Friday, October 22, 2010

On Juan Williams, Elizabeth Moon, and Kristallnacht

Some irritation over my post yesterday - Liberalism's Kristallnacht: October 21st, 2010 - led me to re-think my lede and my comparison.

And I will say it is not apt. Kristallnact, as a commenter pointed out, was a state-sponsored orgy of racial hatred, yesterday's bits of liberal housecleaning could not be properly compared. I will not change anything previously written (the "memory hole" is a liberal construct I do not apply, save perhaps on spelling errors).

I agree. The comparison I should have used was The Great Purge:

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1936–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and executions.

OK, so we peasants haven't been repressed yet, but the hatred in the eyes of the left, and their final answer to all inquiry being "because I said so!", is proof enough of what they wish they could do. See Tom Friedman in the New York Times, constantly cooing about how if only "we could be run like China for a day", we could fix everything that's wrong with us. Uh-huh.

But re-read the words spoken by Moon, and by Williams. If these softly-spoken, well-thought-out expressions of personal belief and concern can make you a person non grata, well...then anything you say can be twisted to be construed as a racist thought-crime, and put you on the same dingy as they are.

Re-think your position. They have already come for Juan Williams and Elizabeth Moon...and when your opinion moves slightly outside the mainstream of acceptable liberal thought, they will come for you next. And those friends that you believe will support you? Out of fear, and hatred, they will turn away, if only to protect themselves for one more day.

Purges are like that, you know. As I mentioned yesterday, the problems with purges is that they never stay small...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are you gainfully employed and does your position require the application of critical reasoning skills?

Neither Juan Williams nor Moon have been disappeared. The former's employer didn't like him being a member of that employer's brand so cut him loose, to seek and secure employment with another arguably larger media outlet. The latter produced commentary that cost her an "honor" at a science fiction convention.

Hyperbolic analogies like yours are an insult to those who actually did stand by principle and truly suffered under totalitarian rule.