Who’s on the Side of Not Taking Sides?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduces Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak to the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on March 16, 2022. J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images

Commentary

“Whose side is Tucker Carlson on?” asks Dean Obeidallah of CNN—thus reaffirming the popular progressive view that everybody has to pick a side, even in a war between two foreign powers 5,000 miles away where no vital U.S. interests or treaty obligations are involved.

This should come as no surprise, however, since it goes naturally with the left’s politicization of everything domestically. We are also expected to take sides on such seemingly non-political and private matters as what we should and should not eat, what should and should not be taught to 5-year-old children or in high school history classes, what kind of car we choose to drive or how to address a gentleman who is pretending to be a lady.

Not only must we pick a side in these and other matters, we must pick the right side—which is of course the left side—or risk cancellation and social ostracization. Or worse.

Over the last 10 years or so, not only in this country but across much of the Western world, we have lost the right to be non-political. Now we have also lost the right, apparently, to be neutral in wars taking place on the other side of the world in which our country is not involved.

The cry from right and left alike is now that we must be involved, even if this means open warfare between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

The Chinese communists, currently at number three, might not mind this too much, though they are nominally allied with number two. But I think that more than just Tucker Carlson in this country would regret it if it happened.

The left has decided on behalf of all decent people (or at any rate all who would hate not to be thought decent people by the left) what is the right and wrong side of everything. They have proclaimed themselves—and, indeed, “history” itself—to be on the right side and then sought to lump with the wrong ’uns anyone with a mind to protest at such automatic and unquestioning side-taking.

Let’s be clear. Sometimes you have to pick a side and fight for it as if your life depended on it, since it probably does.

But sometimes you don’t. And in the case of the Russo-Ukraine war, it’s entirely possible that your life could depend on not picking a side.

I myself don’t think it will come to nuclear war, at least so long as there’s no direct military confrontation between the United States or its NATO allies and Russia. I also admire the resistance of the brave Ukrainians and am sympathetic to the view that, if Vladimir Putin is successful in subduing Ukraine, he will not stop there.

But if I also think it would be irresponsible not to consider the risks as well as the rewards of an American involvement in the war as great as that requested by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his address to Congress on March 16; whose “side” does that put me on?

What seems remarkable to me is not this new shaming tactic of the progressives, for it has been going on for decades with great success in universities and media newsrooms, but the extent to which Republicans and conservatives have gone along with it—especially since the election of Donald Trump gave it a new impetus.

Only this week, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) must have used a similar logic to Obeidallah’s to accuse Tulsi Gabbard of treason for worrying about the security of dangerous pathogens in the bio-labs in Ukraine under Russian assault—just because Putin has claimed, with what truth nobody knows, that such pathogens are being developed as weapons of war.

After Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Romney is known as the most prominent Republican Never-Trumper, which makes him a prime success of the left’s effort, from 2016 onwards, to make the former president its touchstone for decency and indecency in their new political binary system: whatever he’s against is automatically the right side, and whatever he’s for is the wrong side.

With him on the wrong side were all the bad words, like autocracy and fascism, while with the progressive opposition on the right side were all the good words, like democracy and, of course, decency. So much so, indeed, that these words became redefined in relation, first, to Trump and then to anyone unfortunate enough to find him or herself at odds with the left-wing worldview.

You can see the process at work in the column by Obeidallah, questioning Tucker Carlson’s patriotism, that I mentioned above.

“Republican strategist Ana Navarro,” he writes, “while co-hosting ‘The View’ on Monday, suggested that the Department of Justice should investigate whether Carlson is a ‘foreign asset’ who is ‘shilling for Putin.’ While we can debate whether he is or isn’t, one thing is clear: Carlson is not on the side of democracy over autocracy.”

Pardon me, but this is not clear at all. By the pretense that both “democracy” and “autocracy” are clearly understood terms with the meanings they have always had and not the meanings so recently and so tendentiously imposed upon them by the left, for whom they signify nothing more than anti- or pro-Trump, Obeidallah manages to hint that there may be some truth to the outrageous claim that Carlson is “shilling for Putin.”

Now, in other words, these words have made a seamless transition to signifying only anti- or pro-Putin, since both Trump and Putin are presumed to troop together on the wrong side along with autocracy, indecency, treason, and all bad things.

It’s as simple, and as simple-minded, as saying you’ve got to be on one side or the other. About everything.

Here’s a question for Obeidallah. President Joe Biden is currently said to be on the point of closing a deal with Russia’s other ally in the region, Iran, by which the Ayatollahs and their many terrorist allies, in exchange for saying they’re not going to develop a nuclear weapon just at present, will receive a sum reported to be in excess of $100 billion. Whose side is he on?

I think we can guess the answer to that one. And I’m pretty sure it’s the same side as Obeidallah’s.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.