Robert Spencer vs. Richard Spencer: Counter-Jihad vs. White Supremacy, Acts17Apologetics via YouTube, September 30, 2017
The blurb beneath the video states,
A number of journalists and bloggers have confused counter-jihadist Robert Spencer with white supremacist Richard Spencer, just as they confuse opposition to jihad terror with racism. In this video, Robert Spencer and David Wood discuss the differences between opposing terrorism and promoting race-based bigotry.
Alan Dershowitz: ‘Violent’ Antifa movement is ‘trying to tear down America’, Washinton Times, Jessica Chasmar, August 22, 2017
Prominent Harvard law professor and liberal author Alan Dershowitz rebuked the hard left militant movement Antifa on Tuesday, saying liberals need to avoid turning violent leftist factions into heroes. (Fox News)
Prominent Harvard law professor and liberal author Alan Dershowitz rebuked the hard-left militant movement Antifa on Tuesday, saying liberals need to avoid turning violent leftist factions into heroes.
Appearing on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning, Mr. Dershowitz said the movement sweeping the country to take down Confederate-era statues that some find offensive is setting a dangerous precedent.
“Do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues,” he said. “Many of these people, not all of them, many of these people are trying to tear down America.
“Antifa is a radical anti-American, anti-free market, communist, socialist, hard, hard left censorial organization that tries to stop speakers on campuses from speaking,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “They use violence. And just because they’re opposed to fascism and to some of these monuments shouldn’t make them heroes of the liberals.”
“I’m a liberal, and I think it’s the obligation of liberals to speak out against the hard left radicals just like it’s the obligation of conservatives to speak out against the extremism of the hard right,” he added.
Mr. Dershowitz acknowledged that while some historical monuments are better suited in museums, liberals should avoid becoming Stalinist in trying to erase or revise history.
“We have to use this as an educational moment,” he said. “We have to take some of the statues that were put up more recently, for example, during the Civil Rights Movement and perhaps move them to museums where they can be used to teach young students about how statues are intended sometimes for bad purposes, to glorify negatives and to hold back positive developments.”
“But the idea of willy-nilly going through and doing what Stalin did — just erasing history and re-writing it to serve current purposes — does pose a danger, and it poses a danger of educational malpractice, of missing opportunities to educate people, and of going too far,” he said.
Mr. Dershowitz argued that the movement against Confederate-era statues ignores other discriminated groups in America, like Jews, women, and the Japanese.
“Once you start rewriting history of African Americans in this country, you have to start rewriting history of discrimination against many, many other groups,” he said. “Look, we’re both a nation of immigrants and a nation of discrimination against immigrants. That’s an important history for us to remember.”
Satire (I hope) | Let’s repeal America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 18, 2017
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
The American Declaration of Independence was written by a vile slave owner, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The American Constitution was written, at least in part, by vile racists and other “America Firsters.” They tried, but fortunately failed, to prevent noncitizens from exercising their sacred right to vote in national elections. Both demonic documents must be repealed and we must rejoin England, nay even better the European Union, to signal our virtuous multicultural nature and emphatic rejection of all evil past and present.
Antifa, Black Lives (only) Matter, La Raza, adherents to Islam (the Religion of Peace and tolerance), CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and their other supporters — proponents of truth, justice, and true equality for all — will appreciate our efforts even more than they appreciate the removal of all artifacts of American history associated with our racist Wars for Independence and the Confederacy. To please them even more, we must expunge from our history — and from our minds as well — all residual evil thoughts. This is necessary for us to have freedom of proper speech and proper thought (only), as do the fortunate citizens of China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and other glorious progressive nations.
The impeachment of our racist anti-American President Donald Trump is obviously necessary and appropriate for the same reasons. Even better, he should be assassinated, as suggested by a brave Missouri state senator. Then we can have a new, and fair, election so that our dear Hillary Clinton will become Our President; we deserve Her.
