Why do you see this kind of "all or nothing" thinking coming from certain quarters (plural) on so many issues?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese278.html

This old fellow spent 49 years as a journalist and op-ed writer. He has pissed off left-middle-and-right on countless occasions. I think that this one article is very helpful reading if you are concerned about the misery in Darfur.

... In the 1930s, a tougher breed of Americans didn't just demonstrate. They formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, went to Spain and fought in the Spanish Civil War. A famous movie star, Errol Flynn, risked his life and suffered wounds carrying money through enemy lines to the loyalist forces. Of course, Flynn was no sissy. Before becoming an actor, he was a deep-water sailor and smuggler and barroom brawler par excellence. He was real man, not an image of a man.

...

The fighting in Darfur is not a conflict of good guy versus bad guy. It is bad guy versus bad guy. Both sides are armed. Both sides have committed atrocities. Both sides show as much sympathy and mercy for the other as a rattlesnake does for a mouse.

It is not a conflict of white versus black. Both sides are black. It is not a Muslim-versus-Christian conflict. Both sides are Muslim. It might have even started the way the old range wars started in Wyoming in the 19th century. One side is nomadic herdsmen; the other side is farmers. When farmers try to keep herds from grass and water, there is sure to be gunfire, whether in Sudan or in 19th-century Wyoming.

The conflict is, most of all, none of our business. It does not affect the United States one iota. If it goes on for 10 years, it will not affect the United States. If it is resolved tomorrow, it will not affect the United States. We have no strategic or national interests whatsoever in Sudan. If the people in Sudan wish to kill each other, that is their business, not ours.

Read the whole thing; it is not very long and he writes as if he was talking to you at the diner table --- plain and simple.

Wikipedia lists estimates for WWII casualties at 60 million dead. The biggest "thug" on your list for casualties would be Mao, his toll is estimated by some at 41 million. Cambodia is about 2 million, and Stalin about 10 million. So even without adding in other wars, World War II tops the "thugs".

The killing that was the greatest percentage of their own people was the Khmer Rouge. Census figures released by the Finns showed whole ranges of ages to be nearly non-existent. On the other hand, the Russians suffered a similar loss -- in males of fighting age -- during WWI and WWII.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has led to this ridiculous -- and very dangerous -- situation, so I blame Gorbachev, cause if he hadn't opened things up in the Soviet Empire, this mess never would have happened. Then I blame Reagan for jettisoning the whole idea of Public Interest (following in the footsteps of his idol Margaret Thatcher) and undoing a couple of centuries of American progress.

It wasn't just the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was the collapse of Communism as a viable political, economic and governmental structure. True, it never was all it was cracked up to be, even when it was at the height of its power, but the Threat of Communism was enough, it seems, to keep the worst instincts of the Corporate/Fascist overlords at bay.

After WWII, they were so fearful of being shamed in the eyes of the public, and so frightened that the People would rise up... Now they simply don't care. They have no shame, whatsoever, they are entirely amoral, and they couldn't care less whether the People "rise" or take to the streets or what have you. If they dare, the Corporatist/Fascists will simply have them shot down and everyone will just go on about their business as if nothing happened.

And their little wars of aggression (yes, Iraq is a Little War), their focus on seizing and holding resources and battering the Natives into submission, their territorial expansionist objectives are all right out of the pre-1914 playbook of How Great Nations Should Behave. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism has meant that the Powers That Be have reverted to a Pre-1914 mindset, and that they behave as if nothing happened after 1917.

The rest of creation isn't sufficiently organized or ideologically motivated enough to do anything about it, any more than anyone could prevent or even interfere with the Euro-American wars of aggression, colonialism and imperialism of the previous centuries.

Maybe it's genetic.

The point is, without a comprehensive ideological and organizational framework within which to struggle against these massive forces of reversion, we will be dragged back into the darkness.

Libertarianism is not that ideological or organizational framework.

Yet neither side of our two party system is offering any resistance to reversion.

Some of us thought: "One down, one to go."

Have you read this?

Challenges to Capitalism, Challenges for the Left...

http://sojournertruth.blogsome.com/2007/03/13/the-three-way-fight/

Why do you see this kind of "all or nothing" thinking coming from certain quarters (plural) on so many issues?
Why does the USA sell arms to anyone with the cash to pay?
Why let the CIA destabilise other counties?
Why make so many threats as the VP did against Iran the other week?
Why do we think we are the ones to save the planet?
Will we be happy if someday China rules the planet as we do?
Why the UN could do nothing about things like Darfur and other conflicts.

All of these questions, and the one about political self-identity that is sort of the topic of Mr. G's post, flit and swirl around the very questions over who and what we are and how we are going to conduct ourselves in the world. The questions reflect our ideals which exist in a state of tension with perceived practicalities. And then there are the too human psychological dimensions involving - among other things and in no particular order - power, lust, love, ambition, genuine concern, altruism, greed, suspicion, temperament, fear, etc.

we can not remain free and prosperous unless at our very core we are a moral people.

This is true, but is complicated by the ways that 'morals' change over time and vary among cultures.

I feel that to work the problem of asking and answering questions like these is another - often beautiful - human behavior. It doesn't appear to be very useful to think that one has all the answers (a Unified Theory of Everything Political), but it seems that it is natural for humans to default to that attitude, while wrestling with the issues pertaining to our condition . Hence, for one conspicuous example, Libertarianism. Another example: Democratic v. Republican. The tension between the ideal and the practical, seasoned with the spice of human fallibility, is the process by which we manage civilization. Yes?
Captain Obvious,
Ginsberg