Draining the Swamp

Brought to my attention by the author (and sometime reader of my blog) Kerry Langer, this article in The Australian :

GRIPPING a book by Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez crosses himself and calls George W. Bush the devil - at the same time vowing solidarity with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Strange times indeed when Chomsky can be embraced by supporters of Islamo-fascism in their struggle against the US as Great Satan.

On the home front, the cacophony of voices bewailing and predicting disaster, instability and civil war across the Middle East has reached fever pitch. "Left" opponents of the war have allied themselves with many on the Right who initially supported the war but subsequently became panic-stricken at the reality of the radical changes unleashed by neo-con policy.
...
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.

Quite simply: It's no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.

As they say, RTWT. Read The Whole Thing.

Now Kerry and I disagree on many things. It's an objective fact that Israel in the past has had a "reformed" terrorist, one Menachem Begin, as leader. Nonetheless, and despite Israel being not just imperfect, but historically far too imperfect for comfort, I view the prospects of a Palestinian state as dim, simply because so many young Palestinians have imbibed Judenhass for too many generations.
My view on the current regime in Vietnam is similarly jaundiced: they disposed of the unspeakable Khmer Rouge, that much I will praise them for, and highly too. But little else. "Not as bad as I feared they would be" is the best I can say.

And yet... as Kerry wrote to me in a followup e-mail :

We disagree on a lot (politically) but I still think that in these strange times we have some important things in common. I am particularly fed up with the pseudo-left and think those of us who bother to actually think about the world have a lot to learn from each other by attempting to intelligently explore our different perspectives.

Exactly - and we of the Right should be examining the behaviour and philosophies of the True Left, now they've been differentiated from the Moonbats. They've had the courage to examine "their own side" and criticise where criticism is due. We should do the same. If we're supposed to be the pragmatists, let us examine areas where our own cherished doctrines don't actually work, and if necessary, change them.

We may disagree of methodologies, but we agree in ends. Unlike some....



See what I mean? It's no longer Left vs Right so much these days as Sane vs Insane, Rational vs Irrational.