The sloppy man-love for terrorists continues...

The left is often criticized for sympathizing with terrorists. This sympathy almost never -- with some notorious exceptions -- takes the form of actually agreeing with bin Laden's motives, goals, or methods. Rather, it takes the form of asking North Americans to do something they're not normally inclined to do -- read a frikkin book. Since 9/11, the left has repeatedly asked politicians and pundits to actually learn about the history of the muslim world, and at least address the grievances therein honestly. Asking people to actually learn about the state of the Palestinians in no way calls for the destruction of Israel, after all. Talking about America's role as guarantor to authoritarian Mideast vassals means that America has made mistakes, not that it's the great Satan.

And yet, the left is frequently, obsessively demonized for being "soft on terror", "hating America", etc.

So it's somewhat amusing to see an increasing honesty by the right in America. First you had Dinesh D'souza's The Enemy at Home which quite openly says that bin Laden is right, America (or maybe just New York, if you get my meaning) is a decadent bordello and deserves what it got on 9/11. Now, you've got this from the US House of Representatives:

Yesterday the Senate voted 51-46 to give 40,000 airport baggage screeners the right to unionize. The House supports a similar bill, but President Bush has threatened a veto, which there doesn’t appear to be enough votes in either the House or Senate to override. The New York Times reports that Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-NC), called the bill “absolutely absurd. Terrorists don’t go on strike. Terrorists don’t call their union to negotiate before they attack.”

So our labour laws should be reconfigured to reflect the fact that we're at war. Moreover, they should be reconfigured specifically in regard to the enemy we're facing. So.... did we bring back slavery when the Nazis did? Because I missed that. I know we went kind of crazy for internment camps, but that wasn't really a labour practice.

The interesting point here is that actually, unions were restricted from certain activities during WWII -- but they were allowed to organize, and American industry prospered, or at least wasn't overtly harmed, by that organizing.