On the Democratic Underground site, various far- lefties debate whether it’s legitimate for Baathists to kill and attack American soldiers. Many think it is. My favorite comment from the centrists:
regardless of right or wrong.
we dont want to be associated with supporting the killing of our own troops.
that would be political suicide… we dont want to be associated with “supporting” Iraqi resistance.
something like that would make us (dems, libs, progs, whoever) look terrible and just give the opposition fuel.
Good to see their consciences at work.
DERBYSHIRE BANNED?: Or so he says. So a word of support from this quarter. I think even writers like Derbyshire should be free to talk at whatever college they wish to on any matter at hand. His views deserve an airing. Views like this:
Jewishness, open and proud, is a subversive force – subversive, that is, of any institution in which it becomes entrenched… There is no reason why an individual Jew might not be a good and honorable person, any more than there is any reason why an individual gentile might not be a liar and a thief. In matters social and organizational, though, the sum is often greater than the parts, and it is not the one we should focus on, but the many. This, unfortunately, is a very difficult thing to get people to do in a highly individualistic culture like ours. “What about Joe? He’s Jewish, but a finer human being you could never wish to meet.” Sure, we all know Joe; but his case tells us nothing about the probable behavior of an organization whose higher levels are 30, or 50, or 60 percent Jewish… Long-time readers of National Review may recall Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics, of which the second was: “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.” (Conquest actually offered the Church of England as an example of this law in action.) I should like to hypothesize a fourth law, which I am going to call Derbyshire’s Law. Any organization that admits frank and open Jews into its higher levels will sooner or later abandon its original purpose and give itself over to propagating and celebrating the Jewish ethos, and to excluding gentiles and denigrating Christianity.
Now do you think that someone who had written this would still be writing for national publications? But substitute gay references for Jewish ones and you have exactly a piece written by Derbyshire for National Review (I substituted the two terms). The anti-semitic and anti-gay tropes in this instance are interchangeable: the secrecy of Jews/gays, their capacity to exclude others, their ulterior motives, their clannishness, their alleged persecution of those outside the fold, their infiltration and take-over of previously upright institutions, and on and on. And the point of his argument is to defend discriminating against individual gays, regardless of their merits, solely on the basis of their homosexuality. Derbyshire then argues in defense of his right to speak at a college:
Curious to explore the meaning of the word “extreme” as it is understood in the minds of tenured academics at U.S. universities, I asked my intermediary for the names of some speakers who had been welcomed at that campus without incident. He named, among others, Angela Davis. Are you getting this? Derb – extreme. Angela Davis – mainstream.
The truth is that Derbyshire is no more extreme than Davis. But he is no less extreme either. Both indulge in the politics of hatred – she of the far left, he of the far right. And both deserve free speech.
The Dish 