Empty rhetoric

Submitted by D. Wolf (United States), Oct 13, 2002 at 00:35

Dear Professor Pipes,

In spite of having spent eleven years at an unapologetically un-American Quaker school, I must agree with your apparent sentiment regarding the vile and pernicious influence of the current "multiculturalism". People are so easily brought into that type of thinking because the internal rhetoric is satisfying. Similarly, that chestnut of the anti-war movement, the slogan about the simultaneous preparation for both war and peace being impossible, sounds so right, so it must be. Consequently, one who can regurgitate the lingo convincingly enough becomes an outspoken advocate of something on the wrong side of one's views. People demanding cultural "equality" seldom realize that democracy chooses its own path, and "entitlement thinking" is ultimately contrary to what they claim to want.

This dichotomy unfortunately seems to be the prolem with Professor Zinn. He grasps the rhetoric of his ilk, and can methodically spout its various platitudes, but he is made irrelevant by the utter absence of meaning to his words. In response to the statement of any specific facts regarding the Hussein regime and its documented violations of the surrender agreement signed with the US, Zinn can only employ the ultimate weapon of the left-- an emotional harangue which invariably includes reference to the countless innocent Iraqi dead. He cannot cite any instance in which appeasement of an aggressor state has led to containment, however, he merely "knows" war is wrong.

When that tactic fails, he attempts the sickeningly common act of moral relativization in his attempt to portray the US as an imperially-minded bully out to expand its sphere of influence as well as its coffers. As if he could be seriously implying that the US begat the ill will against it in the Arab world!

Zinn seems to think that in enforcing his idea of moral rectitude on US policy, he can explain away the facts of Iraqi aggression as consequences of abusive US practices- and by implication, that observence of his brand of morality would somehow preclude such hostilty in the future.

Thank you for so dilligently bringing your clarity to an increasingly muddled debate.

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