Many members of the political Left around the world have moved to the Right, particularly, although not exclusively, after the stark challenge posed by the September 11th attacks on America. Many of these former Leftists are confused, perplexed and totally unaware of their own liberal tendencies. For these hesitant neo-neo-conservatives, fearful of falling back into old habits, what follows below may be of some help.
By use of a simple series of questions, any position or opinion can be correctly categorized by the newly-conservative.
As an example, we will apply the test questions to two trendy positions taken by those still on the Left, so that we can see how this works. One popular opinion among leftists - Greens, Communists, Animal Rights activists, anti-Globalists and pro-UN Globalists, etc. - is that Israelis are evil oppressors of defenseless Arabs; therefore, the Israeli brutal occupation causes Arab terrorism. Another well-known leftist/liberal opinion is that ethnic or racial profiling for security purposes is morally wrong, ineffective and racist, and should be abandoned in favor of egalitarian, random security checks.
How Do I Know If I Have Encountered a Leftist Opinion?
* Does it lack clear empirical evidence to back it up?
Israel: Statistics show that Israel has only improved the overall life of Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza since taking over those areas. Statistics also show that Israeli deaths at the hands of Arab terrorists have only increased as more land was placed under Arab authority - that is, the more the "occupation" retreated.
Profiling: Almost all terrorist attacks on Americans, in the continental United States and abroad, have been carried out by young, Muslim, Middle Eastern males. Scrutiny of people of that description would have most likely prevented some of the terrorist attacks on Americans. Israeli security measures on El Al airlines depend heavily on advance intelligence, including extensive profiling, and it has been, thus far, a very successful policy. On the flip side, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to indicate that asking a Chinese, female octogenarian to remove her shoes would have prevented a single terrorist incident.
* Is the main function of the position to make the holder thereof feel more righteous or better about himself?
Israel: Chanting slogans against "Israeli apartheid" certainly makes one who was not old enough to protest the real apartheid feel as if he is part of some supremely righteous act, despite the glaring foolishness of the comparison. Similarly, fighting "colonialism" by demanding that Jews be barred from living in parts of their ancestral land (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) is far more enjoyable than actually studying the objective facts of the region's history. After all, condemning the PLO for terrorism or fighting against the Syrian occupation of the entire state of Lebanon just doesn't feel nearly as good as bashing the Israelis -- who are so like Americans -- for imaginary crimes. Besides, it's far more personally dangerous to do the former than it is to do the latter.
Profiling: It certainly does feel good to champion the rights of the oppressed -- or even of the inconvenienced. It is true that a security policy that singles out Middle Easterners for closer security inspections may make some of those scrutinized feel unjustly harassed. One wonders, though, if the innocent, harassed person would have raised any objections whatsoever had security profiling prevented a bomb-toting Iranian, for example, from boarding his airplane. To paraphrase an Israeli friend of Syrian background: "I am the tripwire. If they stop me for closer inspection, I am not upset; on the contrary, I am grateful that someone is doing his job."
* Does the position have logical holes that are glaringly obvious?
Israel: If the Israelis are the oppressors for not creating a Palestinian state under the auspices of the PLO, what were the Jordanians and the Egyptians when they ruled Judea, Samaria and Gaza from 1948-1967? Furthermore, if the United Nations Palestine Mandate is the earliest international recognition of a nation of "Palestinians", then what are we to make of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which consists of two-thirds of the Palestine Mandate that was handed over to the British in 1920?
Profiling: When police are in search of suspected perpetrators of violent crimes, they do not hesitate to inform the public to be on the look out for "a Caucasian male, aged 25 to 35, of medium build, with blonde hair." It is known that terrorist agents are lurking in the United States, yet leftist "wisdom" would make it immoral to publicly identify them in any meaningful way -- until after it is too late, that is.
* Has a policy advocated based on the position in question consistently failed to achieve its stated goals every time it has been put into practice?
Israel: The Oslo Accords and the ten years of "peace processing" that followed have been one long, ongoing experiment carried out on the Israeli public. If that experiment was meant to test the hypothesis that land can be traded for peace with the Arabs, then it has been a catastrophic failure. In the ten years since Oslo, there has been far more anti-Jewish terrorism than in the ten years beforehand. More Jews have died in this decade of the "Israeli-Palestinian peace process" than died in the 1967 war that gave birth to the mistaken concept of "land-for-peace".
Profiling: In this case, it is a bit harder to see where the leftist agenda has been put into effect and failed, but it may be instructive to note that the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, did not lead to a massive intelligence gathering operation among Arab communities in the United States. Who knows what might have been uncovered at the time?
* Does the value of the opinion change depending on who is expressing it?
Israel: When the right-wing former tourism minister, the assassinated Rehavam Ze'evi, said that peace required that the Jewish and Arab communities separate from one another, he was labeled a racist. When former prime minister Ehud Barak, of the leftist Labor party, said Jews and Arabs can't live together and must separate, even appropriating a catch-phrase coined by Ze'evi ("Us - here. Them - there."), he was labeled a pragmatic, even brave, leader.
Profiling: When profiling is discussed among leftist lawyers, they inevitably attempt to show that the policy is racist, an affront to civil rights and a violation of the principle of equality before the law. On the other hand, those same lawyers generally defend affirmative action, which identifies applicants for jobs and admissions by race -- i.e., profiling -- as an eminently enlightened and sound legal practice.
