Hypocrity as Heroism

Leftists, while always willing to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being obsessed with Soviets, Communism, or some feature of the past, can't seem to realize that the past is something they're still living in and clinging to as if it will lend them comfort. Worse still, it's romanticized to forget the millions murdered by the shining lights of the left in the past: Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etal...

That never seems to stop them from living in the past themselves.

The men and women of the International Brigades came from across Europe and beyond, and from all sorts of backgrounds too. In one of the Manchester Guardian's regular lists of those killed, the name of Jim Foley, "an old member of the Irish Republican Army", is followed by that of Christopher St John Sprigg, "the author of a number of detective novels and books on aeronautics".

Winston Churchill's nephew Esmond Romilly cycled across France in order to fight, one of over 2,000 people from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth who joined the Brigades. Many were communists; all were driven by a loathing of fascism. They confronted it out of choice when Britain and France were still trying to appease Hitler.

They were heroes, but not treated as such, attacked in rightwing British papers as mercenaries (the Guardian published plaintive denials from the frontline) and neglected after Spain fell in 1939.

A little criticism from the beggining of the last century, and they still haven't gotten over it. Amazing. If the author had any idea what the scale, persistence, and nature the slander that his fellow travellers emit reflexively... Even though an individual's choice is the last thing that the left's world view would accept. ALL is for the guided greater good of the state and the Jesus-like sacrifice that whatever el lider type they have to lionize at the moment has made for them.