Which Side Is the Left On?

BEFORE Sept. 11, American progressives had reason to hope they might be emerging from the political wilderness. After years of bitter squabbles over identity politics and the merits of the Clinton administration, the left appeared to have reclaimed its anti-corporate heritage and was growing.

For the first time since the 1930's, student activists and labor officials championed the same causes. At dozens of colleges, groups sought to curb sweatshop manufacturing in the developing world and to demand a living wage for employees at home. Organizers were predicting 100,000 protesters, including many union members, would be in Washington in late September during the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party exulted that President Bush's poll ratings were not much higher than the percentage of the vote he had won a year before and that his administration seemed without a purpose beyond cutting taxes. Chances looked good that a liberal coalition could help take back the House of Representatives in 2002 and maybe the White House in 2004.

Those hopes, and the prospect of a unified left, disappeared along with so much else in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack. While labor leaders and liberal lawmakers endorse the administration's anti-terrorist campaign, radical foes of global capital on college campuses and the streets talk of peace and try to grasp why many in the Islamic world seem to hate the United States.

In pleading their case, each segment of the left evokes the metaphors of an earlier war — using two very different examples. For the embattled new peace movement, the war is Vietnam; for anti-terrorist liberals, it is World War II.

Indeed, the arguments of many peace activists echo those New Leftists made 30 years ago. "The fear and desperation that grows [sic] from poverty and oppression is crucial to any understanding of violence throughout the world," says a group called the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. Even symbols of the earlier movement are making a comeback — an ad in The Nation features the peace symbol, now colored red, white and blue.

Accused of being anti-American, peace demonstrators respond that they are upholding the most humane of secular and spiritual ideals — protection of the innocent in a world where the gulf between the rich and poor is ever widening. As with Vietnam, radicals accuse American policymakers of caring about acts of mass slaughter only when their own citizens are its victims.

Meanwhile, most liberals and a few chastened radicals view the Sept. 11 attacks through the prism of World War II. For them, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban represent what the author Christopher Hitchens labels, "fascism with an Islamic face." Echoing the words of Mr. Bush, the anti-terrorist left maintains there is a moral imperative to defend a society that remains, whatever its flaws, a pillar of ethnic and religious pluralism and representative democracy.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, entered politics as an opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. But the religious zealots who destroyed the World Trade Center and blasted the Pentagon remind the Jewish liberal of the Nazis; she vows "to stop that from happening again." Labor officials now struggling to help the families of the hundreds of union workers killed on Sept. 11 — cooks and waiters, janitors and security guards, as well as firemen and police — are hardly inclined to disagree.

This is no time to talk of peace, such progressives insist, before action is taken to punish those who planned the attacks and prevent them from committing further carnage. Repeating a charge hurled against isolationists 60 years earlier, liberals accuse opponents to their left of being naïve about the threat posed to a system in which a culture of opposition can flourish.

This debate within the left also parallels divisions evident in earlier wars. In the 20th century, visionary altruists were both the leaders of America during each major conflict and spearheaded the opposition.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson insisted American troops were needed to make the world "safe for democracy," while pacifists and Socialists charged the doughboys were only protecting the profits of munitions makers and British imperialists. In 1940, leftists and isolationists made a similar indictment against Franklin D. Roosevelt when he urged passage of Lend-Lease and the revival of the draft. (It took the attack on Pearl Harbor to squelch or convert his opponents.) In 1965, most progressive Democrats backed Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to defend the "freedom" of South Vietnam, while young radicals argued that the liberal president was using American power to crush a war of independence against foreign rule.

EACH of these ruptures affected the future of American politics in significant ways. The divisions over World War I and Vietnam — unpopular wars — helped conservative Republicans dominate Congress and the White House in the 1920's and most of the 1970's and 80's. But most progressives backed World War II as a battle against the enemies of freedom, and their cherished causes of industrial unionism and racial tolerance gained as the fighting raged.

Now, though President Bush is a Republican, he is using words saturated with historic left ideals to win the confidence of many Americans. In his address to Congress, the president condemned the Taliban for barring women from school and prohibiting any religious doctrine but their own. He has also condemned acts of prejudice against Arab-Americans and wants to help unemployed workers pay for health insurance. Mr. Bush's oratory of war sounds a good deal like the reformist internationalism that guided the foreign policy of Democratic presidents from Wilson to Bill Clinton.

Anti-terrorist liberals hope the war will be limited and that, as after Pearl Harbor, the communal spirit that has animated New Yorkers and other Americans since Sept. 11 will stir a desire to ease domestic injustices. Antiwar radicals want Americans to put down their flags and address the global ills that the demonstrations in Washington were intended to dramatize.

But activists on both sides fear their chance to build a new left may already have passed.

"Even symbols of the earlier movement are making a comeback — an ad in The Nation features the peace symbol, now colored red, white and blue."

That's right - and if our newly "patriotic" leftists hurry, they can probably still scarf up some Chairman Mao posters on Ebay.

