I have some errands to take care of, but while I’m gone I’ll leave you with a letter to the editor that appeared in today’s Rocky Mountain News. What you do with/to it is entirely up to you. Todd Gochenour, “A DIFFERING VIEW: How is U.S. any different from Iran?”
In its editorial of April 10, ““No real winner in hostage crisis,†the Rocky Mountain News lambastes the Iranian government for its “disdain for international law and low-grade sadism†because the 15 British sailors were “blindfolded, bound, held in isolation, subjected to long interrogations, threatened with lengthy prison terms … paraded before cameras … and led to believe they would be executed.â€Â
I don’t get it. How is this any different from the conduct of our own country? We’ve done every single thing listed here in the context of our “war on terrorism.†Is the Rocky saying America can do these things but Iran cannot?Is it not possible that these sailors were in fact in Iranian waters? No?
Does the Rocky say this based on the word of our president? Wasn’t he the one who said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? It turns out Saddam Hussein was speaking truth, but our illustrious media will never admit it. Demagoguery and fearmongering bigotry  this is what the Rocky editorial promotes.
While we criticize Iran for wanting nuclear weapons, remember that our country is the only country that has ever used nukes against a civilian population. I ask the Rocky to please consider our own hypocrisy for just a moment before proclaiming the evil of another society.
Anybody else get the idea that Todd spends his mornings watching “The View”…?
In the comments section, Todd reappears and offers this new clot of relativistic pablum:
[…] Interesting you should ask if I want Iran to have nuclear weapons. I see a parallel in the debate occuring in this country regarding handguns after the VT shootings. I’ve read in the RMN many comments about how one legally armed student could have stopped this tragedy. It appears the answer from the gun lobby is to arm everyone, so that we’ll all be safer.
If it works on an individual level, then why not on a national level? After all, if a nuclear armed country is threatening you (which America is doing to Iran), what other detterent [sic] is available to them?
The other solution to this problem is adopting a sense of empathy. Once we “stand in their shoes” and understand the point of view of our “enemies”, we’ll begin to understand what motivates them. Only then can we speak to the needs of all people.
Empathy, the opposite to rhetoric of righteousness.
I see empathy as the single defining factor separating the liberal left from the fascist right.
So, there you go. I’ve teed it up for you. Take your hacks, warmongers!
Oh, a tu quoque argument – and from the left! How refreshing! Such a nice break from the ad homineum, isn’t it?
Ummm…
There’re so many incorrect assumptions in those two clips that I just don’t know where to begin.
I’d just add that we’re probably actually WORSE than Iran, because those Afghans and Iraqi’s we’ve tortured weren’t anywhere near our waters.
Of course, quoting him to show this lunacy in all it’s spittle-flecked glory is the epitome of right-wing fascism.
And yet, no empathy is extended to the “fascist right.” Physician, heal thyself.
(Seriously, “fascist right?” Where’s my stylish black Doogie-Howser-in-Starship-Troopers uniform, then? Curse you, Karl Rove!)
Yeah, no joke – if we’re going to be called fascists, why don’t we at least get to behave like them? WE don’t even get to trash a lousy Starbucks, for pete’s sake.
“understand” Iran
embrace a speeding semi
both result in death
Are Jack-Boots comfortable? Where can I get a pair?
I would be willing to make a big money bet that Todd lives a little bit NW of Denver. Within Boulder County and probably that hotbed of insight named City of Boulder.
RTO,
Jack boots are both comfortable and stylish! Particularly when goose-stepping while wearing your brown shirt.
I used to wear brown shirts, but with the switch to the ACU they are now tan.
I don’t get it. How is this any different from the conduct of our own country? We’ve done every single thing listed here in the context of our “war on terrorism.†Is the Rocky saying America can do these things but Iran cannot?
Or, looked at it the other way, is Todd saying that whatever Iran does, we can do? Because, stoning of gays, and persecution of rape victims would go over SO well …
You can pretend that here are no “good” and “bad” guys in this situation, only if you ignore the facts.
Don’t forget the jodhpurs, guys.
And before you ask, the skull badge WITHOUT the jaw is Tanker insignia.
I agree with every word written here. Todd is a brilliant thinker who deserves a much wider audience.
Brown shirts, feh. The really cool shirts were the black ones, like Il Duce wore. The helmet was a nice touch, too.
Um, what were we talking about?
It seems that Todd, in comparing the nuclear situation with Iran to the VT shootings, confuses one fact here… He seems to think that the US is the Cho Seung-hui… when in fact, Iran is the crazy nutjob that can’t be reasoned with or talked out of taking other people with him in his suicide attempt.
If Todd could stop Cho from ever getting the gun in the first place, would he?
