Guild of Liars: If I Didn’t See It, It Never Happened

None of this is to say that the United States should be above criticism when it errs–as it surely has. What it does say is that the sincerity of one’s commitment to liberal values is fairly judged by the sincerity and efficacy of one’s own words, actions, and options offered in their defense.

Photo: The U.N. “safe area” of Srebrenica, after U.N. troops threw down their weapons, and just moments before the killings began

Even deeper than this lies the question of how one can at once denounce evil without possessing the capacity to recognize it and arrange it into a rational moral perspective. Lives and priorities are finite, after all. If one chooses to disregard greater evils in favor of emphasizing lesser ones, that person’s recognition is called into question. If one chooses to attack what was, in the Iraqi case, the only realistic means for ending a greater evil, then the speaker’s moral authority is called into question as well.

North Korea and Iraq are thus just two truths that prove the lie that the “global human rights community” is really motivated by a sincere concern about human rights. Their apathy over real modern-day outrages compels us to look further to find their true motivations. I would not begrudge Mary Robinson or her friends who denounce the “gulag of our time” from on high if it weren’t for the fact that real gulags are a moral blind spot for them.

Were it not so, I might even listen to them.

“It was not a legitimate war and I am glad that more and more people, including President Carter, are coming out to say so.”

Yes, Jimmy Carter–that great national spokesman, that EKG of the American political pulse. Jimmy Carter, that legend of American politics. Like Ramsey Clark, only with a foundation and without (one can only hope) the membership card from the National Lawyers’ Guild. Speaking of which, does anyone remember when the boys from the Guild came back from Pyongyang and said this?

We were struck by the design of the DPRK criminal justice system. We even found in a bookstore the Criminal Procedures Act of the DPRK in English. Several principles seem quite progressive and reflect more of restorative justice, than retributive justice. The prime objective of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation or setting an example, not punishment. There is an element of the latter, as there are jail terms for crimes, but this is not the major thrust of their system. In fact, they have codified a process by which those affected by the decision or the conduct of the accused have a real role in the process and those that contributed to the delinquent act or were involved in educating the person (i.e. a parent or friend) have to be available in the process to receive a “lecture” from the court. Penalties include submitting the accused to “social” or “public education. Those arrested are required to have their families notified within 48 hours. A defense counsel is to be provided to represent the rights of the accused.

You may remember that the debate reached NKZone, and it was a tough room over there that day, as it should have been. I was among those who didn’t particularly dig what they had to say.

‘Daddy never loved me; I sure hope he sees this.’ National Lawyers’ Guild’s Sirotkin meets North Korean comrade.

The Guild believes that reports of massive human rights violations in North Korea are “a grand deception” because it didn’t see any. I wonder if they consider this to be another of those striking examples of the DPRK criminal justice system. It’s difficult to think of a more profane misuse of the word “liberal” than to shill for a standard of jurisprudence that that compares unfavorably with the Salem witch trials. It’s difficult to imagine someone making a success of the profession I love with such imperviousness to facts.

Not to mention, such flawed logic. Saying that human rights concerns about North Korea are “grand deceptions” because gulag victims were kept out of the sight of the Lawyers’ Guild is a lot like saying that the crisp mountain air in Bechdesgaden disproves the reports of gassings at Belsen. Also, the Guild’s members, as seasoned trial lawyers, claim magic lie-spotting radar (which stubbornly defies me after 20-odd jury trials, dozens of ex-girlfriends, and two children; good lawyers catch liars through inconsistencies, which can only be developed over time). The same impeccable logic didn’t stop the Guild from calling Gitmo a “concentration camp,” because of all the things that absolutely must be going on there.

Which brings us back to where we left off: Iraq, Gitmo, and the corpulent terrorists who live there. And the paradox of proclaiming liberalism while shielding illiberal killers who proclaim their refusal to coexist with you. Someone has to go, and in a contest between the North Koreans and the Lawyers’ Guild, or between Mary Robinson and Zarqawi, it almost pains me to say that I bet on the Lawyers’ Guild and Mary. Sure, I’d love the Celebrity Death Match. I’d spring for the Pay Per View and the Cheetohs, but it won’t happen. Not because of any resolution they will offer, but because guys like these still go off to war to protect them. I wonder where we find them, and whether we’re worthy of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are men who did more for human rights in their too-short lives than a a hundred Mary Robinsons and a thousand Mary Robinson resolutions.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Thank you, my friends. Thank you, more than I can ever express.