would motivate me
>> _not_ to become one.
>
>If the passage above "makes it sound like being among leftists is bad for
>health," that's because sometimes it is. Maybe not as bad as being among
>some groups of rightists (or maybe worse), but bad nonetheless. I have no
>idea what the problem in admitting this is.
>
>Suppressing criticism or withholding basic observations to present a good
>showing to the public is dishonest. We are the public. Are you
>concerned that people
>aren't holding their tongues enough, or that their observations are false?
It has been my experience that working with a variety of leftists from a diversity of traditions (from left-wing Catholics and Protestants to anarchists and Marxists, from feminists to Pan-Africanists, of different races, nations, cultures), as well as learning from the successes and failures of leftists in the past from books and oral histories, has been on balance invigorating, for all frustrations that necessarily come with political activism on the left in Japan and the USA, that is political activism with few tiny victories and many, many monumental defeats (for which, unlike some leftists here, I do not blame my fellow leftists in Japan and the USA -- in my humble opinion, most of them did what they could and fought good fights, while making many mistakes like all human beings). I wouldn't exchange it for anything. If I thought it otherwise, I would just tend to my intellectual garden, like Candide. -- Yoshie
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