No, in Todd’s warped world, it’s the US who is the crazed student, threatening everyone…
He sure makes me question all of my old assumptions. He’s right, by gum!
Hmmm.
That letter-writer is the kind of guy who, if captured, bound, and confronted by a guy with a big knife who’s about to cut his head off, would apologize on behalf of the evil West and explain that the knifeboy was completely justified in his actions.
I tried empathy, but they still hate us. Did I do something wrong?
Tinkerbelle must be goofing off again.
How does one counter that? There is NO way to deal with the willfully ignorant and/or irrational. If Todd, really and truly believes that garbage, then Todd is living in a world that is completely lost to me. The only thing he had right, was that we are all human beings. Todd may be an incredibly good human being, and in the end, that’s all that matters, imo, but to be that naive and foolish is bizarre to say the least.
Interesting how he thinks anyone advocating that people be able to defend themselves from random incidents of violence such as VT is automatically a part of the “gun lobby”. Funny, I thought I was just part of the “shooting crazed sociopath losers before they shoot me or other innocent people lobby”.
BTW, don’t worry about being labeled as Nazis or the “fascist right”. To paragraph P.J. O’Rourke, no one has ever fantasized about being sexually ravished by someone dressed up as a progressive.
TW: Just79 sayin’.
This is hysterical. We’re all humans, there’s no difference! Someone needs to get a video camera and tape him when I steal his parking place. Or park my SUV too close to his bicycle.
TW:post24. I’d be suprised if he is.
I feel so naked. Summed up so quickly…noe excuse me while I go kick a puppy.
I’m a Sam Browne man myself – tighten that puppy so it splits the difference between my pecs – sure, there’s a gay vibe, but that’s part of the whole fascist chic, you know?
That’s how you get a date with Coco Chanel, after all.
ThePolishNizel:
No, as a matter of fact, that’s NOT all that matters.
“Good” people who, through ignorance, petulance or any other failing actively support or aid evil have lost the right to the “good” part of their description.
On the other hand, I encourage all such loons to try to give mass-murderers a big hug and wet sloppy kiss. As the spree killer takes his time disemboweling you, the rest of us will have time to get to our guns and respond appropriately.
You do have a good point, Nizel in that it is impossible to “counter,” in a conversational sense, someone who is that whacked out. Just point them in the direction of the “misunderstood” enemy and let Darwin get his revenge.
As to the second of the main “money quotes,” the problem is, the “empathy” the left has is with an illusion created from their own desires, NOT with an actual human being. Which is exactly why the left has to keep ignoring the consequences of their disastrous decisions – things just never seem to work out the way they planned, just like Marat.
I tried tis once. Getting into a terrorists head.
Next thing I knew, there was a headless corpse lying in front of me, and I was clutching a bloody head by the hair.
Well I tell you! I was so suprised, I dropped the gruesome trophy, which bounced twice, then rolled away, tipping over the tripod for the video camera.
And wouldn’t you know it? The stupid camera was set up next to my car, and in falling over, managed to put a big scratch right across the drivers door!
Well, to make a short story long, I managed, through cohersion and threats, to get large legal settlements with the car manufacturer, the camera maker, the tripod maker, and the insurance company, and now I’ll be able to afford a brand new dynamite car.
That’s when I realized I had experianced enough empathy, and took a shower.
Say, any body have a line on any retards looking for a driving job?
I forget who said it before, but shouldn’t a freedom fighter be, you know, actually fighting for freedom?
The only freedoms they’re fighting for are the freedom to stone gays, to stone women who’ve been raped, to oppress women in general, and overall, the freedom to impose their “religion” on the rest of us at the point of a sword.
Last time I checked, none of those things sounded like the kind of freedom I’m interested in.
*sigh*
That’s because you’ve bought into the lies pushed by the While Patriarchy. If you’d just accept that other people value different things, you’d realize it’s important for them to be free in their own way. Who are we to judge their culture of stoning rape victims, murdering women who date, and mutilating women’s genitals?
(I’ll comment no further; I’ve had such a shitty day I’m not capable of making a civil remark about this Todd person.)
I tried to form a rebuttal of Todd’s stupidity, but my brain shut down in a fit of self-preservation. That kind of bulletproof certainty in cultural relativism is impossible to examine in any detail without losing one’s sanity.
I guess we finally know alphoid’s real identity.
I Todd’s key, empathy, should be explored by Todd. I’d like to know how he empathizes with Iranian theocracy.
It’s that creepy lack of introspection that plagues the Left. Did it even occur to him that his call should (or would) apply to himself as well?
This empathic argument smells fishy, like an after-the-fact justification of their position, not a process that led them from empathy with Iran to their conclusion of equivalence.
