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Hugh Segal and "Extremism"
by Glenn Woiceshyn
Published in the Financial Post on Nov/29/1997.
Re: "For U.S. Extremists, No Issues More Crucial Than Their Own"--by Hugh
Segal --Nov/22-24/97--The Financial Post
Hugh Segal did it again! He deployed an intellectually bankrupt term -- "extremism"
-- to package together religious fanatics and power-lusters with principled defenders
of reason and individual rights in order to use the former to smear the latter. (Last
time, Nov. 8-10, he used "intolerance.") On this occasion he packages together
U.S. anti-abortionist politicians with anyone who opposes statist/socialistic institutions
like the United Nations.
The anti-abortionists want to deprive a woman of her fundamental right to her own
body in the name of a mystical doctrine accepted on faith. The United Nations has,
to name just a few black marks, helped legitimize murderous communist nations such
as China and the former USSR by granting them veto power, bolstered collectivist/statist
trends such as tribalism and environmentalism, and hampered U.S. efforts in properly
dealing with murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein.
There is a life-and-death difference between the consistently (extremely!) rational
and the consistently irrational, or between the principled defender of liberty and
its consistent violator, or between Thomas Jefferson and Adolph Hitler (or Maximilien
Robespierre!). Left-leaning "moderates" like Segal want to obliterate this
distinction with the "extremist" charge, resurrect an unprincipled, middle-of-the-road
philosophy as the ideal, and thereby sedate people into "tolerating" the
toxicity of the Left.
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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