Monday, September 24, 2007
Oh wow, just when you think you've read it all from the Globe's James Carroll, he goes one step further. Now it's George W. Bush's fault that Iran isn't with us any more. That's right, Iran, because everyone knows their regime's sincere empathy for us after 9/11 had them supporting us until the president overstepped: N.Y. site transcends boundaries
It was George W. Bush who transformed Ground Zero from a site toward which the world looked with empathy for American pain into a hypernationalistic symbol of a singularly American victimhood. Sept. 11, 2001, became our wound alone, and New York's ravaged precinct became a restricted preserve, as global sympathy for the United States curdled into fear of it.
What if, instead of shunting Ahmadinejad aside as one unworthy to enter the sanctuary of our national trauma, we Americans had said, "Yes - stand here with us. Look at what threatens the universal future if we do not find other ways to relate to each other than with contempt. Relive that horrible September morning with us, when the rank evil of terrorism showed itself with such clarity that the human family, decidedly including the Iranian nation, stood together against it. Let solidarity be the meaning of this place."...
If only we'd welcome him here to hold hands and sing kumbaya... How naive can you get? Ahmadinejad isn't coming here to learn, he's coming to teach.
The kicker is the conclusion:
Meet the modern Left. The patience of Job for foreign murderers, nothing for domestic disagreements. Shame on the Globe for continuing to give column space to this unfortunate deranged man.
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, p.39
I think this is all insane. Insane. The spectacle of a person who says it's ok to "question the Holocaust" and that they don't have gays in Iran, being applauded at a top level American university, is CRAZY.
What is wrong with people?
By the way as many of you know I'm not exactly a right winger. So maybe I am even more disturbed than the Right, which chalks this up to Leftism As Usual.
But it isn't. It isn't.
Some highlights from the event:
-Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,'' Bollinger said, to loud applause.
-He said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant.
-When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous,'' Bollinger said."
-“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you have in your country … I don’t know who’s told you we have it.â€
-"... women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom..."
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2007/09/here-is-ahmadineblog-continuing.html
Damn, I should NOT have read the Carroll piece after I ate. Now I really feel ill..........
BHG
Sophia,
You may well be an Old Left remnant or revivalist, harking back to the days of presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, before the 1960's, before Western Marxism, a.k.a. the New Left, took over. I have nothing but respect for those Leftists. But their camp has been thoroughly hijacked, staining the very term, "Left-wing" for the foreseeable future.
(I'm right-wing on most counts, but my views on economy are centrist, meaning "Employ the best policy for the current situation".)
Well I'm old alright:) And getting older by the minute!
I did grow up in an idealistic, leftist household, where the connection between us as individuals and the world was constantly reinforced, where there were stories of the Depression, stories of the struggle to defend working people, little people, minorities. We didn't take a bite of food without thinking of hungry people in China. We were raised and trained to Make A Contribution - that it is vital to give something to the world.
We marched for civil rights and I watched as my poor single (divorced) mother fought for respect at her serious, challenging job - a job that few women held in the 1950's: art director for a major printing company. She was grossly underpaid and I know she had to cope with the "office politics" of powerful males. We lived in a $90/month basement apartment yet we never missed a trip to the museum or a concert; one of her heroes was FDR, creator of the WPA. We somehow had money for art lessons, ballet lessons, music lessons, and of course we went to Hebrew school. We visited a friend of my mom's, an old Russian Jewish lady, Mrs. Klein, who played the mandolin. I think she reminded my mom of her own mother. We heard stories of the pogroms in Russia, of the flight to America.
Implicit was the fear of poverty, of state power and abuse. The arts were sacred - a way of "making a contribution". "To each what he needs, from each what he has to offer" - this was a mantra that made sense to me then and still does. We read about the kibbutzim, about the heroic fight to reclaim the land, and wept when Israel was attacked. My grandfather had sent pennies, put pennies in the blue boxes for the Jews in the Mandate, all through Depression and Holocaust and war, even when he lost his house in the Crash. When he was an old man he made aliyah and planted a tree in Eretz Israel: the highpoint of a long life that began in the Pale and ended in L.A., but only after he'd made a bus and plane tour of the entire US, to say good-bye to his large and scattered family.
He died at 96. Blessings, Grandpa! I miss you!
From this courageous little housepainter who loved the arts, who had the guts to walk out of Russia, away from the pogroms and into the future, we learned about worker's rights, kindness to the elderly, care for animals, for women's rights, security for minorities, food for the poor and respect for peaceful, evolutionary, democratic means.
That's how I think of the Left. I think of these brave people with their shining ideals.
This "new Left," I don't know from.