Modern-day fellow travelers

Martin Peretz, of The New Republic wrote just a fantastic editorial castigating the Episcopalians for joining the other liberal Protestant denominations in divesting from companies that do business with Israel. What particularly struck me about the article was his discussion of fellow-travelers then and now. By then, I mean those in the West who used to support fascism or communism, even when it became apparent that those were corrupt and cruel regimes. Peretz starts by looking that these foolish (and often quite dangerous) fellow travelers of the past, and then fast-forwards to the present Left's infatuation with the PLO :

They were silly, but they were at least prisoners of ideals. Fascist sympathizers feared the dread evil of communism, and communist sympathizers feared the dread evil of fascism. And communism purported to build a just society, a new relationship of man and man, though it turned out in many ways to be worse than fascism, more murderous, more delusional, more long-lasting. In any event, both of these armed doctrines tried hard to delude their followers with the lure of high ideals, some rooted in one or another version of the Christian ethic. But what vision of a good society do the ideologists of Palestine proffer to their boosters all over the world? Really nothing, except another miserable state like the others in the Arab Middle East. The new fellow travelers lack even the feeble extenuations of the old ones. Indeed, anyone who envisions a future Palestinian polity must wrestle with the grim and ongoing realities of a stagnant class structure, unproductive economic habits, an uncurious and increasingly reactionary culture, deeply cruel relationships between the sexes and toward gays, no notion of an independent judiciary, and a primitive religious mentality that gains prestige in society even as it emphasizes the promise of sexual rewards in paradise for martyrs -- a crude myth that has served successfully as an incentive for suicide bombings not only in Israel but also in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. And no real challenge to any of these backward actualities has arisen in all of the turmoil the movement has sown.

Hat tip: Neo-Neocon With regard to the moral derailment of the liberal arm of the Protestant Church, you may also want to see this post I did earlier.