The removal of a statue of George Washington — a vile slave owner who led our absurd rebellion against the British Empire — has already been proposed. Memorials to General Robert E. Lee and other racist Confederate terrorists have already been removed, “peacefully.” That’s not enough! We must move forward, ever toward the abyss, until America, as we know and despise her, no longer exists. Then, we will no longer have any basis for appreciating — let alone singing — such alt-right drivel as this:
Surely, no true American patriot could countenance such an abomination. America rightfully belongs to everyone, not just those who were born or already live here, but also to those who want to live here and ply their wholesome trades, safe from racist law enforcement. Welcome MS-13, Sinaloa, and all of the rest. America must become a true land of opportunity for all.
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Obviously (I hope), I agree with none of the above. I prefer this:
And this:
Perhaps I was born a century too late.
Georgetown University sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson said Wednesday on CNN that the antifa movement is trying to “preserve the fabric of America.”
CNN host Poppy Harlow asked Dyson to respond to President Donald Trump’s comments during a press conference Tuesday on removing Confederate monuments. The president, while addressing criticism of his response to the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Va. over the weekend, argued that removing Confederate statues erases the country’s history and culture. He wondered if activists will next want to remove monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners.
“Michael, the president said that we are—about the monuments, about the confederate monuments yesterday—that we are trying to erase, we being the American people, it is trying to erase history, change culture, by taking them down,” Harlow said to Dyson. “That sort of completely ignores the fact that they are representing a sanitized, fictionalized history.”
“What did you make of how the president addressed these monuments yesterday?” she asked.
Dyson gave a long response in which he called Trump “lethally ignorant” and said the history of the Confederacy perpetuates the “mythology of white supremacy.”
“This man is lethally ignorant, incapable of even having a kindergartner’s comprehension of race,” Dyson said. “For those who say look, the Confederacy is about history and heritage, it is. The history and heritage of racism! The history and heritage of bigotry. Building their sense of biological and in many cases theological and national identity upon a lie, a mythology of white supremacy.”
Dyson added that groups like Black Lives Matter and the antifa movement are interested in “preserving the fabric of America.”
“The people that we claim, Black Lives Matter, the antifa movement, and so on, are interested in preserving the fabric of America,” Dyson said. “Mr. Miller says again that there was violence there, but the problem is, to equate that violence in reaction to the bigotry with the bigotry itself is to misunderstand the fact that when you go to cancer treatment, the radiation is tough treatment, but it is meant to remove the cancer.”
Antifa refers to an anti-fascist, leftist movement that sometimes uses violence in protests to further its goals. Over the weekend, antifa protesters assaulted at least two reporters. One antifa group blamed a reporter in Richmond, Va., who had to receive staples in his head at the hospital, for “perpetuating rape culture” because they did not give the journalist consent to film them.
Dyson ended his answer by saying Trump lacks the right moral vision and is the most incompetent president in history.
“So what he fails to understand and what the president especially fails to understand is that you are complicit with the worst currents of bigotry in this country when you try to draw a false equivalence between secessionists, racists, and confederate defenders and bigots and neo Nazis, and African American and white people and others who have defended the rights of this nation to really seek a path of healing beyond the consternation we see now,” Dyson said.
“That’s the problem with this president: he ain’t got the right moral vision; he doesn’t have the right words to express that moral vision and he lacks an understanding of American history,” Dyson continued. “This is the most illiterate, incompetent president in the history of this nation and it shows, and it tells on him in the midst of this racial crisis where he is incapable of showing basic decent compassion for those who are vulnerable and who are victims of white supremacy in this country.”
NAACP President Opposes Confederate Statue Removal, The Point (Front Page Magazine), Daniel Greenfield, August 16, 2017
While the Charlottesville counterprotests were, on paper, associated more with African-American groups, the protesters overall tended to be white leftists. Black people have a variety of views on the subject ranging from opposition to apathy to support. For some, it’s a symbol of hate. For others, a part of history that has no effect on the present. And it’s removal just stirs up racism and violence.
Here’s a view from Bethlehem, PA.
