June 13, 2005

Double Standards?!

Double standard: n : an ethical or moral code that applies more strictly to one group than to another.

And boy oh boy, when it comes to America and the rest of the world, double standards abound, even in our own "progressive" circles. Take what Mark Steyn has to say in today's Washington Times:

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's kleptocrat strongman, destroyed a mosque the other day. It was in Hatcliffe Extension, a shantytown on the edge of Harare, razed by the "police." Mr. Mugabe is an equal-opportunity razer: He also bulldozed a Catholic-run Aids center...

The point is the world's Muslims seem entirely cool with Infidel Bob razing a mosque. Unlike the fallout over Newsweek's fraudulent story about the Koran being flushed down a toilet, no excitable young men went bananas in Pakistan; no Western progressives berated Mr. Mugabe for his "cultural insensitivity." And sadly most of the big-shot Muslim spokespersons were still too busy flaying the Bush administration to whip their subjects into a frenzy over Hatcliffe Extension's pile of Islamic rubble.

What??? (Please imagine me saying that in the same tone of voice as Mrs. Broflovski on South Park.)

You see, boys and girls, no matter what America does, America is wrong. We could withdraw all troops from Iraq today and then be asked "how could you?" when the country was once again overrun by murderous thugs and fanatics. We could give all of our money away today and tomorrow become one of the Third World countries we are always accused of downtrodding, and yet we'd still be criticized for not having given our money away yesterday and becoming a Third World counry today.

Despite the fact that we provide much of the worldwide monetary, food, military and medical aid to less fortunate countries on a regular basis, it's never enough. Remember how we were "stingy" during last year's tsunami crisis? And when's the last time anyone stepped forward with aid for America during a crisis such as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, or our country's crisis in the aftermath of 9/11? Lives were lost, financial foundations were shaken, yet Americans weren't considered worthy of any kind of help from outsiders.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that we need such aid. But it's galling, to say the least, that we're always the first to be called upon, and then criticized when it doesn't meet certain "standards." And no one wants to help us, ever. We are, remember, the Great Satan, a country out to dominate the world with Coca Cola, Levis and Paris Hilton. (Ooh, that left a bad taste in my mouth...sorry.)

Back to Steyn and the comparisons of Gitmo and gulags:

Why would a human-rights organization want to trivialize the murder of millions in totalitarian death camps by comparing them with a nondeath camp that flatters every aspect of the inmates' culture? If Gitmo's a gulag, what words are left for the systemic rape practiced by the butchers of Darfur? Or is it because they've so exhausted the extremes of their vocabulary on Guantanamo that the world's progressives have so little to say about real horrors like Sudan?

Go ahead and read all of Steyn's excellent observations. And just remember the meaning of the phrase "double standard," and how it's applied to America by our pals in the MSM and on the "progressive" left.

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