> Miles has said perfectly what I've been trying to get at for years.
>
>>> [...]
>>
>> The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to
>> lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose
>> until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for
>> somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of
>> other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of
>> it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You
>> mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it. --I. F. Stone
========================= More on Stone, whom we all admire for his radical journalism and fighting spirit: Though he distrusted liberals, he had an ecumenical rather than vitupertive attitude towards them and the other the political tendencies he encountered and disagreed with both inside and outside of the Democratic party. "I tried to befriend everyone", he wrote. "I had socialists, communists, Trotskyists, Lovestoneites and liberals for friends. My door was open."
Like many former members and fellow travellers, he continued to adhere more closely to the the CPUSA's orientation to the DP than to that favoured by the Trotskyists and others opposed to the party - supporting it against the Republicans and, within it, supporting the efforts of radicals and dissaffected liberals to change it's political direction and leadership. In the contemporary context, this would place him closer to groups like the Committees of Correspondence and Progressive Democrats of America and to fellow radicals like Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and others who have held their noses and supported Democratic candidates at one time or another, and would see him encouraging rather than disparaging the efforts of liberal critics of the party like Keith Olbermann, Frank Rich, Arriana Huffington, Markos Moulitsas, Katrina vanden Heuvel, etc., whose political limitations would be familiar to him.