Seipp, the Old South, and Islamic militants
Cathy Seipp does a neat trick. First she points out that it is often liberals who are somehow sympathetic to anti-American Islam, or who say you can't change cultures too quickly. Liberals, as she says, would not have made such excuses for the Old South.
Then she shifts to the suggestion that the 9/11 terrorists are merely violent criminals, and to deal with them properly, their demands must be understood. She asks: "Were the political grievances of, say, Timothy McVeigh ever discussed seriously? Should we have considered meeting the demands of Charles Manson?"
Well, there was a certain amount of discussion of the grievances of McVeigh. But even more deeply, lots of people made excuses for, elaborated the grievance of, the Old South. No doubt it was not the most liberal people who did so, and the liking liberals have for theocracy and tyranny, as long as it does not apply to them, is amazing. But weren't lots of Republicans sympathetic to the Old South? Didn't Eisenhower, for example, hope there would be no Brown v. Board decision because it might simply enrage the whites down there, and make things worse?
Wasn't there, er, some reason to think this way? Wasn't it actually true--in the 1870s, if the not the 1970s, that democracy and true civil rights would be a long time in coming--this would not be an overnight process?
In the United States.
Link via the Corner.
|
