The Progressive-Democratic Party is rolling out a new plan of campaign for the 2018 elections. It’s a populist one, but what interests me is this. The Republicans have run, for the last several election cycles, on “take back our country.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), in endorsing her party’s new campaign plan, said
This is one step that Democrats are offering to take back our government[.]
What an instructive, illuminating difference.
…doesn’t like us very much. And, by “us” I don’t mean Conservatives, I mean the United States in particular and Western Civilization in general.
Here are a couple of examples. Recall President Donald Trump’s speech in Poland last week wherein he touted the successes of Western Civilization and the United States’ role in that and further said that we would never give in to the forces arrayed against us.
Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are. And if we don’t forget who are, we just can’t be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget. We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.
And
[W]e value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.
And
Our citizens did not win freedom together, did not survive horrors together, did not face down evil together, only to lose our freedom to a lack of pride and confidence in our values. We did not and we will not. We will never back down.
But these are bigoted remarks, the Left says.
According to Salon, these are “white nationalist” remarks, and
Trump was fairly begging to be labeled a fascist with his speech painting the purity of white civilization as under threat from racialized foreigners….
Here’s Brad Woodhouse, former Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee:
Western civilization and Christian Values are dog whistles to white nationalists[.]
Malcolm Nance, author and commentator from the Left on terrorism [starts around 5:05]:
That speech was the ultimate fulfillment of Usama bin Laden’s ideology of the belief that there would be a clash of civilizations between what he views as his crazy version of Islam and the West.
Never mind that that clash, that war for our survival, has been inflicted on us for years.
And from the tabloid New York Times:
In Warsaw, Mr Trump boldly stated, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” In saying that, he demonstrated his administration’s born-again commitment to preserve America’s post-Cold War Western alliances, though at the price of redefining the very meaning of “the West.”
In the heady days of the Cold War, “the West” referred to the so-called free world—a liberal democratic order. Today it has been replaced by a cultural, rather than political, notion. But unlike in the 19th century, when a “white man’s burden” took pride of place, today what dominates are the “white man’s fears.”
Sure. Because an American President who happens to be a white US citizen said these things and is following an American President who happened to be a black US citizen and who retreated the US from the world, taking to global extent his own view that “there comes a time when you’ve made enough.”
In a side note, the NYT in particular, also chose to “misunderstand” along a different dimension, too:
What stands out most in Mr Trump’s speech is not its oft-quoted illiberalism but its stark pessimism about the future of the West. …he appears preoccupied by the fear of defeat. What he promised his listeners was not the West’s “victory” but that the West shall never be broken.
Because “we will never surrender” was Churchill’s pessimistic fear of defeat and not his optimism of ultimate victory, so it is with “never be broken.” Apparently these guys skipped over an earlier part of Trump’s speech (they didn’t bother to listen to it live):
…we know that these forces [adversaries and enemies], too, are doomed to fail if we want them to fail. And we do, indeed, want them to fail. They are doomed not only because our alliance is strong, our countries are resilient, and our power is unmatched. Through all of that, you have to say everything is true. Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are. And if we don’t forget who are, we just can’t be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget. We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.
Yeah, that’s pessimism, all right. [/aside]
It’s racist bigotry to manufacture a racism beef where there is none present, and it’s a particularly dishonest bigotry (redundancy deliberate) to manufacture a bigotry beef purely for personal attention.
It’s almost like they hate themselves so much they have to relieve the pressure by projecting.
Or, Charlie Gard and sovereignty.
Charlie Gard is the baby with a rare genetic disease that has damaged his brain, probably fatally and soon. The baby’s parents want to be able to try alternative treatments, or in the alternative, be allowed to bring him home to die there with his parents who love him rather than encumbered by the state’s bureaucrats and representatives, his parents also by-the-way present, in an emptily sterile hospital room.
The British government has chosen to not allow any of this: the baby must die in the hospital. The EU’s Court of Human Rights, in a breathtaking repudiation of its mission, has sided with the British government. Understand: that the Brit government and the EU in their ruling have sided with the hospital in which Charlie is being held is neither here nor there. Both the Brit government and the EU Court could have sided with the baby’s parents, and each chose not to.
Which, as The Wall Street Journal put it in their op-ed at the link, raises a question:
Whose baby is Charlie, anyway—his parents’ or the state’s? In this delicate case, Britain’s national care system has elevated technical expertise over parental love.
In this, the WSJ has misunderstood. It’s the Brit government that has decided, not the bureaucrats of the NHS. It is the government of the home of 1984 that has claimed this baby, poor Charlie Gard, as its ward.
With the British government’s ruling, it has made parents irrelevant and claimed all children to be wards of the state. By extension, the British government has made all citizens of Great Britain, raised from early childhood as wards of the state, themselves wards of the state.
The citizens of Great Britain are not sovereign in their own nation. Only Government is sovereign.
Germany’s Bundestag has enacted legislation that not only attacks the concept of free speech (apparently an American concept, and not a human one), but also requires private enterprises to be the government’s enforcers of the new law.
Under the new legislation, social media companies have 24 hours to remove posts that obviously violate German law [hate speech, fake news, terror propaganda, and the like] and have been reported by other users. In cases that are more ambiguous, Facebook and other sites have seven days to deal with the offending post. If they don’t comply with the new legislation, the companies could face a fine of up to 50 million euros ($57.1 million).
And it’s government that will decide what constitutes hate speech, what news is fake, what is propaganda. As if any of this should be proscribed by government.
The answer to unpopular speech, the answer to hurtful speech, is not silence but yet more speech. Apparently, though, that’s another solely American concept and one that’s wholly missed in Europe.
Sadly, this is what our own Progressive-Democrat Left wants for us, too. Oh, wait—they’ve already shown their attitude toward free speech. At colleges and universities, at “protests” in DC, etc.
The New York Times newsroom is going to walk out (as I write this) on Thursday because they don’t like the cutbacks in editors (an understandable concern, even if the newsroom denizens offered no alternative) and other personnel reductions the paper is being forced to make in an effort to reduce costs to a survivable level. It’s their plaints, though, that drew my attention. The copy editors group wrote a letter to Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Managing Editor Joseph Kahn in which they said in part,
You often speak about the importance of engaging readers, of valuing, investing, and giving a voice to readers. Dean and Joe: we are your readers, and you have turned your backs on us.
News flash, guys. Baquet’s and Kahn’s readers, the NYT‘s readers, are the customers who pay around $325/yr for a subscription, or more than $500/yr for both print and online subscriptions. You guys get paid to read your boss’ paper in order to make error corrections.
NYT reporters sent a letter to the same targets in solidarity with the copy editors.
Requiring them to dance for their supper sends a clear message to them, and to us, that the respect we have shown the Times will not be reciprocated.
Respect has to be earned, guys. You have a legitimate beef regarding the lack of transparency in personnel moves your paper is making (another part of your letter), but respect has to be earned the same way any honest American earns it: through actual deeds. You guys don’t get respect just because you think you’re special. In particular, you utterly disrespect your readers—those paying customers—when you masquerade unsubstantiated rumors, which you amusingly attribute to “senior officials,” to sources who “are speaking anonymously because they’re not authorized to speak,” and the like, as fact. And you do that while also carefully declining to corroborate those rumors with on-the-record remarks.
Question for you both—and for Baquet and Kahn—when y’all come back to work on Friday (today, as I post this): did anyone notice your absence? Besides the janitors, I mean. Folks like actual customers.