The Left: Still Inverted

Forty years ago in elementary school, we practiced "duck and cover" for the bomb sure to come. It never did. So defeating Soviet Communism is the most significant event of my lifetime. I know I'm repeating myself but second place surely goes to the political, intellectual and ethical inversion of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Today, the multi-cultured, freedom-loving, brainy tolerant left is:

• Uninterested in, and pessimistic about prospects for, spreading freedom to the developing world.



• Radically intolerant.



• Prejudiced.



• Reactionary.



• Misinterpreting freedom of speech as license for boorish and odious behavior.



• According to Austin Bay, adopted a platform of "de facto support for anti-American dictators and apologies for terrorism."

As I concluded watching Bush's second Inaugural:

[T]he left retained its lofty language and aspirations while purging every plausible technique that might achieve their goals. That's why they prefer nuance--it allows liberals to duck the hard questions. No wonder moderate Democrats resent Bush: he applies pi to problems while they're stuck trying to square the circle.

Writing in today's Australian, Michael Costello agrees:

How has it happened that the Left of politics across the world has ended up opposing a foreign policy philosophy of spreading democracy in favour of supporting the traditional conservative agenda of stability, sovereignty and the status quo? Because that is what the Left is doing in its hostile reaction to George W. Bush's second inaugural address. . .

Bush said in his second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

This is resonant of John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961, when he said: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Kennedy's words inspired the world. It particularly inspired those of us on the progressive side of politics. But those words turned sour because they presaged the US drive deeper into Vietnam. And for most members of the Left, Vietnam is the seminal personal and political rite of passage. Vietnam destroyed a Democrat president. It brought down a Republican president. It discredited the moral and political leadership of the US. Now when the trumpet sounds, the Left's instinctive reaction is to cry "No, not another Vietnam". . .

What will go on is the great human desire to be free, which should be at the core of our foreign policy. The great danger for the Left is that its Vietnam and Bush obsessions may mean that it will end up on the wrong side of history.

The left's run out of ideas and forfeited the moral high-ground. Good thing we passed the prescription drug plan--if big-pharma discovers a pill that cures "loser."

(via Instapundit)