Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Scared "Right"
If you read blogs, you will frequently come across the argument that "leftists" and "liberals" are people who are scared and afraid; afraid of offending anyone and wanting to appease everyone. That's why we whinge about things like Guantanamo and secret torture prisons (often referred to as extraordinary rendition, but let's call a spade a spade).
The irony is that it's the complete opposite; it's the "right" that are the ones who are scared. It's too frightening for them to believe that the problems of the world aren't caused by a simple direct enemy who can easily be identified (flavour of the year being Muslim terrorists). To them, the "war" started on 9/11, and they attacked us so now we're attacking them, and whatever Goerge Bush does, we still have the moral high-ground regardless, cos we're the West!
They don't realise, or they don't want to understand, that these problems go back far earlier than that, and the enemy isn't everyone wearing a burka or talking in arabic; and that we're often just as evil (or worse) as the middle-east. They're afraid that if they start going down that route, they will come to the conclusion that maybe the West isn't so innocent and moral as we like to think, and we might have caused our own problems; and the solution can't be found down the warhead of a bomb.
The irony is that it's the complete opposite; it's the "right" that are the ones who are scared. It's too frightening for them to believe that the problems of the world aren't caused by a simple direct enemy who can easily be identified (flavour of the year being Muslim terrorists). To them, the "war" started on 9/11, and they attacked us so now we're attacking them, and whatever Goerge Bush does, we still have the moral high-ground regardless, cos we're the West!
They don't realise, or they don't want to understand, that these problems go back far earlier than that, and the enemy isn't everyone wearing a burka or talking in arabic; and that we're often just as evil (or worse) as the middle-east. They're afraid that if they start going down that route, they will come to the conclusion that maybe the West isn't so innocent and moral as we like to think, and we might have caused our own problems; and the solution can't be found down the warhead of a bomb.
