Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: GRUNHERZ on November 08, 2002, 05:25:18 AM
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USNEWS AND WORLD REPORT
Culture & Ideas 11/4/02
BY JOHN LEO
Leaving the left behind
Everywhere you turn these days someone on the left is denouncing President Bush as Hitler, Satan, a terrorist, or a tyrannical emperor. A Yale law professor said Bush is "the most dangerous person on Earth." A famous editor referred to Bush as "a lawn jockey" and "Pinocchio," magically transformed into a "great leader" by 9/11.
Some of the angry rhetoric flirts with the fringe idea that the United States planned the terrorist attacks. A Purdue professor said that "there is no ground to be certain" that America and Israel aren't behind the 9/11 attacks. A Columbia law professor compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany–Bush is not responsible for 9/11, the professor said, but he exploited a national disaster to suspend civil liberties, just like Hitler. A Berkeley professor helpfully pointed out that some Indonesian groups think the United States planned the Bali bombing.
The rhetoric accurately reflects the current condition of much of the left–bitter, stymied, alienated, politically impotent, full of loathing for America and the West, and totally unable to address the crisis wrought by 9/11, except to imply (or say) that the United States deserved to be attacked. The left has lost its bearings, Michael Walzer, the political philosopher, wrote in the spring issue of Dissent, the leftist magazine he edits. His article, "Can There Be a Decent Left?" deplored "the barely concealed glee" of the left's reaction to 9/11 and a lack of "any visible concern" about how to prevent terrorism in the future.
"Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens," he wrote, "refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. That's why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed." The favorite posture of many American leftists, he said, is "standing as a righteous minority, brave and determined, amid the timid, the corrupt, and the wicked. A posture like that ensures at once the moral superiority of the left and its political failure." He said the left needs to discard its "ragtag Marxism" and its belief that America is corrupt beyond remedy.
Standing for murder. Solidarity with people in trouble is the most profound commitment that leftists make, Walzer said, but even the oppressed have obligations, and one is to avoid murdering innocent people. "Leftists who cannot insist upon this point, even to people poorer and weaker than themselves, have abandoned both politics and morality for something else." An example of that abandonment came at the University of Michigan's pro-Palestinian conference October 12-14, which could not bring itself to criticize suicide bombings. Save us from moral appeals that leave room for blowing up families in supermarkets.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens resigned from the Nation magazine after 20 years, citing its antiwar stance on Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote in his farewell column, is "a filthy menace" and "there is not the least doubt that he has acquired some of the means of genocide and hopes to collect some more." He thought the Nation had become "the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden." In another article, he wrote, "I can only hint at how much I despise a left that thinks of Osama bin Laden as a slightly misguided anti-imperialist. . . . Instead of internationalism, we find among the left now a sort of affectless, neutralist, smirking isolationism" and "a masochistic refusal to admit that our own civil society has any merit."
Ron Rosenbaum of the New York Observer said Hitchens "forced a lot of people on the left to confront their blind spot, their on-bended-knee obeisance to anyone in the Third World who posed as a 'liberator,' from Mao to Castro to Arafat and the Taliban." Rosenbaum's comments came in an article on his own defection, "Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee." One trigger: A well-respected academic said he welcomed 9/11 because it gave Americans a chance to reassess their past honestly, as Germans did in the 1960s. "I couldn't take it anymore," Rosenbaum wrote. "Goodbye to all that . . . the inability to distinguish between America's sporadic blundering depredations" and Hitler's Germany. Goodbye to the refusal to admit that "Marxist genocides" slaughtered some 20 million to 50 million people in Russia, China, and Cambodia. And goodbye to the "peace marches" like the one in Madrid where women wore suicide-bomber belts as bikinis. " 'Peace' somehow doesn't exclude blowing up Jewish children," Rosenbaum wrote.
We owe a debt to Walzer, Hitchens, and Rosenbaum. Now, will their articles make any difference to our hyperalienated left?
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And your point is...? That right wing journos write anti-left crap and that left wing journos write anti-right crap?
Read it all before, I'm afraid. Thanks for the 'insight'.
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Imagine there is a witty, self-flattering, self-agrandising remark in this spot!
It's all the UN's fault always! And the myriad Balkan war crimes were committed by Dutch troops working for Milosevic and Karadic!
AH player "Grunherz" actually believes George W. Bush is above reproach!
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I could rebate most of that point by point... but I'm very lazy... is just another attempt to climb from the muddy pit off international politics into the moral high ground... only to start peeing on the pit until the mud reachs you again...
Deal with it... honestly you can only choose your shade of gray mud, black and white stink of rotting corpses.
So Castro is this and that, but Pinochet and all those military Juntas where a "neccesary evil" "our bastards" and such things.
Suicide bombers are pure evil, but lobbing a Hellfire on a busy market or repelling stonethrowers with .50 cal fire are valid anti-terrorist policies.
I don't think you can find an honest social-democrat thinker (What a term!) supporting any of that, one way or the other.
