> Instead, the American left--or at least a broad swath of it--is more
> alienated from its own national institutions than its counterparts in
> any other developed nation. Even its own national symbols have become
> anathema (what a warning signal when you cannot tolerate the sight of
> your own flag).
>
I recall that, in the sixties, we thought people who used the rhetoric
of the thirties were obsolete and irrelevant. History repeats itself.
Those who try to ape the thirties are mostly too old to affect the
left's public face. But here go the peaceniks. The sooner we transcend
the pacifist, peace-and-love image the better. We should be making the
point that militarism is not at all a useful way to assure the safety of
the US public. That we need to be thinking of how to address the
authentically legitimate grievances of people in much of the less
developed world, including the Islamic parts of it, and, in particular,
and as a preliminary gesture of good faith, we need to be making efforts
to compel Washington to compel Israel to make drastic, fundamental,
constitutional changes that would be substantial democratic concessions
to the Palestinians.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema