Okay, I'm stumped. Is it politically correct to admire Woodrow Wilson, or not? For the "Yes" case, Mungo MacCallum:
...John Howard has received the Woodrow Wilson Award for public service. The former president Wilson was everything John Howard isn’t: an internationalist who was the driving force behind the League of Nations, a visionary, an idealist and above all, a man of peace. He will now be spinning in his grave...
-- Mungo MacCallum, "Telstra sale’s shiny baubles not worth a tinker’s cuss," 11(34) Northern Rivers Echo (25 August 2005), p 14.
But for the "No" side, John Pilger:
... the [US] Democrats' "tough-minded internationalism" began with Woodrow Wilson, a Christian megalomaniac who believed that America had been chosen by God "to show the way to the nations of this world, how they shall walk in the paths of liberty"...
-- John Pilger, "Bush or Kerry? No Difference," New Statesman (5 March 2004).
Two of the keenest left-wing intellects Australia has ever birthed, now at loggerheads over the Wilsonian legacy. A "Christian megalomaniac" (one assumes that, for Pilger, the adjective here describes rather than qualifies)? Or a "visionary", an "idealist", and a "man of peace"? Choices, choices... Being on the Left is not always easy, although at least it saves you from viewing the world in simplistic black-and-white terms, like those Manichaean neocons do.
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