“I think it’s all senseless. All senseless,” begins Bethlehem NAACP President Esther Lee.
Lee says the images that she’s seen over the last few days, have been tough to watch.
Lee says violence is still violence. She doesn’t agree with the vandalism of Confederate monuments in Baltimore or condone the actions of those who tore down the statue in North Carolina, either.
“You know that’s history. That was in that point in time. You can’t eliminate what history is. So I disapprove with young people pulling down those statues,” she says.
Lee then adds, “A young woman died. Two officers were murdered in a plane crash and all for what? Because somebody in their mind decided, “we don’t need to look at that anymore.”
“It shouldn’t be,” she says softly.
While Lee doesn’t agree with President Trump on everything, she does think that history should be left to stand and advises others to join her in praying for the president.
“I would pray that he would gain the strength to do what’s necessary in the job, at least for these four years,” she says.
Lee says maybe things aren’t what they should be. But that doesn’t mean hate and hurt need to win.
It’s a different point of view that isn’t being represented on the national stage.
The debate about Confederate statues in Dallas intensified on Monday as a group made up of predominantly African Americans called for the monuments to remain standing.
Several cities across America have now begun to remove or talk about removing Confederate markers shortly after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville turned deadly.
Former city council member Sandra Crenshaw thinks removing the statues won’t help.
“I’m not intimidated by Robert E. Lee’s statue. I’m not intimidated by it. It doesn’t scare me,” said Crenshaw. “We don’t want America to think that all African Americans are supportive of this.”
Crenshaw, along with some Buffalo Solider historians and Sons of Confederate Veterans are coming together to help protect the Confederate markers from toppling over in Dallas.
They feel the monuments, like the Freedman’s Cemetery, tell an important story and help heal racial wounds.
“Some people think that by taking a statue down, that’s going to erase racism,” said Crenshaw. “Misguided.”
Well I rather doubt that they do think that. They’re out to engage in a radical transformation of America. And their goal is to conduct radical social change and touch off clashes like these. When they’ve gone through the Confederate statues and the statues of Columbus, they will at some point move on to George Washington.
Will anyone rescue European women? Israel National News, Marc Arsak, June 20, 2017
(The holy Multiculturalist Scriptures supersede all others, except the even holier Islamic scriptures. — DM)
This circus of self-flagellation, self-repudiation, self-hatred and fanatical self-criticism has been pursued professionally as a career for Europe’s caste of globalist politicians. Meanwhile, the sources of our exponential crime rates and territorial disintegration, on the other hand, continue to be systematically exonerated of all suspicions and elevated to unattainable levels of absolute perfection and utter sainthood.
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Barely a week into Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, a petition was launched to bring the daily lives of many native European women to his attention. It was nothing more than a fruitless wishful attempt.
The facts are that the female residents of a Parisian neighborhood, have had enough of “being spat at, daily insults in different languages, forced robbery, the presence of pickpockets, drunkards and the smell of urine,” as the petition states. Many do not dare leave their houses alone, not to mention wearing a skirt or tight pants, lest they are attacked or insulted. They are not welcome in local bars and restaurants where they are greeted by the lewdness of gangs of drunk and unemployed young men who are either French citizens of foreign heritage or recent illegal migrants.
There is no shortage of this type of neighborhoods in Europe, long abandoned to the rule of gangs, drug dealers, and illegal migrants. Even so, any concern or criticism expressed by native Europeans is regarded as blasphemous towards multiculturalism. Which explains why as soon as some of these women expressed their displeasure at being dispossessed from their way of life, they were accused of prejudice and ‘racism.’
Smears and accusations of racism and bigotry are today’s price for telling the truth and describing the reality in Europe. Also, the fear of being called ‘racist’ further dissuades the authorities to take any concrete actions, even if they were ever going to. Besides, most people even fail or prefer not to recognize that these problems do exist and keep getting worse. Politicians from across the board believe that the thugs reigning in European territories are flawless and irreproachable in essence. Therefore, the situation could be ultimately and solely explained by the alleged evils of the European people and their past.
