>
> Many lbo-ers know Tim Shorrock. He's an excellent left journalist who
> specializes in Asian issues. His recent article in the Nation on
> Wolfowitz's career in Asia was posed last week (and I highly recommend
> it). He was also an lbo-talker for a while, and a regular on Doug's show,
> so some of us came to know that he grew up in Asia because his parents
> were missionaries there. Which, at least for me, always left a
> half-formed question of how exactly two missionary parents gave birth to
> him.
Actually many left-wingers have come from missionary households. The best example being the great historian E.P. Thompson, whose father was a methodist missionary in India. Somewhere or other Raphael Samuels did a long list of leftist who had similiar backgrounds. I think the fact that missionaries have close contact with the global poor sometimes has a radicalizing effect. Not always though: Henry Luce and other reactionies were also mission kids. Jeet Heer