I was appalled to see Paul Fritch, the [former] director of the Secretary General's office and therefore a [former] spokesman for the OSCE, take sides in this debate on Facebook (below). (UPDATE: turns out that despite his misleading Facebook profile that makes it seem as if this position is still current, Fritch is no longer in this job--CAF.]
The debate was about whether or not Romney is "wrong" and is supposedly "factually incorrect" in criticizing Obama over the obvious apologetics in the Middle East -- not only with the US Embassy statement in Cairo, since repudiated by the State Department, but going all the way back to the Cairo speech in 2009.
What's just so outrageous about these "progressives" on the international justice jet-set network is how they believe they can make reality come about just by affirming it in hortatory fashion at every turn.
But they can't. Just because somebody doesn't share your anti-American lefty views doesn't mean they are "factually wrong," good Lord! [UPDATE: turns out that Fritch, also a former NATO employee, is an American who served in this international position. Seems like he leaves up a description where he can invoke the power of office in a Facebook fight to me.]
What Paul Fritch has to realize is that perfectly intelligent, liberal normal people who voted Democrat all their lives, like me, who are human rights advocates, who have no justification for this hate film and work for tolerance, like me, do not think Obama is serving human rights and do think it was an apology. It was right, proper, legitimate and necessary for Romney to step up under these circumstances and call out this weak and unprincipled position. (BTW, read this article from my avatar on my Second Life blog for my reasons for switching to a candidate outside my registered party.)
People like Fritch think support for the kind of views Romney expressed about the terrible attack on our people abroad is just a "neocon" problem or a "Sarah Palin" problem of a factor of, oh, shopping at Wal-mart, being overweight, and driving an SUV.
This exchange is SOOOO emblematic of every debate these days on The Atlantic or The New York Times or anywhere, where journalists and commenters alike assert with smug assurance that people who don't share their assessment of a situation are "factually wrong". It's truly disgusting.
Fritch can mix into a political fracas like this with such smarmy self-confidence and faux sincerity because he really thinks it's a "just the facts, ma'm" problem that he can "set people straight on". It truly is a moral horror.
For one, it puts an automatic chill on every debate because every debate can only be seen in terms of "fact-checking" and "the facts" --which are meaningless terms in the era of Politfakt and the hugely biased "fact-checkers" in places like Politico or the Washington Post or the New York Times.
There's a literalism and a narrow-mindedness here that truly is worrisome for the fate of democracy and pluralism.
People like this have to understand that liberal Democrats like me are voting for Romney regardless because we have seen just too many assaults on liberty under this Administration to countenance it as a trend for four more years. People like me aren't thrilled with Romney and certainly don't agree with him on gay rights and social issues like that, but on the central problem of Obama's failure to stand up to the tyranny of states as well as Islamist non-state actors, he's on the right page.
Let the Democrats spend the next four years in chastisement finding a non-socialist candidate willing to stand up for civil and political liberties as much as he is social and economic rights. Socialism doesn't work in this country; and yes, community-organizing is stealth-socialism, and you cannot "fact-check" me out of that basic knowledge I have had since attending the same Socialist Scholars' Conferences that Obama attended in the 1980s. So there.
The Cairo statement was an apology. "Apology" means expressing regrets and making a bow to an injured party. But while hate speech occurred, the type of violent injured response that occurs in response is not justified and cannot be condoned. And yes, such violence does indeed have to be pre-emptively called out -- especially with the track record we've had on this with Koran burnings never done intentionally leading to the deaths of journalists.
The focus in these cases should not be on apologizing -- yes, apologizing -- for a hurt, which is a subjective concept at best and easily manipulated. The focus should be on condemning the speech and not pre-anticipating what victims should feel. The focus should be on calling for the positives of tolerance and non-violence.
There were ways, consistent with US policy, UN resolutions, and past statements, as I've pointed out here and here to condemn the speech as hateful, and distance the US from it, without taking on the additional moral burden of characterizing victims or their experiences -- which is only inflammatory itself, especially in a context where no universals were affirmed. That's pre-emptive subjectivity that really is out of place.
Whenever I hear all Catholic priests characterized as pedophiles or responsible for AIDS deaths in Africa, I don't experience "hurt feelings" or feel I get to beat or kill someone. I take it for what it is: an exaggeration that has some cases of truth on the issue of pedophiles, and actually no basis for the claim about Africa. It requires patient and earnest debate and citing of facts and efforts to build tolerance of dissent against not Catholic hegemony but "progressive" political correctness.
Each influential figure like Fritch who converts a disagreement over policy into a factology is undermining freedom of speech and legitimate debate. This is getting very, very common and it has to be called out and pushed back at every turn.
If you think there was no apology and Romney doesn't get to call it out as an apology, you are creating blasphemy law in the United States - no one can criticize the president in times of emergency. If you think there "facts" in this story that definitely point to any non-apology, why, you have to ask yourself why the State Department itself retracted the statement! Hello, Mr. Spokesman, get that! And if you think there wasn't an apology, you are in fact arguing the content of the US Embassy Cairo statement all over again, as James Kirchick explains on Index on Censorship. Knock it off! It's time for the liberal democratic men in the West to stand up to the neuralgic machismo of the few but determined Muslim men in the Islamic World, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, willing to kill over their sense of insult and indignation -- or, what is more likely, cunningly willing to hoist liberals by their own petards and guilt-trip them with this trigger as a cover for jihad.
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