Why Collude with the Despots? And who is a left-winger?

Submitted by Richard Rabinowitz (United States), Sep 23, 2003 at 15:24

Folks, folks, folks.

Saudi Arabia is too theocratic for American society to fully accept. Their values are not our values, true, but there is no doubt that their values cause pain and suffering to untold millions of people. Whoever supports the Saudi theocracy is no true liberal, no true left-winger, but a RIGHT-WINGER, a supporter of the oppressive Status Quo. Saudi Arabia must be stood up to. We must take our military there, plant our feet on the ground, and declare we have the right, under our laws, to practice free religion and speech on Saudi soil. We must set up safe haven for religious dissidents, protected by arms and supported by money for dissidents. We must exclude terrorists who want to bring America down. (Yes, this means a three-way US/ Saud/ bin Laden confrontation.) .

We must do this, folks, because if we don't, that makes us cowards, like the French are cowards. Silvio Burlesconi was right when he said Western civilization was the most glorious in the world, because it was our civilization that got around to tolerating freedom of speech and religion... and continued to do so after centuries. (Indian civilization may also have claim to such a prize: Akhbar, the ex-Muslim prince, wholeheartedly supported freedom of religion, holding debates among the folks of various faiths. However, later Muslim princes attempted to choke down on non-Islamic practices in India, leading to the downfall of the Muslim empire there.)

Following the West's lead, Hispanic Civilization and Japan threw off their shackles (although a Western country forced the latter to do so at gunpoint, following a disasterous war). Currently, Islamic Civilization is a major religious oppressor, and China has some questionable practices itself (such as banning Falun Dafa). However, China appears nowhere near as restrictive as Saudi Arabia is. Whatever happened to Manifest Destiny? It is no longer the "white man's burden", if it ever was. It is the free human's burden. Blacks founded Liberia in Africa in the nineteenth century; they were free folks, not white folks, and they furthered Manifest Destiny. We ought to help the dissidents of the world's dictatorships to do the same - build a Manifest Destiny based on freedom of choice, not supremacy of religion or race.

-Richard Rabinowitz.

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