It took me a while to get around to reading this article from The New Statesman. Entitled The Euston Manifesto, it is an attempt to redefine the left. (And a hat tip to my new blog friend, Brainster for the link).
This passage is illuminating:
We value the traditions and institutions of the liberal, pluralist democracies, and we decline to make excuses for, to indulgently "understand", reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy. We hold the fundamental human rights codified in the Universal Declaration to be precisely universal. Equally, violations of these rights are to be condemned whoever is responsible for them and regardless of cultural context. The manifesto speaks of our attachment to egalitarianism in all domains.
We reject the anti-Americanism which is infecting so much left-liberal thinking. We support the right of both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution. There are paragraphs opposing racism and identifying the resurgence of anti-Semitism; on terrorism and against the excuses made for it; on humanitarian intervention when states violate the common life of their peoples in appalling ways.
They call for the spread of democracy – which is what the word 'liberal' should stand for.
Too many on the left today openly support murderous thugs so long as they are anti-American. From the veneration of Che to the current genuflection to Chavez, the left of today is mostly against liberalism.
Go read it – they have a good perspective on Iraq and on freedom in general.
I wish them all the luck in the world, people like this would be a joy to find common ground with. I notice that there are very few on the current left who are commenting on this article, though. The silence is deafening. And telling.