Dear recovering leftist, if you notice that a certain policy position resonates with you, but can be described by most of the above parameters, then rest assured that you have fallen off the political wagon. Seek out a conservative friend to take your keys away immediately.
By use of a simple series of questions, any position or opinion can be correctly categorized by the newly-conservative.
As an example, we will apply the test questions to two trendy positions taken by those still on the Left, so that we can see how this works. One popular opinion among leftists - Greens, Communists, Animal Rights activists, anti-Globalists and pro-UN Globalists, etc. - is that Israelis are evil oppressors of defenseless Arabs; therefore, the Israeli brutal occupation causes Arab terrorism. Another well-known leftist/liberal opinion is that ethnic or racial profiling for security purposes is morally wrong, ineffective and racist, and should be abandoned in favor of egalitarian, random security checks.
How Do I Know If I Have Encountered a Leftist Opinion?
* Does it lack clear empirical evidence to back it up?
Israel: Statistics show that Israel has only improved the overall life of Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza since taking over those areas. Statistics also show that Israeli deaths at the hands of Arab terrorists have only increased as more land was placed under Arab authority - that is, the more the "occupation" retreated.
Profiling: Almost all terrorist attacks on Americans, in the continental United States and abroad, have been carried out by young, Muslim, Middle Eastern males. Scrutiny of people of that description would have most likely prevented some of the terrorist attacks on Americans. Israeli security measures on El Al airlines depend heavily on advance intelligence, including extensive profiling, and it has been, thus far, a very successful policy. On the flip side, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to indicate that asking a Chinese, female octogenarian to remove her shoes would have prevented a single terrorist incident.
* Is the main function of the position to make the holder thereof feel more righteous or better about himself?
Israel: Chanting slogans against "Israeli apartheid" certainly makes one who was not old enough to protest the real apartheid feel as if he is part of some supremely righteous act, despite the glaring foolishness of the comparison. Similarly, fighting "colonialism" by demanding that Jews be barred from living in parts of their ancestral land (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) is far more enjoyable than actually studying the objective facts of the region's history. After all, condemning the PLO for terrorism or fighting against the Syrian occupation of the entire state of Lebanon just doesn't feel nearly as good as bashing the Israelis -- who are so like Americans -- for imaginary crimes. Besides, it's far more personally dangerous to do the former than it is to do the latter.
Profiling: It certainly does feel good to champion the rights of the oppressed -- or even of the inconvenienced. It is true that a security policy that singles out Middle Easterners for closer security inspections may make some of those scrutinized feel unjustly harassed. One wonders, though, if the innocent, harassed person would have raised any objections whatsoever had security profiling prevented a bomb-toting Iranian, for example, from boarding his airplane. To paraphrase an Israeli friend of Syrian background: "I am the tripwire. If they stop me for closer inspection, I am not upset; on the contrary, I am grateful that someone is doing his job."
* Does the position have logical holes that are glaringly obvious?
Israel: If the Israelis are the oppressors for not creating a Palestinian state under the auspices of the PLO, what were the Jordanians and the Egyptians when they ruled Judea, Samaria and Gaza from 1948-1967? Furthermore, if the United Nations Palestine Mandate is the earliest international recognition of a nation of "Palestinians", then what are we to make of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which consists of two-thirds of the Palestine Mandate that was handed over to the British in 1920?
Profiling: When police are in search of suspected perpetrators of violent crimes, they do not hesitate to inform the public to be on the look out for "a Caucasian male, aged 25 to 35, of medium build, with blonde hair." It is known that terrorist agents are lurking in the United States, yet leftist "wisdom" would make it immoral to publicly identify them in any meaningful way -- until after it is too late, that is.
* Has a policy advocated based on the position in question consistently failed to achieve its stated goals every time it has been put into practice?
Israel: The Oslo Accords and the ten years of "peace processing" that followed have been one long, ongoing experiment carried out on the Israeli public. If that experiment was meant to test the hypothesis that land can be traded for peace with the Arabs, then it has been a catastrophic failure. In the ten years since Oslo, there has been far more anti-Jewish terrorism than in the ten years beforehand. More Jews have died in this decade of the "Israeli-Palestinian peace process" than died in the 1967 war that gave birth to the mistaken concept of "land-for-peace".
Profiling: In this case, it is a bit harder to see where the leftist agenda has been put into effect and failed, but it may be instructive to note that the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, did not lead to a massive intelligence gathering operation among Arab communities in the United States. Who knows what might have been uncovered at the time?
* Does the value of the opinion change depending on who is expressing it?
Israel: When the right-wing former tourism minister, the assassinated Rehavam Ze'evi, said that peace required that the Jewish and Arab communities separate from one another, he was labeled a racist. When former prime minister Ehud Barak, of the leftist Labor party, said Jews and Arabs can't live together and must separate, even appropriating a catch-phrase coined by Ze'evi ("Us - here. Them - there."), he was labeled a pragmatic, even brave, leader.
Profiling: When profiling is discussed among leftist lawyers, they inevitably attempt to show that the policy is racist, an affront to civil rights and a violation of the principle of equality before the law. On the other hand, those same lawyers generally defend affirmative action, which identifies applicants for jobs and admissions by race -- i.e., profiling -- as an eminently enlightened and sound legal practice.
Dear recovering leftist, if you notice that a certain policy position resonates with you, but can be described by most of the above parameters, then rest assured that you have fallen off the political wagon. Seek out a conservative friend to take your keys away immediately.