The absurdity of the Left
I've managed to get a sneak preview of Nick Cohen's latest masterpiece, "What's left? How Liberals lost their way".Here's an excerpt where he tears into a particularly idiotic left-winger:
I was brought up to believe that being left-wing was to be good. Now I'm not so sure. Some people who claim on the Left appear to believe the strangest things. A good example is an award-winning journalist who wrote in the late 1990s and early 2000s for a number of impeccably liberal publications. He supported CND, who wanted to get rid of our nuclear weapons despite the overwhelming nuclear strength of a hostile Soviet Union. In February 2000, in the New Statesman (not much of a surprise, you might say) he declared that the best definition of 'terrorist' was also the best definition of the British "political class and security establishment". On June 17th 2001 he declared that "Bush is destroying international agreements and pushing potential rivals who fear American military dominance of the planet through the militarisation of space into a new and unnecessary nuclear race".
Was his complacency shook by the horrific events of September 11th 2001? Not a bit. In those dark days after the atrocity, he argued that British intervention in Afghanistan - where the perpretators of that wicked act were based - 'endangered' its citizens, and declared that its Prime Minister's 'indiscriminate love' for the United States and meant Britain was 'American's poodle'. Worse still, he criticised those liberals in the media who were prepared to stand against Afghanistan as 'demented' and declared that standing shoulder to shoulder with our American allies had 'pinned a large target sign on this country'.
As America continued to recover from the horrors of September 11th, on January 14th 2002 he wrote a piece in the New Stateman titled, 'Why it is right to be anti-American', declaring that "The determination to destroy the Kyoto agreement, International Criminal Court and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty says in effect: "We are not content with our dominance. We want more." American unilateralism is contemptuous of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world can't be blamed for responding in kind." He concluded, "there is little about modern America to be for." In March 2002 he declared there were no links between Iraq and Islamic terrorism: "The CIA and MI6 have searched for them for six months and found nothing."
In August of that year he criticised the great lawyer Alan Dershowitz as a "blood-lusting fantasist" for advocating torture, and arguing that such a policy could not "be excused as an understandable but transient overreaction to the slaughter of innocents. The suspension of civilised standards has become settled policy".
Labels: Decent Left
posted by Matthew @ 11/06/2006 07:57:00 PM
Comments: 0
