Liberals Are Blind to Evil

(extract) Progressives have lots of arguments against the war on Iraq -- some of them compelling. But why aren't they burning to free Saddam's oppressed masses?

By Edward W. Lempinen

March 19, 2003 | As one watches protest marches, antiwar advertising and local arts events, one has to wonder whether the left has really weighed the moral issues posed by the horrors of Saddam's regime -- weighed life by life the repression of the 24 million Iraqis who live in a ruthless police state, not to mention the thousands or tens of thousands who have been imprisoned without trial, tortured, exiled or killed.

It sometimes seems that the left is so averse to war, especially war waged by America, that it is prepared to turn a blind eye to even the most ghastly realities. Perhaps it is because the left no longer sees these realities that its antiwar arguments tend to justify continuation of the status quo. (Lempinen has no love of Geroge Bush.)

Today, the political counterculture and the antiwar movement in the West often seem to be one and the same...The antiwar left does not mount massive protests against China, Pakistan or Egypt. Millions do not pour into the streets on behalf of the student-led democracy movement in Iran. And Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are not angrily compared to Hitler -- that treatment is more often reserved for George W. Bush...Is it possible that some of the most vocal and visible elements of the left are vulnerable to a similar charge?

Anti-Americanism: Opiate of the left

Human Events, Oct 27, 2003 by Spero, Aryeh

Liberal Rhetoric Exposes Hatred of US

Karl Marx claimed "religion is the opiate of the people." More than a century later it is clear that Marxism is the opiate of the intelligentsia. Or, as the events of recent weeks have illustrated, anti-Americanism is the opiate of the left, including the left living here in America.

The left's refusal to acknowledge the heft of evidence supplied over the last five months by the Bush Administration regarding Saddam's lethal arsenal of mass destruction and his obvious defiance to conform to the disarmament required of him demonstrates the left's attitude of: "Don't confuse me with the facts, ma'am."

For too long, we've been laboring under the false assumption that enough evidence would convince the left. But tons of evidence is never enough to those who neither seek the truth nor are open to objective persuasion but instead are motivated by an unyielding desire to oppose America no matter what and stand forever behind liberal causes. As with everything with today's left, the Cause overrides facts, logic, or evidence.

However frustrating and demoralizing the verbal assault on the United States during the last months, it has been very eye-opening in making us realize that the left is not guided by motifs of liberty, freedom and human rights but anti-Americanism and international socialism. The descriptions and eyewitness accounts of the long-list of the most gruesome, monstrous, and systemic torture performed by Saddam and his goons have not moved the hearts of those evolved into fascists of the left.

This apprehension should be vital in bolstering our self-confidence-knowing that the left does not hold the moral high ground, simply a control and manipulation of the vocabulary and language needed to camouflage and appear altruistic.

Moreover, it is now apparent that the left no longer shares our historic American values. It is thus futile to try to convince them by referring to these ideals. Sadly, the left's emotions soar only when advocating boundary-less, one-world socialism. The events of the last weeks have been tectonic in alerting us to an America that is not divided simply politically but bifurcated by two separate value systems, one American, the other nouveau European.

That America is more than simply a country but an ideal and ethos is daily reified by the worldwide pronouncements of anti-Americanism. There is no such phenomenon of, say, anti-Belgianism or anti-Swissism.

It has become crystal-clear that there exist in this country many Americans who are anti-America, especially when it is governed by a President who boldly acts in a fashion reflecting the ideology of Americanism. Be they from academia, Hollywood, journalism, or wayward students, they are bound by the glue of leftist ideology and would, in a heartbeat, elect the nouveau European Leftist Jacques Chirac president of the United States if such were possible.

Some come to their anti-Americanism having ingested the ideological poison against America fed by their teachers, clergy, media, and those who are called "artists." Some are infected by the psychological disease of self-hate or the age-old tendency in human nature to destroy or deconstruct that which is good and noble. Many are, of course, propelled by a self-righteous sense of moral and intellectual superiority. What began forty years ago as domestic self-criticism has degenerated into a simpatico with anything anti-American.

Still, we ask why; why would people voluntarily and enthusiastically see in their own good country only evil while exonerating the truly evil empires and movements present in the world? Perhaps because such is the membership card into the clique. It is the entry and sustaining ticket into the fashionable fraternity of those whose association they crave.

History has shown that the need for acceptance induced many toward membership into the Nazi or Communist Party. It then, as now, reflected a personal need to be part of an elitist corps, a fellow traveler in the sought-after circle. Despite the success many have achieved here precisely because of Americanism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism are the attitudes necessary for membership into the coveted club. It reflects not courage but weakness. As for leftist true believers, anti-Americanism is the new-found religion, Marx's opiate.

Rabbi Spero is president of Caucus for America. (He can be reached at ASpero@att.net.) Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Oct 27, 2003 Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

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