Cannot think of a name wrote:I don't. I'm not picking a sports team to root for, I'm having a loosely organized set of policy questions being slotted into an arbitrary binary of political thought in order to reduce several complex ideas into a versus narrative. I'm 'left' because more of the choices on this scale come down on what has currently been determined as 'left' than right. As to whose jersey that puts me in I have little to no interest as I am not going to base other decisions on what the 'team' does, past or present.
If you do not consider yourself a leftist, then the OP of this thread does not concern you. You will notice that the title of this thread is, "
Leftists have, can, and should oppose Islam".
Again, you should not get your impressions of the left you say you belong to from the characterizations on right wing AM radio. Because this is rhetoric. You're shaming into action based on a definition of the people you're arguing against so that they have to answer that instead of actually proposing an idea. It's unbecoming. Don't do it.
What makes you think my impressions of left-wing apologia comes from what the right-wing says? They don't. My impressions are derived from what I have read and heard self-proclaimed leftists say online and in everyday life. You can see some of these left-wing apologetics even on this very thread.
And this I suppose is why you're doing it. Because this is basically the right's policy stance, that them there Muslims can't handle democracy. But if you said that you wouldn't get to be part of the 'left' to say that. At least in American terms, this is the the side of the issue that the conservative right has staked out. So, you figure, if you can make it seem like a 'left' idea then we'll all go, "Wait, I'm on the left...I should believe this too then."
I'm not sure if you've been paying attention to news for the past decade, but the administration of George W. Bush (generally considered to be right-wing) launched major military interventions in two Islamic countries with the explicitly stated goal of
introducing democracy to these regions (other motives may have also played a role). I was/am opposed to these interventions on the basis that they have promoted the destabilization of the greater Middle East, are a waste of American resources, and are ultimately doomed to fail due to the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan are not Sweden or Denmark.