Sunday, November 13, 2005
Goose-stepping Obedience or Cell Phones and I-Pods...Decisions, Decisions
If anyone even regularly watches the nightly news, they've at least once or twice seen the goose-stepping parades in Pyongyang, North Korea. It also would have been hard to not notice the military officers covered in medals to such excess that they look as if they've been clothed in tuna fish cans. Is there anything that really needs explaining here? North Korea is a Stalinist dictatorship, one of the most oppressive and brutal societies on the planet. There has been plenty of consistent and growing evidence that unimaginable cruelty is taking place there as a regular matter of state policy. I don't expect the average protest-minded hippy academic to show much concern for such things but one would hope that those who stand to risk the most would at least be privy to potential dangers when this nut-case of a state is one's northern neighbor.
As it turns out, the young and foolish of South Korea, nurtured -- as in the west -- on the fantasies of a left "leaning" media, and educational system, believe the Gulag to the north of them might actually be okay:
"…South Korea's sunshine policy has done nothing to moderate the regime of Kim Jong-Il, quite the opposite. At the same time, it has warped the perceptions of many South Koreans, who now feel greater sympathy towards the criminal regime in Pyongyang than towards the United States. It appears, with regard to North, that the South Korean left has taken a page from their American brethren, eschewing strenuous opposition to tyrannical governments in favor of accommodation and appeasement. When the government of Kim Jong-Il falls into the dustbin of history, many South Koreans can look forward to explaining to their northern cousins why they stood by and did so little to save them from their hellish predicament."
I realize there are levels and stages of Communist horror and, if one is an intellectual, one can even make it all sound necessary and good to turn an entire nation into a prison camp but, the North Korean situation just looks a bit too obvious to me. What's it going to take to wake up the kind of stooges who think that Kim Jong Il is merely misunderstood?
The left -- even in its watered down appeasement mode -- is so pathetic.
In any event, read the excellent article on this matter at Front Page Magazine. I hope it doesn't infuriate you as much as it did me.
As it turns out, the young and foolish of South Korea, nurtured -- as in the west -- on the fantasies of a left "leaning" media, and educational system, believe the Gulag to the north of them might actually be okay:
"…South Korea's sunshine policy has done nothing to moderate the regime of Kim Jong-Il, quite the opposite. At the same time, it has warped the perceptions of many South Koreans, who now feel greater sympathy towards the criminal regime in Pyongyang than towards the United States. It appears, with regard to North, that the South Korean left has taken a page from their American brethren, eschewing strenuous opposition to tyrannical governments in favor of accommodation and appeasement. When the government of Kim Jong-Il falls into the dustbin of history, many South Koreans can look forward to explaining to their northern cousins why they stood by and did so little to save them from their hellish predicament."
I realize there are levels and stages of Communist horror and, if one is an intellectual, one can even make it all sound necessary and good to turn an entire nation into a prison camp but, the North Korean situation just looks a bit too obvious to me. What's it going to take to wake up the kind of stooges who think that Kim Jong Il is merely misunderstood?
The left -- even in its watered down appeasement mode -- is so pathetic.
In any event, read the excellent article on this matter at Front Page Magazine. I hope it doesn't infuriate you as much as it did me.
