Through the power of the telephone, I spent an hour last night on radios across Southern California through KABC's Al Rantel Show. We discussed Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and then moved to the broader theme of the anti-American impulse on the Left that I covered in Why the Left Hates America. A couple of fringe types called in to the show, and Al did a clever thing. He posed a question, something like: Who served as the greater threat, menace, danger to the world, Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush? Neither caller could bring themselves to say Saddam, nor could they, if I heard correctly, opt for Osama bin Laden when his name was substituted for Hussein's.
Think of how much you despise the terrorist Osama bin Laden or the tyrant Saddam Hussein. Many American leftists harbor that same hate for George W. Bush. I know this not merely because two talk-radio callers said as much to Al Rantel. I know this from interviewing hundreds of anti-war protestors, many of whom have said the same thing to me. However much John Kerry rubs you the wrong way, you would have to be out of your mind to draw a moral equivalence between him and Saddam Hussein or him and Osama bin Laden. Kerry's hardcore base, however, imagines similarities between America's president, on the one hand, and al Qaeda's leader and the most famous defendant in Iraq, on the other.
This is just something to think about as November approaches.
Such moral fanaticism is almost fascinating, if it weren't so scary. I have wondered at times in the last couple of years if we aren't going to see a return of the leftist terrorism of the early seventies. One thing worth noting is the extent to which the neo-right and the left share a similar penchant for moral demonization and bloodthirsty rhetoric.
I wonder what a leftist would say if someone asked them to think the following through: 1) Saddam is a tyrant and an extremely bad guy, 2) therefore the Iraqi people would have been just to and maybe should have deposed him through violence if necessary. I would think most on the left would agree with such a "right" to revolution and, for example, would think that the German officers were right to try and overthrow Hitler in 1944 in the Stauffenberg Plot.
3) Bush and his regime is at least as bad as Saddam . . . probably worse (in the left's opinion) so therefore . . .
That is my question, therefore what? Why does the left not see the logic of their hatred and demonization of Bush? Scary times I'd say when there are too few capable of proper moral perspective. Vote your conscience and for someone other than Bush (preferrably third party) yes, but drop the incoherent hate and get a grip.
*RIP Marlon Brando*
