When Is It Reasonable?
At what point does it become reasonable to describe the left as adhering to an ideology that is not supportive of freedom? I think the time has long since passed but it is difficult to press the case without sounding like a bit of a lunatic.
A couple reminders of this crossed my screen recently. First there was the Inqy’s demand that the Supreme Court allow continued violations of the first amendment. They made it positively humorous by publishing an editorial the next day demanding a shield law for journalists. Freedom for me but not for thee.
Then there was Tom Friedman’s love letter to the Chinese Communist Party. Tom writes:
There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
Yeah, it really sucks to be us with that whole freedom and democracy thing. It’s pretty inconvenient when your (leftwing) ideology is built around control and the electorate (along with the supposedly non-existent other party) gets in the way. Cap ‘n’ Trade and Obamacare would be no trouble at all if they could just be dictated from on high.
The fact is, the left has a long and ugly history of supporting thugs and dictatorships. Academics, journalists and (of course) artsy types have a history of loving the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Ho Chi Minh, Adolf Hitler (pre-genocide), Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Throw in the murderous wanna-be dictator Che Guevera too. The list goes on and it’s ugly.
They support dictators. They support policies built around control (except, of course, sexual lifestyle groups – they have carte blanche to do as they please and get government support in the process). Yet the left continues to pass itself off as supporters of freedom.
They’re not and haven’t been for a long time.