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 LEFTISTS . . . see "POLITICS" for related links "If our aim is to indoctrinate students with unpatriotic beliefs," said the leftist historian Eric Foner of Columbia University in late November, "we're obviously doing a very poor job of it." Foner was referring, sarcastiscally, to a poll disclosing the surprising news that there was firm support for the war among college students nationwide.[...] Of course, I do not mean to single out one professor--I am speaking of a class--but this does happen to be the same Eric Foner who could bring himself to assert, even while the fires were still burning in late September, that "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." What atrocious rot. And yet such pronouncements, and worse, once tripped lightly and almost without the necessity of thought from the mouths of people like him. It was all part of the culture wars, and it cost them nothing to say whatever wild and reckless things they pleased about their country and its leaders--on the contrary, they were richly rewarded for it, and they were winning. But now thousands of their innocent countrymen were ash, and there was a smoking hole in downtown New York, and another in the side of the Pentagon, and a third in a field in Pennsylvania, and anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear could tell the difference between one thing and another, between the horror that had engulfed New York City and the determined, manly, but far from apocalyptic rhetoric of the president. Foner could not have been alone among the professoriate in thinking it might be time to try a new tack, time to pretend "we" had never tried to indoctrinate anybody--and by the way, we failed. --William J. Bennett (1943- ) American poiltician and author, _Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism_ [2002] -- The old-fashioned left used to be universalist--used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so. They thought this was especially true for people in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy-societies like the one in Iraq. But no more! Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes! Tyranny for Arabs! And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude? By the way, you don't hear much from the left about the non-Arabs in countries like Iraq, do you? The left, the real left, used to be the champion of minority populations-of people like the Kurds. No more! The left, my friend, has abandoned the values of the left-except for a few of us, of course. --Paul Berman, "A Friendly Drink in a Time of War", http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/wi04/berman.htm What a tragedy that you don't see this! It's a tragedy for the Afghanis and the Iraqis, who need more help than they are receiving. A tragedy for the genuine liberals all over the Muslim world! A tragedy for the American soldiers, the British, the Poles and every one else who has gone to Iraq lately, the nongovernmental organization volunteers and the occupying forces from abroad, who have to struggle on bitterly against the worst kind of nihilists, and have been getting damn little support or even moral solidarity from people who describe themselves as antifascists in the world's richest and fattest neighborhoods. What a tragedy for the left-the worldwide left, this left of ours which, in failing to play much of a role in the antifascism of our own era, is right now committing a gigantic historic error. Not for the first time, my friend! And yet, if the left all over the world took up this particular struggle as its own, the whole nature of events in Iraq and throughout the region could be influenced in a very useful way, and Bush's many blunders could be rectified, and the struggle could be advanced. --ibid -- The tone and tendency of liberalism . . . is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress. --Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874-1880], speech in London [24 June 1872] -- Dear Mr President, Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome. You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable. I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second. Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time. --Frederick Forsyth, Novelist [letter to The Guardian] [2003] - "A lot of anger going on; Liberal fury at Team Bush has gotten positively murderous" The voice-mail message started out innocently enough. The caller gave her name and said she was 77 years old. "I think Air America is a breath of fresh air, and we liberals love it... You didn't like what they said about the president on the Randi Rhodes program? Too bad about you. I believe that Osama bin Laden had it right: His throat should be slit." Whoa, Nellie -- what's going on here? What happened to arsenic and old lace? The caller was among the scores of people responding to my pan of Air America Radio, the all-liberal-all-the-time network. I wrote then that during 10 hours of programs, network hosts made frequent sex jokes about the Catholic Church, suggested that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be tortured and that President Bush should be shot. While Al Franken, the network's top host, told me later in a phone chat he was sure there was no literal intent of violence, the angry caller certainly found the idea of a dead president appealing. It's a chilling thought, all the more so because the caller (whose name I won't repeat) was endorsing throat-slitting on the very day America was reeling from the pictures of Nick Berg's beheading by Arab terrorists. Her call was unique in that regard, but the overwhelming tone of the responses made clear that some on the left are burning with an anger at the Bush administration that borders on irrationality. Attacks are not expressed in terms of disagreement. Rather, the players of Team Bush are routinely called liars, cheats and thieves and likened to the Taliban and Nazis. Some respondents have bypassed anger and gone straight to hate. "Hating Rumsfeld is the most patriotic thing anyone can do," Suzanne Hayes wrote in a fairly typical E-mail. Like many others, she began by calling me names -- "a brainless right-wing idiot" -- and asserted that Air America speaks for the "liberal majority." In that case, bring back the silent majority. At least they were nicer! The most striking thing about the responses was how most said that right- wing talk jocks had been spewing venom for years and now it's payback time. "It's return fire," wrote Greg Burrows. "Long live Air America." Those making that argument invariably cited Rush Limbaugh, which confirmed my suspicion that the pill-popping Rush has rattled the libs. Apparently having given up on beating him, they've sunk to defending their own low-road antics by saying he did it first. As every parent knows, that's a mighty lame excuse for bad behavior. In political terms, it makes the left part of the problem instead of the solution. But I heard that explanation over and over. Because of Limbaugh's attacks on feminists, "calling Rush a Nazi ... is long overdue," wrote Tom Nugent. Patrick Robinson of Seattle said the references were fair because "Limbaugh often comes off like a modern Hitler." Let's see: Limbaugh's bombast = the man who did the Holocaust. Talk about your fuzzy math. It's too soon to say whether Air America will develop enough of an audience to be a political force, but a liberal friend is pessimistic. "Their cardinal sin is not being funny," said the man, who is a successful TV executive. "It's not enough just to be an angry activist if you want to get people to listen." He left me with a good question: Why is it that the left, which has a lock on the entertainment industry, can't figure that out? --Michael Goodwin, "A lot of anger going on; Liberal fury