I was thinking yesterday about the strange way that systems are evaluated by those on the left. Now, the left is not alone in applying two sets of standards. I have written before about how those on the right cherry pick quotes from the Koran to criticize Islam, yet dislike when others do the same to Leviticus. But that is a relatively small complaint. On the other hand, the left has a tendency to apply two standards to very basic questions.

For instance, as I have mentioned before, the free market is often faulted for failing to resolve all shortcomings, being criticized for not producing perfection. At the same time, the interventions intended to correct these shortcomings are judged to succeed if they produce any benefit, even if they too fall far short of perfection, or even short of the results that the free market produced. That is, the free market "fails" if there is a single flaw, while intervention succeeds if it produces anything that can be called beneficial.

However, the even more egregious example, the one that struck me yesterday, was the criticism often raised against religion, that it does nothing but increase human suffering. To prove this, they point to the many supposed harms done by religion, the Inquisition,the Crusades*, and any other act of intolerance or violence. And they are immune to any argument that these are distortions of the message of religion, that they are expressions of human failings, not religion.

On the other hand, when confronted with the slaughters committed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others, or by the very real oppression and violence that goes on every day in communist states, they often reply that is because no one has tried "true communism". They respond that such incidents are not to be blame don communism, but on the individual implementations.

In other words, religion is to be judged on the basis of its worst proponents, even when the rest of the religious community has denounced them, but communism is to be judged by the ideal version they wish might someday exist in the real world, but has never yet been seen.

Of course, today, most on the left don't bother defending communism. They might still have the same warm, fuzzy feelings toward socialism, might think of communism as an ideal, but outside of the WTO protesters, most "progressives" realize that communism (socialism) is a hard sell. So you don't hear as many Stalin defenses as you once did. Instead, they try to pretend that somehow their government intervention is different than communist intervention, and deny that they are in any way related to socialism, becoming angry if anyone tries to compare Obama's partial nationalization of industry to socialism.

But that is, in itself, another deception. As I argued above, they take the moderate, pluralist religion of modern America and, because it has the same features as the most extreme beliefs, compare it to the worst excesses of religion ever seen. On the other hand, when liberal practices are identical to steps carried out by socialists, they still insist there is no common ground, that THEIR nationalization is nothing like communist nationalization, that THEIR national health care is nothing like socialist national health care, and so on. In other words, they tie all religion to religious extremism through very tortured analogy, but they deny very plain parallels between their practices and beliefs and those of socialists/communists.

As I said, the left is not unique in this dishonest argument, other have problems of their own, but I do have to say, the elft has turned the double standard into an art form.

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* As a religious event, I am not so sure the Crusades merit praise, but as a simple political act, they hardly deserve the criticism the modern left has heaped on them. Thanks to its Islamo-philia the modern left has engaged in a strange revisionism, seeing them as some sort of invasion of Moslem homelands. They forget that Jerusalem was Byzantine less than 300 years before the crusades (and some lands retaken, such as Edessa and Antioch, had been Byzantine -- or Byzantine protectorates -- even more recently), and was changing hands continually between the Abbasids, Seljuks and others. Yes, to some degree the causes of the Crusades were trumped up, but it was hardly the unprovoked invasion of sacred Moslem heartland that some would have us believe.

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POSTSCRIPT

As I mentioned the double standard the right applies, as well as revisionism about the Crusades, I will direct readers to the following posts: "What About The Crusades?", "Thoughts on Islam and the Current Conflict", "Winning Over Moderates" and "Perceptions of Iraq". They cover a range of topics which might be of interest, such as mistaken beliefs about the Crusades, the cherry picking of quotes to criticize Islam, the varied history of Islam, for good and ill, and some thoughts on why modern Islam has lost a lot of the cosmopolitan and relatively tolerant nature exhibited by some historical Islamic states. Taken together they help explain why I can both agree with some of the arguments about this being a "war of cultures" while still disagreeing with those who postulate that Islam is inherently evil. (And, yes, if you believe in a different religion you obviously will think it incorrect, but if you think all non-Christian religions are "evil", then so am I, so I am hoping that claims of "evil" rest on more than "not Christian".)

And before you write about me somehow "going soft" on Islam, read "A Hypothetical Situation", "Correlation vs. Causation", "Moral Equivalence", "A Pet Peeve", "Another Pet Peeve" and "Thank You ObamaCare!"., and recall that Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin are among my favorite modern historical figures. (Yes, Begin signed off on returning the Sinai, but as he expected additional conflict in the Golan, I can see why he wanted to protect his flanks, and was happy to give up an indefensible, relatively valueless stretch of land to do so.)

POSTSCRIPT II

Actually, I should qualify a statement above. Being one of "my favorite historical figures" doesn't always mean I admire the individual. Admiral Canaris is on that list too, but he definitely had some shortcomings, for example, he was far too ambivalent in his feelings about the Nazis, allowing his nationalism to get int he way of seeing the reality of Nazi Germany. So not everyone I find interesting is also admirable. Just wanted to clear that up.