Why the left fails to condemn terrorism
The American Spectator (via Molten Thought) explains why Israeli leftists, and by extension, to be sure, American leftists, cannot or will not properly condemn terrorists and their dirty work:
I don't know if anyone else has ever thought of this, but what the authorities did could be called - and most certainly is - un-Israeli.
In Israel, and probably also in the U.S. to a considerable extent, this softness toward terrorism is the sine qua non of the Left. Among the majority who recognize it as evil, the question becomes practical: what should we do about it? Withdraw from the terror enclaves and try to keep them surrounded and bottled up? Keep patrolling them while allowing them to exist? Fight them seriously and root out the terror? On such issues one can hold discussions without a sense of betraying one's deepest values.Something that I too am wondering, and perhaps they might be willing to explain. There are three interesting points made in this article, to which Molten makes a fourth:
The Left, however, cannot cross the Rubicon of just condemning terror. I've seen the anguish and anger in leftist friends after an attack. But after a while, they always come out at the same place. It was we, our arrogance, our insensitivity, our one-sided narrative, that drove this desperate person to do this. You and I would do the same in his place -- we would be mass murderers, child-murderers.
The question, then, is why the leftist persists in this view of things.
...leftists consider it a sign of strength to kill innocents to effect social change. Lenin beat this into them way back when: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."I just read a topic from Yesha Speaks Out, discussing how the government, and by extension, the police/army, have been employing violence against residents in Gush Etzion, all for the sake of tearing down a house whose existence they're opposed to, and after reading this, there's probably a fifth point that can be made out of all that: that they have no qualms against being violent themselves to achieve their own goals.
I don't know if anyone else has ever thought of this, but what the authorities did could be called - and most certainly is - un-Israeli.
...leftists consider it a sign of strength to kill innocents to effect social change. Lenin beat this into them way back when: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Interestingly enough I've always believed that any individual/movement that believes that you can achieve "political" objectives by employing violence is in essence facist. (There is even some theoretical basis for this, see the article on my personal blog "Second Thoughts" ) http://YoelBA.blogspot.com
Posted by Yoel.Ben-Avraham | 1/17/2006 01:22:00 AM