Progressives are so busy congratulating themselves on self-righteously making government off limits to anyone with questionable income tax returns that they have failed to consider what they have really done. In torpedoing the nomination of Tom Daschle, they have set back a far more important goal: the moral imperative to provide health care for all Americans.

Disqualifying every public servant who has a tax problem makes as much sense as disqualifying every neurosurgeon who has a tax problem. When you need brain surgery, you want the most qualified brain surgeon; what he did or did not claim on his last tax return has no bearing on his ability to perform delicate, lifesaving neurosurgery.

"There's a huge difference between choosing to go to a doctor who has tax problems and putting the public trust in someone whose job it would be to devise a program that will necessarily be paid for with huge increases in taxes, but who fails to pay his own taxes."

There's no difference if you are judging both on the ability to get the job done. The appropriate penalty for a tax violation is a fine, not being banished from public service.

We are merely hurting ourselves when we indulge our penchant for self-righteousness by pretending that tax violations, infidelity or smoking pot disqualify people for public service.

Thank you, Haruki Murakami, for inadvertently laying bare the moral bankruptcy of the Left.

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide."

In other words, morality has nothing to do with it. Everything comes down to power relations, and the less powerful should always be supported regardless of the morality, correctness or even truth of their position.

In one sense, such a statement, and Salon’s support for it, is a relief. Finally, someone has dared to utter the truth. All the trumped up charges and outright lies about Israel are nothing more than window dressing. The reality is that it makes no difference to the Left what Israel actually does.

"No group of people is so evil and so irredeemable that they deserve extinction."

Then you ought to be supporting Israel.

Israel has no intention of murdering all the Palestinians. If they did, they could have done it many times over already. On the other hand, Palestinians have publicly declared their intention to murder all the Israelis and fill the Mediterranean with their bodies and blood.

Oh, wait! I forgot. Reality has nothing to do with support for the Palestinians.

asleep in the belfry,

Bravo!

Murakami is making a very simple claim: If you are weak, you are automatically right.

That is so obviously false, that in any other setting it wouldn't even be worthy of argument. There is absolutely no connections between being weak and right, and any attempt on the part of the Palestinian apologists to impute one is simply morally bankrupt.

"Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg."

And that's supposed to be better? The point remains the same. Murakami don't care who is right; merely being the underdog is just as good as being right. That's morally bankrupt, too.

How about actually addressing the issue? Is it moral to claim that the issue of right and wrong is meaningless? Let's see you make an argument to defend that claim.

"And just what is the "issue" in your mind"

In other words, you can't defend the claim, and would rather change the subject.

You seem to think it is self-evident that the weaker party is "entitled" to support. I find that claim morally bankrupt and I am waiting for your to defend it with a MORAL argument, not your personal preferences.

MerelyMortalMale:

"Apologists for Israel echo those who urged understanding for WWII Germany"

No, apologists for the Palestinians echo those who urged understanding for the Nazis. The Palestians actually invoke the comparison themselves. They AGREE with the rhetoric AND the actions of the Nazis, and are not shy about saying so in newspaper, books, and on TV.

But I want to come back to the key issue. Can anyone make a MORAL argument that Murakami's claim that the justice of a cause makes no difference, the weaker party is always entitled to our support? I haven't seen anyone try to make anything approaching a philosophical argument for this morally bankrupt claim.