Posted on 01/02/2004 6:31:13 AM PST by livesbygrace
IT used to be difficult keeping track of the left. They came in more categories than could be found on supermarket breakfast cereal shelves: you had your Stalin Death Crispies, your Maoist Flakes, your Anarcho-Syndicalist Bix, your Socialist Bran, your Third Way Brits, your Commie Loco Pops, your Environmentalist Wheat Bubbles. TIM BLAIR writes.
And that was before you busted them down to their various factions-within-factions – Labor Feminists Against Fast Cars and Molluscs, perhaps, who would be the sworn enemies of the Anti-Mollusc and Rapid Car Collective of Labor Wimmin.
After September 11, however, the global left gathered into two main groups: the sane and the insane.
The sane left realised that the threat represented by fundamentalist Islamic terrorism was directed mainly at them; Osama bin Laden and his supporters would sooner put progressive, pro-feminist, pro-equality activists against the wall than they would any right-wing businessmen.
On the sane left we subsequently found such people as Christopher Hitchens, the British ex-socialist turned defender of western democracy; The Melbourne Age's Pamela Bone, who wrote in July: "I do not see, in the light of those mass graves, how it is now possible to say this war should not have been fought"; Michael Totten, a US journalist and Democrat who now warns his party that your enemies are those who are trying to kill you.
Make the proper distinctions. Get your priorities straight; and Jim Nolan, a Melbourne industrial relations barrister and ALP member since 1968, who last year asked: "Why won't Labor and the Australian left call for the removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on human rights grounds alone?"
And on the insane left, we found . . . well, every single leftist who opposed the war in Iraq. What were these people thinking? Let's keep nice old Saddam in power until he is able to hand over Iraq to sweet Uday and darling Qusay, bless their raping, bloodlusting little hearts? Let's behave like our brains have been stolen by the CIA?
A great many of them did. 2003 was the year of the Crazy Leftoid, of people who seriously believed they could influence global events by taking off their clothes, painting the Opera House, or hosting The 7.30 Report.
The good news is, for those of us who enjoy watching these groups disintegrate, that 2004 promises total, China Syndrome-level meltdown. You thought the left went berko last year, what with the liberation of Iraq, the capture of Saddam, and the sudden friendly co-operation of Libya's Gaddafi? Just wait for this years entertainment.
We've got two elections to look forward to, here and in the US (with the additional possibility of an election in Britain in 2005). George W. Bush and John Howard – those evil, life-hating monsters who somehow conspired to bring freedom to millions of oppressed, tortured Iraqis – are likely to be re-elected. Put yourself in the mindset of a typical anti-war, anti-liberty, anti-reason leftist howler monkey.
These elections aren't exactly going to make you happy, are they?
(They won't even make you happy if Mark Latham defeats John Howard. Since he claimed the ALP leadership, the Lord of the Rungs has done everything he can to reverse his previous positions on the war, the US, and everything else. Put aside Latham's dismissive remarks about Bush; those were probably only a means of getting the Crazy Left onside. Latham is more pro-US than even me. He'd lick Richard Nixon's dead arse if he had the chance; the disgraced, deceased ex-US president is one of the politicians Latham most admires.)
In advance of this wonderful year, the anti-war left has already commenced a campaign of hilarious denial.
Sydney Morning Herald book reviewer Megan Gressor wrote last month that stumbling, hopeless, defeat-bound US Democrat candidate Wesley Clark was the man most likely to be the next US president. Sorry, Megan; Clark won't win his own party's nomination, let alone the presidency. Another SMH columnist, 2UE morning host Mike Carlton, decided that Clark was a trenchant critic of Bush's ill-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq, although Clark had actually praised Bush writing that he and Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt".
It is by sheer luck that Baghdad didn't end up evaporated in a mushroom cloud. Just like the anti-war left.
???
You have gotta love the Aussies for their frank speech, at least!
This is one to remember.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.