The Left's Dream

CNSNews.com ^ | March 18, 2003 | Daniel Pipes

[Stand Watch Listen]

Has anyone noticed an indifference in the precincts of the far Left to the fatalities of 9/11 and the horrors of Saddam Hussein?

Right after the 9/11 attack, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called it "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos." Eric Foner, an ornament of Columbia University's Marxist firmament, trivialized it by announcing himself unsure "which is more frightening - the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Norman Mailer called the suicide hijackers "brilliant."

More recently, it appears that none of the millions of anti-war demonstrators have a bad word to say about Saddam Hussein nor an iota of sympathy for those oppressed, tortured, and murdered by his regime. Instead, they vent fury against the American president and British prime minister.
Why is the Left nonchalant about the outrages committed by Al-Qaeda and Baghdad?

Lee Harris, an Atlanta writer, offers an explanation in a recent issue of the Hoover Institution's journal, "Policy Review." He does so by stepping way back and recalling Karl Marx's central thesis about the demise of capitalism resulting from an inevitable sequence of events:

- Business profits decline in the industrial countries;
- Bosses squeeze their workers;
- Workers become impoverished;
- Workers rebel against their bosses; and
- Workers establish a socialist order.

Everything here hangs on workers growing poorer over time - which, of course, did not happen. In fact, Western workers became richer (and increasingly un-revolutionary). By the roaring 1950s, most of the Left realized that Marx got it wrong.

But rather than give up on cherished expectations of socialist revolution, Harris notes, Marxists tweaked their theory. Abandoning the workers of advanced industrial countries, they looked instead to the entire populations of poor countries to carry out the revolution. Class analysis went out the window, replaced by geography.

This new approach, known as "dependencia theory," holds that the First World (and the United States above all) profits by forcefully exploiting the Third Word. The Left theorizes that the United States oppresses poor countries; thus Noam Chomsky's formulation that America is a "leading terrorist state."

For vindication of this claim, Marxists impatiently await the Third World's rising up against the West. Sadly for them, the only true revolution since the 1950s was Iran's in 1978-79. It ended with militant Islam in power and the Left in hiding.

Then came 9/11, which Marxists interpreted as the Third World (finally!) striking back at its American oppressor. In the Left's imagination, Harris explains, this attack was nothing less than "world-historical in its significance: the dawn of a new revolutionary era."
Only a pedant would point out that the suicide hijackers hardly represented the wretched of the earth; and that their objectives had nothing at all to do with socialism and everything to do with - no, not again! - militant Islam.

So desperate is the Left for some sign of true socialism, it overlooks such pesky details. Instead, it warily admires Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and militant Islam in general for doing battle with the United States. The Left tries to overlook militant Islam's slightly un-socialist practices - such as its imposing religious law, excluding women from the workplace, banning the payment of interest, encouraging private property, and persecuting atheists.

This admiring spirit explains the Left's nonchalant response to 9/11. Sure, it rued the loss of life, but not too much. Dario Fo, the Italian Marxist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, explains: "The great [Wall Street] speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty so what is 20,000 dead in New York?"

The same goes for Saddam Hussein, whose gruesome qualities matters less to the Left than the fact of his confronting and defying the United States. In its view, anyone who does that can't be too bad - never mind that he brutalizes his subjects and invades his neighbors. The Left takes to the streets to assure his survival, indifferent both to the fate of Iraqis and even to their own safety, clutching instead at the hope that this monster will somehow bring socialism closer.

In sum: 9/11 and the prospect of war against Saddam Hussein have exposed the Left's political self-delusion, intellectual bankruptcy, and moral turpitude.

(Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America.)

Daniel Pipes

[Stand Watch Listen]

Related Articles

The Fifth Column Left Declares War
Source: Townhall.com; Published: March 18, 2003; Author: David Horrowitz

Anti-War Protests Have Big Price Tags
Source: FOX News; Published: March 18, 2003; Author: Dan Springer

The left /fascist 'peace' coalition
Source: The Washington Times; Published: March 17, 2003; Author: Martin Gross

Leftwing "Peace" Saboteurs, Anarchists go Shopping
Source: www.frontpagemag.org; Published: March 17, 2003; Author: Brian Sayre

Ask Dr. Ridgley: What's the Post-War Left to Do?
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: March 14, 2003; Author: Stanley K. Ridgley, Ph.D.

