>What shall be my penance, Grandfather? What can I do to regain that
>Paradise Lost?
While I have greatly enjoyed many of your arguments encouraging people to vote for the Democratic candidate, I think you and others have misunderstood the reason why Carrol raised the issue in the first place.
He brought up his discussion with you elsewhere as an illustration of what he means by the difference between principled criticism, polemics, and unprincipled discourse. I don't see any reason to think Carrol has taken this personally. He doesn't feel stung or hurt that anyone calls him a traitor. to wit:
CC: <...> If the critic feels animosity towards the person being criticized, then it probably is not criticism but polemics -- i.e., aimed at drawing a line along which opposing sides line up. (Or, often, simply an explosion of personal pique, which needs merely to be ignored.)<...>
Now that you've admitted that it was an angry, albeit justified, e-mail to Counterpunch, the anger just needs to be ignored. We've talked about this a bit before, here. Sometimes we use LBO as the "teacher's lounge": we come here and bitch about the things we have to deal with, and sometimes we "let our hair down" as Chuck0 explained re: his comments about the need for more Carries in left/Marxist circles.
CC continues: _Where_ such lines should be drawn is probably one of the most 'fertile' sources of significant debate (friendly or unfriendly) on the left. <....>
QUESTION: Does this language suggest to you that Carrol has decided that all drawing of lines is wrong? No, indeed, he's saying that even if unfriendly, this sort of drawing of lines is _fertile_. This suggests someone who, in his better moments, really is capable of handling this sort of drawing of lines maturely.
CC continued: For example, John Lacny in calling anti-ABBs traitors has excluded us from the left: that is not a criticism but a drawing of a sharp line of distinction between "the left" and "the enemy." We (anti-ABDs) are for John the Enemy.
TRANSLATION HELP: CC was showing on this is a drawing of lines, a marking of distinction, NOT a criticism of anti-ABBs. Given the sentence prior, I'm going to assume that he's making a matter-of-fact statement: this is what happens among diverse groups who are Marxists or Heavy Users of Marx, hell, even Users of LC Marx (great tasting, half the carbs!)