Mumbai and Moral Equivalence

Again, a long hiatus and again, sorry.

First off, I want to talk a bit about the Mumbai massacre. This was an atrocious tragedy. It has received a bunch of attention, as it should. But some of the things I have read have been beyond idiotic. Of course, we were inundated with moral equivalence. Muslims are a persecuted minority in India, Indians are wrongfully occupying Kashmir, and every other excuse under the sun. Has it occurred to anyone else that Muslims are the only ones who get these excuses? When Baruch Goldstein opened fire in a mosque in 1994, killing a bunch of Muslims at prayer, did anyone get on CNN and try to explain away this horrible deed? No. If and when Hindu Indians kill Muslims, it is a wrongful, genocidal deed. When Muslims do likewise to the Hindus, there is a Rolodex of excuses waiting for them.

It's disgusting. If Americans, Israelis, Britons, Indians, or any other nation currently in a fight with Islamists is attacked, it is always some transgression on the former's part that justifies the latter's terrorism. Yet the former never gets the benefit of any such viewpoint. It seems as though there is no limit as to what is acceptable for them to do. Plow a plane into the World Trade Center, stone and/or hang homosexuals, shoot women for painting their toenails in front of stadium crowds, etc, and there will be some Noam Chomsky-like defender of your actions. Happen to be a soldier of the IDF, and shoot some Palestinian terrorist attempting to blow something up, and you are the approximate equivalent of Paul Blobel, the architect of the Babi Yar massacre.

Moral equivalence is probably the most sickening development in Western society that has exploded in popularity since the Vietnam War. We must realize that our culture is really no better than any other culture. If another culture sacrifices children to Moloch, it's cool, it's their culture. It's this sort of thinking that placed the Soviet Union and the United States on the same moral plane during the Cold War. According to this way of thinking, the two were equal actors in the five decades pursuant to World War II, and one was no better than the other. In other words - the USSR, who shoved millions into the maw of the Gulag and robbed peoples of their human rights, is basically the same difference as the United States, which occasionally went overboard in its support of anti-Communist regimes in Latin America and elsewhere. If anything, the former is given the benefit of the doubt more than the latter. In other words, supporting a few unsavory characters in a few Latin American countries is worse than the USSR starving and killing millions of its denizens. In these people's minds, Guantanamo Bay is a worse moral stain than Kolyma and Abu Ghraib is worse than Lubyanka. I understand that the U.S. does not have a lily white past - but who does? And basically the same difference as the Soviet Union as the two culprits in the Cold War? This is insanity.

This is also the kind of thinking that makes Mikhail Gobachev some kind of knight in shining armor and makes Ronald Reagan a Forrest Gump-level idiot. Perestroika and glasnost were not intended to tear down the Communist structure, but rather to strengthen it by making some reforms. Reagan gets no credit in these quarters and if so, it's for the strength of his personality, not his ideology or his policies. Gorbachev and the Soviets get more credit. Not true and, if it were, completely unintentional on their part.

I have started a biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, which so far is a magnificent read. The author describes the educations that these men would receive, and the subjects they were expected to know: the classics (the Aeneid, Cicero, Greek and Roman philosophy and history), Greek and Latin, the Bible, etc. These are, indeed, the backbone of Western civilization. Nowadays, with the multicultural left running (and ruining) academia, and moral equivalence all the rage, it is not considered politically correct to teach these things. This is not to say that one cannot take these courses, but they are no longer required in the curriculum. They are, if anything, an elective or an obscure major. At my school, as a history major I was required to take more courses on Third World nations than on Europe and the United States. I do not understand why it is suddenly a faux pas to be knowledgeable and proud of Western heritage. I don't understand why the Aeneid and the Bible were dropped and Marxo-Feminist Thought and Chicano Literature were added. While the latter can be interesting to some, they are not nearly as important as the former in Western civilization. If the PC police got a problem with that, then fuck 'em. Come get me.

We have lost pride in ourselves, and I believe that the start of this was the Vietnam War. I am not going to debate it, because a) it is still a sore issue and b) I am still debating myself as to what I really think about it. I believe that it was for a decent cause and I do not believe any such bullshit that it was for imperialist reasons. What would be the point? But, at the same time, to send vast numbers of men to die for a country not in our backyard was over the top (an understatement). I just finished Philip Caputo's memoirs of his time as a Marine Lieutenant in 'Nam, A Rumor of War. One of the best books I have read. If you haven't read it, drop what you are doing now, go to your nearest library or bookstore, and get it. You will not be disappointed.

Anyway, our loss of self-respect and confidence stems from Vietnam. Because many believe that we did not act morally in that war, it suddenly stained our entire history. The multicultural left came to view the United States as the aggressor, as the bad guy, hence their whitewashing of Soviet communism and their demonization of Reagan. To this day, to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt or to display the hammer and the sickle, or a portrait of Chairman Mao, is considered cool. There is nothing cool about it. Che Guevara was a cold-blooded murderer who killed thousands and was the father of the Cuban prison camps. I see so many ignorant college kids with his t-shirt that it makes me physically nauseous. The hammer and sickle represented a murderous systems which killed tens of millions. Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward killed millions.

Yet to display a swastika would bring immediate social isolation and contempt AS IT RIGHTFULLY SHOULD. Nazism was extraordinarily evil, but at the same time so was Soviet Communism. The former is rightfully hated while the latter is given an excuse. "Well, Lenin deviated from Marxist doctrine. If only they followed Marx to the letter, it would have worked," etc. It is as though Lenin and Stalin were fools who just "didn't get it" rather than murderers of millions. (And even many of those who will admit the Soviet state's evil, Lenin, a bloodthirsty bastard, is often given a complete pass and Stalin somehow is a corrupter of the system who fucked it all up, and real communism is actually a delight). I suppose the difference is that while Nazism was bluntly evil in both word and deed, communism sounded pretty acceptable in theory. Therefore, they are given much more slack than their Nazi cousins.

Communism killed, and still kills, way more people than fascism in all of its forms. But for many, somehow the ends justify the means. "Stalin killed a lot of people, yeah, but it was necessary to consolidate the revolution. It was necessary to achieve a stateless society. Plus, he modernized the Soviet state." Well, let's put it this way: no the ends did not justify the means. Maybe he built some canals, roads, and dug up ores but he did so through the enslavement and deaths of tens of millions. His state was an economic basket case because no one had any motive to make anything of high quality. Everything was about just attaining a quota. In the 1970s something like 3% of the country's farms were private but they produced like 40% of its agricultural goods.

Many of us did not have the moral certitude to say that we were in the right during the Cold War. Sometimes we were overly aggressive but never were we even in the same league as the Soviet Union in terms of sheer wrongness. That has extended into today, with many making George W. Bush worse than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Muslim fundamentalists are coddled everywhere. Israelis, as mentioned briefly above, are demonized in the most hateful of language. There are Sharia courts in Great Britain. Asshole terrorists who shot up hundreds of people are given a "Well, you see...." justification. Enough. Grow some balls to stand up for yourself, and for your culture and civilization. We were better than the Soviet Union then, and we are better than the terrorists now. Yet we are tentative to say so. Winston Churchill must be spinning in his grave.