NP Of interest

[barbara100 at jps.net]

I really enjoyed the article.  Anybody wanna discuss it? It flowed along
rather interestingly, but I got hung up on a couple of points, especially in
the excerpts Jbor posted. How does the writer jump to the conclusion that
the Left's real reason for hating America is because  "America stands for
the idea that people should be free to live by their own lights, regardless
of the opinions or convictions of others"? It seems like quite a leap.  Can
we even assume that that sentence plucked from the writings of political
theorist Chandran Kukathas was referencing the root cause of the Left hating
America?  I'm rather skeptical.  I mean I'm not familiar with he works of
Kakathas, but the sentence standing alone doesn't imply anything at all
about the Left.  And if it the theorist's quote has no relation to the
author's overall point about the Left, it doesn't serve the argument well.

And another thing that bothered me is how the author says, "...the very
genuine achievements of the Labor movement since World War II have been made
despite, rather than because of, their contribution" and then abruptly ends
the paragraph without so much as one example of how the Left impeded the
Labor movement's achievement (or at least I think "impeding" was the
implication).  It's subtly worded, but it's quite an accusation, and if
someone says it's true, they should be obligated to say how.  I certainly
don't know if it's true,  but I'm not inclined to take any writer's word for
it blankly.


>
> Extract:
>
> [...]
>
> The good news, however, is that the contemporary Left has learned the
> lessons of communism, and cleansed itself of any totalitarian impulse. As
a
> writer in the Times Literary Supplement remarked, a synonym for the "Third
> Way" would be: "Hayek won!" This was, of course, not the case, even in the
> 1970s, when there was a segue in the Labor Party from social democratism
> across to something much more sinister. These days, even those most wary
of
> Big Brother, and most committed to a market-based economy, can safely vote
> Labor.
>
> Here, I am speaking of the mainstream Left. The situation is completely
> different as regards the radical, or socialist, or anti-capitalist, or
> "intellectual" Left - the group that spends most of its seemingly ample
free
> time bitching about Labor's "sell-out". In fact, all of the very genuine
> achievements of the Labor movement since World War II have been made
> despite, rather than because of, their contribution.
>
> The virulently anti-American response by this group to the events on and
> since September 11 has demonstrated that Left intellectuals have lost
> neither their instinct for collaboration, nor their talent for dressing
that
> instinct in the phoney language of concern. Even if their rote-learnt list
> of American crimes were entirely accurate - and it is anything but - it
> would not really matter, because those are not their real reason for
hating
> America.
>
> Their real reason was summed up in a single sentence by the political
> theorist Chandran Kukathas: "America stands for the idea that people
should
> be free to live by their own lights, regardless of the opinions or
> convictions of others."
>
> [...]
>
> best
>
> p.s. Kudos to Dave Monroe for an illustrious opening to the SLSL.
>
>