According to their delusional narrative, racist, bigoted, unwelcoming and parsimonious Europeans who colonized the otherwise cultivated, flourishing and prosperous Third World nations have to pay for some committed and mostly uncommitted ancestral sins eternally. Hence, it is, for instance, the fault of the French people, if they are turning into an unprotected ethnic minority in their own homeland. Consequently, had Europeans had not committed these cardinal ancestral sins, had they been less racist and more welcoming today, these masses of unemployed men would not only assimilate and abandon rape, crime, and terror, but they would also make Europe as advanced, civilized, cultivated and modern as the countries they fled.
This circus of self-flagellation, self-repudiation, self-hatred and fanatical self-criticism has been pursued professionally as a career for Europe’s caste of globalist politicians. Meanwhile, the sources of our exponential crime rates and territorial disintegration, on the other hand, continue to be systematically exonerated of all suspicions and elevated to unattainable levels of absolute perfection and utter sainthood.
Feminists are also doing their fair share in the ongoing circus. Following the controversy, Caroline De Haas, a leading feminist figure, proposed to solve the problem by expanding the sidewalks in the neighborhood in question. And no, in case you were wondering, she is not a comedian. The expansion of sidewalks, according to her, will address the issue and make women feel safe again. Her method, at best, might prove to be as efficient as France’s new counterterrorism measure. In case you have not heard of it, “you won’t have my hatred” has become this fancy buzz phrase that many French people are determined to fight terrorism with. Anything more efficient than candles, solidarity hashtags and “you won’t have my hatred,” would be – you guessed it – racist. Thank God, not many people thought of combating Nazism with this you-won’t-have-my-hatred type of servile idiocy.
With no solution on the horizon, it seems that Parisian women will simply have to learn to live with insults, robbery, sexual harassment and all the other wonders of multiculturalism just as their peers in Cologne did. The mere denunciation of this reality is deemed ‘racist’ by the thought police, just as any other thought, word or action advocating the rights of native Europeans to self-preservation is considered to be so. Failing to address the real racism that many people from White South Africans to Christians in Arab countries suffer from, those who use the word to slander Europeans resisting cultural and ethnic substitution have rendered it devoid of any meaning.
Sadly, however, the myth of racist Europeans does not seem to stop the ever-growing flow of criminals, rapists, and terrorists from coming into the continent. Will Europeans soon be told that their very existence, even as an unprotected ethnic minority in their homelands, is racist? Does anyone care enough to rescue the European women, at least?
Let’s suppose for a moment that a white student at Berkeley had tweeted a call for beating Mexicans for Cinco de Mayo. We all know what would happen. The full court press would descend. It would end with his life over and Berkeley adding three diversity deans and two buildings named after Pancho Villa.
But the other way around is fine. Assuming that the authorities and the media are forced to address it, they will, as in the past, call it youthful high spirits and sarcasm. Because they agree with it. That’s the dirty truth lurking under the surface.
“Let’s celebrate 5 de Mayo by going to Dolores Park and beating the shit out of white people, in the spirit of La Batalla de Pueblo,” tweeted Prieto.
Juan Prieto, an English student at UC Berkeley, made the remark on Twitter two days after receiving Berkeley’s Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Undocumented Students.
“Let’s celebrate 5 de Mayo by going to Dolores Park and beating the shit out of white people, in the spirit of La Batalla de Pueblo,” tweeted Prieto, who later locked his Twitter account. The illegal immigrant student referred to a battle in Mexico in which the Mexican army defeated French occupiers.
“It’s Twitter,” said Prieto to The DCNF. “I post dumb shit on Twitter all the time. Aha. But I see how this fits into your agenda, and no matter what I say, you’ll write your article so that I continuously get threats for the next two weeks until white supremacist [sic] have another person of color to attempt to silence via virtual bullying.”
