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First principles

January 1, 2009 By dev Comments are Off

Marc Cooper has posted some New Year hopes and reflections, one of which touches on a theme dear to my heart: why it’s important for staunch liberals to attack authoritarian thinking on the left, and not care about the grief they catch for it.

And so, dear reader, the question is not why I expend time and energy railing against the Sean Penns of the world. The question is: Why don’t you?
Cooper:
I write frequently about Cuba precisely because I think capitalism is a heartless, inhumane (perhaps inevitable?) system that accentuates greed and inequality. So those who operate in the name of opposing it have bitten the apple, so to speak, and bear a special responsibility for demonstrating the viability of alternatives. They should be given no license to hijack and bespoil the moral capital of those who would want a more humane world.

The Cuban example is clearly, and unfortunately, [a] failed one. The United States bears great responsibility for the Cuban debacle, no doubt. But the buck stops at the Castro residence. No amount of hostility from the United States, not even armed intervention, justifies the intellectual imprisonment of an entire population and the deprivation of all basic civil liberties for fifty long years. And the sooner a modern left accepts that reality, then the sooner some sort of exit from the injustice in which most of the world wallows can be more fully imagined.

In the meantime, there is no substitute for simple freedom. Liberty, above all, should be our First Principle. Free education means very little if there is nothing to read and if it is a crime to write.


[Update: Roger Cohen on Penn. “…Penn accuses the ‘mainstream media’ of being ‘conscious manufacturers of deception,’ before allowing Raúl Castro to ramble on for seven hours without a meaningful question about Cuba’s disastrous economic situation or stifling political system.”]

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