Monday, February 14, 2005

Backing Myself Up

This Boston Globe piece (Hat Tip: Instapundit) goes a long way towards backing up my description of the left in the Essayist #2. Observe:

What a strange moment for the left to lose faith in democracy. The Soviet Union and other Leninist dictatorships are gone in a puff of smoke. Democracy is taking root in Latin America. South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Thailand are all newly democratic. Throughout the 20th century, war and authoritarianism were inseparable. For 30 years, democracy and free markets have surged and no war has occurred anywhere on the scale ofKorea and Vietnam, let alone World War I and World War II.

But you see, that's the point. The Left is synonymous with Social Revolution, and the Social Revolution means attacking whatever authority happens to exist, "speaking truth to power," in its own tendentious phrase. Liberal democracy is only to be embraced when it's a means of sticking it to the Man. Once democracy has been established, it loses it's value, and becomes the new Man to be taken out.

Revolutions. At war. Dig?

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