Monday, June 19, 2006
(8:03 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Moral Symmetry
I recently read some comments in the form: "Our leaders have been doing awful things abroad for most of this century -- but isn't it morally problematic that some leftists are apologists for communist atrocities?"These kinds of remarks are a mainstay of blogospheric faux-produndity. I don't have much use for such sentiments. Even if I were to say, "Stalin was the greatest man who ever lived," that would not make me morally equivalent to Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. They are war criminals; I am, at worst, a dumbass. Dumbasses are obnoxious, and you probably don't want to invite them to a party, because they'll end up cornering some over-friendly and indulgent person the whole time talking about all the slanders committed against Chairman Mao. War criminals, on the other hand, cause mass death and destruction.
I know that many people make moral judgments based on intention, as though it's just an accident that Donald Rumsfeld has the power he does -- presumably if I were in his position, as an ardent communist (in this hypothetical scenario), I would be "just as bad," with another ideology whose "badness" level is approximately equal to neoconservativism. That kind of logic misses the point here. If I really were an ardent communist, obviously I would try to organize a group of people who would, if necessary, be willing to kill a whole lot of fucking people so that we could seize power. But since you don't hear much about communist cells assassinating the Secretary of Defense, presumably all of these marginal figures on the left aren't really serious about what they're saying. In real life, they want the comforts of consumerism, and they want to vote for Democrats every couple years, and on top of that they want to feel morally superior to others, but without actually having to do anything.
Sure, it's morally bankrupt, but I don't think that it approaches the level of, say, "crimes against humanity." No one is crippled for life by my apologetics for Stalin. No one loses their father at age five because I want to pose as a Maoist. My avid reading of Chomsky books does not replace a once-fertile countryside with a mine field.
People need to realize that in the United States, "the left" seriously does not pose any threat at all, to anything. In fact, as a group, they make important contributions to the economy.
