Leaving The Left

Cigarette Smoking Man, from "Cancer World" (which is, by the way, one of my favorite unknown local blogs) has piece by Keith Thompson on "Leaving The Left". CSM notes:

This article deserves more than just a link and a passing blogstyle attaboy. It deserves a full length copy-paste plagiarization because I want to make sure people read it. It captures about 99% of why I myself can't swill the same political Kool-Aide as my fellow punk rockers and porn fans today:

So go go read the article, already.

It starts:

Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mitch at May 30, 2005 05:44 AM | TrackBack