Posted on 05/22/2003 12:39:08 PM PDT by veronica
Wrong again.
Not long ago, the Left in the democracies was saying that the U.S. was getting stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, that the Iraqi people were fiercely resisting the hated invaders, that the war had been badly and unrealistically planned. Now that the dust has cleared, and the revelations of horrific tortures by Saddams regime are emerging, were left with a strange spectacle: the Left, which likes to think of itself as a champion of the oppressed and the weak, was in fact supporting the indefinite continuation of one of the most rapacious, cruelly oppressive regimes on earth.
Its nothing new; the Left has long had a penchant for getting things catastrophically wrong. In Britain and France in the 1930`s, the Left saw Herr Hitler as a reasonable man and could not countenance the thought of the democracies doing something to stop his war machine before it got rolling. In the U.S. in the late 1060`s and 70`s, the Left loudly demanded the wholesale abandonment of Americas Southeast Asian allies. Eventually it got its way, and the Cambodian and Vietnamese peoples paid horrendously for that exercise in advanced morality.
In Israel from 1993 to the present, Ive been witness to another left-wing venture in moral equivalency and appeasement. The Israeli Left anointed Yasir Arafat as a moderate, and brought him here to rule over the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza and make a lasting peace with Israel.
Ive seen some of the results with my own eyes the bombing, death, and maiming in our streets, not to mention the creation of a corrupt, destitute, anti-Semitic mini-Iraq in the territories. Ive also seen most of the Israeli Left keep insisting that they were right all along, not even having the gumption to admit their terrible mistakes and rethink their positions.
Its hard to say what makes people living in the lap and luxury of Western democracies take such perverse attitudes. Indeed, for decades the Left in general has showed its mettle by fawning over, idolizing, and making pilgrimages to one brutal dictator after another Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, up to our own Arafat (still playing host, in his bombed-out Ramallah compound, to a stream of eager European diplomats and even U.S. congressmen).
Its strange that while people who admire Hitler are rightly consigned to the margins of society as cranks and creeps, people whove admired a long line of mass murderers and terrorists so long as they have a left or revolutionary aura get the status of honored professors, pundits, artists, oracles.
But having observed leftists in the two countries Ive lived in, the U.S. and Israel, Ive been struck by certain family resemblances. They tend to be highly secularized, and vituperative toward traditionally religious people whether evangelical Christians in the U.S. or Orthodox Jews (both of the non-Zionist and Zionist varieties) in Israel. They tend to view their societies as oppressive, and to embrace all trends from feminism to gay rights to preferential quotas that claim to be liberating while they refuse to take seriously any counter-arguments or heed evidence of those trends harmful effects.
Even more strikingly, Ive noticed that leftists in both countries tend to practice cults of highly personalized, prima facie hatred and contempt toward right-wing leaders just mentioning the names Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (W. in particular), or Shamir, Netanyahu, and Sharon, is enough to illustrate what I mean. It never occurs to them that to sneer at and delegitimize a person because of his social background is no less a form of bigotry than the kinds of bigotry they claim to deplore.
Are leftists misguided patriots, people who mean well but whose refined lives prevent them from grasping the realities of politics? Or are they elitists with a deep-seated hostility toward their own societies that leads them to feel sympathy for their societies enemies no matter how odious and evil? To ask what makes them tick takes us into murky waters of psychology and motives. Whats clear, though, is that the historical record proves the Left is dangerous and sometimes catastrophically harmful.
Its not that it wants the Hitlers and Pol Pots and Arafats to perpetrate their atrocities, but it paves the way for those horrors by disarming and demoralizing the democracies with its shrill, accusatory propaganda and, when it can, pursuing its ruinous policies. No, the Left didnt revel in the thought of Saddam, Uday, and the rest gassing people to death and slicing out their tongues but it was the thought of American soldiers with guns that sparked its fiercest opposition.
Democracies, to be sure, have no choice but to grant leftists the freedom to express themselves, to organize, to run for office. By the same token, non-leftists are free to point to the historical record and expose leftists recurrent, inexcusable moral and political blindness. The more energetically and persistently we do that, the less likely that leftists can prevail, and wreak their calamities, in the future.
Excellent point. Their foolish utopianism, of having peace without needing to use force to stop evil, impedes our ability to deal with reality. As a result, we are weakened in our ability to confront evil.
Not when you come to realize that leftists follow a wayward and evil Philosophy that avoids reality, reason and truth.
A gifted philosopher of the 20th century -- in my opinion,the most brilliant philosopher ever -- explains it well in a speech delivered personally to West Point's 1974 graduating class.
A copy of that speech (it is, unfortunately, a typo-ridden copy) is available at CLICK HERE.
I am always disgusted and disheartened whenever a talk show host or a pol dismisses the Left as "the looney left" because they're damn dangerous! They're not looney, not silly, not amusing, not cute.
They ARE dangerous, their agenda is decidedly UN-American/anti-American, and I'm grateful and pleased to find my exact thoughts in print, and so well written!
West point liked the speech so well that they asked, and received, permission to use it as chapter one in the Point's Philosophy textbook.
A military officer gave me a copy of the speech some years back - it changed my life.
Their foolish utopianism, of having peace without needing to use force to stop evil, impedes our ability to deal with reality. As a result, we are weakened in our ability to confront evil.
Nicely put.
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