Great interview. Among the many things I liked was Lew’s discussion of “proto-neocon” Herman Kahn [he used to be called "Dr. Strangelove" by some of his critics] and his advocacy of “megadeath diplomacy”… and I don’t mean the heavy metal band.

But in the interest of fair play, as a history nerd, I’d like to point out that Bertrand Russell, a leftist socialist, and one time chairman of a private left wing committee on US war crimes in Vietnam [commie war crimes didn't count], actually beat H.K. to the megadeath punch. Soon after WW2, Berty, now fondly remembered as a peacenik, was advocating a US/UK preventive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union to pave the way for a world government, presumably of Fabian socialist complexion. I managed to dig up some discussion of this here. Berty’s advocacy of the megadeath dealing, along with his fascist sounding advocacy of eugenics, and demands that birth control be imposed on Third World nations, have largely been airbrushed out of his modern biographies. Of course we shouldn’t be surprised, left-wing ‘antiwar’ socialists and the neocon hawks have never been all that far apart anyway. After all they all worship the same state idol.