BRENDAN O’NEILL ON GENOCIDE:
Hardly anyone talks openly about a global divide between the savage Third World and the enlightened West anymore. Yet today’s genocide-mongering has nurtured a new, apparently acceptable divide between the genocide-executers over there, and the genocide-saviours at home. This new global faultline over genocide is formalised in the international court system. . . . At a time when the West making claims to global moral authority on the basis of enlightenment or democracy has become distinctly unfashionable, the new fashion for genocide-mongering seems to have turned ‘genocide’ into the one remaining moral absolute, which has allowed today’s pretty visionless West to assert at least some authority over the Third World.
I don’t think I agree with his analysis, but it’s worth reading. And his free-speech point is clearly correct.