Prieto is the social media coordinator at UC Berkeley’s Undocumented Student Program, which provides academic help, legal support, and financial aid info to illegal immigrant students.
Prieto, very predictably, played the victim. Even more predictably Berkeley is ignoring it. And the same media, which ran his self-promoting claims to be living in “fear” will ignore his racism and threats of violence.
The New York Times gave him column space. “Even at Berkeley, I Face Threats as an Undocumented Student – New York Times”. Don’t expect it to spend space discussing the threats Prieto poses to white students. And Prieto has a history of promoting and celebrating left-wing violence in racial terms.
On Feb. 7, Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian ran a series of opinion pieces in support of “violence as self-defense.”
“My campus did nothing to stand between my undocumented community and the hateful hands of radicalized white men,” wrote Juan Prieto, a UC Berkeley student. “A peaceful protest was not going to cancel that event.”
“Only the destruction of glass and shooting of fireworks did that,” Prieto wrote.
The so-called ‘violence’ against private property that the media seems so concerned with stopped white supremacy from organizing itself against my community.”
This is real fascism. Or Communism.
He describes himself on Facebook as a “Self-entitled punk who rather leach off of the American system than construct a life for himself” (he adds a Communist hammer and sickle to the end of his bio).
Into the heartland, American Thinker, Lloyd Marcus, May 4, 2017
While fake news media would like us to believe they have successfully killed traditional American values, wholesome values are alive and well in the heartland.
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Rumors of my death are exaggerated. The reason my wife Mary and I dropped off the face of the earth is because we have not had internet for almost a week, which as y’all know feels like an eternity. We drove up from Florida to close on our new home in a tiny West Virginia town, population 500. Why?
To move close to our parents and family.
The drive up from Florida was quite interesting. The number of Trump signs on display in yards, rooftops, and billboards tells me Trump has connected with everyday Americans like no other president before him.
It seemed that every time we pushed the search button on our radio another faith-based station came up. While fake news media would like us to believe they have successfully killed traditional American values, wholesome values are alive and well in the heartland.
My wife’s brother-in-law said when it snows, his neighbor plows out the road for everyone with his tracker. Mail is delivered at a central location for his group of neighbors. The mailboxes and poles were in need of repair. A neighbor took it upon himself to repair and refresh the mailboxes. Another neighbor fills potholes in their road. All these things were done without ridiculous paperwork, meetings, or government.
There is no home mail delivery. When we went to the post office to sign up for a P O box, the cheerful clerk said, “Are you the Marcuses? Y’all bought the white house.”
We had to pay a $200 cash deposit at the Town Hall to get our water turned on. The clerk said, “Are y’all the people who called the other day? Y’all bought the white house.” The pleasant clerk said she would call “the” maintenance man to turn us on. One hour later, he showed up and turned on our water.
Most expressive were seniors Virginia and her husband Daniel who greeted me with big smiles when I walked into the library. “Welcome!” Virginia gave me the scoop. “Lunch at the Senior Center is $2. Today is hot dog day.” Virginia filled me in on all the churches, concluding that anyone we choose will be fine. Virginia said they are all good friendly people.
As a black guy, not once have I felt a twinge of the stereotypical racism attributed to the south — quite the opposite. Everyone has been warm and friendly.
The only store in town is Dollar General. Walmart, Home Depot and Lowes are over 20 miles away.
Mary and I stopped into “the” bank. “Y’all bought the white house.”
Yes, I am experiencing culture shock, but the people are nice and I think it is going to be fun.
The Left’s Shifting Overton Window, Front Page Magazine, Benny Huang, March 27, 2017
[The “Overton Window” represents the breadth of ideas that the public considers acceptable discourse superimposed over a spectrum ranging from far left to far right. At both ends of the spectrum lurk ideas that are literally “unthinkable.” As we inch closer to the Overton Window we find ideas that are merely “radical.” The first category contained within the Overton Window is “acceptable,” followed by “sensible,” then “popular,” and finally “policy.”
