LIBANON | 2006-07-05
LibAnon makes several good points on my saying liberals will switch to pro-missile defense for Israel:
NOT SPAM
I found the Stormfront version of your post, and you were a lot clearer there. I now see that I was right the first time. You're saying that the American left will about-face on Star Wars because missile defense is now good for Israel.
Either way, I disagree with your analysis. You seem to think Left and Right are distinct movements. They are not. They are distinctions WITHIN movements. Every political movement — Zionism, liberalism, communism, even Nazism — has both left and right wings. When a movement achieves its objectives, one of those wings is purged. It never fails. That is how political movements work.
It is to the credit of idealists that they tend to misunderstand this, but even if they're wrong for admirable reasons, they're still wrong. Jews who remain on the Left today are good examples. They all grew up denouncing racism and fascism. So now that Israel has become the world capital of racism and fascism, they condemn Israel. This is very naive. The more worldly-wise among them, like David Horowitz, know that the difference between Left and Right is a matter of tactics, not principles. So like chameleons, they know how to change color when the environment changes. Idealists who cannot do this end up fighting for their enemies, and are finally thanked by being destroyed.
Comment by LibAnon
In the 1970s, relative to Communism, the left and right WERE different. Yet I published a book exactly thirty years ago denouncing both, please note the title:
A Plague on Both Your Houses
I complained there that conservatives will vote for ANY military expenditure. Liberals voted against all military expenditures that might hurt the USSR. This was so long ago that George Will made some sense then. He described the pro-Defense, Henry Jackson Democrats as "keeping American armed forces strong enough to defend Israel." They are now neo-conservatives.
It would help a bit if you and Joe would note what I said, though I am the last to have a right to that complaint. I said the liberals like Kennedy would be reversing themselves when they go from decades of denouncing missile defense to supporting it now that Israel is threatened. Conservatives will not be reversing themselves because they have always voted for ANY military expenditures.
This is a small historical change I expect to see. I thought I would mention it. It is NOT a declaration that TODAY there is difference between left and right.
Conservative spoksesmen, especially at National Review, now unanimously agree that those who founded NR were WRONG. They agree that liberals were the only true faith until 1970. But obviously this represents a change of personnel.
In the 1960s, there were actually pro-segregation articles in NR, one by Ernst Van Den Haag of the New School for Social Research in New York (Yes, I knew him, too). Now the conservatives leave more slime on the floor when it comes to race than liberals do.