MORAL EQUIVALENCE….Matt Welch has a post up complaining yet again that the left is too kind to Fidel Castro, prompting this remark in comments:
This inability (or unwillingness) to make moral distinctions seems to me to be peculiarly unique to the port side of the political spectrum. To be sure, the Right overlooked or excused the excesses of the Pinochets, the Somozas, the Marcoses; but never to the extent, it seems to me, that the Left has done for Castro.
But they did this as well for Mao and Stalin and various other brutal rulers as well….
This is tiresome. The only people on the left who have defended Castro are the Gilligan’s Island crowd (you know, professors and movie stars), never anyone to my knowledge who is even remotely in the mainstream of liberal thought. Ditto for Stalin and Mao, who were vigorously denounced by Truman, JFK, Johnson, Humphrey, and virtually every other Democrat who occupied a prominent spot in the real world during the Cold War.
If the only examples of an inability to make “moral distinctions” that you can find are radical academics, ditzy movie stars, and student protesters, then what’s the point? Sure, go ahead and denounce the “extreme left” for their views if you must, but leave the rest of us liberals out of it, OK?
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, as long as we’re on the subject can anyone explain to me what the difference is supposed to be between a “left wing” dictatorship and a “right wing” dictatorship? They sure all look the same to me.
