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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (13347)	10/8/1998 2:41:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

<<My friends... have both written eloquently on the subject of the psychology of the Left, reflecting on their own years of radical activism.>> The psychology of political ideologues, whether of the left or the right, is identical. Pragmatism, reality, common sense all go out the window. The results are inevitably disastrous. <<The question is support of criminal regimes, not responsibility for their rise to power.>> Excuse me, which criminal regime are we talking about? The criminality of the Somoza regime far exceeded anything the Sandinistas did, or contemplated doing. If the question is the support of criminal regimes, the right is at least as guilty as the left. <<Like Kirkpatrick, he didn't understand that violations of political and human rights don't count if the offending regime is on the Left. The fault, if any, is someone else's.>> What Kirkpatrick didn't understand was the same thing that you don't seem to understand: encouraging and supporting right wing dictators creates exactly the conditions that left wing regimes require to grow. The US right, with its slavish support of Somoza, did far more to bring the Sandinistas to power than the Soviets. And what about the political and human rights abuses of the Somoza regime? Will the right take credit for those? Do they, in your words, "count"? Given the extended involvement of the US right with the Somoza dynasty, how does one divorce them from some responsibility for the conditions from which the Sandinistas grew. Don't you think those conditions influenced what the Sandinistas became? Or where they plunked down in situ by those evil Soviets? The "criminal regime" tag sticks better on Somoza than it does on the Sandinistas. Did you read the history link I provided? Reasonably balanced, actually, considering the amount of absurd propaganda generated by both left and right at that point. Silly, it seems to me, to dwell on the absurdities of one camp of ideologues while ovelooking those of the other. The American right has done far more damage than the American left, but only because it has had far more power. Even proceeding from a solidly anticommunist perspective, do you really think that subsidizing corrupt, inept, brutal dictators was ever an effective means of resisting communism? Do you deny that the nature of any opposition is shaped by the nature of the regime it opposes? Don't you see the similarity among all successful communist revolutions? Has any Communist organization ever succeeded in overthrowing a democracy? Steve