Thursday, December 28, 2006

Quinn VS Wolfe Part 2

A friend asked me to do a follow up on Quinn VS Wolfe. Let me start with this Playboy Interview with Sol Alinsky Interview from 1972.

My 1st Question:
1. You seem to think that every one who disagrees with you is a Commie or a Marxist. Do you know the meaning of those words? Red Baiting went out in the 60's. I call myself a Sol Alinsky Leftist and never have and never will join any political party. I remember the 50s all to well.

Qunns answer to this question puts everything I've said about him (Quinn) in perspective. After he defends McCarthy as being a little "rough edged in his approach but was basically right" and then laughs as he tells me I need to know a little history about Sol Alinsky, that Alinsky was a "Freakin Communist". Quinn just loves to Red Bait. I'll let Sol answer this in his own words:

PLAYBOY: Did you consider becoming a party member prior to the Nazi-Soviet Pact?

ALINSKY: Not at any time. I've never joined any organization -- not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what judge Learned Hand described as "that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right." If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. The great atomic physicist Niels Bohr summed it up pretty well when he said, "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." Nobody owns the truth, and dogma, whatever form it takes, is the ultimate enemy of human freedom.

I could go on from there and respond to the rest of Quinns Rhetoric but I think I've made my point.

No comments: