"Committee for the Republic"

[MattNC]

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB105821991056891800,00.html

[Jack Rabbit]

1. I disagree with this paragraph

Left-leaning foreign-policy thinkers have taken up the battle cry as well, saying they disagree less with the ends of the neoconservatives than their means. They want empire, but administered through multilateral institutions. Robert Cooper, director-general for external affairs at the European Union and a senior adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calls for a "new kind of imperialism" by which Western states, perhaps acting under the guidance of the United Nations, take political responsibility for zones of disorder. Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay at the Brookings Institution, a more-liberal leaning think tank here, write: "The real debate is not whether to have an empire, but what kind."

Speaking only for myself and not for others, I take exception to the end. Empire is inconsistent with democracy. Empire assumes the right of the elites to rule over the masses. This requires a degree of oppression not only agaisnt the subjugated peoples, but of those among the privileged who reject injustice.

There may have been a time when association with the British Labour Party qualified one as a "left-leaning", that is to say, one who stands for democracry against elitism. However, Mr. Blair betrayed that tradition in the Labour Party by embracing Bush's imperialist war in Iraq.

No one truly "left-leaning" could ever be persuaded to embrace an imperialist ideology.