--- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Taken advantage of by people more interested in > > political power than the national interest. > > This sounds to me about as rational as > characterizing the right as people > more interested in economic power than the national > interest.
Which is, of course, something that gets done _all the time_ on this list - by you as well, I believe, but certainly by many people - on considerably less evidence. > > What's it's really about, though, is hate. Well, > hate > > and envy. A large portion of the world's left > just > > goes batshit crazy at the idea of George Bush. So > > much so that no one, nothing, is more important > than > > beating him. Defending a sociopathic dictator? > No > > problem, as long as it hurts George Bush. > > Big government motivated by hatred? Social programs > based on hate? Unions > based on hate? Bleeding-heart hatred? I'm all > confused -- I can't seem to > wedge a psychology of hatred into the usual > stereotypes. Gimme a good > old-fashioned Hitler and I can see plenty of hatred, > but he wasn't a leftie, > unless he went so far that he circled back around. National _Socialist_. Or Stalin, of course, Castro, Mao - but none of them _were_ hated by the Left, of course. They were supported by the Left. Actively. Arthur Schlesinger and Daniel Aaron had to found Americans for Democratic Action precisely because the American Left had lined up on the side of the totalitarians. But hatred all the same - of anyone who opposes those oh-so-self-righteous plans for the reinvention of society. It's striking, of course, that you can't mention anything the Left has produced since before Vietnam. While there were strands of this in the pre-Vietnam left, it is, of course, the post-Vietnam era Left that has no ideology except opposition to capitalism and - most important of all - the United States. > New national symbol -- the American eagle with its > left wing missing! Only by the left wing's choice, apparently. Christopher Hitchens (a socialist) certainly had something to say. But he had to leave The Nation because it didn't. > > > I spent the year > > after the attacks in Cambridge - a place where the > > left would generate something coherent if it was > > capable of it _anywhere_ - and it didn't, and > isn't. > > Setting aside sarcasm now... I think that you may be > mistake in *expecting* > the left to come up with a coherent war plan against > terrorism. That's like > turning to the Dali Lama to head your SWAT team... > or asking the Joint > Chiefs to run social programs. The Joint Chiefs could probably do a pretty good job of it. They could do no worse than the people running them now, certainly. But, Nick, the war against terrorism is more important than every other political issue in America today. If - by definition - the Left isn't even able to propose a strategy, then you are supporting my argument, because the Left is irrelevant. _In fact_, however, the Left has proposed a strategy, it's just that the strategy is surrender - if you want to dignify it by calling it a strategy, I guess. It is the rejection of that by the American people, and the fact that the Left in the US was able to come up with nothing other than that which is the permanent death knell of the post-Vietnam Left, whatever happens in the war on terrorism. Not just because it was unable to defend civilization, but because it was unable to understand that civilization was worth defending. > The left is defunct only if we remain forever in a > state of total war. And > that's precisely why a vaguely defined, open-ended > "war on terrorism" that > suspends normal checks and balances for civil rights > is as partisan as any > policy ever has been. No, it's because that's what we've got. Only in paranoid fantasies do we have a war that suspends normal checks and balances for civil rights. If it did, you and The Fool would have been arrested already. When Ashcroft's jack-booted thugs come for you, give me a call - I'll be happy to protect you. Another one of those things that's different between the modern left and right, actually. Just look at the way FIRE stands up for college students all across the country, no matter what their politics. Where is the ACLU? But here you demonstrate, impressively, why the Left has become totally irrelevant to the political discussion. The war against terrorism is not by choice but by necessity. The Left's preferred options - doing nothing, or giving our enemies what they want - are not policies, they are suicide pacts. The "war on terrorism" didn't happen because it made people happy, any more than the Cold War happened because conservatives needed an enemy (another one of those fantasies of the Left, come to think of it) or the Second World War happened because FDR needed someone to distract from the failure of his New Deal policies to end the Great Depression. The war happened because it was forced on us by our enemies. What most of the right wants to do is win it. What most of the Left seems to want to do is pretend that there is no war - like the mythical ostrich, I guess. As long as the American public is faced with those two choices, then I know how this will end. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
