Why The Left Won't Condemn Terrorism

A mystery solved:

In Israel, and probably also in the U.S. to a considerable extent, this softness toward terrorism is the sine qua non of the Left. Among the majority who recognize it as evil, the question becomes practical: what should we do about it? Withdraw from the terror enclaves and try to keep them surrounded and bottled up? Keep patrolling them while allowing them to exist? Fight them seriously and root out the terror? On such issues one can hold discussions without a sense of betraying one's deepest values.

The Left, however, cannot cross the Rubicon of just condemning terror. I've seen the anguish and anger in leftist friends after an attack. But after a while, they always come out at the same place. It was we, our arrogance, our insensitivity, our one-sided narrative, that drove this desperate person to do this. You and I would do the same in his place -- we would be mass murderers, child-murderers.

The question, then, is why the leftist persists in this view of things.

While I find the reasons given in the article compelling enough, I'd like to add a fourth: leftists consider it a sign of strength to kill innocents to effect social change. Lenin beat this into them way back when: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

This helps to explain the constant efforts of the Berkeley Bolshies to idolize such murderous scumbags as Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Huey Newton, and the rest. Nothing is quite so attractive to them as a sociopath who mouths the same platitudes they do.