At last, a liberal has called out the phoney liberals who are quick to condemn the so-called “atrocities” committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan but turn a blind eye to the 48 years of murders and human rights abuses committed in Cuba by their poster boy castro and his henchmen. In this quiz, the author, Sarah Baxter, challenges the typical liberals and progressives in today’s world to question who they defend and if these people and organizations are truly worthy of liberal “tolerance.”
“Don’t say you haven’t been warned, comrade, when you flirt with “revolutionary Islam” as if it were a mild form of liberation theology. But it is time, too, for Che to lose his secular halo. If he were still living, the chances are he would be another dictator like Castro, who has ruled Cuba with an iron fist for half a century but gets a pass from liberals because he provides a modest health service.”
The article is a little long, but I found it an interesting read.
As I have often said, the situation in Cuba (and in any country where people are oppressed and subjugated by a totalitarian ruler) is not a question of ideology but of human rights. It does not matter what someone like castro thinks about egalitarian land reform, or the benefits and pitfalls of a centralized socialist economy; what matters is that he has oppressed, maimed, tortured, and killed his people in order to remain in absolute power.
I do not care whether you are a liberal or a conservative—if you are a human who believes in the rights of other humans to be free, you must oppose monsters such as castro.
There is no argument that gives anyone the right to support tyranny.
This is outstanding, Alberto. Question number 6 sums it up: Can you be a people’s champion if your people can’t get rid of you?
I couldn’t agree with you more, Alberto. It goes beyond a left/right issue, it’s a HUMAN issue.
That is what I have always said, Dave. What worries me is that you would figure that liberals–of all people–would be first in line to denounce communist dictatorship atrocities. Unless, of course, those atrocities are being committed on what your typical liberal/progressive considers to be “less” than what they consider human.
This quote from the article I think pretty much sums up the unfortunate truth about liberals:
“The left are like old-style Tory imperialists, who believe rights are all very well for western Europe but not for Johnny Foreigner, and that the liberation of women is essentially for white-skinned women, not brown-skinned women.”
It is sad. They are worse than the right-wing biggots they despise because at least those do not hide their disdain and do not pretend to care.
Give me honesty over treachery any day.
Great article, including the poll! I think one thing that it got me to thinking about was the fact that the “left” used to (by “used to, we’re talking 30-40 years ago); A, have more common sense; and B, had more consistency. I’m not talking about the far left-like most extremists, “common sense” is a concept that escapes then totally-but rather the mainstream left. When I was a kid, most mainstream lefties felt Castro was bad news, even if they disagreed that an embargo was the best way to deal with him. They didn’t think Ho Chi Minh was any kind of hero, even if they didn’t agree that the Vietnam War was the best way to stop/contain him. They knew just as much as conservatives did that the way to stop terrorism isn’t to give the terrorists a great big hug and sing them songs from “Barney and Friends Greatest Hits”. To most lefties back then, something like female circumcision, for example, didn’t get a “pass” just because it was a part of a “different” culture.
Though I don’t consider myself a “conservative” (even though I do agree with conservatives on certain things, and in some areas go even further than most of them do), but rather a “libertarian-leaning independent”, I, like many folks in our society, was an ardent “lefty” as a kid and young adult. I think the reason I stopped being one was not so much because my core values or the way I looked at the world changed, as it was because the definition of what one supports if one’s a “lefty” changed.
Thank you for posting a link to the quiz. Many of the same people who would give Islam a pass on this quiz would also praise Castro for his “advanced” health care system. These same people most likely would also condemn Pinochet, cheerfully unaware that Pinochet got Chile from an Infant Mortality of ~60s to below 20/1000 births twice as fast as Castro did in spite of Chile ~ 1973 having about half the number of MDs per inhabitant that Cuba did ~1959.
While Pinochet left power after 16 + years, after nearly 49 years, sigue igual.
The “multi-cultis” who would give Islam a pass on this quiz have most likely never traveled to the Third World, and personally observed the effects of dysfunctional and oppressive political/social systems. To them, Islam Vs. the West is like choosing between chicken-fried steak, hummus, and pizza. They took the Barney song to heart, cheerfully unaware that their “tolerance” is not reciprocated.
If Castro were a right wing dictator, it wouldn’t matter if he provided free health care (even of good quality), free education (even if it involved much less political indoctrination than it does now) or free anything. “Liberals” would be on his case non-stop. They’re a bunch of hypocrites, at best, and the fact they’re so sanctimonious only makes it worse.
The focus of leftism’s foreign policy today would appear to be summed up in one phrase: Weaken America at all costs.
The desire to drag America down is nothing new, but the spectrum of peoples, nations and organizations the left is willing to ally itself with is much, MUCH wider. This is the inevitable result of automatically equating American democratic capitalism with white supremacism: you have to believe that any group that is not caucasian and/or not capitalist is automatically your friend because they must automatically be anti-American. (Except for Cuban Americans, of course — they’re supposed to go “say hello to Batista”.)
But when you invite a tiger into your house to kill a mouse, what happens when the mouse is gone?