Leftwing viper and racial demagogue Jim Sleeper last came to my attention when he attacked Jewish students for standing up to the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies at Yale. Now he rises to the defense of radical provocateur Frances Fox Piven, who only this month called for a bloody revolution in America. Of course, in defending Piven and attacking Glenn Beck, John McWhorter and me in a TPMCafe blog Sleeper refers to Piven as a “sociologist” and me as a “provocateur.” But that’s just the way unprincipled leftists talk. And yes, I have provoked Islamo-fascists and their apologists, like Jim Sleeper, from time to time, but that’s not why Sleeper is attacking me now. My friend Ron Radosh has ably blogged the Piven controversy so I will save the time and energy.
Continue Reading…
This column was originally published by Salon on March 3, 1997.
Tom Hayden and I were once comrades-in-arms in a movement to overthrow America’s democratic institutions, remake its government in a Marxist image and help America’s enemies defeat her sons on the field of battle. Now he is running for mayor of Los Angeles and many people are asking me, “Does this past matter?” I think it does.
Hayden and I were deadly serious about our revolutionary agendas. During the Vietnam War, Tom traveled many times to North Vietnam, Czechoslovakia and Paris to meet communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders. He came back from Hanoi proclaiming he had seen “rice roots democracy at work.” According to people who were present at the time, including Sol Stern, later an aide to Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein, Hayden offered tips on conducting psychological warfare against the U.S. He arranged trips to Hanoi for Americans perceived as friendly to the Communists and blocked entry to those seen as unfriendly, like the sociologist Christopher Jencks. He attacked as “propaganda” stories of torture and labeled American POWs returning home with such stories as “liars.” Even after America withdrew its troops from Indochina, Hayden lobbied Congress to end all aid to the anti-Communist regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia. When the cutoff came, the regimes fell and the Communists conquered South Vietnam and Cambodia and slaughtered 2.5 million people. When anti-war activist Joan Baez protested the human rights violations of the North Vietnamese victors, Hayden called her a tool of the CIA.
Continue Reading…
This column was originally published by Salon on February 17, 1997.
Everybody from Newt Gingrich to Bill Clinton agrees that the crisis in our schools demands national action. Many proposals — raised standards, smaller classrooms — are already part of a bipartisan agenda. But no one seems to have the political spine to name the parties responsible for this crisis. As a result, none of these solutions will work.
Continue Reading…
Originally published by Salon on March 31, 1997.
As a man who helped to create the radical New Left in the ’60s and became a conservative in the ’90s, I am often asked to explain how it is possible to make such a 180-degree turn. I have tried to answer this in 450 pages, in my autobiography, “Radical Son.” But there is a short answer as well, one I think most Americans can understand from recent political events and the 180-degree turn taken by our own president.
Continue Reading…
This column was originally published by Salon on October 6, 1997.
It has become the topic of the season on the political right: Whatever happened to the triumph of conservatism? Recently, the Weekly Standard ran a cover symposium titled “Is There a Worldwide Conservative Crackup?” Conservative ideas appear to be ascendant, the editors pointed out, but the party that represents them is getting battered. In an essay in the Wall Street Journal, “What Ails Conservatism?” two of the right’s most articulate theorists, William Kristol and David Brooks, put it another way: “The era of big government may be over, but a new era of conservative governance hasn’t yet begun. Why the delay?”
Continue Reading…
