Anti-Slavery International: ‘Forced Labor in North Korean Prison Camps’
[Update: Kathreb responds here, but VanMidd comes the closest to the truth: “[A]ll us lefties are scoob smoking hippies on welfare ….” Good on you for admitting it, and I’d gladly return the favor by recommending a decent barber and springing for bus fare to the day labor center or the nearest Home Depot. It’s going to be a long road, VanMidd, but we’ll be here for you when you decide to take that first step.]
Over at Kathreb’s blog, I found this new (to me) report, which I haven’t yet had time to read, but which looks interesting. I’ll save it to my drive and let you know if it adds additional information to what we already know, but even if it doesn’t, it’s always gratifying to see NGO’s paying some attention to this issue. It shouldn’t be so, and I often ask myself why.
I believe that the Human Rights Industry is dominated by the left, and most would probably agree with that statement. I’ve also long suspected that many on the left aren’t more aggressive in their criticism of Kim Jong Il because he’s anti-American. Since too many on the left harbor deep, emotional anti-American feelings of their own, they give other anti-Americans a pass as reflexively as they attack any authoritarian they can link to the Pentagon, even if the latter regime is Candyland compared to North Korea. One dynamic that interests me works like this: if G.W. Bush, the Great Satan of the left, is now giving aid to Kim Jong Il and cozying up to him, might the left suddenly take a new-found interest in the welfare of the North Korean people?
There are, of course, some on the political left who have always had that interest: Stephen Solarz, Joe Lieberman, Peter Beck, and Rabbi David Saperstein to name a few. And there are others, on the political right, who have stuck with their principled support for the North Korean people even when George W. Bush abandoned them. But any human rights cause that draws most of its support from the right, as this one still does, is stuck rowing in a circle. Why so? For one thing, conservatives lack the gene that makes people want to go out and protest things, and for another — forgive me for this — they’re more likely to have day jobs that prevent them from doing so. And of course, the left prides itself on being more “compassionate,” which is really another way of saying “emotional.” If you’re emotional enough to want to save the lives of people you’ve never met, the odds are that a syrupy John Edwards speech can also make you verklempt.
The counter-example of Darfur, certainly a worthy cause, proves my point: the Human Rights Industry and the reporters who follow it are blind in their right eyes. A more pernicious and far less defensible example is the fact that 300-odd terrorists fattening up in Gitmo have attracted infinitely more sympathy from the Human Rights Industry than 200,000 men, women, and children in the worst system of concentration camps since Nazi Germany, with the possible exception of Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia. The operative word there: sympathy. Extend the implications yourself. To some on the left, there are worse things than killing a few thousand innocent people. Is it really all about who you kill?
Objectively, North Korea ought to be a far higher priority for anyone motivated by a desire to help others, but objective thinkers don’t dominate inherently emotional conversations.
Such a dynamic would take time to form, of course — maybe more time than Bush has left in his term — but given sufficient time, history could record that it was the taint of George Bush that turned the world against Kim Jong Il. But we’ve certainly seen that this isn’t enough. What a woeful statement that would make about the moral retardation of our world.
A big hat tip to Kathreb, and I hope you’ll join me in wishing her an even speedier recovery in the new year.