New reverse McCarthyism
Jan 28, 2008 9:43:10 GMT -5
Post by Disgruntled70sHab on Jan 28, 2008 9:43:10 GMT -5
Man, I wish I could write like this.
January 27, 2008
New reverse McCarthyism
Anyone who disagrees with leftists is a warmonger, hates the poor and opposes social justice
By ANGELO PERSICHILLI
Canada is at a political, social and economic crossroads.
We need to make bold decisions about our place in the world, the renewal of our economy, our changing demography.
We need to choose the kind of government and the type of leaders who will best preserve what we have built over the centuries, while acknowledging and addressing the changes taking place inside and outside our borders.
In order to make these decisions, we need an honest and profound debate on our country's values.
Unfortunately, that debate is being muzzled by a reverse form of McCarthyism.
That's how it works with McCarthyism. You pick a fight, demonize your opponents and identify them with a nasty enemy in order to shut them up.
That's what the right-wing American Sen. Joseph McCarthy did to those who stood in his way in the early 1950s, smearing them as communists and traitors.
Today, we live with a reverse McCarthyism.
It started when the baby boomers crowded into universities.
Some embraced business and capitalism but others decided to dedicate themselves to social causes, following the preaching of Herbert Marcuse, "the father of the New Left," and similar figures.
Once their schooling was over, business-oriented boomers started an era of unprecedented economic achievement, but often without policies to protect the less capable.
Meanwhile, many of their left-wing contemporaries remained in academia, monopolizing the culture and turning universities into assembly lines popping out the cloned, ideological grandchildren of Marcuse.
One day, when my son was attending university, he inexplicably stayed home. I asked him why he wasn't in class. He told me his professor had taken the day off to demonstrate against George Bush in Quebec City.
Many of those who came off these educational assembly lines, inspired by Marcuse and his like, are today quite successful. We see lots of them in politics, in universities and in media newsrooms.
They have not simply become the apostles of left-wing culture. Rather, they are the culture and, according to them, anyone who disagrees with their ideas is a warmonger, hates the poor, opposes social justice. Their New McCarthyism is actually McCarthyism in reverse.
Of course, they're not physically dangerous, not violent revolutionaries, like the Red Brigades. There are no Che Guevaras among them.
In fact, they live like everyone else, taking advantage of all that a "capitalist" society can offer. They pollute the environment just like the rest of us.
But what they do most of all is talk. And write. And write. And talk.
Indeed, they never actually "do" anything. They are what we used to call in North America and still call in Europe, the "radical chic."
They shape any societal debate before it begins, establishing the ground rules strictly on their terms.
They declare themselves the "environmentalists," "pacifists," "progressives," "reformists," "democrats," fighting for peace, defending the poor from the rich, the "ethnics" from the "racists" and the planet from everything -- from pandemics to pollution.
But they never tell us what to do in any detail, only that those who disagree with them are "capitalists," "warmongers," "racists" and "deniers."
They hate complex thinking such as: "I don't like many of Bush's policies, but I believe we should remain in Afghanistan."
A PACKAGE DEAL
To them, it's a package deal. You're either against the war, or in favour of Bush and Stephen Harper killing innocent children.
They tell us to "celebrate our differences" but that we can never identify what those differences are, much less criticize any of them.
Do that and you're a "racist," guilty of "ethnic profiling."
Fortunately, things are changing. These pseudo-revolutionaries of the 1960s, who challenged everything their parents stood for, branding them as bourgeois and reactionary (while enjoying all the comforts their parents' hard work provided to them), are being flushed out of the system with the passage of time.
They've even started to taste their own medicine. Ironically, the younger generations consider them "demode" (old-fashioned). Their doctrines are fading.
I hope we don't swing back to McCarthyism, with its knee-jerk demonization of these formerly chic preachers of the left.
I hope we regain the ability to debate issues openly and honestly, to not have to choose between "Bush and bin Laden."
