Perhaps too much time is spent asking the wrong questions, like why does ethnic cleansing happen in places like Bosnia and Rwanda? What should also be asked, instead, is “why does it not happen in other places where it could, such as Switzerland and Canada?” Like Sherlock Holmes, we could pay more attention to the dog that does not bark, the ethnics that do not cleanse. There is a strange statue in a Swiss park that prompts some brief reflections here (...) about the enigma of Swiss success. It is in a prominent spot, right in the middle of Geneva, by…. (shrink)

Paul Gottfried and Paul Piccone wrongly confuse liberal activism with liberal absolutism, and anti-genocidal interventionism with Western imperialism. Gottfried claims that human rights are just “pious noise signifying whatever journalists or victimologists want it to mean in a particular situation,” manipulated by the self-appointed vicars of the church of “human rights,” whose “new theocratic world government” means a “reduction of morality to trendiness.” Trendy theocrats? Is there some contradiction here? In his various comments on my work, and his critique of (...) Victor Zaslavsky's views on totalitarianism,1 Piccone rejects universal human rights and the liberal critique of totalitarian states—a theme echoed…. (shrink)

The problem with “Europeans want Peace” is that they do not oppose genocidal war. They have not learned the lesson of the 1930s (that timely intervention—with American support that was sadly lacking but would end up coming anyway—could have stopped Hitler and saved millions of lives in Europe), or the lesson of Auschwitz (that genocidal crimes may warrant such intervention). Nor do they see that the“European sovereign state” they refer to, i.e., Yugoslavia, was actually a disintegrating communist federation, whose constituent (...) units have the right to choose whether to re-federate or go off on their own (like Slovenia), or that…. (shrink)