I once praised Ho Chi Minh for his leadership of the Vietnamese people. I used to think Fidel Castro was the cat's pajamas. I was a member of SDS. For five years, I helped to edit a journal called Socialist Revolution. Or how about Joe Lieberman's press aide, Marshall Wittman, whom I like and admire? Marshall has had his moment on the far left (I can't remember the group) and on the far right (when he was the Christian Coalition's rep in Washington). I know some other prominent intellectuals on the left and the right who were once part of or very close to Weatherman. I'm not going to name them because of the current notoriety about Weatherman. But that's just an interesting and curious fact about them. Like me, or like Bob Dreyfuss, they have had a long political and intellectual journey that has sometimes taken them into weird byways. If Bob Dreyfuss were still member of LaRouche's organization, I'd worry about him and I would wonder about the magazines were publishing him. But what he did 25 or more years ago--when James Kirchick was probably still an infant? I wouldn't give that a moment's notice.
--John B. Judis