In a recent op-ed piece for the London Times, Oliver Kamm says it's time for the British (and American) Left to get serious about confronting the totalitarian ideology of radical Islam:
American voters seem intuitively to understand that the anti-totalitarian struggle is neither temporary, nor a distraction from bread-and-butter politics, nor the result of Western provocations against the Third World. It is the cause of our generation and it ought also to be an instinctive cause of the British Left. A politics that fails to place national security first cannot serve progressive ends. There is an authentic tradition on the British Left that understands that, and that needs to reassert itself.
The precedents date from the 1930s and 1940s. Having taken a long time to shed its illusions about the power of moral suasion against aggressive dictatorship, the Labour Party served patriotically in the wartime coalition. It then played an essential role in defending democratic parties and trade unions against Soviet expansionism.
Unfortunately, the American Left is preoccupied with Scooter Libby, Joe Wilson, and endlessly revisiting pre-war WMD debates, even as arson and violence spreads across Europe. and wedding parties are blown to smithereens in hotels in Amman, Jordan. Because no matter what happens, it's all Bush's fault. If only we realized that US foreign policy is the cause of the world's problems, we would issue a worldwide apology for our unjust overthrow of Saddam Hussein (justified by lies, all lies), leave Iraq immediately, sign the Kyoto Accord (which will stop global warming in its tracks) and let the United Nations take its rightful lead in managing global affairs, so we can join the rest of the world in fixing blame where it belongs - Israel.
To my fellow liberals: do you feel I just caricatured your position? Are you sure? Why is it that the Left is currently so fixated on Plamegate and pre-war intelligence that it can't take five minutes out from partisan politics to issue Tony Blair-like statements opposing the spread of a totalitarianism as virulent as any we saw in the 1930s? Here's a little suggestion from someone who had voted Democrat in every election up through 2002 and would like to again: it's possible (no, it's imperative) for the Democratic left to be foursquare opposed to totalitarianism and still be against the Right on fiscal and social policy, and even on the war. But if you expect to be in power again, you've got to show some glimmer of awareness of what we're up against and be willing to speak out against it unreservedly and unapologetically. At present, you have far more venom in your rhetoric for Bush, Rove et al than you do for Zarqawi and his ilk who are killing not only our soldiers but Iraqis and now Jordanians.
Where are the Democrats on the spread of this profoundly anti-liberal, anti-humanistic religious fundamentalism? The only voices I hear are from the Right. As I have noted previously, it is the major irony of our time that liberals have chosen to outsource the defense of liberalism to conservatives.
(Hat tip: Michael Barone)
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