IDIOCY IS NOT SO EASILY LEFT BEHIND:

Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee (Ron Rosenbaum, NY Observer)

I want to make clear that saying goodbye to idiocies on the Left doesn't mean becoming a conservative, neo- or otherwise. I think Imade that clear in a column published here on Jan. 28 of this year, "Where Was the Values Crowd When Dr. King Needed Them?" In that column,I argued that just as the Left had failed to come to terms with its history of indifference to (at best) and support for (at worst) genocidal Marxist regimes abroad, the Right has failed to come to terms with its history of indifference to (at best) and support for (at worst) racism and racist political allies here at home.

It's ironic, considering what I'm about to write, that I got a nice note from that hard-core Old Red folkie, Pete Seeger, thanking me for my Dr. King column. But you know, I still can understand people like Pete Seeger joining the Party back in the 30's during the Depression, when it looked like unregulated capitalism had cruelly immiserated America, when racism and lynchings reigned down South and it looked (looked, I said) as if the Soviet Union was the only force willing to stand up to Hitler. But to cling to Marxism now, after all we've learned in the past 50 years-not just about the Soviet Union, but China and Cambodia... ?

Particularly in the context of the rest of this column Mr. Rosenbaum's point about conservatives here is profoundly offensive. In the first place the Right has more than come to terms with the early Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. whom Mr. Rosenbaum lauds. It is the latter Dr. King, not much distinguishable from Pete Seeger, who gives us trouble to this day. The Right did understandably have difficulty separating the two when it could have been of most help to the former, but today the Right's message is very much what his message was when he was merely demanding racial equality: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." In fact, one needn't look very hard to find Leftists who are enraged that conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Shelby Steele have adopted King's very words to argue against affirmative action.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2002 12:15 PM