Men like Zinn and Chomsky remind me of the Alec Guinness character in the movie, ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’, who realizes in the last moments of his life the treason of his actions, although with Zinn, Chomsky, and others, the truth is that they will probably never have such a moment of self-revelation—and unlike the Guinness character—any chance at redemption.
As an aside, Dante reserved the hottest part of his Inferno for the false counselors, men just like Zinn.
And I said everything I said in #3 as a former Lefty from the late 60s who decided to go ahead and LET himself be drafted, right after the big buildup in ‘66, just after high school. That experience didn’t exactly END my leftism, but it started a process where I gradually moved away from it over the next 4 years. Even then ,though, as an adolescent, I wasn’t stupid enough to get swayed by the old-style “New” Leftism of Zinn and Co. Get right down to it , and it’s no different at all from the blunt, hardnosed Pro-Stalin apologism of the 30s-50s, with all those hairy and unappealing apparatCHICKs hanging around every demonstration and “urgent meeting”.