The left-wing Witherspoon Society, a PCUSA special interest caucus, features an article today by someone named Bill Peach. He’s writing about the Nobel Peace Prize, and much of what he says is unobjectionable, but this is the conclusion that he leads up to in the piece entitled, “Nobel Peace Prize 2009 – decided by a “left-leaning” panel?
The repeated reference to the panel as being “left-leaning” is more or less an obvious one. The criteria for nomination include pacifists, activists, advocates for humanitarian efforts, democratic reform, and peaceful resolution of conflicts. All of this makes you wonder if perhaps there should be a “right-leaning” panel to select a Nobel War Prize.
The references to the panel as being “left-leaning” actually has to do with their political affiliations in Norway, but let that pass. The point Peach seems to be making here is that peace, humanitarianism, human rights, etc. are all the purview of liberals and leftists, while war is the purview of conservatives and rightists. Given that, I can’t help but wonder about the political and ideological leanings of some of these folks:
•Winston Churchill: Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain who led the Allies to victory over the forces of evil and death that were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
•Dwight Eisenhower: American general who led the military operations against a genocidal regime during World War II, and later, as a Republican president, ended the Korean War.
•Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: Republican president and Conservative British Prime Minister whose efforts led the way to the end of the Cold War and the freeing of hundreds of millions of people from the yolk of Soviet totalitarianism.
•George H.W. Bush: Republican president who put together the coalition that defeated Saddam Hussein and freed Kuwait from Iraqi tyranny.
Those are just the ones that comes to mind off the top of my head–I’m sure you can add more. I wasn’t particularly a fan of Reagan or Bush, but only by a measure that insists, a priori, that only liberals care about peace and human rights could they or the others I mentioned be denied the Peace Prize. Yet none of them won it, while such stellar individuals as Yasser Arafat, fraudulent writer Rigoberto Menchu, Le Duc Tho (who negotiated the Vietnam War “peace” agreement knowing his country had no intention of abiding by it), fraudulent moviemaker Al Gore, and the corruptocrat Kofi Annan did. I think that sums up the expression “left-leaning Nobel Peace Prize panel” pretty well.
The Reformed Pastor 
October 17, 2009 at 10:13 am
I think crediting Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher with the end of the cold war is a huge stretch. The certainly fought it, I don’t know that they did all that much to end it.
October 17, 2009 at 11:35 am
Aw, c’mon, Kate, your partisanship is showing. The Soviet Union didn’t just spontaneously implode. There were a lot of factors involved (Afghanistan, unrest in Eastern Europe, a leader loath to use the methods of the past to crush dissent), but the actions of Reagan and Thatcher, particularly in challenging the Soviets to an arms race that they couldn’t win and which eventually brought down their economy, surely had a lot to do with it. It’s also a fact that the growth of Soviet influence world-wide was stopped and even reversed in the 80s after Jimmy Carter bungled matters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Again, Reagan and Thatcher’s actions aren’t the whole story (I’d have to include Pope John Paul II as a significant factor in the empire’s collapse), but their contributions can’t be ignored.
October 17, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Yes, and they almost got us blown up in the process. My husband grew up in Goose Bay, Labrador, and remembers being up all night after every single bomber was scrambled, wondering if it would be the bombers coming back and landing that they would hear, or the sound of incoming nukes. That arms race could just as easily have resulted in turning half the world into nuclear slag, and I don’t think that Regan or Thatcher should be given a whole lot of credit for it.
October 17, 2009 at 1:06 pm
We came closer to nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis than at any other point in the Cold War. Can you name a single moment during either Reagan’s or Thatcher’s tenures when we got anywhere close to that?
October 17, 2009 at 2:07 pm
What ended the Cold War? The Soviet ecomomy could no longer afford its domestic socialist programs to keep its citizens content.
What crippled the Soviet ecomomy? The crash in oil prices in the mid 80’s.
Other things may have speeded the process (such as Reagan challenging the Soviets to an expensive arms race, which also put the US in the red), but the primary reason for the implosion of the Soviet Empire was that its economy was kept afloat by selling energy.
If oil prices crash again and stay low for an extended period of time we’ll see the implosion of Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes kept afloat through petro-dollars. Russia would probably re-implode as well. When dictatorships can’t buy off their citizens with oil-funded social programs, they get overthrown.
So, anyone want to buy a hybrid?
October 18, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Rather amusing to see someone attempt the complicated rhetorical gymnastics of criticizing someone for painting conservatives with too broad a brush (a point on which I’d agree with you, if I thought you meant it), then contort around and write a blog post that ends with you doing the same to liberals, apparently hoping no one would notice.
And then to follow such a post with another railing against hypocrisy. Heh. Is that the blog post equivalent of a triple-axle?
🙂 “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.” Emerson would be proud, David, of your giving up “foolish consistency”. LOL
October 19, 2009 at 9:44 am
I agree with you David but I also believe much credit is owed to prayer, and Pope John Paul II
October 19, 2009 at 10:03 am
It is interesting to see how selective we can be as we look back at history. You mention the positive impact of Churchill, Eisenhower, Reagan and George H.W. Bush in certain situations. Yes, I suppose.
But what about the ill effects of colonialism in general? What about the ways the UK, the US and others have exploited others with military superiority for centuries?
Have you read THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein? Yes, she is definitely well to the Left of Center (although Center here in the USA is now too much to the Right IMO), but her research is thorough and should not be ignored. She details many, many cases of US actions which have hurt millions of people over the past half-century, particularly because of an infatuation with the ideas of Milton Friedman.
DEMOCRACY NOW! regularly informs those willing to listen and see that the policies and actions of the USA are indeed causing much death and poverty and other injustices throughout the planet.
I invite you to pay attention to so much more than the Right Wing echo chamber which is sadly full of misinformation and just plain bigotry.
love, john + http://www.abundancetrek.com + “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.” — Teilhard de Chardin
October 19, 2009 at 10:03 am
Barb: You won’t get any argument from me.
October 24, 2009 at 12:35 pm
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