ANSWER's Steering Committee: Traitors, and Commies, and Jew-haters - oh my!
Source: FrontPageMagazine.com; Published: March 12, 2003; Author: Ryan Anderson O’Donnell

"Workers World Party", Other Leftist Orgs Paying For Protests
Source: Fox News Channel; Published: March 12, 2003

Where were critics during Kosovo?
Source: Washington Times; Published: March 11, 2003; Author: Larry Elder

Useful Idiots And Useless Arguments: The Depressing Iraq War Debate
Source: Toogood Reports; published: March 10, 2003; Author: W. James Antle III

Anti-War Activists Map Their Strategy (FR mention)
Source: AP; Published: March 9, 2003; Author: Jeff Donn

Anti-War Or Anti-Reality?
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: March 5, 2003; Author: Paul E. Scates

Barbara Stanley: America: Land Of The Free, Even Free To Be Traitors
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: February 28, 2003; Author: Barbara Stanley

Congress Mulls Probe of Communists' Ties to Appeasement Movement, Radical Islam
Source: NewsMax.com; Published: February 28, 20003; Author:| Wes Vernon

Exposing the Anti-War Movement, Part I: MoveOn.org
Source: Citizens for Fair and Balanced Funding; Published: February 28, 2003; Author: David Ware

If antiwar protesters succeed (by Iraqi citizen)
Source: CS Monitor; Publisghed: February 26, 2003; Author: unsigned opinion

Marxist Groups in the Anti-War Movement
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: February 25, 2003; Author: Paul M. Weyrich

Anti-war Protestors: Shades Of Stupidity
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: February 21, 2003; Author: Rachel Marsden

Who's Paying for It All? [re: anti-war demostrations]
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: February 18, 2003; Author: J. Michael Waller

Anti-War Protestors Are Warmongers for Our Enemies
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: February 11, 2003; Author: Alex Epstein

The Peace Movement’s Mumia Connection
Source: National Review; Published:| January 28, 2003; Author: Byron York

Reds Still [re: The story no one wants to hear about the antiwar movement]
Source: National Review; Published: January 23, 2003; Author: Byron York

[anniegetyourgun]

Can't be repeated enough:

"In sum: 9/11 and the prospect of war against Saddam Hussein have exposed the Left's political self-delusion, intellectual bankruptcy, and moral turpitude."

[Sam Cree]

"The Left tries to overlook militant Islam's slightly un-socialist practices - such as its imposing religious law, excluding women from the workplace, banning the payment of interest, encouraging private property, and persecuting atheists."

Yeah, Islam is not exactly "egalitarian."

Danile Pipes writes with so much thought and clarity, that I have been surprised to see even the Left go after him, but they have.

But he's right, I am totally astonished at how the Leftists are not even pretending any more. They are really out in the open for sure. Even so, they continue to get the support of big media.

[baseballmom]

I read this yesterday or the day before. Excellent article. Rush is reading from this now.

[baseballmom]

Thanks for putting all these articles in one spot. Bookmarking for future reference.

[anniegetyourgun]

I heard Rush read this. The only thing he failed to say is that these Leftists (and I include Daschle in that after his recent anti-American statements) make up a 'sleeper cell' in this country.

[Ga Rob]

"Even so, they continue to get the support of big media".

That support will not last. There are several reasons for this, in my opinion. 1) Bottom line the media is buisness. I believe that eventually the "media" will begin to feel effects in the pocketbook. 2)They cannot continue to tell on the leftist side of the story. The fact that we are here and informed is proof of that, it goes back to the pocketbook.3)See above.

[Sam Cree]

Hope you are right, then. The success of Fox is definitely an indication that you could be.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

I now refer to the Democratic Party as the "Donner Party", named after the ill-fated wagon train that got stranded while going to the west coast in the 1800's. They had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive the winter.

It seems that the Democratic party has been taken over by the far left.

