Hi Jeff

My understanding is that South Korea's turn to anti-Americanism was not accidental but a process initiated by the prior South Korean president muzzling the Conservative press and letting the Left-wing teacher's unions propagandize without restraint in the school system. Apparently in Europe as well there was a concerted effort by the hard left in the early 1990's to recoup their devastating loss after the fall of the USSR to hammer anti-American themes in the Euro media and institutions of higher ed.

Interestingly enough, the virtually unknown acceditation organizations are introducing a political litmus test for universities and colleges in the United States to inculcate * Social Justice* as graduation requirements for prospective teachers. They are very serious and very specific in their requirements and right now it is flying under the radar of the Bush administration.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/05/23/johnson

I have a question as well.

Why is the radical Left around the world such an ardent defender and eager supporter of tyranny and despotism wherever it resides?

They disparage their own free governments in favor of nations that would never allow such dissent. They swoon over regimes that brutally silence, oppress, and murder their own citizens. And they do it routinely - like it's a prerequisite of Leftist thought.

I guess mostly it is support for Communism. For some reason, despite every example of its utter failure on every level, the Left refuses to admit it is an untenable system. Why do they continue to support a form of government that subjugates and shackles its citizens - imprisoning them in a cess pool of shared misery?

The only possible answer I can see is not that they want to live in such a tyranny, but rather wish to rule one themselves.

Mark,

I'd seen the article on accreditation (and your post on your blog was good) in a couple of places. I finally wrote about it today.

It is my understanding as well that there was a deliberate movement in several of our Cold War allies to stir up anti-Americanism as a way to deflect public attention from economic and other problems at home, but I don't know enough about it to state more than that. In S. Korea, though, there was an interesting difference: the anti-Americanism came about at the time that the South realized that the North might actually fall, and the South would have to foot the majority of the cost of absorbing and fixing the North. After Germany's experience (which was much less severe than absorbing N. Korea would be), the South didn't want any part of that.

Brian,

I think it's a manifestation of One True Wayism. The French Socialists prior to WWII were very, very anti-Nazi and anti-fascist in general. They were the defenders of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the religious and ethnic minorities and so forth. Their overriding value, though, was to be against war under any circumstances.

This led the Socialists to claim that Germany was not rearming, because to admit that would have required intervention because of the Treaty of Versailles.

When it became obvious that Germany was indeed rearming, this was passed off as merely necessary self-defense against the predations of France and Britain. And it's not like the Germans had remilitarized the Rhineland or anything.

When the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, this of course was only right and proper as the Rhineland was part of Germany and so Germany needed to be able to defend its citizens there. If only Versailles hadn't been so punitive, Germany would not have had to do this. And, said the Socialists, Germany had no plans to mobilize the military, so there was no danger.

When Germany did mobilize, the Socialists claimed that this was because Germany had so many internal troubles, what with the Jews causing problems, and besides, France and Britain had much larger militaries and Germany had ot protect itself. Anyway, Germany wasn't expansionist, so there was no problem. Nope, no need to go to war. Versailles in fact should be compeletely scrapped.

You might be guessing how this turned out. At each stage, in order to avoid war, the Socialists would justify and explain away increasingly militaristic behaviors and increasingly atrocious treatment of the very people the Socialists claimed they wanted to protect. Eventually, the Socialists ended up as the rulers of Vichy, and willingly sent the French Jews (including a former Socialist Prime Minister) to the death camps. The Socialists had gradually become invested in the very things they claimed to abhor, to prevent the one thing they eventually made inevitable.

This is happening now on the part of the Western hard Left, and it's seeping into the soft left as well. This is why the media, university intellectuals, entertainers, NGOs and so forth - in other words, groups that are somewhat to the left of center, and that have an overriding principle that war is always wrong (at least if perpetuated by the imperialist/colonialist West against the noble savage indigenous populations - seem to be (and probably are) moving towards active support of the very things they most abhor against the things they most claim to value.

It's why I have come to the conclusion, anyway, that the hard Left in the West, and the institutions that lean strongly to the left, are either on the other side, or at least opposed to our side.