The goal of most progressive strategists has been to move that window so that previously unthinkable ideas become conceivable and eventually uncontroversial. People who don’t adopt the newly mainstreamed idea quickly enough are usually shamed into silence. If they refuse to keep quiet they are shunned by polite society and often lose their livelihoods because their old ideas have been pushed into “radical” and “unthinkable” territory.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is prepared to go to the mat to prevent the construction of a wall on our southern border. The senator from New York is threatening to use all available options, including a government shut-down, to forestall three key provisions in the new budget: a deportation force, a border wall, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Well, it’s good to know where Schumer draws his line in the sand. Anything that impedes the endless flow of undocumented Democrats he considers to be an act of war.
But I’m old enough to remember when Chuck Schumer supported at least one of these budget items. In 2006, he and 25 other Democratic senators voted for the Secure Fence Act which would have built a double-layered fence on the US-Mexico border. The bill passed, by the way, and President Bush signed it into law. It wasn’t a close vote because it wasn’t particularly controversial.
Now I’m sure that a persnickety liberal like Chuck Schumer would split hairs on this one. He voted for a fence, not a wall! That argument is a non-starter. Walls and fences are both barriers intended to keep people out so let’s not pretend that the difference between then and now is the type of barrier. What’s changed is that Chuck Schumer now supports endless and unlimited immigration with no distinction made between those who enter the country legally and those who don’t. He has likely learned that his party’s best interests are best served by diluting the voice of their actual constituents.
There is perhaps no better example than Chuck Schumer of how much this country has changed since the Bush years. Positions once held by a proud New York liberal are now considered reactionary. What happened? In short, the Overton Window has moved quickly and decisively leftward.
The Overton Window? What’s that?
Glad you asked. I’m not talking about Glenn Beck’s boring novel but rather about its namesake: the handy mental model formulated by political scientist Joseph P. Overton. His window represents the breadth of ideas that the public considers acceptable discourse superimposed over a spectrum ranging from far left to far right. At both ends of the spectrum lurk ideas that are literally “unthinkable.” As we inch closer to the Overton Window we find ideas that are merely “radical.” The first category contained within the Overton Window is “acceptable,” followed by “sensible,” then “popular,” and finally “policy.”
The goal of most progressive strategists has been to move that window so that previously unthinkable ideas become conceivable and eventually uncontroversial. People who don’t adopt the newly mainstreamed idea quickly enough are usually shamed into silence. If they refuse to keep quiet they are shunned by polite society and often lose their livelihoods because their old ideas have been pushed into “radical” and “unthinkable” territory.
This is perhaps one reason the Left so despises the slippery slope argument—except when they employ it against their adversaries, of course. They want people to concentrate only on the issue as they narrowly define it without considering the principles at stake or the long-term ramifications. Who could have imagined, for example, that a little sensitivity toward racial issues would eventually lead to the stifling environment we find on college campuses today, in which it’s now considered a microaggression to say something as harmless as “I just believe the most qualified person should get the job”? That’s against the rules at the University of California, the largest university system in the country and a state school with an obligation to protects students’ free speech. Certainly no one foresaw this in the 1960s. We just thought we were telling racists—genuine racists—to shut up. What’s the next forbidden phrase? The Left doesn’t want you to ask. If people knew where this crazy train is going they’d demand to be let off.
But we should ask. What radical ideas will the Left be pushing in ten years? What unthinkable ideas will they champion in twenty? You can bet that they won’t admit to any of them now because the time isn’t right. That’s how this game is played.
For another example of the sliding Overton Window, consider Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, both Democrats who sought the presidential nomination of their party, one successfully and the other unsuccessfully. When conservatives called Obama a socialist throughout his presidency, the Left balked. “Don’t be ridiculous!” they said. “He’s no socialist.” This protégé of the radical anti-American CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis, who openly bragged of hanging out with the Marxist professors on his college campus, who praised a Soviet-backed communist terrorist like Nelson Mandela, was absolutely the furthest thing from a socialist a person could possibly be—or so we were told.