Ok... i'll stop, nothing new to tell or to do really, you can continue the chest thumping and club waving as the guys of the other tribe are doing, i'll just try to avoid getting a crack in my skull when the BS starts flying.
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Just goes to show you what people would try to do to kill you. Sighs, good thing this isnt about real bullets and simply words. People can write about anything they want and if your dumb enough to believe it, then your just dumb. Hows that for a reality check.
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"Imagine there is a witty, self-flattering, self-agrandising remark in this spot!
It's all the UN's fault always! And the myriad Balkan war crimes were committed by Dutch troops working for Milosevic and Karadic!
AH player "Grunherz" actually believes George W. Bush is above reproach!"
I'm flattered... :)
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I aim to please.
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Dowding, you have a nice signature :)
Grun, just a question:
Where is the line between "Patriotism" and "Nationalism"?
For the rest of the post: Yawn.
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I have no doubt you see yourself above this article naso...
As for your question, I dont see how it applies in this situation. Would you ask this question during the London Blitz? "Pardon me Mr. Smith, do you think your anger towards German terror bombing of London is patriotic or nationalistic." The distiction is irrelevant in such a case.
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I know, it's irrelevant to the thread.
And this Dem-Rep bashing it's something that can interest only an US citizen (well, maybe the USA foreign politics can be different).
Anyway, the question I've made, it's the thing that have always amazed me to know about the US citizens, expecially the Rep/right people like you, and, since you promised to keep the things civil, I asked the question hoping in a civil discussion instead of the usual flamefest.
BTW, now that i reread the article, the question arise easily, since, for me, it is on the edge, maybe a little out of the patriotic.
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Who is this 'Left' that the article keeps talking about. It's like the author believes that there is only one political axis, left -> right.
What if I were to tell you that there are at least two other politcal axes with their own extremes.
As a polemic, it lacks outrage. As an article it is devoid of much other than opinion, so can be expected to reflect the politcal composition of the author. (rightwing good, left wing baa-aad)
As for Hitchens, he is never happier than when people are disagreeing with him. He's a gadfly, truly in the Socratic sense.
His leaving the Nation was due to a shift in his worldview, not theirs. He's never been a multiculturalist, and after 110901 he invented the phrase 'Islamo-Fascism', neatly lumping all adherents of a religion together with a political ideology. Of course, he's an experienced journalist who avoid crass generalisations.
I would have thought the lesson of 110901 would be that extremism in all its forms should be watched very carefully.
Kind of reminds me of Bertrand Russell's game of Irregular Verbs, you know the one:
I am Sparkling
You are Unusually Talkative
He is Drunk
I have clear political vision
You are single minded
He is an extremist.
I am a fighter ace
You are a Dweeb
He is a cheat
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Why are so many Euros responding to this article? It is specfically about the American left, not the highly advanced European left. :rolleyes:
It hits the nail right on the head.
BTW, I agree with Bounder about Hitchens being a gadfly.
ra
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Its early in the USA ra, Europe is allready well into the day.
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Thank you ra, your contribute it's higly appreciated.
Grun, please, next time put a sign in your thread "only for US citizen", maybe with a note "since at least 5 generations".
This BBS was so open in the past times, I wonder what changed that, 9-11??
Scratch another victory, Osama, you damn mot....ker.
(oh, and on a side note: Maybe so much Euros because its 2-3 PM here, while in USA there's a lot of people commuting to work and then not able to respond, but this need to much reasoning, uh?)
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LOL Grun, we overlaped the answer....
Oh, my GOD!!!
Me and Grun....
the same answer???
;)
:D
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>Where is the line between "Patriotism" and "Nationalism"?
Patritism has * whereas Nationalism does not.
* is whatever you want it to be.
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"Pinocchio," magically transformed into a "great leader" by 9/11.
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I'm glad the left is so full of martyrs and is so fond of the outragous... It's when they go on into their incremementalist mode that I worry.... they get all the women voters.. End womens sufferage NOW!
lazs
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I think the article uses too broad of brush to paint the entire left culture. Its more geared for the ultra-left liberals of our country, and not your typical "Moderate Democrat".
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Naso,
Thank you for explaining time zones to me. My question was why would Europeasants care about US politics at all? I sure don't go to UBB's and post my opinions about the latest row between Labor and Tory. Seems you guys are always trying to make the US fit into your pathetic class stuggle view of the world.
ra
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the new dem leader war cry:
"needles for addicts, needles for addicts!"
guess they don't learn, its was their extreme left leaning that cost them Tuesday. Now they want to put someone in charge that would make Dick G look like a extreme right winger??? think wrong move, he ought to stay and place blame where it really lies, seperating the dem party from gore, clinton and the like as quick as possible...Martin Frost would be bad enough but does any of you dems realy think Nancy Pelosi should be your "leader" in the house?
very nice to see/hear hollywood cry the blues over tues too :)
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Thats true Rip, but Leo often comments on the far far left and this article is clearly focused on that segment of the left wing, not moderates. With that in mind he's got it right on every count.
