Thursday, June 02, 2005
(6:16 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
I hate Instapundit
Every now and then, I like to be angry. That's why I will sometimes read the top post off of Instapundit. In this gem, he castigates Amnesty International for comparing Gitmo to the gulags. I must admit, the comparison seems to be over-the-top, although it's funny that he quotes this:Even the most damaging charge Amnesty International levels against the United States and its conduct at Gitmo, that our government has been guilty of ``entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,'' bears no relation to the way things worked when it came to the Gulag. Soviet prisoners were charged, tried and convicted in courts of law according to the Soviet legal code."See, it's not like the gulags -- on this point, gulags were better." My least favorite part is this, however:
Like a lot of people, Amnesty has lost perspective here. Instead of making constructive criticisms that might address actual problem areas, it has chosen posturing and over-the-top hysteria that ensure that it can be written off as lacking perspective and credibility.By contrast, instead of making constructive criticisms that might address actual problem areas, Instapundit has chosen posturing and over-the-top hysteria that ensure that Amnesty International can be written off as lacking perspective and credibility. Apparently the most important moral fact about Guantanamo Bay is not the abuses that routinely occurred there, but that someone is criticizing them in a somewhat exaggerated way.
This is a broader pattern on the right -- whenever a right-winger is engaged in some wrong-doing, the important moral fact about the situation is that people are pointing it out. One can always make the argument that a particular criticism or accusation is over- or under-stated or misses the point (by however small a margin). And then, it's just: words, words, words. I get so sick of these right-wing postmodernist elitists who are running things nowadays.
