Judis and the left (and Ronald Radosh too)

[Dennis Perrin]

> TRB FROM WASHINGTON: THE HERETIC
>
> By John B. Judis
>
> In the mid-'80s, when I was in New York researching a biography of William
> F. Buckley, I used to see Radosh a lot, and in Maryland now we're almost
> neighbors. We don't talk politics that much because we have such different
> interests. (I still have trouble pointing out Nicaragua on a map.) But
I've
> always maintained a grudging respect for his opinions. I say grudging
> because I don't usually agree at first but find out later--whether on the
> guilt of the Rosenbergs or the sins of the Sandinistas--that he was right.
I
> think of him as the Cassandra of the American left.

If Judis has trouble finding Nicaragua on a map, then perhaps he's not the
best judge as to whether Radosh was right about the Sandinistas. The Ortega
regime can be faulted for many things, but it was not the Stalinist state
that Radosh, Horowitz, Leiken, et al., claimed that it was. It held
scheduled elections with international observers. It allowed opposition
parties and two opposition papers to exist (despite harassment), and allowed
the editors of La Prensa to compare it to Nazi Germany while openly rooting
for a foreign-based and financed proxy army to violently overthrow the
state. Castro certainly wouldn't have allowed that, and neither did Woodrow
Wilson during WWI.

As for the Rosenbergs, really, who cares, apart from the capital punishment
angle. During a visit to some FAIR comrades in LA, I was asked (I suppose as
a litmus test) what I thought of the Rosenbergs. I replied that I thought
they were the Flying Dutchmen of the left, and this elicited a few long
stares, until Jeff Cohen stepped in and tried to cover my ass. Then we drank
a lot of wine.

DP