> >It's a bad situation and while Hitchens is a poor poster child for the
> >problem, his exit from what he sees as his progressive home parallels
many
> >others alienation from it.
>
> This alienation is not visible in the Nation's circulation figures.
Circulation of political magazines reflects passions-- I'm sure many leftleaning folks who weren't reading as much have picked up subscriptions to the Nation, out of fear of Bush's domestic and foreign adventurism. Bad things for the nation are good for The Nation-- I think Navasky said that.
But that says little about creating the kinds of divides between people, and my sense is that Hitchens was reacting to the personal interactions he's had on the left in recent months and years.
BTW I've said repeatedly that I am against the Iraq war, as I was against the Afghanistan war. As I was against the first Gulf War. But it was during that first war back in 1991 that I first realized how intellectually and morally bankrupt the sloganeering of antiwar organizing had become, failing to deal with the realities of changing conflicts in way that was not just ineffective but counterproductive in alienating potential allies driven to the other side by it.
I still think Barney Frank had the most succinct statement of the biggest difference between the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts. Ho Chi Minh was on the right side back then. Today's tyrants aren't, so the issue of war is more ambiguous, much more balancing the costs of wars against the gains of displacing the thugs. But that is a pragmatic empirical calculation, not the moral high-ground the Left had with the Vietnam War and many other colonialism struggles.
And people of good faith and conscience can disagree on such empirical calculations of costs and benefits of war. The failure of the recent antiwar left is that they won't extend that good faith-- which many on the prowar side won't as well, but that is a separate issue. They have John Ashcroft to keep waverers on their side from causing too much trouble-- we don't enjoy that luxury. We need to hold the waverers through personal respect and strong arguments.
-- Nathan Newman