Back in the days before CSIS when the RCMP was our main intelligence and counter-espionage agency, a nagging concern was the distinction between legitimate dissent and illegal subversion.
RCMP Security (in which I had more faith than many media did), was acutely aware of this distinction, even though it was often blurred.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and emergence of nationalistic Russia, the dissent/subversion issue has faded, to be replaced by the need to distinguish the difference between "liberal" and "left" -- too often treated synonymously, often by commentators such as Rush Limbaugh who sees them as equal and interchangeable blights to be opposed.
One who does understand the distinction is Jamie Glazov, a Russian-born Canadian and PhD in history who has written a powerful book that says it all: United in Hate; The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror.
While "liberals" are usually leftists, the hard "left" is never liberal. The left is dogmatic, while liberals tend towards open mindedness (in theory, anyway). Classical liberals tend to be today's conservatives.
A quintessential "liberal" was George Orwell, a socialist who understood totalitarianism and used his two great books, 1984 and Animal Farm to warn the world of dangers of the left totalitarianism.
Soviet background
Perhaps his Soviet background made Glazov unusually perceptive -- as are many of East European heritage with personal experience of freedoms being stolen. Glazov notes that after the Berlin wall came down and the U.S.S.R. imploded, a sense of dejection settled on leftist ideologues who "bitterly lamented that the alternative to capitalism was now gone."
After 9/11, Glazov says "almost overnight these individuals underwent a miraculous transformation. A bright spark could once again be detected in their eyes ... ready for another attempt at creating a glorious and revolutionary future. Sept. 11 represented a personal vindication for them."
The likes of Prof. Ward Churchill in the U.S. called 9/11 "chickens coming home to roost," and Americans who died deserved it. The left cabal, that despises things American, includes the likes of Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, British MP George Galloway, "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, billionaire George Soros, and even former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who thinks Hamas is "an organization ready for peace."
Glazov thinks the American left "succeeded in making United States vulnerable to 9/11."
When he was president, Bill Clinton neglected numerous chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. His tepid reaction to the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the attack on the USS Cole in Aden, encouraged America's enemies. U.S. intelligence agencies neither shared information nor co-operated.
Things such as women at anti-war rallies veiling themselves like Muslims or dressing as terrorists, are ploys of left ideology.
Glazov recalls Mary McCarthy refusing to believe the North Vietnamese massacre at Hue, and writing "I prefer to think it was Americans."
Names and idiocies
This book is useful in recalling the names and idiocies of the left that we've since forgotten -- hatred of their country, paranoia, accusations of "right wing conspiracies," admiration for revolutionary icons.
Such people are not liberal. They are true believers and reflect what Malcolm Muggeridge once called "the Great Liberal Death Wish" and bemoaned it was a disease more than a conspiracy which could be fought. A death wish cannot be fought, but it can be understood.
It's hardly reassuring, but if the hard left ever realize the goal of their Islamofascist idols achieving power, they will be the first victims. Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and their heirs today waste no time in eliminating Liberals and leftists whom they had used to secure their ends.