Witness the boos that John Kerry got last week in California when he advocated military force in Iraq.

Witness the election of Nancy Pelosi to the House leadership.

Witness the big applause that Paul Wellstone's kids got when making bombastic speeches at their father's funeral.

The demographics are against the Democrats. The baby boomers are getting older, and the older you get, the more tendency you have to be conservative.

I am really going to enjoy watching the socialist Democrats slowly fade from any power they once had.

[Sam Cree]

Hope you are right, Ronaldus.

Pelosi is pretty much of a socialist, is she not? And isn't Daschle an old left wing extremist left over from the 60's?

The Left is really going with a full court press these days, IMO, they are risking it because they have realized that the president is a man of vision. They are driven by their fear of what his vision can accomplish. W is bold, and very capable of being ruthless in his pursuit of the enemies of America. I hope and pray that the risks he is taking, that he must take because doing nothing is more of a risk, will pay off.

I believe the Left, and the Democrats who are part of it, are desperately afraid that W will be successful.

[expatpat]

The Left tries to overlook militant Islam's slightly un-socialist practices......

The socialists are stupidly forgetting that they are the first ones the Islamists would go after, for their support of atheism, feminism, and licentiousness, stands which the Islamists most hate.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

The left will never succeed. If they get everything they want, what will that entail?

A health care system like Canada's? What a joke.

An economy like France and Germany's welfare state, where unemployment is constantly in the double digits? What a joke.

A tax system like Sweden's? Heck, hypocritical Hollywood celebrities are establishing residence in Colorado to avoid high California state income taxes. What a joke.

America will never adopt the welfare state. There is too much reward to be had for working hard, having ambition and taking risks.

[oyez]

Given the chance tthe first thing militant islam would shut down would be Hollywood and leftist academia.

[expatpat]

Exactement!

[Sam Cree]

Well, if the Left were to succeed, they would be a failure, in that I agree.

After all socialism, since it in itself cannot produce wealth, requires the presence of capitalism on which it must feed as a parasite.

However, I am not so sanguine as you that they cannot one day be successful in taking control here by appealing, as they do now, to avarice, envy and greed. England, the home of the individual freedoms and traditions that are the foundation of America, has pretty well captitulated it seems.

'Course they do not have a constitution as we do, only a centuries old tradition. But I think our Constitution could lose its ability to protect us if we all choose to ignore it, as the Democrats are already doing.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

I am sanguine because there are signs of hope. Take the recent referendum in Oregon ( a liberal bastion) to implement socialized health care in the state. It got voted down by 80% of the populace!

[Sam Cree]

"It got voted down by 80% of the populace!"

Cool.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

Speaking of Oregon, here is a recent editorial in this weeks Barron's financial magazine....

"State's Rights
Oregonians made their own decisions about school funding

IF IT WEREN'T for the cartoon strip "Doonesbury," we might never have heard that an indifferent cowboy hat in the White House is responsible for the death of public education in Portland, Ore. By the time news from Oregon reaches our corner of the Eastern Seaboard, it is usually drowned out by the incessant clamor generated in California. It took a comic strip to let us know that, for lack of funds, Portland would have to close its schools five weeks early this year.

"Mr. President," the cartoon hat is asked at a cartoon press conference, "how do you justify a costly, discretionary war when we can't even afford to keep our schools open." The hat replies that it's all part of his education policy, which is "Leave no child behind, except in Oregon and a few other loser states."

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau milked the situation for laughs at the hat's expense in nine daily strips. Imagine our surprise when we found that his hat's description of Oregon was on target. Loser state, indeed.

The crisis in public funding for education in Portland and most of the rest of Oregon was deliberately constructed and approved by the voters, who made the state income tax the source of 70% of school funding and limited local property tax rates to 0.5%, who turned down a state referendum for an emergency income-tax increase when times got tough, who have made a sales tax anathema in the state, and who have decided that being 17th in the nation in total dollars expended per pupil is good enough, and maybe a little too good.

They made their choices. If the hat fits, Oregonians should wear it."""

END of editorial

Looks like people in Oregon still have a few things to learn.