It’s how “Not Without My Daughter” used to be a progressive movie for the Left, but is now a insensitive and bigoted movie to the Left.
The movie did not become insensitive after some director’s cut or bonus DVD commentary, it became bigoted to justify the Left’s position on Islam in general and Iran in particular…
…or perhaps all of this is to justify their position on the United States.
Yes, yes. WHY ARE YOU SMEARING TODD, NEOCON!?!ELEVEN!!?
Todd doesn’t need this ignorant Amerikkkan shit. Todd needs a ticket to a more enlightened place. Tehran, perhaps?
I entered the discussion thread with Todd, pointing out the error in making everything equivalent.
Much to my surprise, he seemed to agree with me, as he said in his final post. I guess I can’t say that every liberal I’ve encountered in the blogosphere won’t change his mind.
OTOH, he said he wanted to go out and drink with friends. That might have been his true motive in bowing out so gracefully. The allure of beer. ;->
I’m not so sure an enlightened mind like Todd’s would be appreciated in Tehran. But it’d be fun to watch him try….
The latest-issue Fascist Right uniforms are jackboot, black shirt and leather coat for men; heeled boots, latex catsuit, coat and whip for women. Studded leather hats are available upon request.
Seriously now…
This is, in all its glory, the very axiom lying at the foundation of Todd’s worldview. Once one accepts that, everything else follows. Don’t accept tha, and it won’t be possible to reach a compromise position.
Fabio – related to your point is that the axiom that lies at the foundation of their worldview also PRECEDES and SUPPLANTS observation of the world.
It’s like a filter through which the world is seen.
For myself, personally, my political / philosophical views evolved gradually based on my observations of and attempts to understand the world.
I did not start out with political views – I was pretty apolitical early on and through my teens I developed political ideas based on what I had seen.
I’ve called myself a “Libertarian” since shortly therafter, but it would probably be more accurate to call me an “anti-leftist” based on the huge split I had with the Libertarian “consensus” after 9/11 (and probably slightly before that as well, since BDS was creeping in shortly after the 2000 elections).
Red meat?! On a Friday!
I’m calling my lawyers!
TW:believe66 One number away Goldstein…one away…
And right there you get to the reason why proglodytes like Todd are so willing to embrace terrorists. Both are, in effect, partisans of those old-fashioned traditional cultures that classical liberalism arose to challenge and supplant—in the case of the proggs, they’ve only reinvented the caveman’s stone wheel and think they’re better because they used power tools instead of a hammer and chisel.
I forget who said it before, but shouldn’t a freedom fighter be, you know, actually fighting for freedom?
I think it was in that Heritage Foundation lecture by Evan Sayet about How Liberals Think.
I really wonder what people like Todd come up with when they apply their empathy to the Iranian madmen? I guess it is similar to how people are so quick to “forgive” Cho.
I’ve met people who honestly believe that no one in their right mind would embrace evil, ever, so if they do something bad, it’s because they were driven to it by something outside their control. Like a baited bear who lashes out in frustration after hours of torment, terrorists are pretty much just cornered animals who were pushed beyond their limits. Otherwise, they’d be as peace-loving and tranquil as Todd and his beer buddies.
They just don’t get that some people dig evil, that evil is seductive as it promises shortcuts to glory, power, and wealth, and that some people have no problem paying a moral price if it gets them what they really and truly want.
They also don’t get that the Islamists are driven by a will to power, by the desire to dominate and humiliate and destroy to purge their shame and gain glory for Allah. Whereas us? We just want to drive our SUVs in peace.
Yup. Just like them. We’re all alike.
Except for the fascist right, of course. Fuck them.
Todd’s got that covered, dicentra.
See? Empathy. Balance. And hope.
It’s all good right?
If Iran and the U. S. are morally equivalent, and it makes no difference whether the mullahs get the nuke or not, then let Todd move to Tel Aviv once they get a device. To shelter under Tehran’s nuclear umbrella, you know.
Conservatives have righteousness (perhaps he means self-righteousness), while libs have empathy? Sheer self-congratulation. The soldiers overseas and the feds here at home, beating back The Jihad, are the ones who have empathy, for us their fellow citizens. Libs floating on their presumed higher moral plane, high above the rest of us, are just along for the ride.
Yup, I must have heard it from that video. I highly recommend it to everyone here. It was both entertaining and enlightening.
Jackboots seem hard to come by, could I suggest a nice pair of knee-high calked boots? They’re very comfortable and there’s nothing better if you need to get a grip. They also make them in women’s sizes. With those and the catsuit, coat & whip she could hurt you sooo gooood!
As for Todd, isn’t this the classic definition of the bliss ninnie?
