Bryan Henderson Sticks It to the Left
I previously got into it a little with the folks at protestwarrior.com, and I have to say, while I can’t agree with much (any?) of their political platform, they get points for being rude and persnickety in a semi-entertaining way.
Anyway, I found the following story interesting: Operation Tiger Claw: Debriefing. I think I’m basically okay with this. I disagree pretty strongly with many of the views young Bryan Henderson is espousing, but I like his willingness to engage in public debate in a rational manner. We need more high school seniors like him.
June 25th, 2004 at 6:17 am
Although Henderson’s presentation is one-sided, I think he makes a valid point: simply that, while there were very good, reasoned arguments against the Iraq War, not many of them were marching down the street with signs. Anti-war politics has been hijacked by clowns years ago – if center left thinkers would confront this as directly as some right wingers have, the anti war movement might have meant more than silly sloganeering and nose rings to middle class voters.
This will become a big issue gain this Summer, when thousands of protestors will converge on the RNC convention to protest Bush and the war. Sadly, it won’t be reasonable, mainstream liberal thinkers marching around the convention hall. It will be ill-informed, dogmatic nuts like the ones in Henderson’s video. Once these cards hit network television wreaking havok, with their cute little masks and goofy signs, spouting Dead Kennedys-level political analysis to any TV camera in sight, too many voters will come away with the mistaken and unfair idea that the chaos of college leftism speaks for a mainstream liberal platform it doesn’t even resemble. If these protestors get wild, as some have already promised to do, a lot of people will mistake these jokers for Democrats, which they aren’t , and blame the party for their shenatigans. Hopefully, the DNC will do a better job distancing itself from extremist bozos than the mainstream liberal community has thus far.
Radical leftism, as practiced by the current protest culture, is as useful to American Liberalism as the PMRC was to American Conservatism.
A couple good, left-of center articles on this subject can be found at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j101501.html
and
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/16/protest/index_np.html
June 25th, 2004 at 6:26 am
I misspoke when I identified the film maker, Maloney, as Henderson, the highschool student. My apologies for writing these posts prior to my morning coffee.
June 25th, 2004 at 5:37 pm
Okeydokey, I just looked over the protestwarrior.com page, and I just feel like throwing a little political non-Euclidianism into the mix.
For the most part I am lefter than all youse dudes. I wrote a novel called Blues For Robots five years ago that covers much of the stuff on the lefty blogs. Hell, I don’t even believe in intellectual property any more (it’s part of the Right/fascist/corporate scam: see the brilliant essay Against Intellectual Property by Brian Martin at
http://deoxy.org/aip.htm ). And I’ve been onto the fascist master plan for years (see the book The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee). I voted for Nader in 2000 but only because I live in Massachusetts and knew it couldn’t hurt Gore in the electoral college. When Chimpy got inaugurated I drove there all alone to protest. So my liberal bonas are fide.
But I can’t understand why the liberals are so down on Israel. My position on Israel is closer to those conservative kids. As far as I can tell, they are right on this (if nothing else). The Arab states really have wished to throw the Jews into the Mediterranean for fifty years. There were more Jewish refugees after 1948 from Arabic countries than there were Arab refugees from Palestine. The difference is that Israel took in their refugees while the Arab governments cynically left their brethren in fetid camps so as to create a running sore on Israel’s flank. The Arabs, if they wanted peaceful coexistence, could have had it any time in the last half century. They are simply in the wrong.
Anyway, as the military writer James Dunnigan said, if Israel disappeared, there would be at least as much fighting between Arab rivals afterward.
It’s neither fair nor reasonable to ask the Jews to be a bunch of wimps. Hitler taught them what happens to wimpy Jews. Life might be simpler if they had all emigrated to the Amazon and made a New Israel there, but you play the cards you’re dealt. Even the Wall/fence seems like a good idea. How many bad bombings have happened in Tel Aviv lately? Exactly.
The irony of all this is that the long-running Jewish diaspora tragedy road show started out because, in A.D. 79, these guys were the Taliban. They were ungovernable. A contemporary commented that Roman soldiers could rob them and they would meekly put up with it, but they would tear the same soldiers limb from limb for setting foot in the temple. They’d stone you for saying the name of G-d out loud. And so on. The Romans didn’t destroy provinces or religions on a whim. The Empire was full of ethnic groups and creeds that managed to get along and not upset the civil order. But the Jews pushed them too far.
That’s some heavy karma. Twenty centuries later and they’re still paying for it. Their dues are paid, they learned their lesson, but they’re still expected to pay. Other religious extremists ought to take the hint, by the way. If civilization as a whole thinks Wahhabists, Taliban, or for that matter Unification followers or Southern Baptists, push the rest of the world too far, their offspring might be persecuted for a hundred generations.
Tom Buckner
June 28th, 2004 at 5:35 am
Many people are measured and bring up valid points and logical debate. The problem seems to be that, without a website, we’re written off.
December 30th, 2004 at 6:21 pm
Hi. I am Cemil Boyraz. I am a graduate student at Middle East Technical University, Media and Cultural Studies Master Program. I am conducting a thesis on Intellectual Property and Copyright Piracy.I noticed your site while I am erading an article of Bryan Martin who has become influential to me. I am planning to study in this issue further in my doctorate, however, I could not find a solution for my financial problems, don’t know how to finance it. What are the requirements to make an application to the university and what do I have to do to overcome financial limits? I would be happy if you help. Happy new year!