The Failings of the Modern Left

I think not

Hall of Fame Member
Apr 12, 2005
10,506
33
48
The Evil Empire
By Marc Schulman

Nick Cohen, a columnist for The Observer (the Sunday edition of The Guardian), was a "trenchant voice" on the liberal-left in the 1980s and 1990s. The Iraq war caused him to rethink his political allegiance. In a lengthy article in last Sunday's Observer, he provides a summary of his newly-published book, "What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way." In this post, I let him speak for himself by providing excerpts from his Observer article. My thanks to reader Rich for making me aware of Cohen's article.
_________________________
  • . . . after Hitler broke the terms of the alliance [the Nazi-Soviet Pact, signed in August 1939] in the most spectacular fashion by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, you could rely on nearly all of the left – from nice liberals through to the most compromised Marxists – to oppose the tyrannies of the far right. Consistent anti-fascism added enormously to the left's prestige in the second half of the 20th century. A halo of moral superiority hovered over it because if there was a campaign against racism, religious fanaticism or neo-Nazism, the odds were that its leaders would be men and women of the left. For all the atrocities and follies committed in its name, the left possessed this virtue: it would stand firm against fascism. After the Iraq war, I don't believe that a fair-minded outsider could say it does that any more.
  • [During the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003,] everyone I respected in public life was wildly anti-war, and I was struck by how their concern about Iraq didn't extend to the common courtesy of talking to Iraqis. They seemed to have airbrushed from their memories all they had once known about Iraq and every principle of mutual respect they had once upheld.
  • I supposed their furious indifference was reasonable. They had many good arguments that I would have agreed with in other circumstances. I assumed that once the war was over they would back Iraqis trying to build a democracy, while continuing to pursue Bush and Blair to their graves for what they had done. I waited for a majority of the liberal left to offer qualified support for a new Iraq, and I kept on waiting, because it never happened – not just in Britain, but also in the United States, in Europe, in India, in South America, in South Africa … in every part of the world where there was a recognisable liberal left. They didn't think again when thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered by 'insurgents' from the Baath party, which wanted to re-establish the dictatorship, and from al-Qaeda, which wanted a godly global empire to repress the rights of democrats, the independent-minded, women and homosexuals. They didn't think again when Iraqis defied the death threats and went to vote on new constitutions and governments. Eventually, I grew tired of waiting for a change that was never going to come and resolved to find out what had happened to a left whose benevolence I had taken for granted.
  • [ . . . ] It was utopian to hope that leftists and liberals could oppose George W Bush while his troops poured into Iraq – and killed their fair share of civilians – while at the same time standing up for the freedoms of others. There was too much emotional energy invested in opposing the war, too much justifiable horror at the chaos and too much justifiable anger that the talk of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be nonsense. The politically committed are like football fans. They support their side come what may and refuse to see any good in the opposing team. The liberal left bitterly opposed war, and their indifference afterwards was a natural consequence of the fury directed at Bush.
  • [ . . . ] 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.
  • A part of the answer is that it isn't at all clear what it means to be on the left at the moment. I doubt if anyone can tell you what a society significantly more left wing than ours would look like and how its economy and government would work (let alone whether a majority of their fellow citizens would want to live there). Socialism, which provided the definition of what it meant to be on the left from the 1880s to the 1980s, is gone. Disgraced by the communists' atrocities and floored by the success of market-based economies, it no longer exists as a coherent programme for government. Even the modest and humane social democratic systems of Europe are under strain and look dreadfully vulnerable.
    It is not novel to say that socialism is dead. My argument is that its failure has brought a dark liberation to people who consider themselves to be on the liberal left. It has freed them to go along with any movement however far to the right it may be, as long as it is against the status quo in general and, specifically, America. I hate to repeat the overused quote that 'when a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything', but there is no escaping it. Because it is very hard to imagine a radical leftwing alternative, or even mildly radical alternative, intellectuals in particular are ready to excuse the movements of the far right as long as they are anti-Western.
