Back in the 1950s or 60s, can’t remember when it was, Diana Trilling had an essay called “The Other Night at Columbia.” It was meant to be a mordant, ironic musing on a poetry reading at Columbia University by Allan Ginsberg, who had been a student of Trilling’s husband, the Columbia professor and literary critic Lionel Trilling. I’m sure I’m misremembering the details, perhaps even the overall mood and ethos of the piece; it’s been a long time. What I vaguely remember is this: Despite Trilling’s attempts to make the essay into a larger comment about littler manners and morals, what you come away with, more than anything else, is her total emotional investment in…Columbia. Even when she’s trying to be critical, […]

Now that they’ve discovered the notion that a political party, faced with a dangerous political enemy, should suppress all internal criticism of its putative leader lest she be “harmed” by that criticism, and that the party should refrain from fractious internal debates lest it be ill-equipped to defeat the enemy, I wonder if liberals are rethinking their views on Lenin. The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party. Actually, by the standards of today’s liberal, Lenin’s strictures come off as relatively benign. He at least called […]

First they came for the Revolution and I did not speak out because I was not a Revolution. Then they came for the Parliamentary Socialism and I did not speak out because I was not a Parliamentary Socialism. Then they came for the Third Party and I did not speak out because I was not a Third Party. Then they came for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party and I did not speak out because I was not a Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. Then they came for the Green Lantern and I did not speak out because I was not a Green Lantern. Then they came for me but that was cool because I’m a Democrat.