Slashdot Mirror

For Einstein's own thoughts on socialism, check out his essay at Monthly Review: Why Socialism?

We defeated a nation controlled by left-wing ideology in WWII...

And that nation would be....? The Nazis were anything but left wing. They suppressed the socialist and Communist parties and followed no policies of their own that were founded on Marx or any socialist philosopher or economist. As for Italy and Japan, they were as right-wing as you could want.

Yet at the same time this same "liberal" is generally very much in favor of things like socialism.

You do not appear to know anything about liberals or socialism. Very briefly, socialism advocates public ownership of industry. All of the big Washington liberals (Kennedy, Lieberman, Clinton, Daschle, etc.) are solid free marketers.

Authority that is not accountable and vulnerable to the will of the people is tyrrany.

Every liberal and conservative and all shades in between agree with that bit of bombast. And that "will of the people" demogoguery doesn't sound anything like libertarianism. I thought libertarians were suspicious of mass movements and mob psychology that threaten the rights of individuals, dissidents and minorities. In any case, the Founding Fathers thoughtfully set up an independent judiciary as a check on the will of people in case it ever got out of hand, which it often does.

This is from an interview with Noam Chomsky. It answers the question "What was he supposed to do?".

Q: Talk about the relationship between ends and means. Let's say you have a noble goal. You want to bring perpetrators of horrendous terrorist crimes to justice. What about the means to reach those ends?

A: Suppose you want to bring a president of the U.S. to justice. They're guilty of horrendous terrorist acts. There's a way to do it. In fact, there are precedents. Nicaragua in the 1980s was subjected to violent assault by the U.S. Tens of thousands of people died. The country was substantially destroyed, it may never recover. The effects on the country are much more severe even than the tragedies in New York the other day. They didn't respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They went to the World Court, which issued a judgment in their favor condemning the U.S. for what it called "unlawful use of force," which means international terrorism, ordering the U.S. to desist and pay substantial reparations. The U.S. dismissed the court judgment with contempt, responding with an immediate escalation of the attack. So Nicaragua then went to the Security Council, which passed a resolution calling on states to observe international law. The U.S. vetoed it. They went to the General Assembly, where they got a similar resolution that passed near-unanimously, which the U.S. and Israel opposed two years in a row (joined once by El Salvador). That's the way a state should proceed. If Nicaragua had been powerful enough, it could have set up another criminal court. Those are the measures the U.S. could pursue, and nobody's going to block it. That's what they're being asked to do by people throughout the region, including their allies.

Remember, the governments in the Middle East and North Africa, like the terrorist Algerian government, which is one of the most vicious of all, would be happy to join the U.S. in opposing terrorist networks which are attacking them. They're the prime targets. But they have been asking for some evidence, and they want to do it in a framework of at least minimal commitment to international law. The Egyptian position is complex. They're part of the primary system that organized the bin Laden network. They were the first victims of it when Sadat was assassinated. They've been major victims of it since. They'd like to crush it, but they say, only after some evidence is presented about who's involved and within the framework of the UN Charter, under the aegis of the Security Council. That's a way to proceed.