    On 15 February 2003 , about a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime. It was the biggest protest in British history, but it was dwarfed by the march to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime in Mussolini's old capital of Rome, where about three million Italians joined what the Guinness Book of Records said was the largest anti-war rally ever. In Madrid, about 650,000 marched to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime in the biggest demonstration in Spain since the death of General Franco in 1975. In Berlin, the call to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime brought demonstrators from 300 German towns and cities, some of them old enough to remember when Adolf Hitler ruled from the Reich Chancellery. In Greece, where the previous generation had overthrown a military junta, the police had to fire tear gas at leftists who were so angry at the prospect of a fascist regime being overthrown that they armed themselves with petrol bombs.
    The French protests against the overthrow of a fascist regime went off without trouble. Between 100,000 and 200,000 French demonstrators stayed peaceful as they rallied in the Place de la Bastille, where in 1789 Parisian revolutionaries had stormed the dungeons of Louis XVI in the name of the universal rights of man.
    [ . . . ] The protests against the overthrow of a fascist regime weren't just a European phenomenon. From Calgary to Buenos Aires, the left of the Americas marched. In Cape Town and Durban, politicians from the African National Congress, who had once appealed for international solidarity against South Africa's apartheid regime, led the opposition to the overthrow of a fascist regime. On a memorable day, American scientists at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica produced another entry for the record books. Historians will tell how the continent's first political demonstration was a protest against the overthrow of a fascist regime.
    [ . . . ] No one knows how many people demonstrated. The BBC estimated between six and 10 million, and anti-war activists tripled that, but no one doubted that these were history's largest co-ordinated demonstrations and that millions, maybe tens of millions, had marched to keep a fascist regime in power.
    [ . . . ] Jose Ramos-Horta, the leader of the struggle for the freedom of East Timor, noticed that at none of the demonstrations in hundreds of cities did you see banners or hear speeches denouncing Saddam Hussein. If this was 'the left' on the march, it was the new left of the 21st century, which had abandoned old notions of camaraderie and internationalism in favour of opposition to the capricious American hegemony. They didn't support fascism, but they didn't oppose it either, and their silence boded ill for the future.
    [ . . . ] The anti-war movement disgraced itself not because it was against the war in Iraq, but because it could not oppose the counter-revolution once the war was over. A principled left that still had life in it and a liberalism that meant what it said might have remained ferociously critical of the American and British governments while offering support to Iraqis who wanted the freedoms they enjoyed.
    It is a generalisation to say that everyone refused to commit themselves. The best of the old left in the trade unions and parliamentary Labour party supported an anti-fascist struggle, regardless of whether they were for or against the war, and American Democrats went to fi ght in Iraq and returned to fi ght the Republicans. But again, no one who looked at the liberal left from the outside could pretend that such principled stands were commonplace. The British Liberal Democrats, the continental social democratic parties, the African National Congress and virtually every leftish newspaper and journal on the planet were unable to accept that the struggle of Arabs and Kurds had anything to do with them. Mainstream Muslim organisations were as indifferent to the murder of Muslims by other Muslims in Iraq as in Darfur. For the majority of world opinion, Blair's hopes of 'giving people oppressed, almost enslaved, the prospect of democracy and liberty' counted for nothing.
    [ . . . ] When a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein came, the liberals had two choices. The first was to oppose the war, remain hypercritical of aspects of the Bush administration's policy, but support Iraqis as they struggled to establish a democracy . . . The second choice for the liberals was to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. To look at the Iraqi civilians and the British and American troops who were dying in a war whose central premise had proved to be false, and to go berserk; to allow justifiable anger to propel them into 'binges of posturing and ultra-radicalism' as the Sixties liberals had done when they went off the rails. As one critic characterised the position, they would have to pretend that 'the United States was the problem and Iraq was its problem'. They would have to maintain that the war was not an attempt to break the power of tyranny in a benighted region, but the bloody result of a 'financially driven mania to control Middle Eastern oil, and the faith-driven crusade to batter the crescent with the cross'.
    They chose to go berserk.