at Team Bush has gotten positively murderous" _New York Daily News_ [16 May 2004] -- The Left blamed the United States for the Cold War and the division of Europe, and for unrest in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. Whatever happened, the Soviet Union was innocent and peace-loving. This same Left - in the Sontags and Pinters, these same people - follows an unbroken line in its attitude towards extremists in the Arab and Muslim world. Happy to leave millions at the mercy of Communism, they are happy to leave millions at the mercy of Islamist terror, so lining themselves up as ever on the side of oppression and lies. Their intellectual failure probably does not matter much here [in the West], where long exposure has shown that their opinions have foundations in psychopathology rather than reality. But it plays well in extremist circles, where assorted fanatics can now say, Look, the West is wicked, their intellectuals tell us so. --David Pryce-Jones, "An Arab Moment of Truth: Which way the Islamist fantasy?" http://www.nationalreview.com/15oct01/pj101501.shtml -- Always remember this: "Tolerance - the great "virtue" of the American left today - never applies to those who do not share their opinion." Also remember this: "Jerky college professors who are intolerant of others always believe themselves superior to everyone else." Picture your college-age daughter working hard in extracurricular activities to bring a much respected war hero to her college campus to speak to students about his experiences. When she innocently invites faculty to attend, she receives a reply that not only threatens her, but proceeds to suggest that America's fighting men and women commit treason and execute their commanding officers. Think it wouldn't happen? It did ... this week. Rebecca Beach, a freshman at Warren Community College in Virginia, had worked hard to invite the decorated hero of the War on Terror Lt. Col. Scott Rutter to appear yesterday to discuss the progress being made in Iraq. In response to her invite, Beach received this: "Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors." John Daly, the professor who responded, went on to tell Rebecca "that he will ask students in his English and writing classes to boycott the event and also vowed "to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca's] won't dare show their face on a college campus." --Kevin McCullough, Professor to soldiers: Kill officers in Iraq http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47472 [Note: The professor, John Daly, resigned shortly therafter] -- They are mainly political activists with not very much actual science background who are using the rhetoric of environmentalism to push agendas that are more political than they are ecological. --former Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore -- It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950) English novelist, "Notes on Nationalism" [May 1945] - All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’. It is true that Kipling does not understand the economic aspect of the relationship between the highbrow and the blimp. He does not see that the map is painted red chiefly in order that the coolie may be exploited. Instead of the coolie he sees the Indian Civil Servant; but even on that plane his grasp of function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950) English novelist, "Rudyard Kipling" http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/kipling/e/e_rkip.htm -- I set out to do one thing, to preserve and protect families. I did not anticipate how much the left-wing agenda was willing to do to be destructive. They don´t debate, they destroy, or try to. Life gets tough and you want to quit. The difference between somebody who creates something and somebody who doesn´t is whether or not they actually give in to it. As my son says, he didn´t raise a mommy to be a coward. --Dr. Laura Schlessinger (1947- ) American radio host -- Do people on the left ever wonder why we do not suffer the poverty of India, the oppression of North Korea, the anarchy of Liberia, the slaughters of Rwanda, etc., etc.? Would it ever occur to them that it might have anything to do with those very values and traditions which they are striving so hard to undermine or dismantle? --Thomas Sowell (1930- ) American economist and author, "Random Thoughts", http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030930.shtml -- Leftists lecture us not to confuse dissent with disloyalty, and then turn around and confound loyalty with myrmidonism. Just as youth is wasted on the young, so America is wasted on these Americans. --The Sanity Inspector, alt.quotations -- 25. Once you've told a lie or slandered someone, be sure to repeat it as often as possible until it becomes true. "Members and front organizations must continually embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascist, or Nazi or anti-Semitic .... The association will, after enough repetition, become "fact" in the public mind." --Communist Party, Moscow Central Committee, [1943], as quoted in Article 25 of the "Leftwing Liberal Handbook" ----- LEFTISTS - 2005 I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together. I choose this day [Iraqi election day] for my departure because I can no longer abide [...] people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere [...] reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode. My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self- determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom. --Keith Thompson, "Leaving the Left", _San Francisco Chronicle_, [22 May 2005], http://tinyurl.com/d4rn5 - Here at the U.S. Military Academy, shortly before Memorial Day, plaques like this one are hard to miss: "In memory of those classmates who gave their lives in the service of our country while serving in the Republic of Vietnam." My conscience is not easy, because (dare I write this?) U.S. casualty reports were good news for my comrades and myself. U.S. deaths in Iraq work the same way for some among the left today. Here at this majestic site on a cliff above the Hudson, it seems that people should measure up to at least this part of the Cadet Prayer: "Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong." I did not: I chose a wrong not only easier but vile. So did the United States in its post-Watergate twitching, as we suddenly withheld arms from our Southeast Asian allies and were thus complicit in the creation of killing fields. [...] The Academy, unlike most U.S. secular universities now, is not hostile to theistic belief, and students report that they aren't, either. Maybe one reason for religious sensitivity is that many of my 20-year-old Texas students think they have at least 50 years before it's time to think about death. The realization of students here that they may face it in not more than five concentrates the mind wonderfully. So this hard-to-write column is in honor of West Point and those who died to protect me not only now when I'm grateful, but also a third of a century ago when I was at my worst. And isn't that how Christ dies for sinners? --Marvin Olasky, Uneasiness on the Hudson [26 May 2005] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050524.shtml - 2006 "The Sounds of Silencing" By Peggy Noonan October 14, 2006 _The Wall Street Journal_ [. . . ] At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. "Having wreaked havoc," said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, "No one is ever illegal." The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, "I don't feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech.... The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration." [ . . . ] end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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