A short while ago, I encountered an unusually bizarre speech on a leftist site. A cancer survivor, Jim Gilliam, detailing his physical and emotional struggles with cancer, explained how his very survival depended not only upon his determination, but upon a sea of knowing and unknowing participants in a sort of indescribable camaraderie. In fact, had his activist friends not intervened for him, causing such an uproar that a medical center felt obligated to give him a lung transplant, it is likely that he would be dead today. (more…)