    http://americanfuture.net/?p=2561
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
4,612
63
48
ITN

Liberal governments rising to power are a product of particular times and circumstances...

Baby-Boomers...born into a world by parents who embraced conservative ideals despite the fact that millions upon millions of people were sacrificed in wars of greed and patriotic zeal...

The question left hanging forever...if your conservative-near-fascist capitalistic answers worked...how did the world get into the condition it's in....?

Liberals have swung the social pendulum completely out of whack while they renounced their liberalism...it's Baby-Boomers running soul-less corporations today....

Liberal values haven't worked any better than Conservative values.... It's got very little to do with political machinations and far much more to do with the nature of human beings...

Liberals don't want "identity" they want a nirvana of same-ness where everyone crouches in fear of offending the religious zealot...where "feelings" are accepted as the currency of governments and social institutions...whether history demonstrates the inappropriateness of this garbage-thinking...or not!

The only difference between a Hell's Angel or an Outlaw or any gangster motorcycle gang and government in Canada or the United States is nuance and nuance alone...
 

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
21,155
149
63
A couple years ago we saw a lot of these articles. Written under the assumption that Bush was right and everyone else was wrong about Iraq. So far everyone else seems to have been correct about the aftermath. It surprises me there are some like this guy who keep flogging the horse.
 

mabudon

Metal King
Mar 15, 2006
1,339
30
48
Golden Horseshoe, Ontario
Well, now that Bill Clinton is retroactively to blame for 9-11 AND Iraq (and no doubt Iran too, they'll find a way to pin that sucker on him too) I guess the article is spot-on, dontcha watch television ;) ??
 

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
21,155
149
63
Interesting answers, all of them irrelevant.

Why were millions opposing the removal of an oppressive regime?
Because the end was worse than the means. Why is Bush not removing other oppressive regimes like North Korea?
 

I think not

Hall of Fame Member
Apr 12, 2005
10,506
33
48
The Evil Empire
Different foreign policy tenets, but mostly our military doesn't have the muscle to do anything like that.

Do different foreign policy tenets include turning a blind eye to the oppressed?

And yes you don't have the military muscle, but Canada, the EU and a few other countries could.

I'll tell you what the problem is Tonington, and I'll make this short because I have to run.

Sitting on the sidelines passing judgment is just way too cool and much less expensive than actually doing something about it. Talk doesn't get anyone anywhere.

I'll be the first to admit the Iraq invasion was a bad idea. I never wanted it. But surely, even the distorted morality of the left can see the significance of coming to Iraq's rescue and make the US look even more warmongering, selfish and unjust.

For the left, it's easier to sit back and let millions of oppressed continue to be oppressed, so long as they can grind their political ax. It's that simple, always has been.

And forget North Korea, let them starve! How about other regions of the world?

Where are the tree huggers for places like Somalia?

The US can't do everything, because quite simply, it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

Backseat comments by the morally defunct left don't impress me. They used too a long time ago, but not anymore.
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
7,326
138
63
California
ITN

You deserve a good round table discussion on this article ITN - as you originally hoped.

I would love to write on it - but in the interests of survival I'll have to pass.

Hope more people see fit to give it a go....

(as she slinks away quietly on tippytoe)
 

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
21,155
149
63
I can respect that answer. Would you be willing to live under the rule of Saddam Hussein?



Why doesn't Canada form an international alliance and oust the North Korean government?
I would rather live under Saddam than under today's daily car bombings and religious crusades.

Canada doesn't help oust NK because there isn't much to be gained except more chaos. What would be the end game? The political dynamics in the region? Would we go there to enforce democracy? Where will the resistance come from in the aftermath? How many years would troops need to be in North Korea to fight that resistance? How many caskets would have to be flown home and for how long? Just what gets accomplished?
 

#juan

Hall of Fame Member
Aug 30, 2005
18,326
119
63
Originally Posted by I think not
Interesting answers, all of them irrelevant.

Why were millions opposing the removal of an oppressive regime?

ITN


I guess you and I will always be opposed on this subject. I don't believe might makes right. I don't think it was the U.S.'s job to bomb and kill the many thousands they did just to get rid of Saddam. Many people warned that Saddam's removal would cause a political vacuum and that civil war would be the result. The bombing and invasion of Iraq was wrong. Saddam was a bastard, but so is Mugabe, and so are the Saudi royal family, and many others.
 

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
15,441
150
63
Do different foreign policy tenets include turning a blind eye to the oppressed?

And yes you don't have the military muscle, but Canada, the EU and a few other countries could.

I'll tell you what the problem is Tonington, and I'll make this short because I have to run.

Sitting on the sidelines passing judgment is just way too cool and much less expensive than actually doing something about it. Talk doesn't get anyone anywhere.

I'll be the first to admit the Iraq invasion was a bad idea. I never wanted it. But surely, even the distorted morality of the left can see the significance of coming to Iraq's rescue and make the US look even more warmongering, selfish and unjust.

For the left, it's easier to sit back and let millions of oppressed continue to be oppressed, so long as they can grind their political ax. It's that simple, always has been.

And forget North Korea, let them starve! How about other regions of the world?

Where are the tree huggers for places like Somalia?

The US can't do everything, because quite simply, it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

Backseat comments by the morally defunct left don't impress me. They used too a long time ago, but not anymore.

