Double-standard trouble
Both left and right play games on federalism and states' rights. Liberals, generally contemptuous of states' rights, want to retain state tort and environmental laws, which they think are better than national laws under Republican dominance. Conservatives consider the states "laboratories of democracy," except when they want to trump a liberal state program. John Ashcroft's argument that Oregon's right-to-die law violated federal drug legislation comes under this heading.
Liberals have been severely critical of the Patriot Act and Ashcroft for the policy of seeking library records of suspected terrorists. Librarians were particularly incensed. However, the American Library Association declines to protest the serious mistreatment of librarians in Cuba. Some 75 dissidents, including 10 librarians, are subject to beatings, denied medical help, and kept in "medieval cages," according to human-rights advocates. The librarians' silence has to do with the lingering romantic attachment of the American left to communism in general and Fidel Castro in particular. The Motorcycle Diaries, the glowing movie about the young Che Guevara, is the current horrible example. The romantic left would never do a similar film about a young Nazi. Guevara killed a lot of people and dreamed of slaughtering more. How about On the Road With Adolf ? Let's not dwell too much on what came after.
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