Gautam Mukunda wrote:
...
>
> A lot of it probably has to do with collapse of an
> ideology. September 11th was the deathknell of the
> modern American left. It simply had no meaningful
> response to the attack other than to suggest - either
> openly or by implication - that the United States had
> brought the attack upon itself.
Well, it did do a lot to cause the attack. And not
by harmlessly distributing Britney Spears videos, either.
Some of being targeted was because America was "walking point"
for the West in general. But the US has done a lot of
selfish things to make other countries mad at it over the
years.
Like it or not, if your policies make some people
angry enough to kill themselves to show their displeasure,
you need to rethink your policies. But this is not a very
popular thing to say, and the Left does have some political
sense.
I would like for the US to really be a champion of
human rights THROUGHOUT the world, not just when and where
it was politically convenient. We could rehabilitate our
reputation, and earn broad respect by doing this--
consistently and courageously doing good for a change.
But this is an abstract and long-term agenda, and
many Americans simply do not care about the rest of the
world enough to support it.
---David
Liberia, Burma, ... where to start? And those are the easy
ones--Chechnia and Tibet would take convincing major powers
to change their ways.
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