Turning a blind eye is one way to put it, but that's not only limited to foreign policy, the same can be said for domestic policy.

I'm not sure that anyone in the EU would come forward expressing any interest or committment to something like N.Korea, with the exception of the UK. The "others" allready hide in places like Afghanistan, behind large walls, unwilling to use their troops for what they are supposedly there for.

There are plenty of places in the world which could use help, not all of them are asking for it though. Even when they do ask for help it's not allways forthcoming.

The problem is, simply there are all kinds of messed up people out there. Talk or military, one falls on deaf ears, the other a catalyst for more hatred and more f'd up people.

The US does bare the lion's share of the damning comments, that's what happens when you're top dog. I don't think theres a simple fix for any of the number of hotspots worldwide. To generalize a little, liberals would talk forever, conservatives prefer to wield the sword.

Really we're all on the sidelines passing judgement.
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
7,326
138
63
California
I didn't write this but thought it might open some doors...
http://themissal.blogspot.com/2006/12/examination-of-differences-between.html

AN EXAMINATION OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLASSICAL LIBERALS AND MODERN LIBERALS
How are the views of the Modern Liberal similar to, and different from, the views of the Classical Liberal? Let’s examine the evidence for a better understanding. 12-03-06


ON JUSTICE

Classical Liberal: Believed Perfect and Universal Justice in society a noble ideal to be industriously pursued, even if sometimes it can only be imperfectly achieved.
Modern Liberal: Believes the very idea of the pursuit of Justice an imperfect ideal, and therefore not a worthy objective. The only real Justice the modern liberal understands is something they call Social Justice, which is a bizarre and impotent bastardization of the idea of Universal Justice, a sort of “Multi Generational Vengeance” on the Macro, or Group Scale. Does not believe in Justice as normally defined, rather, believes in compensation, courts, and legislation by lawsuit.


ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Classical Liberal: Believed Human Rights Granted to all Men and Protected by God. Believed in Universal Equality.
Modern Liberal: Believes Rights derived by ever-malleable Human Social Contract, and therefore open to debate as to their nature, extent, and character. Believes some people are capable of liberty and some are better suited to rule by Tyrants, Strongmen, and Dictators.


ON EDUCATION

Classical Liberal: In general extremely well and Classically educated. Believed in self-education throughout the entire term of their lives.
Modern Liberal: Thinks the modern and current public education system is a brilliantly effective method of education. Doesn’t understand the term self-education, and sees no point to the exercise.


ON LIBERTY

Classical Liberal: Was willing to fight for, in word and deed, his own liberty and the liberty of his fellow man, no matter how long the struggle took or how difficult it might be.
Modern Liberal: Expects liberty to be granted to him as a birthright, but is unwilling to fight for or expand the franchise to his fellow man if any real sacrifice is called for, or any real struggle is involved.


ON RELIGION

Classical Liberal: Deeply, if often unorthodoxly, religious. Friendly towards expressions of religious liberty in public life. Believed faith based institutions such as churches valuable components of a healthy societal order and public virtue. Believed personal behavior often tied to, and beneficially regulated by, religious belief.
Modern Liberal: Unorthodox and Freakish in personal behavior. Often deeply irreligious. Desires religion and therefore religious liberty expunged from public life. Believes the greatest public virtue is to erase faith as a component of the societal order.


ON EVIL

Classical Liberal: Feared no evil and believed all evils could be overcome with patience, proper action, and reason.
Modern Liberal: Sees no reason to try to understand the concept of evil. Thinks it a Fairy Tale or subjective psychological construct. Resents recent talk of evil and wishes we could all return to the days of neuter-speak and inoffensive misdefinition.


ON TAXATION

Classical Liberal: Believed Taxation means and meant exhaustion and therefore taxation should not be imposed unless absolutely necessary for a true and valid function of local, state, or federal government. Did not believe in taxation without representation. Believed individuals made the most productive use of their own resources. Believed taxation should be directed towards what people consume, not what they produce, and that taxes in regards to property should be allodial.
Modern Liberal: Believes the resources of the individual actually belong to the government. Does not believe in any invalid or unproductive government function. Believes representatives should promote ever higher rates of taxation. Believes in a nebulous and non-sequitor term, “Progressive Taxation,” even though the terms progress (to continue or to improve) and tax (to exhaust) are diametrically opposed to one another. Thinks property should be continuously taxed in order that the state, not the individual owns the property in perpetua.


