SPANISH BOMBS. Yesterday, new Corner blogger Mario Loyola took to task "the hippies . . . the Howard Dean left" for ignoring their historical roots among "the European and American leftists who, during the Spanish Civil War, went to Spain to fight the rise of a fascist dictatorship," a moment said to have been "their finest hour." This strikes me as confused on several levels, but since when did this become the conservative line on the Spanish Civil War? I recall that a couple of years ago some right-winger or other managed to convince me that this particular sacred cow of the left was worth slaughtering.
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the International Brigades more generally were organized by and under the control of the Comintern, which is to say Stalin. The membership was mostly Communists and fellow travelers. There's no reason for contemporary American liberals to look back on that movement as a key model to emulate, and there�s certainly no reason for contemporary American conservatives to do so. Surely some of the other National Review bloggers can be counted on to make these points?
--Matthew Yglesias
