LogFAQs > #895784210

I've noticed there's a real tribalism among a lot of people who strongly self-identify as either conservative or liberal: a sheep-like compulsion to trot into the pen along with the rest of the flock. It's as if they feel they need to tick every box on a long checklist of approved positions to feel sure of "belonging".

I'm a Brit. I served my political apprenticeship on the Left -- back before its global vision, internationalist spirit and campaigning energy shrank to complaining about trivial non-PC fluff in Western democracies. Back when protests targeted death squads instead of videogames.

What grew to disillusion me was the cranky contrarianism of the Left in its blind, knee-jerk opposition to any military action, in any context whatsoever, undertaken by any Western government even when it was clearly mandated by humanitarian imperatives. They oppose it apparently for the simple reason that these governments are Western -- and are therefore to be despised and distrusted unconditionally by all properly self-hating Westerners.

The Falklands, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo: time and again I've read scathing condemnations of British military intervention ("neo-imperialism") even in those cases where there's actually been a clear moral mandate for action. (During the Falklands War my mother-in-law bought Argentinian corned beef to flaunt her support for a junta whose hands were filthy with the blood of thousands of victims of torture and murder, just for the sake of giving Thatcher a poke in the eye. That's the kind of cosy British left-wing hypocrisy that turned my stomach.) People who demanded that "something" be done to stop Saddam gassing Kurds suddenly backflipped when that "something" eventually involved bombing, no-fly zones and sanctions backed by American muscle -- because if there was one thing more important than stopping Saddam from gassing Kurds, it was hating Uncle Sam for doing anything at all.

On GameFAQs, I've read lefties on other boards even argue that it was a good thing that the West, and especially the US, did not intervene in Rwanda in 1994 to stop the genocide -- because, apparently, it would have been "imperialist" for the West to infringe upon the sovereignty of another country, and it would somehow have "made things worse". Seriously: this is what it's come down to.

Western governments are condemned when they do something, and they're condemned when they do nothing. I've read leftists rail against the "imperialist" overthrowing of dictators like Marcos, Cdras, Saddam and Gaddafi -- often the very same leftists who, rightly but with no apparent sense of irony, lambasted Reagan and Thatcher for mollycoddling other dictators. The Left used to attack the CIA for bumping off democrats; now it savages Uncle Sam for deposing autocrats. Someone should tell today's contarian, "plague on both your houses" Left that sitting on the fence is not the same thing as standing on the moral high ground.
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texty bastard