>
>It's one thing for folks to trash me as a cruise missile liberal or
>whatever, since a bit of rough-and-tumble with contemporaries is par for
>the
>course, but it really bothers me that young activists are attacked this
>way.
>
>Hitchens is being both personally high-handed but also reacting to the
>high-handed ideological litmus testing around the left on these issues.
>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.
>
Hey, listeb, Nathan, as a market socialist and liberal democrat (who is nonetheless intransigently opposed to US military intervention abroad), I've certaibly had experience in being read out of the left over the years, I finally did take a hint with respect to the self-identified _Marxist_ left, although it wasn't mainly that I was mde to feel unwelcome--some, including my Soli comrades, would be happy enough to have accepted me for whatever I called myself--as much as a growing reaslization of the terminal collapse of Marxism as a movement (as opposed to a theory). Still one has to continually fight these tedious battles, and I agree with Nathan that it doesn't further our cause to attack especially the young and inexperienced on these grounds. Nathan and I can take it. We obviously have. Pick on someone your own age, not the kids. jks
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