Posted by
Dawnsblood on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 6:55:17 PM
I love a good, long and interesting political essay. Especially when it is a thinker on the left. They don't have many after all.
Marc over at American Future found Nick Cohen and
boy is Cohen unhappy. I don't agree with everything he is saying, but he is starting to think and it just may lead him to interesting places.
Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for
everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why
will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the
exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty
conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and
Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were men and
women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As
important, why did a European Union that daily announces its commitment
to the liberal principles of human rights and international law do
nothing as crimes against humanity took place just over its borders?
Why is Palestine a cause for the liberal left, but not China, Sudan,
Zimbabwe, the Congo or North Korea? Why, even in the case of Palestine,
can't those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what
type of Palestine they would like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New
York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister
conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a
superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after
the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers
run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic
theology from the ultra-right?In short, why is the world
upside down? In the past conservatives made excuses for fascism because
they mistakenly saw it as a continuation of their democratic rightwing
ideas. Now, overwhelmingly and every where, liberals and leftists are
far more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic governments and
movements, with the exception of their native far-right parties. As
long as local racists are white, they have no difficulty in opposing
them in a manner that would have been recognisable to the traditional
left. But give them a foreign far-right movement that is anti-Western
and they treat it as at best a distraction and at worst an ally.