{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives... where Mike is totally out of control and needs to be stopped at all costs!}
{Visit Dan's blog at danielbielak.blogspot.com}
Every once in awhile I like to front page a comment that looks promising for discussion. I very much hope that Dan will not mind if I front page this comment and discuss it at some length. Dan writes:
Until recently, I always took for granted that I was "liberal". To me the phrase "ultra liberal", still, despite what has been happening among, and to, and by, what I now call the so-called "Liberal Left", does not really have, for me, negative connotations. To me the phrase "ultra liberal", still, has kind of the same connotation as the phrase "ultra good".
However, I no longer consider myself to be "liberal". I have learned certain things that I didn't know at the time when I thought of myself as being "liberal". Seeing the behavior of the contemporary Left, and hearing and reading the words of people such as Thomas Sowell (a former Socialist, by the way) has caused me to become aware of certain things that I wasn't aware of before, and has broadened my horizons -- my knowledge and understanding.
For the record, I do consider myself a liberal because on the issues (and it's the issues that count) I fall on the liberal side of the equation. The term "liberal" has shifting meanings and shifting connotations, but from a classical standpoint, as well as from a contemporary standpoint, I am a liberal.
The classical meaning, i.e., the 18th and 19th century meaning of "liberal" means favoring democracy, a free press, free market capitalism, freedom of religion, and so forth. This is what the western system (and the Constitution of the United States) is founded upon. It represents the western political Enlightenment in opposition to the "Old Regime" of European feudalism. By this definition Ronald Reagan was also a liberal.The contemporary meaning of "liberal," however, as it emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, is what we might call "rights liberalism." Women's rights. The rights of minorities. Gay rights. And so forth. That being the case, I am a liberal in the contemporary sense, as well, since I favor universal human rights and freedom of opportunity for all people, including ethnic and sexual minorities.
Part of the problem that we have is that western "progressives" have given up on universal human rights in favor of the multicultural ideal. This means that they have sold Jews, women, and Gay people in the Middle East entirely down the river. The contemporary left has, thus, abandoned its entire reason to be. Once western feminists started talking about how the burka is liberating for Muslim women, it was all over. The progressive-left has been unable to reconcile its fundamental contradictions and thus no longer stands for anything. This is why we see essays on large progressive sites like Daily Kos lauding the fascist, sexist, homophobic, and genocidal Muslim Brotherhood as something akin to a civil rights organization.However, I do not consider myself to be "Conservative". The political party associated with the contemporary "Conservative" movement -- the Republican Party -- is still headed by members of the bigoted selfish supremacist "Establishment" social class. However, the ideas and agenda of the contemporary "Conservative" movement is, in fact, mainly Classical Liberal.
The political views that I hold are Classical Liberal.
I am not a "conservative" either.
The Western Left, as a whole, has become a populist totalitarian racist movement, and has allied itself with a huge global racist genocidally anti-Jewish, totalitarian, supremacist, imperialist, world-domination-seeking, political movement -- the Islamic supremacist political movement -- a revival of authoritative Islam. Furthermore, the political party of the Left in the United States of America -- the Democrat Party -- has come to be controlled by wealthy actual Marxist Radical totalitarians and their organizations.
The progressive-left is, as Dan notes, the most racist political movement in the west today, due to the fact that they consider people of color, particularly Palestinians, to be so inferior that they cannot be held to normative standards of human decency. This is what has been called "humanitarian racism" and it is just as pernicious as the more traditional forms of racism that the progressive-left claims to oppose. Furthermore, the progressive-left does have totalitarian instincts which we constantly see on an individual basis, as well as from the kind of collectivist inclinations which led many on the left to support Soviet Communism in the early-middle part of the last century.Republican supposedly "Conservative" political candidates have, at least, the pressure of their constituency to uphold the U.S. Constitution against the efforts of the purveyors of Sharia. Democrat so-called "Liberal" candidates are colluding with, and enabling, the purveyors of Sharia.
This is correct.
There are elements in the progressive movement that have joined with radical Jihadis in opposition to the Jewish people, and the Jewish state of Israel, as we see in the BDS movement. We also saw it in the flotilla nonsense from over a year ago, in which progressive racists such as Alice Walker joined with actual Jihadis in an effort to confront Jews on the high seas.
Their progressive message to us was, "Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz!"
I now choose to support Republican supposedly "Conservative" political candidates rather than Democrat so-called "Liberal" candidates.
I choose to support Winston Churchill rather than Benito Mussolini.
Ignorant, bigoted, indoctrinated, totalitarian, racist so-called "Liberal" Leftists may call me a "warmonger" -- even though I disapprove of any and all violent action, and even though I am advocating for beneficial non-violent skillful actions.
In the 1930's, self-professed "Liberal" "Pacifists", and many Socialists, excused and defended the Nazi regime of Germany and called any people who expressed opposition to the Western collusion with the Nazi regime of Germany "warmongers".
Unlike Dan I am not a principled pacifist and believe, given the history of the Jewish people and the ways in which both Christians and Muslims have kept our numbers artificially small over the course of many centuries, that Jewish people have a right and an obligation to stand up for ourselves against aggression.
In today's world the primary aggression against the Jewish people is Muslim aggression in the Middle East, which is the very source of Palestinian grievances. The Palestinians, and their western-left allies, generally blame the Jews for Palestinian social and economic dysfunctions, claiming that it is Israeli oppression which is the source of those dysfunctions.This is false.
The source of Palestinian social and economic dysfunctions is the long history of Arab-Muslim race-hatred toward, and oppression of, the Jews of the Middle East. The reason that there is a so-called "occupation," which is to say, the reason that there are checkpoints and the security barrier, is because Jewish people, given our history, reserve the right to protect ourselves.
Until such a time as their Koranically-inspired aggression abates they will continue to live in the poverty and misery that their own hatred toward us creates.
We must, however, stop blaming ourselves for the consequences of their hatred.
Their hatred toward us is not our fault. It was never our fault and it is still not our fault.
Israel is not perfect, but it is a far better place than most countries on this Earth.
We need to remember that.
{Visit Dan's blog at danielbielak.blogspot.com}
