7df3fb8
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This world's anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.
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violence
tragedy
pain
war
grief
faith
fear
hope
love
anguish
casualties-of-war
child-victims-of-war
children-killed-in-war
gun-laws
peacemaking
russia-and-ukraine-conflict
spiritual-love
gun-violence
world-suicide-prevention-day
syrian-civil-war
unconditional-love
agape-love
conflict-resolution
nonviolent-conflict-resolution
police-reform
police-shootings
peace-movement
peace
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Aberjhani |
f959192
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Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable.
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violence
war
faith
wisdom
hate-crimes
civil-unrest
faith-in-humanity
peacism
political-aggression
political-turmoil
syrian-civil-war
we-can-do-better
intolerance
war-crimes
black-history-month
national-history-day
nonviolent-conflict-resolution
hope-for-the-future
ukraine
bigotry
peace-movement
cruelty
prophecy
peace
crimean-war
diplomacy
russia
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W.E.B. Du Bois |
3caf720
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"If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement"."
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noninterventionism
pacifism
peace-movement
leftism
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Christopher Hitchens |
5bb6eb0
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George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism--the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it--is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
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morality
moral-absolutism
presidency-of-george-w-bush
presidency-of-bill-clinton
al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory
rwanda
rwandan-genocide
sudan
bill-clinton
anti-war
ba-ath-party
democratic-party-united-states
opposition-to-the-iraq-war
george-w-bush
iraq
saddam-hussein
united-nations
peace-movement
iraq-war
united-states
madeleine-albright
moral-relativism
liberalism
leftism
evil
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Christopher Hitchens |
4c1ce1d
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You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor.
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socialism
anti-war
ba-ath-party
democratic-party-united-states
iran-iraq-war
iraqi-communist-party
iraqi-kurdistan
kurdish-people
labour-movement
middle-east
opposition-to-the-iraq-war
republican-party-united-states
baghdad
george-w-bush
invasion-of-kuwait
iraq
kuwait
saddam-hussein
peace-movement
iraq-war
leftism
communism
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Christopher Hitchens |
9ca4e11
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I have been taunted on various platforms recently for becoming a neo-conservative, and have been the object of some fascinating web-site and blog stuff, from the isolationist Right as well as from the peaceniks, who both argue in a semi-literate way that neo-conservativism is Trotskyism and 'permanent revolution' reborn. Sometimes, you have to comb an overt anti-Semitism out of this propaganda before you can even read it straight. And I can guarantee you that none of these characters has any idea at all of what the theory of 'permanent revolution' originally meant.
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politics
blogosphere
isolationism
peace-movement
permanent-revolution
right-wing-politics
trotskyism
us-non-interventionism
war-on-terror
iraq-war
neoconservatism
propaganda
internet
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Christopher Hitchens |