15. “Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West
because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so
forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points
out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates
America and the West because they are strong and successful.”

and …

21. “Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the
leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.”

The first several sections of the Manifesto make for an interesting read if you haven’t had the pleasure. You can find the whole thing at http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

Forgot Clarence Thomas?

Your mistake is accepting the protesters self-definition as activists motivated by moral priciples. This is part of the collectivist mythology which allows those who are basically immoral/amoral to masquerade as principled moralists responding to a higher calling than mere patriotism or nationalsim.

These myths, including such things as intellectual sophistication, tolerance, open mindedness, compassion, moral sensitivity, as well as principled morality in the case of political or military actions, are utterly self-serving.

Their purpose is to cause others to make the very assumptions upon which you write this post—the implicit presence of coherent moral principles in their activites—and therefore cede to the collectivist’s street theater a moral position it could never achieve if they were judged by the standard of who they supported and who they opposed.

If, for example, ANSWER was not allowed to parade itself as a self-defined anti-war and anti-racism organization, but was correctly described in any and all instances as a marxist front group whose only purpose and activity was anti-American propaganda, this bizarre con game would soon be exposed for the scam it is.

Unfortunately, much of the media and intelligentsia, especially internationally, share many of the conceits and mythology of the protesters, so questionong that facade never occurs to them.

I realize that part of what you are saying is—Look how inconsistent and hypocritical they are, but what I am trying to respond is that the way they react to these various situations is, in fact, completely consistent with who they truly are.

As the blogfather says, they are not anti-war, they’re just on the other side.

A protest about the Iraq War on the other hand makes sense darn near anywhere you have it (save for a military funeral or even a military base, these are just tasteless) because the people watching the protest do have a direct influence via their votes, their letters to their congressmen and their opinion polling inputs.

As far as Iraq, I had varying experiences with Iraq War protesters that caused conflicted feelings about the point of the exercise. The ones on Colby Ave in Everett, WA in 2007 (a Navy town north of Seattle and home to Boeing manufacturing) were overwhelmingly polite and highlighted by people who used good humor and neighborly attitudes with the counter-protesters who would line up on the other side. I was offered a glass of kool-aid (go figure!) by a woman with her young child when I happened to walk by on my way to my ship. These people were anti-war but did so in a way that wasn’t offensive or even that dumb (they talked up high deficits, broken promises, failed strategies, Iraqi sectarian warfare and outright lies by high officials).

When visiting family in Miami later that year, I was disturbed by the vulgarity and violent antics of the protesters at American Airlines Arena.

This requires that you maintain an army of people who are ready to march for the cause de jour. This requires lots of money to:
a. maintain contact with each protestor through out the year
b. provide motivation to your troops (money, sex, food, drink, camraderie, thrills, etc)
c. discipline/terminate outliers

In order to have rapid response capability you need people who will demonstrate TODAY, not next week or next month.

This type of spontaneous organization needs lots of money to create and maintain. It needs highly professional community organizers who are smart enough to get the job done but dumb enough to do what they are told to do.

There were no demonstrations over Iran’s or China’s actions because the people who own the demonstrators did not call out the demonstrators. We know who they are. They are the same people who funded Obama and gave him his money.

Fred, is that you?

“The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.”

Hence, the primary attack focus on the Left must be either on enemies at home, or on foreign enemies which are viewed as closely sharing values with the enemies at home (ie, Israel). It’s pretty clear that Obama, for example, regards the events in Iran, etc as an irritating distraction from the domestic struggle.

In the end all of the concerts, peace marches and letter writing campaigns (and “free tibet” bumper stickers, of course) don’t do a thing for anyone, besides the people doing the letter writing and bumper stickering themselves. I guess it makes them feel good.

Nobody really wants to get down to the dirty work of getting those people GUNS, the only thing that will help them.

In other words, a “free tibet” bumper sticker might as well say “f1ck Tibet, I feel good”.