As I noted in passing below, the Guardian carries a 'CiF' article attacking the outcry against what is being euphemistically called 'enhanced patdown' at airports. The writer, Richard Adams, is taking up the classic fallacious stand-point that because it is the 'right-wing' objecting to it, it must be wrong. The straw-man goes 'if it was Bush doing it, then they wouldn't mind'.
It doesn't take a particularly elevated intellect to see over that position. Certainly, the easy retort is 'if Bush was doing it, you would mind.' But why waste time with playground point-scoring? The answer to that is, I suppose, because we're talking about the Guardian, and there's nothing else on offer.
What Richard Adams and his ilk cannot seem to do is form an opinion without first asking 'who's doing it to whom?' So consequently, since Obama got elected to the Whitehouse, they've had to make a screeching U-turn on pretty much everything Bush was doing. The wars, the bail-outs, the torture, the Patriot Act (renewed by Obama) and of course Guantalamo Bay continue. Adams won't tell you these things are good. He just won't mention them at all, except in the past.
The same tendencies are found on the other side of the sandpit, and to those of us who try to be consistent, it's difficult to avoid a smile to see, in England, the activist left-wing reemerge after sleeping, Rip van Winkel-like for the last 13 years, while Labour butchered our civil liberties. The same thing applies in reverse in America.
Holding a principled position means you do not ask 'what side's doing it?' It doesn't matter. The same rules apply to both sides.
It doesn't take a particularly elevated intellect to see over that position. Certainly, the easy retort is 'if Bush was doing it, you would mind.' But why waste time with playground point-scoring? The answer to that is, I suppose, because we're talking about the Guardian, and there's nothing else on offer.
What Richard Adams and his ilk cannot seem to do is form an opinion without first asking 'who's doing it to whom?' So consequently, since Obama got elected to the Whitehouse, they've had to make a screeching U-turn on pretty much everything Bush was doing. The wars, the bail-outs, the torture, the Patriot Act (renewed by Obama) and of course Guantalamo Bay continue. Adams won't tell you these things are good. He just won't mention them at all, except in the past.
The same tendencies are found on the other side of the sandpit, and to those of us who try to be consistent, it's difficult to avoid a smile to see, in England, the activist left-wing reemerge after sleeping, Rip van Winkel-like for the last 13 years, while Labour butchered our civil liberties. The same thing applies in reverse in America.
Holding a principled position means you do not ask 'what side's doing it?' It doesn't matter. The same rules apply to both sides.
2 comments:
As far as the left is concerned, these things only matter if they aren't in power. If they are in power, it's looking after our safety.
QM,
I don't think that's quite it. I see:
denial; they don't want to admit their authoritarian tendencies
counter-accusation; they want to point the finger at their enemies, the right-wing, who are far worse, they maintain
paranoia; they cannot admit their wrong, as this may threaten the greater good that only leftism can deliver.
But, as I say in the post, the right-wingers play the same game, or at least a similar game. Many of them were blind to Bush's massive violations of the Bill of Rights, and there is a continuity of agenda between supposedly opposing parties in government.
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