I have three things I’d like to say to you.

First, I want to thank you for spending some of your valuable time here. Time is precious, I know, and any good writing takes time.

Second, I hope you won’t be taken aback at commenters whose bad manners you will no doubt suffer. Believe me when I say that this regrettable abuse comes with the territory, but that many of your best readers will be there, listening quietly in the background. The experienced teacher knows this, but it may be good to remember in times to come.

Third, please do challenge me. We live in a time of rigidities, and it seems as if we were navigating the difficult waters of the Arctic Ocean. Help us break the ice.

Once again, welcome.

The two from my old neighborhood are gone now. So, I come here to learn from others and contribute if I can. I’m sure I have much I can learn from you and it’s wonderful to have you here.

“In what may be the first example of ‘political correctness’ run amok, the Party expelled or brought to trial members whose only sin was using words like ‘whitewash’ or ‘black sheep,’ both which were offered as proof of racism. As Joseph Starobin, the former foreign editor of the Daily Worker, explained in his history of the American CP, ‘Both whites and blacks began to take advantage of the enormous weapon which the charge of ‘white chauvinism’ gave them to settle scores, to climb organizational ladders, to fight for jobs and to express personality conflicts which, by Communist definition, were never supposed to predominate over political objectivity.’ It became, as he so accurately put it, an ‘internal witchhunt.’”