Saturday’s antiwar rally in Washington, DC provided an intimate look at the worldview of the political Left, which was entirely silent vis a vis the fact that this demonstration, where a host of luminaries from the Democratic Party and Hollywood alike were among the featured guest speakers, was sponsored by United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ). That organization’s benevolent-sounding name belies the fact that it is headed by Leslie Cagan, an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence (a remnant organization created by the American Communist Party) and a strong supporter of Fidel Castro since the 1960s. Proudly aligning her politics with those of Communist Cuba, Cagan condemns what she calls America’s “daily assaults and attacks on poor and working people, on women, people of color, lesbians/gays and other sexual minorities, the disabled and so many others.” This view of America is entirely consistent with the beliefs of every speaker who took a turn at the microphone Saturday. And certainly they are entitled to hold those views. But it was disingenuous of Cagan and her group not to lay their cards cleanly on the table and, in the interest of full disclosure, inform the 30,000 people in attendance that UFPJ’s agenda is in fact steered by a committed Marxist-Leninist. That would have helped listeners to place in proper context the things they were about to hear.

The first speaker to take the microphone was Rabbi Michael Lerner, the 1960s Berkeley radical and founder of Tikkun magazine, whose philosophy is an admixture of Old Testament teachings and Marxism. Lerner has charged that “[t]he Jewish community is racist, internally corrupt, and an apologist for the worst aspects of American capitalism and imperialism.” This anti-capitalism theme was central to Lerner’s remarks on Saturday when he implied that America’s alleged greed and exploitation was responsible for the fact that of the world’s six billion people, “2 billion of them are living on less than two dollars a day, and 1.3 billion of them are living on less than one dollar a day.” “Can you see the picture,” he asked, “that you’re on the same planet with these people, and that there are some people [American leaders] who are fighting to keep it that way, who benefit from it?” Article