"she will be remembered by many as someone who never stopped struggling to bring justice to the people"

Some might argue with that. When Solzhenitsyn asked her to take a stand on behalf of imprisoned Com Bloc dissidents in the Gulag and Czech prisons (like Vaclav Havel and some rock musicians), thinking she had common ground in that she claimed political prisoner status, she said "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison."

I suppose if the Warsaw Pact governments were as "in favor of the people" as they claimed to be, then anybody speaking out against those governments was an enemy of the people, and they deserved imprisonment or death, which many received. I guess it just depends on how you define 'the people' and 'standing up' for them.

Yeah, that's a spicy pick alright...

In the Wikipedia link Scott provided, that request actually came from the Czech dissidents, not Solzhenitsyn. Of course, there's some rich quotes from Solzhenitzyn too, such as his apparent statement during the 1999 NATO bombings in Serbia that "there is no difference between NATO and Hitler." Point is, we've all got things we've said that were either taken out of context or might have better left unsaid. Put another way, I think I'd rather have a beer with Angela Davis any day over Jonah Goldberg.

jim, baby, you don't make an omlette without breaking some eggs. did reagan roll back the socialists in central america with bon mots? pienso que no.

my point is not a tit for tat thing (ya know, like, "your favorite kind of government was waaayyyy more oppressive than my favorite kind of government" though that is exactly what i just did) but the observation that the government that endures generally fails to do so strictly on the basis of it's highest principles. from the fall of rome onward, there have been epic empires that looked good in principle but failed to follow them and ended up ruthlessly oppressing people to keep power.

my stated reason for liking her ackowledged the very point you make: i appreciated her consistency. you may choose to disagree with her, and my support of her, and that would be fair. I see her as someone who generally held firm to the idea that democracy and socialism were more compatible than democracy and capitalism. where you see someone hanging out dissidents to dry, i see someone who felt the dissidents were undermining something she supported. if she had folded up in that instance, it would be difficult to know with certainty when she supported socialism and when she didn't. we call those kinds of people pragmatists.

again, not a big deal but we're just diametrically opposed in opinion on this issue. and as a special shoutout to jacobson, i will toast the freedom of speech which america has bestowed upon us in order to speak our minds.

I typically prefer much smaller omelettes than the Russian style. It takes an awful lot of butter to cook seven digits worth of eggs.

I'll raise a beer to your final point as well.

I've got a different take on this. Some -- including many in the West, who simple-mindedly saw any dissidents in Eastern Bloc countries as pro-American and pro-Capitalism -- may see the dissident movement known as Charter 77 in the former Czechoslovakia as purely anti-Communist. This is not necessarily the case. With Charter 77 specifically, there was pointedly no political stand taken -- it was purely about human rights, not about what kind of economic system their country should live under. The Civic Forum, a political party which grew out of the Charter 77 movement, was ultimately not as successful partially because many of its members could not agree on whether or not the new Czechoslovakia (it was still one country at the time) ought to take a "third way" between the capitalist West and Communism. Thus, I don't really see criticism of human rights abuses as contradicting support for socialist, or even communist, ideals.

Having said all that, this doesn't mean I don't share Scott's admiration for Angela Davis. My admiration is based on something similiar to what he articulates, but different. I really don't have a problem with small inconsistencies. I think if you put anyone under a microscope, you'll find plenty of horrible things about them. Some of my heroes - people like Sinclair Lewis, Adlai Stevenson, Pierre Trudeau, Dimitri Shostokovich, James Wright, James Baldwin, Medgar Evers, and Lisa Simpson - all have foibles. Some of them contradict each other. I don't care - they are to be admired because they tried to consistently strive for their ideals, even while sometimes falling short. I sort of see Angela Davis in the same way. Really, for that matter, should the legitimacy of the United States be questioned because we lied when we created treaties with First Nations people, and then essentially engaged in genocide? Some would say so; I wouldn't -- you'd have to eliminate just about every nation in existence if you tested them against their own history.

I'd still rather have a beer with Angela Davis then Jonah Goldberg.

OK, sorry, I'll shut up now.

No Chris, don't shut up. That's a pretty good point you make.

> some will undoubtedly feel that she went too far in her advocacy

And how so, exactly? Oh the little prick of a judge that got killed? A defender of the privileges of the bourgeoisie? Boohoohoo! Cry me a river!

Assata Shakur comes to mind as another great female African-American activist of the same generation.