But then along came Bernie Sanders who didn’t even bother to hide his socialism. Of course, he made the highly dubious claim that he preferred the Danish variety of socialism to the Latin American brand he championed earlier in his political career, but at least he was honest enough to use the “S” word. And suddenly there really was nothing wrong with being a socialist. Who knew that after eight years of fervently denying Obama’s socialism—as if it were a bad thing—that the party’s next rising star would be a self-described socialist?
Sanders might even have won the nomination of the Democratic Party if Hillary Clinton hadn’t stacked the deck against him. His loss can be attributed to a number of factors but an aversion to socialism among Democratic voters isn’t one of them. Six in ten Democratic primary voters think socialism “has a positive impact” on society. That’s because the Democratic Party is really just America’s socialist party by another name.
The Left has been particularly successful in radically shifting the frame of acceptable discourse for three reasons. First, they have the media on their side to give them top cover. Second, they are masters of emotion-laden propaganda. And third, they recognize golden opportunities when they see them.
When Barack Obama came to power he recognized that an unpopular war and an economic collapse had left the American people stumbling and woozy. It was an opportune moment to remake society. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” said Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Emanuel’s maxim has been the Left’s unarticulated strategy for a long time. They recognize that in times of national tumult the electorate often grants to progressives plenty of latitude to enact their policy wish lists. Obama benefited from one of these moments when he entered the White House in 2009 with a cooperative Democratic Congress to work with. The road was wide open and Obama went pedal to the metal into territory that most Americans would have considered too far afield just a few years before.
Few presidents have changed the nation as fundamentally as Barack Obama—and not in a good way. Within his first two years he had made the ideas of Saul Alinsky look all-American. I would argue that only Franklin Roosevelt spearheaded a more complete American transformation and he had twelve years to do it. Now there was a man who knew how to move the Overton Window. FDR’s New Deal was considered radical when he proposed it and would have been unthinkable a generation before.
But there was still work to be done. Thirty years later, President Lyndon Johnson exploited America’s national grief over the Kennedy Assassination to push through the atrocious Great Society agenda. President Carter pushed the window further to the left in those disorienting days after Watergate and the Vietnam War.
We conservatives never really push it back, often because we’re afraid we’ll be accused of “turning back the clock.” We need to get over our fear of moving the Overton Window in the other direction for a change. With both houses of Congress and the White House now in conservative hands, there is no excuse not to reverse most of the horrid policies of the Obama years. While they’re at it, they ought to reverse the policies of the Carter, Johnson, and Roosevelt years too.
Defending Our Police Officers, PJ Media, David Solway, March 24, 2017
Police officers leave flowers on Westminster Bridge Aftermath of terror attack outside parliament, London, UK – 24 Mar 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images)
When the fire alarm was pulled by a cohort of rowdy student demonstrators prior to my wife’s anti-feminist talk at the University of Toronto in March 2013, she was hustled for her protection into a nearby patrol car. I appreciated the sympathetic police officer who stood guard beside me at the car door. When I muttered that I would destroy anyone who laid a finger on Janice, he replied: “I’m with you, bro.”
I recall, too, an event at St. Paul University in Ottawa where a masked rabble, calling itself the Revolutionary Student Movement — Marxists in the making — disrupted a talk by journalist and author Cathy Young. When I suggested to the police officers present that the paddy wagon should be called in and the protestors arrested, the officers were plainly uncomfortable, one of whom confessed that they had no authority to do so. A good man, he shrugged his shoulders and gave me a rueful look. I later met one of this honorable cadre of officers at a conservative conference, who told me he often felt ashamed of his superiors and resented some of the orders he was compelled to follow.
Of course, there were, and are, bad apples among ordinary cops, but I have always respected the orchard. Indeed, some of my best students were to be found in the Police Tech classes I regularly taught. Their interests were not strictly academic or distinctively intellectual, but they were diligent, reliable and unfailingly courteous — in this regard, they formed an ideal body of students and citizens who took their responsibilities seriously. Regrettably, one cannot say the same for the general run of their compromised and politically correct superiors, who will often order their subordinates to “stand down” during protests, street demonstrations and riots.
