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Mar. 13th, 2007 05:05 pmThis morning I passed a car with the following two bumper stickers: one that read "Doing my part to piss off the heathen left" and one that reproduced the ACLU logo exactly, except that the C was replaced by a red hammer-and-sickle.
Exactly what does an organization that fights for our Bill of Rights have to do with a fallen authoritarian regime? (Other than that both are "something [that driver] doesn't like", of course.) Just point out to me one case of the Soviet Union's support for freedom of speech or the
press, or of the right of the people to assemble, or ...
The first sticker amused me, briefly, as a twist on the far-more-common version "Doing my part to piss off the Religious Right." But it's insidious in a way that I don't think the original is: there is a big distinction made by those capital letters. "The Religious Right" is a faction, a more-or-less defined group. "The heathen left" imputes heathen-ness to every member of the left. And then there's the idiocy of treating heathen and religious as opposites: the opposite of "religious" is clearly and obviously "irreligious"!
Exactly what does an organization that fights for our Bill of Rights have to do with a fallen authoritarian regime? (Other than that both are "something [that driver] doesn't like", of course.) Just point out to me one case of the Soviet Union's support for freedom of speech or the
press, or of the right of the people to assemble, or ...
The first sticker amused me, briefly, as a twist on the far-more-common version "Doing my part to piss off the Religious Right." But it's insidious in a way that I don't think the original is: there is a big distinction made by those capital letters. "The Religious Right" is a faction, a more-or-less defined group. "The heathen left" imputes heathen-ness to every member of the left. And then there's the idiocy of treating heathen and religious as opposites: the opposite of "religious" is clearly and obviously "irreligious"!
