Euston Manifesto... Interesting!

Please go to Normblog to read the Euston Manifesto. It's a manifesto for leftists that are basically sick and tired of the far fringes of the left dominating the debate coming from that side of the proverbial aisle.

I didn't agree with all of it, because I think there's an underlying current of "capitalists are bad" despite the fact that successful capitalism tends to produce the very results they'd like to see economically and even democratically. However, overall, I wholeheartedly agree with Paul at Powerline: When I was a liberal, THIS is closer to the kind of liberal I was and the so-called "progressives" and the left in general has completely left me bewildered.

Truthfully, I see the real progressives (if the meaning is something like "those committed to social, political, economic and general human progress") on the right, in the conservative momement in this country (of course, always leaving the far fringe dangling out there where they belong). Who is trying (once again) to defeat vicious totalitarianism, this time in the form of Islamofascism? Who is fighting for the rights of women and minorities in places where they are most oppressed? Who is dedicated to the spread of freedom and democracy? Who is working for broad-based capitalism that gives ordinary people the opportunity to better their lives and takes total economic control away from oppressive governments? It ain't the left, my friends.

In fact (this is what bewilders me), it is the left, the so-called progressives, that protest against the actions people on the right are taking to produce the results that they should want.

If this was just a disagreement over methodology, I'd welcome the debate. But, as the Manifesto points out, there is no realism in the far left's argument, because the methodology they would recommend has proven completely ineffective. For example, Kerry's "everything must go through the UN" approach, despite the fact they are the most hapless bunch in history, complete with corruption, self-centered rather than "what's right" motives (e.g. Oil For Food and France and Russia regarding Saddam, or the entire Arab block regarding Israel, or the human rights violators leading the UN human rights organizations), and straight up incompetence (Sudan, the response to the tsunami, Rwanda, etc.). Another example (which is in the Manifesto), is socialism. While the Manifesto seems to have socialist leanings, it does acknowledge that Communist and Socialist regimes amounted to nothing more than murderous tyrannies. If only even the right thinking left, as represented by those who wrote and support the Manifesto, could finally see that the European style socialism that they like is, instead of producing the kind of economic freedom and personal liberty they would love to see, producing economic stresses that will cause systemic collapse (and, hence, MORE joblessness and LESS economic security and personal liberty), they'd REALLY have something.

It does, however, acknowledge that the people the so-called liberals have aligned themselves with, intentionally or not, tend to be the worst kind of tyrants, monarchs, and theocrats. And it admonishes the left to disengage themselves from those entanglements. Basically, it acknowledges that there IS an enemy to freedom, democracy, and progress that does have to be defeated, lest we stop progress and go backward.

It's well worth the read, and it would be incredibly good if the right and left could begin debating from there, rather than from "Bush and the right are wrong in everything they do and anything and anyone that opposes them is OK with us!" My opinion is that the left needs to get back to the more rational place represented by the Manifesto, or everything "progressive" we've gained as humanity will be thwarted by the Islamists (hey, they're only a millenium or a millenium and a half behind in their thinking!), or, at best, the battle to retain the progress will be fought at close quarters.