> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of > Gautam Mukunda
... > 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. > 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. > 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. New national symbol -- the American eagle with its left wing missing! > 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 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. This is not an argument against fighting terrorism. It is an argument against the manner in which it is being fought. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
