January 23, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Advocate Nomenclature
Best of the Web has uncovered CNN's description of Ramsey Clark as a "civil rights advocate". Having plowed through Ramsey Clark's lunatic ravings, I am sympathetic to the Journal's suggestion that a more accurate label would be "anti-American advocate". It's true, he spends most of his time "indicting" the U.S. for war crimes in his little mock court. IAC's sustainable yield of useless propaganda has little to do with civil rights per se.
Why is it that the left's lunatic fringe get to be cause oriented, even when the description barely fits, but the right's more extreme members are invariably labeled "conservative", even if, in fact, they advocate radical change? Andrew Sullivan et. al. have made a big deal about selective application of labels, but what about the choice of labels to apply?
Perhaps a blogger with a "critically rational libertarian perspective" might some day be called an "individual rights advocate" or an "anti-idiotarian advocate".
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at January 23, 2002 08:26 AM | Technorati inbound linksThis is especially odd with Clark because his views are so out there. The group he is the figurehead for is openly Stalinist.
I assume if you had a right wing figure who prosecuted Benjamin Spock for advocating draft resistance in the 1960s; traveled to Tehran during the hostage crisis for a "Crimes of America" forum; was a defender of Lyndon LaRouch in the late 1980s; has publically questioned the need to pursue suspected Nazi war criminals; smoozed with Radovan Karadzic and denies that Serbia committed any crimes of ethnic cleansing at all ... can you imagine if a conservative activist had that sort of resume?
Posted by: Brian Carnell on January 23, 2002 02:33 PMComments are Closed.