Saunders' conservative slight
In an otherwise well-done essay, the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders makes one erroneous (and somewhat maddening) assertion. In profiling Canadian scholar Michael Ignatieff, Saunders writes: "Red-meat conservatives have no interest in his [Ignatieff's] language of human rights." It is a never-ending source of frustration how bien pensant leftist writers and academics like Mr. Saunders gratuitously assume that conservatives don't give a damn about human rights.
That simply isn't true.
Support for human rights is not monopolized by the Left. Indeed, it is "red-meat conservatives" who included human rights in Iraq as part of the rationale for going to war. It is because conservatives do not rush out into the streets, holding placards complaining about the trampling of human rights in Colombia or "fair trade" coffee or any of these other leftist hobby horses that Saunders and his ilk dismiss us. Human rights are best secured in countries that have as fundamental values freedom and democracy. Freedom + democracy = human rights. That is a principal reason why I supported regime change in Iraq (don't send me emails about the shame at Abu Ghraib, I'm aware of it) and why liberalization in the Middle East is important. Indeed, you could even argue that the modern Left cares less about human rights than conservatives do. One need look no further than Iraq, and the U.N. refusal to deal with Saddam Hussein, or Kofi Annan's disgraceful obliviousness to what was going on in Rwanda in the early 90s as proof.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:33 PM
