Democracy: It's a Good Thing

Max Boot, nefarious neo-con, stomps on the realpolitik critique of "making the world safe for democracy." The increasing solidarity of "radical right" and "radical left" on this issue is striking. It's remarkable how many so-called "progressives" have become champions of a status quo that keeps the wretched of the earth wretched. The progressive defense of the status quo ignores, in an almost reactionary fashion, what the status quo actually means to those who endure it: torture, bloodshed, slaughter, brutality, genocide. How many of those bulging-veined protesters at the Republican National Convention, for instance, bothered to get up off their stools at Starbucks to attend the recent protest against the genocide in Darfur? Norman Geras, a principled leftist, has called the left's defense of brutal regimes a moral failure. I agree.

Update: More on Darfur from Mort Kondracke.