Because all of us should be able to criticize and debate openly again, without the fear of being labelled racists and warmongers.
The link
January 27, 2008
New reverse McCarthyism
Anyone who disagrees with leftists is a warmonger, hates the poor and opposes social justice
By ANGELO PERSICHILLI
Canada is at a political, social and economic crossroads.
We need to make bold decisions about our place in the world, the renewal of our economy, our changing demography.
We need to choose the kind of government and the type of leaders who will best preserve what we have built over the centuries, while acknowledging and addressing the changes taking place inside and outside our borders.
In order to make these decisions, we need an honest and profound debate on our country's values.
Unfortunately, that debate is being muzzled by a reverse form of McCarthyism.
That's how it works with McCarthyism. You pick a fight, demonize your opponents and identify them with a nasty enemy in order to shut them up.
That's what the right-wing American Sen. Joseph McCarthy did to those who stood in his way in the early 1950s, smearing them as communists and traitors.
Today, we live with a reverse McCarthyism.
It started when the baby boomers crowded into universities.
Some embraced business and capitalism but others decided to dedicate themselves to social causes, following the preaching of Herbert Marcuse, "the father of the New Left," and similar figures.
Once their schooling was over, business-oriented boomers started an era of unprecedented economic achievement, but often without policies to protect the less capable.
Meanwhile, many of their left-wing contemporaries remained in academia, monopolizing the culture and turning universities into assembly lines popping out the cloned, ideological grandchildren of Marcuse.
One day, when my son was attending university, he inexplicably stayed home. I asked him why he wasn't in class. He told me his professor had taken the day off to demonstrate against George Bush in Quebec City.
Many of those who came off these educational assembly lines, inspired by Marcuse and his like, are today quite successful. We see lots of them in politics, in universities and in media newsrooms.
They have not simply become the apostles of left-wing culture. Rather, they are the culture and, according to them, anyone who disagrees with their ideas is a warmonger, hates the poor, opposes social justice. Their New McCarthyism is actually McCarthyism in reverse.
Of course, they're not physically dangerous, not violent revolutionaries, like the Red Brigades. There are no Che Guevaras among them.
In fact, they live like everyone else, taking advantage of all that a "capitalist" society can offer. They pollute the environment just like the rest of us.
But what they do most of all is talk. And write. And write. And talk.
Indeed, they never actually "do" anything. They are what we used to call in North America and still call in Europe, the "radical chic."
They shape any societal debate before it begins, establishing the ground rules strictly on their terms.
They declare themselves the "environmentalists," "pacifists," "progressives," "reformists," "democrats," fighting for peace, defending the poor from the rich, the "ethnics" from the "racists" and the planet from everything -- from pandemics to pollution.
But they never tell us what to do in any detail, only that those who disagree with them are "capitalists," "warmongers," "racists" and "deniers."
They hate complex thinking such as: "I don't like many of Bush's policies, but I believe we should remain in Afghanistan."
A PACKAGE DEAL
To them, it's a package deal. You're either against the war, or in favour of Bush and Stephen Harper killing innocent children.
They tell us to "celebrate our differences" but that we can never identify what those differences are, much less criticize any of them.
Do that and you're a "racist," guilty of "ethnic profiling."
Fortunately, things are changing. These pseudo-revolutionaries of the 1960s, who challenged everything their parents stood for, branding them as bourgeois and reactionary (while enjoying all the comforts their parents' hard work provided to them), are being flushed out of the system with the passage of time.
They've even started to taste their own medicine. Ironically, the younger generations consider them "demode" (old-fashioned). Their doctrines are fading.
I hope we don't swing back to McCarthyism, with its knee-jerk demonization of these formerly chic preachers of the left.
I hope we regain the ability to debate issues openly and honestly, to not have to choose between "Bush and bin Laden."
Because all of us should be able to criticize and debate openly again, without the fear of being labelled racists and warmongers.
The link
