Jim wrote:

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I find it much more plausible that commies did bad things, things characteristic of commies, because they were bad people.

Faustine

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True: but then there's always the gray area of exactly what's done in the name of "what bad people deserve" that keeps me uneasy about the whole thing. Have you read Gordon Thomas' book about the Mossad, "Gideon's Spies"? He was allowed to interview all the top agency people, so you can be sure nothing got out the agency didn't want out. Even still, it's a fascinating, hard-hitting look at what happens when an organization of brilliant, ruthless people come to exist in a system with limited accountability: hardcore realpolitik at its most elemental.

We know the spooks do bad things. They have done bad things to people who post on this list. We also know commies do bad things.

The argument I object to is that all the bad behavior, the authoritarianism, the crimes, the repression, that we saw from the new left during the seventies is somehow the fault of the spooks, and somehow not the fault of the people who were doing it.

Point well taken. But the same could be said of the "crimes and bad behavior" at Waco and Ruby Ridge; it might have been their fault, but they sure as hell didn't deserve what ultimately happened to them any more than the commies did. I'm not out to defend any ideology, only the idea of government agents' accountability to the rule of law. ~Faustine.