THE SILENCE – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  First, a question:  Have you noticed the absolute silence of the political left on the tragedy in Japan?  Oh, yes, a few leftist tongues are wagging about the nuclear issue, the better to send us all back to the "environmentally friendly" stone age. 

But as to the tragedy itself – the thousands dead and missing, the massive dislocation, the shortage of food – nothing, absolutely nothing.  Compare please to Haiti, where the left rushed in where real angels feared to tread.  The rock stars were on their private jets in minutes, flying down to embrace Haitian relief.  The result?  Haiti today, by most accounts, looks pretty much the same as it did the day after last year's earthquake.

I guess Haitians are just more deserving, although I know not why.

And have you also noticed the silence of the political left on the revolutions in the Mideast?  Now, wait, I thought these people were interested in "human rights."  Am I misinformed?  But have you noticed that all those people of the Code Pink stripe who whine about "the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people" never show the slightest interest in the rights of any other Arabs?  I wonder why that is.  You don't think it's because the Palestinians are battling Israel, and that Israel is an ally of the United States, do you?  Oh no, these "human rights activists" don't think that way, do they?  They certainly do.

I recall the Vietnam period.  The left whined mightily about "the Vietnamese people."  But when the war ended and the Cambodian genoicide began, that same left was utterly silent.  Only one prominent leftist voice, Joan Baez, spoke out on the horror, and she was shouted down immediately by Jane Fonda and others.  Of course, the left was utterly silent about the genocides in the old Soviet Union, so why should we have been surprised? 

So, what do we learn from all this?  We learn that Haitians are more important than Japanese.  Palestinians are more important than other Arabs.  And human life, on the hard left, is simply a matter of politics.  Real living flesh need not apply. 

Far from being advocates for human rights, you will find the people on the real left to be cold and indifferent.  It's all about the ideology, never about the people.

March 17, 2011