By Daniel Greenfield
Naturally he meant in the Muslim world. He certainly wouldn’t apply that formula to the United States or Rush Limbaugh.
In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, John Brennan denied the existence of “absolute human rights” and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian dictatorship.
“Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship,” Brennan wrote. “Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing political systems.”
And we wouldn’t want mass opposition, would we? Much better to feed the public on a diet of CNN/MSNBC/NYT/WAPO. Two legs bad, four legs go, two legs better.
“Can human rights violations in the Soviet Union be as easily justified in terms of the preservation of the communist ideology? Unfortunately (looking at events from a democratic perspective), yes. Since the absolute status of human rights has been denied, the justification for the violation of any of those rights has to be pursued from a particular ideological perspective. Leonid Brezhnev could justify human rights violations in the Soviet Union as a necessary part of the preservation of the communist ideological system.”
Brezhnev isn’t the only one justifying human rights violations from a particular ideological perspective to preserve the Communist system.