Jewish Champions of First Amendment or something

[Ilya Somin]

I think Mark is missing a crucial distinction here. Those on the right who supported repressive foreign regimes during the Cold War did as a purely tactical consideration: these regimes were considered to be valuable allies against a greater evil and also to be less repressive than the available alternatives in their own countries (often communists or left-wing authoritarians). In much the same way, both liberals and conservatives accepted the USSR as an ally during WWII because the alternative of losing the war was even worse. Such prudential  alliances of convenience may or not have been justified (I think they were right in some cases but wrong in others). But they are very different from a  belief that the repressive foreign regime in question is actually a good regime and a model for the US to emulate. The latter, of course, was the view held by members of the CPUSA.

Ilya Somin
Assistant Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
3301 Fairfax Dr.
Arlington, VA 22201
ph: 703-993-8069
fax: 703-993-8202
e-mail: isomin at gmu.edu
Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~isomin/
SSRN Page: http://ssrn.com/author=333339


----- Original Message -----
From: MARK STEIN <markstein at prodigy.net>
Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 2:56 am
Subject: Re: Jewish Champions of First Amendment or something

> 
> If we are going to say that you are not a champion of the First 
> Amendment if you support a repressive foreign regime, that rules 
> out not only all Communists during the Cold War, but also the 
> entire Right and also the Cold War liberals in the center.  The 
> only ones eligible would be the democratic Left, which I suppose 
> makes sense.
> 
> Actually, Right and Center during the Cold War should probably be 
> considered less eligible than Communists, under this criterion, 
> because they had government power in America and they used it to 
> keep foreign repressive regimes in power.    
> 
> Mark    
>