Jack Ross emailed me from the road to make some points:
You can't take Dershowitz seriously, he's talking out of
his ass. Yes I was upset that Carter didn't speak, but at least he
came on stage and was honored, and you could tell that a large part of
the audience was applauding him extra hard to make their feelings
known, the same thing happened when the mention of Carter's name
randomly got applause in Bill Clinton's speech.
Contrast this to Bush
Sr. not appearing on stage at all at the Republican convention, to say nothing of Dick Cheney not being there at all. For that matter compare it also to John Edwards being pointedly kept away.
Your post about Holmes is also fascinating in this respect. Holmes was a vintage racist totalitarian of the Progressive Era, and is almost singlehandedly responsible for the outrageous defamation of Herbert Spencer with the crack he made in his Lochner dissent.
As for Ralph Seliger: 1) Mapam's pro-Soviet orientation has everything to do with
Seliger's argument – the relative strength of a Stalinist party is
supposed to be a hallmark of a country's progressivism? 2) He is flat
out wrong about there having never been contacts with Hitler, Lenni Brenner
has been the leader in documenting it, there have been others…
