Posted on 08/05/2003 9:18:39 AM PDT by johnqueuepublic
Shadow Boxing With Norm
By William A. Mayer
In an attempt to claw themselves a sliver of the moral high-ground now firmly under the dominion of conservatives, while at the same time admonishing the left with as little real fire as possible, Marxist professor Norman Geras - in an August 4 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal - berates his fellow comrades over their opposition to the Bush Administration’s war against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Geras makes three basic points:
- The left has a tradition of supporting human rights.
- The left’s opposition to the Iraqi operation can be traced to knee-jerk anti-Bush mindset.
- The left’s failure to effectively deal with Stalinism is its fundamental error.
If this is what passes for trenchant analysis by the left then maybe we ought to seriously entertain the thought of merely stepping back and nodding knowingly as the philosophy implodes.
To be more specific, Geras’ first point is absurd.
What the left does is give elaborate – Lewinsky like – lip service to the concept of human rights via such slack jawed lefty apologist icons as Amnesty International.
The left does not really support human rights; it rather uses human rights as a tool to demonize the real target, which is capital driven republicanism, small “r”.
The philosophy of the left – socialism in all its many hues, is anti-democratic & anti-individualistic.
The left does not believe in personal rights so much as group rights, group rights being so much easier to use as justification for the oppression of the individual – ends and means conflicts notwithstanding - allowing the “masses” to gang bang the supposed belle of the ball – the anomie driven worker bee.
In Mr. Geras’ 3,200-word shadow boxing session he hardly breaks a sweat, showcasing his minimal offensive and defensive skills as being perfectly matched. This, however, results with the protagonist/antagonist found reveling in satiety of rather meager proportions.
Geras’ second point – that the left hates Bush – demonstrates a firm grasp of the obvious, but it goes no deeper in attempting to explain why there is such visceral disdain for a man who has bent over backwards and sometimes even forwards to demonstrate his “new tone” to such little avail.
May we suggest - since we are operating under a deadline which has already come and gone – that the reason – aside from the election which was “stolen” from Gore’s putsch – is the fact that with nearly every fiber of his body, Bush exudes leftist antibodies – he is straight, soft spoken, married, stern yet not humorless, Christian, fearless, capitalistic and honest.
It is the Christian part that probably is the biggest countervailing force because it imposes a morality driven roadmap for action. It sees diversity and multiculturalism as false gods - idols really - erected precisely to kill the kind of ethics, which would give consideration of human rights its due.
In short, the left and the concept of true human rights have and always will be at war with each other.
Geras’ third point falls nearer the mark, and of course all three of his observations are merely differing facets on the same indictment - albeit possibly the most tepid indictment that could be offered – somewhat on the order of saying that Hitler had issues with those of the Jewish faith.
That Stalinism - three-quarters of a century after it commenced - is only now starting to be recognized by the left for the horror which it was, should stand as comment enough.
What Geras fails abysmally to do is to construct a critique of radical Islam as anti-democratic, anti-human rights, terrorist philosophy.
Islam is not mentioned once in the overly wordy essay, nor are the words terror or terrorism, yet this is the face most easily identifiable as being allied with the violative principles, which spawn human rights abuses in the first place.
The same can be said for socialism and Mr. Geras’ particular love affair with the Trotskyite sub-genre of Marxism - a philosophy which postulates continuous revolution - and which, not so surprisingly, got him bludgeoned to death in Mexico by Pavel Sudaplatov acting on orders directly from Joseph Stalin - in Mr. Geras’ eyes possibly his greatest sin.
Capitalistic republicanism and socialism are mutually exclusive; they are the matter and anti- matter of political physics and nothing, certainly not a gaseous essay by a UK Marxist, can ever change that.
Human rights have, and always will be, individually ordained by the Creator. Conservatives have a lock on the issue and that is, simply, that.
Grow up lefties, you will always have Vichy Paris.
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