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Well, if you do not know the history of the audience he addresses, then "left" seems like he points to anyone left of center (Shrugs)
I have a very good article explaining how the extreme left parallels Nazism more than the extreme right if anyone is interested :D For the record, I dislike both extreme religious right and extreme left liberals.
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Heheh, listen to those Lefties squeal.............
Since Tuesday, whenever i think of the Liberal-Left(foreign or domestic)I keep hearing that old Stone's tune:
OUT OF TIME
(Jagger/Richards)
"You don't know what's going on
You've been away for far too long
You can't come back and think you are still mine
You're out of touch, my baby
My poor discarded baby
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Well, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You are all left out
Out of there without a doubt
'Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You thought you were a clever girl
Giving up your social whirl
But you can't come back and be the first in line, oh no
You're obsolete my baby
My poor old-fashioned baby
I said baby, baby, baby you're out of time
Well, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Yes, you are left out
Out of there without a doubt
'Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time"
Old, no ideas, out of touch, discarded. The Left has been stuffed into the ash can of history. Buh-bye...........
Cabby
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@ ra
"Europeasants" "pathetic class stuggle"
Civil discussion.
.squelch ra
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@ senna, that's correct
"Patritism has * whereas Nationalism does not.
* is whatever you want it to be."
but does'nt answer the question.
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BTW ra raised a good question, that can be splitted in two easily.
Why the Euros (and the rest of the world) care so much about the US??
Simple enough,
1) because US it's the big boy in the block, he have a gun in the hands, and in this moment it's waving the gun here and there, I guess everyone have to worry that a shot can go in the wrong direction
2) We can like it or not, what the US do have conseguencies on all the western countries, because for the rest of the world we are one single enemy (even if the US it's by theyr eyes the most evil).
3) even more, the US is showing more and more the attitude to enforce the self-interests by the force, not a problem while we have the same interests, but what if....
4) maybe the Euros are just curious of what happens around them, want to understand the things, want to acquire more knowledge, and the country that it's more spreading his culture, sub-culture and propaganda in the world it's the USA.
5) an open mind.
The other, specular part of the question is:
Why the US people care so low(correct word?) of the other country?
I dont know, can someone explain?
P.S.
Some of the sentences in this post are an excessive generalization, I made it for the sake of discussion.
P.P.S.
BTW Bush IS the most dangerous man in the world, dont forget "THE BUTTON" ;)
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Cabby, if you think the left is down and out, you're sadly mistaken (Looks at professors at major college campuses)
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It looks like the article is more pertaining to those constantly trying to set the "left wing" standard. Publications have a tendancy to do that. They think they set the trend, thus define the genre.
The truth that most seem to be able to understand in the thread is that very few are that extreme.
Though... in the article's defense... "What could America have done to deserve this?" has become a bit too much of a catch phrase these days.
AKDejaVu
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Originally posted by ra
Why are so many Euros responding to this article? It is specfically about the American left, not the highly advanced European left. :rolleyes: ra
Because politics in this country affect almost everyone else on the planet to some degree.
I welcome it. The United States is not a vacuum.
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"Because politics in this country affect almost everyone else on the planet to some degree."
Yes, I agree. And 9/11 was an example of that.
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<<1) because US it's the big boy in the block, he have a gun in the hands, and in this moment it's waving the gun here and there, I guess everyone have to worry that a shot can go in the wrong direction
2) We can like it or not, what the US do have conseguencies on all the western countries, because for the rest of the world we are one single enemy (even if the US it's by theyr eyes the most evil).
3) even more, the US is showing more and more the attitude to enforce the self-interests by the force, not a problem while we have the same interests, but what if....
4) maybe the Euros are just curious of what happens around them, want to understand the things, want to acquire more knowledge, and the country that it's more spreading his culture, sub-culture and propaganda in the world it's the USA.
5) an open mind. >>
Very good generalization of global politics Naso, but none of this has anything to do with the article, which describes a few US leftist intellectuals becoming alienated from other US leftist intellectuals. The open minded Euros on this board seem to disagree with this straightforward article without saying exactly why. Apparently they see something in it that reflects on them, and I'm still curious to know what that is.
ra
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Originally posted by Naso
I know, it's irrelevant to the thread.
And this Dem-Rep bashing it's something that can interest only an US citizen (well, maybe the USA foreign politics can be different).
Anyway, the question I've made, it's the thing that have always amazed me to know about the US citizens, expecially the Rep/right people like you, and, since you promised to keep the things civil, I asked the question hoping in a civil discussion instead of the usual flamefest.
I already have explained why I asked, the word "Civil" attracted me.
Errare humanum est, sed diabolicum perseverare.
Every time I enter in a discussion here in OClub, I am in the second part of the sentence, I need mental cares :rolleyes:
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You are very patient :rolleyes:
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LOL :)
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Doesn't describe anybody I know.
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Grunherz,
SHACK!