ON MARKETS

Classical Liberal: Believed Markets should be free and open enterprises and that competition is the mechanism by which both individual and collective industries improve, thrive, and prosper.
Modern Liberal: Thinks prospering is very bad and unjust and that people should be protected from the markets, lest they too profit.


ON INCOME AND WAGES

Classical Liberal: Understood the original and true distinctions in definition between the terms “Income” and “Earnings” and “Wages.”
Modern Liberal: Does not understand what an income is, but thinks it should be tied to the minimum wage, and that earnings should be universally regulated.


ON INITIATIVE AND INVENTION

Classical Liberal: Was admiring of Personal Initiative and Invention in individuals and considered both necessary qualities of eventual success.
Modern Liberal: Takes the initiative in declaring persons incapable of individual success without assistance from collective groups or governments. Is not impressed by success because it sets an unfair measure of personal achievement that makes it very difficult for the lazy to achieve profitability parity.


ON ENTERPRISE, PROFIT, INDUSTRY, AND DRIVE

Classical Liberal: Understood the definition of the term Enterprise and that it signified a dangerous and risky undertaking. Understood the concept of “Profit.” Thought a man would succeed or fail based upon his Personal Industry and Drive.
Modern Liberal: Has no concept of an enterprise. Thinks profits are bad and disgraceful and somehow personally and institutionally corrupting. Thinks no one should mention personal and industry in the same sentence. Likes governmentally mandated regulations on both what you drive, and how much drive you should have.


ON CREATIVITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT

Classical Liberal: Believed in personal and individual creativity and accomplishment.
Modern Liberal: Thinks creativity occurs by committee, but since they also believe life has no ultimate meaning, personal accomplishments are all illusions anyway.


ON PROBLEM SOLVING

Classical Liberal: Believed every problem eventually soluble via the careful and consistent applications of reason and industry in the individual.
Modern Liberal: Thinks world is doomed and the individual an impotent cipher incapable of solving his own problems.


ON REASON

Classical Liberal: Believed the ability to Reason instrumental to success and one of God’s Great Gifts to Mankind.
Modern Liberal: Believes they have successfully reasoned away God.


ON LIFE, HEALTH, AND PROPERTY

Classical Liberal: Thought a man’s Life, Health, and Property the responsibility of the individual involved and subject to his personal decision making process. Believed very strongly in Personal Responsibility and Accountability.
Modern Liberal: Thinks a man’s health a function of society, his property in eternal escrow to the state, and his life determined by environmental factors and therefore a matter beyond his personal control.


ON PRIVACY AND PERSONAL CONDUCT

Classical Liberal: Believed a man should be secure and honored in his private opinions, speech, and papers. And that his public conduct should be upright and virtuous.
Modern Liberal: Believes everything a person does should be a private matter even if it involves publicly felonious conduct.


ON SCIENCE

Classical Liberal: Believed man should morally and materially benefit from the blessings of Science and scientific progress.
Modern Liberal: Believes that the material benefits derived from Science automatically relieve everyone of any cumbersome consideration of the moral ramifications of scientific progress.


ON TOUGHNESS AND HARDIHOOD

Classical Liberal: Admired the traits of Toughness and Hardihood in individual people.
Modern Liberal: Thinks toughness and hardihood chauvinistic and outmoded expressions of individual behavior. Admires effeminate conduct or at the very least gender-neutral personality expressions in all circumstances.


ON FREEDOM AND LIBERTY

Classical Liberal: Believed all men could and should enjoy the personal blessings of Freedom and Liberty.
Modern Liberal: Believes Freedom means that they should be at Liberty to do as they please.


ON EQUALITY AND THE LAW

Classical Liberal: Believed all men are and should be equal under the Law.
Modern Liberal: Believes the Law is a tool for righting perceived political inequalities.


ON OPTIMISM AND PROGRESS

Classical Liberal: Were highly Optimistic and Progressive in the true sense of the term.
Modern Liberal: Thinks true progress is achieved by properly executed tax schemes, and should be regulated by government. Highly pessimistic and reactionary in most other matters.


ON CHARITY AND PHILANTHROPY

Classical Liberal: Believed that good could best be done to the unfortunate by acts of private and voluntary Charity and Philanthropy.
Modern Liberal: Thinks the government is the best and most efficient method of distributing charity and philanthropy. This is unfortunately how they think they can best serve the unfortunate.


