Two Standards—or One?

Two Standards—or One? M. STANTON EVANS

F acep witH the challenge of Com- munism, the Liberal says that objec- tive standards of right and wrong cannot exist in the affairs of nations, and that it is not up to us to criticize the “chosen way of life” of another people. Which means that we should never engage in “moralizing” about the imagined iniquities of the enemy, and that, in the interests of realism and “peace,” we should always be ready to yield a thing or two. The Liberal response to Nazism was of course precisely the opposite. The fas- cist enemies of the United States, it was argued, were the personification of evil. With them there could be no compromise; their destruction was our duty. So radical a conflict of standards when the Red despotism and the Brown are in question sug- gests a condition of mind in which the normal processes of reasoning have given way to some non-logical obses~ Sion. The insistent folly which marked our postwar dealings with our enemies and our allies is now being recorded in a growing number of “revisionist” books. Specifically, many shameful episodes of our brutal treat- ment of the defeated enemy are see- ing the light of day.

MS

About the Author

M. Stanton Evans

Two Standards—or One? M. STANTON EVANS

F acep witH the challenge of Com- munism, the Liberal says that objec- tive standards of right and wrong cannot exist in the affairs of nations, and that it is not up to us to criticize the “chosen way of life” of another people. Which means that we should never engage in “moralizing” about the imagined iniquities of the enemy, and that, in the interests of realism and “peace,” we should always be ready to yield a thing or two. The Liberal response to Nazism was of course precisely the opposite. The fas- cist enemies of the United States, it was argued, were the personification of evil. With them there could be no compromise; their destruction was our duty. So radical a conflict of standards when the Red despotism and the Brown are in question sug- gests a condition of mind in which the normal processes of reasoning have given way to some non-logical obses~ Sion. The insistent folly which marked our postwar dealings with our enemies and our allies is now being recorded in a growing number of “revisionist” books. Specifically, many shameful episodes of our brutal treat- ment of the defeated enemy are see- ing the light of day.