On the battlefield, the kind of political struggle that needs to be waged in a healthy democracy, is simply not possible nor desirable. In Spain, the actions of those connected to the Communist International were issued by Stalin whose main interest was the Soviet Union, as he saw it, and not the preservation of the Spanish Republic, even though that was probably not the goal of most of the Communists who volunteered to fight there. Preserving the Spanish Republic was the goal of the other volunteers, anarchists, Trotskyists, etc., who became, under orders from Stalin, a force to be delegitimized, if not liquidated. The noxious Leninist oxymoron of "democratic centralism" held sway and Spain perished. Do the bad folks triumph because the good folks can't get their act together? I would say that this is frequently the case. However, in the present 2000 election, by no stretch of the imagination can Gore, Lieberman and the Democratic, corporate-funded inner circle be classified as "good guys." That Nader and the Greens did not get their 5% is because too many "good folks" didn't understand that. Jeff Blankfort Robert Houriet wrote: > after I wrote: > >I appreciate Richard Scheneirov's efforts to take us through several > >interesting presidential battles and the issues that were contested in > >each, but in blaming Nader for Gore's loss, he fails to mention the > >critical issues that distinguish this year's Democrat from this year's > Republican. > > > >Does he or others seriously think that Hitler and the economic forces > >behind him would have withdrawn from the scene if the Communists and > >Socialists had cooperated in that instance? The conventional wisdom on > >this issue rarely contemplates how unlikely that would have been. > > Jeff, > Do you see some of the same argument that Scheneirov makes in Orwell's > diagnosis of the Spanish Civil War? Or as he put it more metaphyiscally in > 1984 that the bad guys triumph not by virtue of their own power, but by > dividing the "good guys" by playing divisively upon their fears; in short, > that good does not prevail, not due to superior evil, but because the good > aren't good enough? > > Robert Houriet >
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