ON LABOR

Classical Liberal: Believed if a man was dissatisfied with the rewards of his labor that he should be free to seek better opportunities to fully exploit his personal industry for higher profit.
Modern Liberal: Believes all labor should be unionized so that the worker can best be collectively exploited, and so that profits may be diverted to more deserving persons.


ON CIVIC DUTY AND VOTING

Classical Liberal: Believed it was the duty of every citizen to vote and to vote with an informed background of information and experience towards both the candidates and the issues.
Modern Liberal: Thinks non-citizens and felons should vote, and vote often – even often in the same election, and that if voters do not understand the actual process and mechanics of voting that their failed intentions to properly execute a vote should be derived by statistical models, the courts, and by political soothsayers and augurs. Issues are secondary considerations in any election for the modern liberal, the important thing is assuring votes are counted or at least construed by psychic process.


ON REPUBLICS AND DEMOCRACIES

Classical Liberal: Believed the highest form of government to be a Constitutional Republic with Rights guaranteed by God for the good of the people.
Modern Liberal: Thinks Democracy the highest form of government, Constitutions open to “living legislation” by the Judiciary, God an anachronism, and the good of the people best decided and protected in every case by majority vote.


ON CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE

Classical Liberal: Believed the most important aspects of an individual to be the nature and content of his character.
Modern Liberal: Believes the most important aspects of an individual to be his charisma, charm, and personality.

 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
4,612
63
48
Curiosity

I wrote a paper on postmodern morality that could have been a companion piece to the one you've provided...

You had it right in an earlier post my dear...

Human beings ...how did you put it...got off on the wrong path or something...

ITN believes the world is a better place with greed as the motivator behind industry ...that prosperity and success are acceptable in a climate of global warming and respiratory failures increasing at an normous rate... Postmodernists don't care for absolutes of any kind and that includes acknowledging the failures of idologies that promulgate the cycles of death and destruction whether in the name of greed commerce and "prosperity" or religious fanaticism...
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
7,326
138
63
California
MikeyDB

I think there are other nations on the planet who have differing views than we in the western nations - we who have so much and expect more.

There are actually people who spend their whole existence involved personally with their own comfort and acquisition without a thought for humanity itself.

Some of them create legislation and law and commerce and educate young unformed minds.

We in our bountiful "west" should have to go on a sabbatical for a year or two in our pre-adult lives, to the back of beyond - to view how others live and survive and coexist - and come home with a plan for
the improvement and sharing with that particular section of the planet.

I was so warmed by young William of Wales when he journeyed to far off lands to assist in charitable
giving - something implanted deeply in the two boys by their mother Diana.

And yes - we in the west have taken the wrong turn - with such self-concern for substantial wealth and welfare far beyond any one human should ever need in one lifetime.

I am not a socialist....but I do believe it is the right of all humans to be educated and perform some kind of work for subsistence and living, to have a say in communities, and larger governments, and
to ensure a peaceful end stage of life spent in teaching the young.

Giving endlessly to the same governments does absolutely nothing to those who receive. Yet we continue to do it.
 

Toro

Senate Member
Do different foreign policy tenets include turning a blind eye to the oppressed?

And yes you don't have the military muscle, but Canada, the EU and a few other countries could.

I'll tell you what the problem is Tonington, and I'll make this short because I have to run.

Sitting on the sidelines passing judgment is just way too cool and much less expensive than actually doing something about it. Talk doesn't get anyone anywhere.

I'll be the first to admit the Iraq invasion was a bad idea. I never wanted it. But surely, even the distorted morality of the left can see the significance of coming to Iraq's rescue and make the US look even more warmongering, selfish and unjust.

For the left, it's easier to sit back and let millions of oppressed continue to be oppressed, so long as they can grind their political ax. It's that simple, always has been.

And forget North Korea, let them starve! How about other regions of the world?

Where are the tree huggers for places like Somalia?

The US can't do everything, because quite simply, it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

Backseat comments by the morally defunct left don't impress me. They used too a long time ago, but not anymore.

Bravo!

Couldn't have said it better myself!
 

Toro

Senate Member
ITN believes the world is a better place with greed as the motivator behind industry ...that prosperity and success are acceptable in a climate of global warming and respiratory failures increasing at an normous rate...

First, ITN doesn't believe that.

Second, the rise of modern capitalism over the past 200 years coincides with the greatest rise of living standards, the greatest advances in life spans and infant mortality, the greatest greatest medical advances, greatest technological advances, etc., in the history of humanity. That is not a coincidence.