After reading this post on Oxblog, as well as another one by Reason's Cathy Young, I have to wonder: why is it that some (not all, mind you) on the Left are so anit-American? Why are they so quick to compare America to Nazi Germany and yet give truly racist or authoritarian regimes like Saddam's Iraq or even the Soviet Union get a pass.
The United States is not perfect. I'm not one of those Republicans who sees America as God's chosen instrument that can do now wrong. We've done plenty wrong. But it seems to me we need to put this in perspective and to compare the US to a genocidal regime like the Nazis is just plain wrong.
I opposed the invasion of Iraq. I am not happy with a lot of the Bush Adminsitration's foriegn policy. But I don't think I live in a fascist state with a wimpy media. Even though the Bushies want to curtail our civil liberites, I don't live in places like China where you have to be careful what you say.
I guess I don't get it.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
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2 comments:
There have actually been a few recent (past couple of months or so) entries on other blogs that have discussed this very topic. This one from Belmont Club sums it up fairly neatly:
From the Marxist perspective at least, the Cold War ended not in defeat, but in a negotiated armistice; with surrender on the economic front offset by a capitulation to it by the West on cultural matters. People might have to work in private companies, it's true, but all the accompanying baggage of traditional culture like religion, sexual mores, notions of objectivity, etc were forfeit; and that was more than compensation. That was the tacit 'deal' and the EU, UN and cultural institutions were going to carry it out. By slow degrees the Western world was going to be politically corrected, multiculturalized and transnationalized.
[...]
When the planes smashing into the Twin Towers forced everyone to nail their colors to the mast Marxists no less than the conservatives indignantly found themselves facing an unanticipated rebellion. Liberal rage over Bush -- and maybe Lieberman and McCain -- for behaving "illegitimately" and "turning back the clock" is incomprehensible until one realizes that from a certain perspective it represents a double-cross. The West was supposed to die; slowly and comfortably but ineluctably. And we were supposed to buy off the Islamists until we could finish the job ourselves. Bush declaring his intention to fight for the survival of the West was just as logical as Chomsky's pilgrimage to Hezbollah and just as infuriating to his enemies."
People on the left are not anti-American. Since the war, I have not heard one single liberal make an anti-American remark. There is a lot of anger at the Bush administration, yes. And liberals believe that Bushco is destroying the values that Americans hold dear. Yes, a lot of liberals fear that this nation is creeping toward fascism, and their fears are valid. It's not the same thing as comparing the US to Nazi Germany. Please avoid creating straw men.
Some people hear criticism of Bush and his cast of idiots and believe that the critics must be anti-American. By that logic, Brent Scowcroft is anti-American. Anger toward Bush is not anti-Americanism, and some Republicans and right-wingers cannot seem to make this distinction.
This is not 1968. We are not in Vietnam. Nobody is spitting on the troops. Liberals support the troops. They do not support the Iraq war. Liberals believe in America. They do not support the administration.
Believe me, if the left were really so anti-American, we wouldn't be talking about taking our country back.
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