Empathy. I KNEW we forgot something.
dicentra:
dingdingdingdingding!!!!
A++ With honors and all that!
And as this belief is a precept, it can’t actually be changed by experience or learning – every new piece of data is “filtered” to fit into the preconceived rules.
And as this belief is a precept, it can’t actually be changed by experience or learning – every new piece of data is “filtered†to fit into the preconceived rules.
And to this I respond with my latest Favorite Lileksism:
“When your world view is made up entirely of round holes, your mind is a lathe that can turn everything into a cylinder.” -James Lileks
That saying should go at the top of every thread, IMO.
Where’s the empathy, Todd? Where’s the responsibility?
MikeyNTH wrote:
I suspect that’s a deliberate tactic on his part. The old “baffle them with bullshit” trick.
Ayn Rand used to say that morality stops when guns begin. This guy somehow totally inverts that maxim and makes it into morality starts and ends when guns begin–our guns.
Understanding doesn’t mean failing to respond. This is where a liberal left pscyhology fails. It tries to switch a process witha part of the process. They put themselves in other’s shoes and try to understand their position.
Just as any campus liberal would try to “understand” the gun shooter by putting himself in the shooter’s position. But guess what, no matter how much I understand the shooter’s psychology that wouldn’t do me a great good if that shooter is shooting me. Just as “udnerstanding” Iran’s penchant for nuclear weapons won’t do me a lot of good if those weapons are trained at me.
Understanding doesn’t mean that I will excuse the gun shooter or Iran or that I don’t have to fight them. But understanding is good and meaningful only if I would use that understanding to stop the gun shooter and Iran.
And then there’s the Iran’s bluff argument. Putting myself in Iran’s shoes doesn’t work if Iran itself is developing these weapons not because it wants a deterrent against me but for other purposes as well. Like jihad, maybe. Like wanting to be a superpower, maybe. Of course it will claim that it is developing these weapons as a deterrent but that’s part of its strategy of disarming me. “Putting myself in Iran’s shoes” then turns out to be a false argument. It rules out prima facie that Iran doesn’t have any other motive than building up a deterrent against me, without evidence and argument and after postulating that as its assumption, wants me to understand its “desire” for nuclear weapons by relativising myself.
I hope I made sense.
You did, promachus, as did others.
In truth, I don’t have any problem with the concept of empathy. The problem is that the empathy exercise in Todd’s world inevitably leads to victimization and blame.
Guess where that blame falls every time?
I have a good friend who is a Peace first kind of gal. I don’t talk with her about it anymore. Her sensibilities are so fragile that I simply don’t want to deal with the emotional baggage. “Peace is always better than war” reflects a purely emotional argument that is intellectually infantile and logically corrupt. In the very brief discussions that we managed I quickly became aware that her knowledge of radicalized Islam and socio-political realities was nonexistent. Nothing mattered except the shining, charismatic concept of peace.
Todd’s empathy argument shares many of the same critical thinking flaws of my friend but adds a large, steaming dollop of hypocrisy. His concept of “walking in their shoes” inexorably leads down the path of American guilt and Islamic victimization. Because he is so invested in a multicultural focus group mentality his empathy tank is almost entirely empty when it comes time to apply some of his vaunted sensitivity to his own country. There is a homing instinct in many of his ilk, a siren song that insists, in some way, that a nation that has accumulated so much and done so much right, has the “broad shoulders” to absorb the collective guilt of a thousand socio-political mistakes, freeing the rest of the world to improve their lot by dancing round the penitent convicted.
Todd simply can’t handle national success in an overall, global perspective. So much of his whining is generated by the idea that America must be wrong because so much has gone right. We’ve also seen this particular psychosis in a certain simian creature. Remember this every time we discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions and someone brings up the 1953 CIA and British Intelligence overthrow of the socialist government.
The problem is what happened in 1953 has placed a psychic debt on all generations and a burden on all national decision-making. The idea that, well, that was then and this is now ignores the stated siren song of national guilt and global economic and political victimization.
We are not worthy! Now bare your necks!
It’s the zero-sum mentality. For the US to be successful, we must have made others fail. Never mind that the rest of the world is capable of making choices, and that they frequently make poor choices; our success means it’s stolen.
The dedication to this mentality can be seen in their reaction to the descent of Zimbabwe and Venezuela. No matter what decisions are made by Mugabe and Chavez, no matter how poorly those decisions have ended in the past, the results are blamed on the West, particularly the US.
It’s almost as if they don’t think some people are fully capable of running their own lives.
We would have to stand in a series of concentric circles, otherwise some of us would still be on the left and some on the right. Depending on whether you were standing in front of the line or not.
I’m not sure Todd has thought this whole thing through properly.
They sure want to run ours.