Courage, strength, sanity, humor, ... Lefty Tools!

Professor Eric Alterman of Altercation fame, writing in The Nation here, serves up "Three Liberal Lives" examining the lives of recently passed legends of the left. "John Kenneth Galbraith died on April 29 at age 97, ... just days after those of two other giants of American liberalism: Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg at age 84 and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin at 81." I especially appreciated how he wound up this effort.

Where does the courage come from to insist that you are right when all others around you are not merely wrong but wrong in ways that are morally and intellectually indefensible? And how does one retain not only one's sanity but also good humor when doing so?

In his own way, each man spoke to this question, though the answers are necessarily unsatisfying. Asked by a church group why he found himself getting arrested so frequently, Coffin replied, "I can only reassure you that I don't like to go around picking fights. Some fights pick you."

To a question about his troublemaking, Hertzberg once explained, "A rabbi should be where the real issues of society are, not where safe platitudes are to be preached.... You save your soul by saving someone else's body."

And in a moving tribute to his friend and co-conspirator, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled Galbraith observing, "The emancipation of belief is the most formidable of the tasks of reform, the one on which all else depends."

We'll done for these three men plus a tip of the tam for Doc Alterman. Peace ... or War!