Wrapped in a flag, of course.

I love hearing about these little "thinkers" tying themselves up in knots over their ideas but I just can't read the whole darn article. Their ideas are lame and the world has passed them by. The NYT is trying to get in the flow, but it won't be possible to come to center from so far left.

Maybe someday the news really will be the news without the tilt.

The "left" has had a divide and conquer strategy for a very long time--at least 50 years. . . . if it weren't for the issues they've used so fruitfully for that, they'd dig up others.

Label a subgroup disadvantaged. Then set them at odds more and more violently with the larger culture. Great strategy for evil. . . .until God Almighty pulls the rug out from under the whole sheebang.

The alternative is for those who Know God and His values to be compassionate and growthful, protective, instructive, etc. toward all. . . .

But since the enemy has been so good at getting believers to devour one another out of pride, fear, possessiveness--there's not been much reaching out to the poor compared to what might have been. Still, many have managed to do a lot of good over the centuries. . . often the only good being done.

...and wants to help unemployed workers pay for health insurance.

I'm interested in what people think of this idea. In the current state of uncertainty, many people who are normal hardworking Americans are finding themselves faced with unemplyment and subsequently no insurance for their families. Under the circumstances, I'm inclined to think we should consider sound, solvent means of providing reasonably priced access to these individuals, something like a less expensive COBRA (which can break the bank for many of the unemployed.)

Look, I'm not turning left, but I'm wondering what we can do, during circumstances that are pretty much a state of war and directly impacting our economy and the lives of normally hard working Americans, what can we do? Just food for thought.

While the left is dissintigrating, we might as well pull the rest of their teeth and lay to rest as many social issues as possible so that once we save America and return to normal, they have nothing significant to whine about. Let's bury these enemies once and for all and take care of our own.

Just remember folks, this is the New York Times speaking. What we call Left isn't always what they call Left. Quoting from Christopher Hitchens, yes, that qualifies as Left in just about anybody's book. But while most of us here consider the vast majority of the Democratic party to be Leftist, that isn't how the NYT sees it. Leftist, though rarely used, usually means the fringe elements. And notice how they mix it in with the word "progressive," their sanitized word for the Left.

Question: What side is the left on?

Answer: They are on the side of any force which exhibits hatred and violence against: (a)tradition, (b)any person who asks for renunciation rather than argues over distribution,(c)any group that hates the Christian religion;(d)they are against any person who loves his country even unto mob violence;(e) against any person resisting slavery;(f) any person, firm or entity that is against The West-the list goes on, feel free to add to it.

Yes, but for how long will it fissure? What is going to happen is that the left is very well aware that the business community and Bush would rather rely on arab armed welfare to protect our country and oil interests abroad rather than fight the war ourselves. Hence, since we are relying on foreign protectors instead of our army now peace keeping (while our own nuke plants are open for terror attacks), and that those protectors find it easier to turn on us than attack Saddam, Russia, China or India, we will get killed.

Then the left will ask us to turn to Russia, China, Saddam and India to turn agaisnt the terrorists, instead, again, of fighting the war ourselves. The result is that we are going to help our enemy destroy our assets in the middle East. A few glowing nuke zones around Saudi gas and oil wells will make us completely dependent on Russia and leftist nations for oil. Then those nations in one clenched fist will destroy us because they will raise the oil price so high that we will either have to fight them or implode in a revolution against the bourgeoisie.

See, that's what the left has in mind. Tactical failure do not scare them, because they predicted them and they have a long range strategy and algorithm ready made to destroy us, and proven by years of experience and experiments against us in how we react to the Vietnam war, Somalia blood fears, Gulf war type hybrid coalitions and what not.

I think you raise a good question that needs some mulling over. I don't feel like typing out all the details right now, but suffice it to say that neither my wife ( who is "cured" now, or my sister-in-law ( who just died ) could have paid for their treatments without the insurance their employers provided. No way on earth.

They're not fissuring... only evolving. The liberals are fissuring. Gephardt, Daschle, Kennedy, Schumer and others, don't know how to attack Bush when the two towers of world finance lay in ruins and 7000 dead lay under them. No, it's the real left, the commies, greens and pseudo-intellectuals that will champion another inside assault on our republic. They will blame us instead of radical Islamics for 911.

The LEFT has Always been anti-American; it just more obvious to everyone now. It'll be interesting to see if they admit it. Surely, they were not against the Viet Nam War, per se, they just didn't want the US to win ANY war! The sit in the richs of capitalism while glorifiying communism. If they were serious, they'd move permanently to some communist country: China!

Humorist P.J. O'Rourke was once asked why the Left could mount demonstrations of thousands for any reason at all, but it was rare for conservatives to demonstrate.,

That's because conservatives work for a living, he replied.

The ultimate result of all the deaths may be that the socially conservative union members will desert the progressive causes: alas, they still send their dues to the leftist union presidents to funnel to the Dems.

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