Clearly, it is in the leadership where the general rot sets in, that is, where career and perquisites tend to take precedence over duty and conscience. We have seen many instances of reprehensible conduct on the part of higher authority, of which the most outrageous in Canada was the Caledonia scandal in which the police, under orders from former OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, allowed “First Nations” vandals to rampage for years over a land dispute — giving them “space to destroy,” as in the Baltimore riots. Authorities like LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck or Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy preventing police from carrying out their prescribed duties in enforcing immigration orders, or Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announcing he will defy Trump’s cut in Planned Parenthood funding also spring immediately to mind. The roster of civic and political disreputables doesn’t end there.
While it is heartening to see President Trump offer his respect and support for the nation’s police officers who carry out their lawful mandate, even when it goes against the individual’s grain, it is equally distressing to note the lawless disobedience of many in the top echelons who refuse to accept his presidential orders. In the law enforcement community, this is the point at which the police unions, where they exist, should step in to enable their members to perform both their lawful and morally legitimate duties, whether by wielding the strike option or work-to-rule policy. Canadian policemen are on the whole better off than their American colleagues, but they too are frequently countermanded by the police bureaucracy and forced to act against their moral judgement or are cruelly harassed on the flimsiest of grounds. In such instances officers may have recourse to the courts, though such an expedient may be hazardous to their employment prospects and service record.
But not always. In a case that lasted for 12 years, a certain Sgt. Peter Merrifield of the fabled Mounties has just won a major decision against his superintendent, who persecuted him mercilessly for running for a Conservative Party nomination. The RCMP, reports the National Post, “has been dogged for years by accusations of a toxic internal culture rife with bullying and harassment.” One can readily detect how senior officials, generally of a left-liberal stamp, are influenced by political considerations, to the detriment of their subalterns. Merrifield is now advocating for RCMP unionization.
Obviously, in the present ideological milieu, it’s not good for one’s reputation or bank balance to praise or come to the defense of rank-and-file policemen, as I can attest from personal experience. For example, an article I wrote, inter alia defending policemen and ordinary citizens who found themselves under attack by thugs like Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, appeared in one of Canada’s literary journals. It was very quickly scrubbed and de-archived. The editor wrote a blogpology in which I was, in effect, branded as a systemic racist, and my métier as a published author in this country soon crashed and burned.
Policemen Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, as well as neighborhood-watch civilian George Zimmerman, whom I had in mind in the offending article, were all eventually vindicated, but progressivist sympathy is almost instinctively extended, often on racial grounds, to criminal perpetrators. As Heather Mac Donald writes in City Journal, “On the left, it is only acceptable to speak about the loss of a black life if a police officer is responsible. But police shootings, overwhelmingly triggered by violently resisting suspects, cause a minute fraction of black homicide deaths.” To imply as I did that Wilson, Pantaleo and Zimmerman had reason and justice on their side leads, in our left-oriented, “social justice” climate of identity politics, to social and professional ostracism — my case is by no means unique — and far worse to on-and-off duty policemen. According to reports, 64 police officers were shot and ambushed in the U.S. in 2016 in a veritable war on cops.
Ordinary policemen, who daily put their lives on the line to ensure public security, are getting a raw deal. Often handcuffed by their politically appointed superiors and the object of much public odium and media calumny, they run the double threat of violence and misprision. “Our officers, deputies and troopers believe the political leadership of this country abandoned them,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the National Association of Attorneys General Annual Winter Meeting; “Their morale has suffered.”
I think back to my Police Tech students and wonder about the life they have chosen for themselves. Canada is a more temperate country than the U.S., but they run real risks and receive little in the way of gratitude or respect for a service most of us are not willing to perform.
“I’m with you, bro,” as the officer standing beside me said, protecting my wife from possible assault. It’s time we returned the favor.
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