Jewish Champions of First Amendment or something

[Miguel Schor]

Pinochet was less repressive than Allende?  Somoza was less  
repressive than the Sandinistas who were democratically voted out of  
office?  Supporting the overthrow of a democratically elected  
government in Guatemala in 1954 because, among other things, it  
favored nationalizing United Fruit's holdings enhanced civil rights?   
This is support for repression (which is a nice word for state  
sponsored murder) over democracy.  Miguel

On Sep 12, 2006, at 3:03 AM, Ilya Somin wrote:

> 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
>>
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Miguel Schor
Associate Professor of Law
Suffolk University Law School
120 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02108
617-305-6244
SSRN Webpage http://ssrn.com/author=469730



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