Bill DeBlasio, The New New Left & A New New York City

I have manfully refrained from commenting on the NYC mayor's race; but, now that the Huma/Weiner circus has left town, I really need to ring the alarm bell on how Gotham's citizens are on the verge electing a real socialist as mayor; that socialist being Bill DeBlasio, the Democrat in the race.

Think I'm joking? No less than the New York Times has written about DeBlasio's frankly hard left background which includes extensive work with the Nicaraguan Sandanistas and even a honeymoon celebration (!) in Cuba. The New York Post has reported on his extensive ties with ACORN, including a sound bite from the notoriously avowed red Bertha Lewis. DeBlasio himself allows that he was - and remains - a "progressive" and a "social democrat," and is up front about his Reagan-era work with the Internationale. New left worthies like (yes) Tom Haydn are already looking at DeBlasio's 30% lead and licking their lips at the thought of all that sweet, sweet redistribution. The man is not just a leftist. He is a pinko at the very least,  and not even shy about saying it.

Now, one thing that is important to keep in mind: the fact that DeBlasio was flying down to Nicaragua to "help" the Sandanistas is not just a signifier of his extreme leftism. It's also a sign that he is an idiot, both literally and in the "useful idiot" formulation. I traveled in some real left-wing circles back in those days, and I am here to tell you that even most liberals and lefty types thought that Sandalistas like DeBlasio were fools who were helping prop up a dictatorship. Maybe things have changed, but back then there was no honor in announcing that you had just arrived from a spring break trip to Managua. DeBlasio and the rest of the Sandalistas really put the "simp" (as in "simpleton") in Com-simp.

So are New Yorkers really going elect a guy like this? All those bad ass Gothamites with their attitudes, street smarts, and "yo, yo, yo" are going to pull the lever for a guy who thinks Daniel Ortega and Bertha Lewis are worthy of his attention?

Well, they have to vote for someone, and right now the Republican in the race, Joe Lhota, does not seem like the sort of "someone" who can overcome the lazy inertia of Democrat registration. Successful NYC Republican politicians have been larger-than-life figures who could deliver their bold promises to clean up the city's mean streets. Lhota appears to come from the Todd Akin wing of the party. He once called Port Authority officers "mall cops" (37 of them died on 9/11) and is best known for leading the charge against a dung-covered painting of the Virgin Mary.

Also, Lhota says that - Yes! Absolutely! - he is going to make an issue of DeBlasio's communist past and socialist present, but - no - he is not going to call his worthy Democratic opponent a socialist. I look forward to his concession speech, as Lhota clearly doesn't have the stones to face down the left.

Look, Joe, maybe you think it's de classe' to call your opponent by his real ideological leanings, but you can still call him out without having to label Bill DeBlasio a socialist. Notice anything in paragraph 2 above? The man went to Cuba for his honeymoon! In 1994!! He broke a boycott put in place by JFK!!! He violated federal law!!!! His honeymoon dollars went straight into the pockets of a regime that maintains gulags and throws people in prison for simply speaking out against the government!!!!! What kind of person thinks of Cuba as a romantic spot to celebrate his marriage ???!!!

Listen up, Joe! I'm using all these explanation points because I don't think you understand how easy you could make this into a campaign issue without your having to stoop to (shudder) McCarthyism (i.e. telling the blunt truth)!

The success of Republican and pseudo-Republican governance in NYC has been one of the under-appreciated stories of the last 25 years. Rudy Giuliani came into an urban liberal hellhole and turned it around in short order following policies that any conservative would support. Michael Bloomberg re-registered as a Republican (!) to run as Rudy's successor. This at the same time that it's been conventional wisdom that Republicans can't win in big cities and can't fight liberal machine politics! They can with the right candidates and the right message! Too bad for Chicago and Detroit that they never had their own Rudy/Bloomberg moments. And yet, we are poised to hand the mayor's office off to a "progressive" who has specifically promised to return to the law enforcement and budgeting policies that sent NYC into the toilet. Excuse me, I am running out of foreheads to slap.

The NYC mayor's office has been one of the GOP's real plums for the past 20 years, and yet we're not showing any sign that we intend to fight to hold on to it.

Think-u-cation Fail: A Lonely Grad Student Rebels Against Diversity

This email from a University of Wisconsin-Madison TA has been making the rounds. The background is that, as a condition of his academic coursework, he had to attend some racial and gender diversity workshops, and at some point he had had enough. Read it and weep:

At the “diversity” training yesterday, though, even this fig leaf of apoliticism was discarded. In an utterly unprofessional way, the overriding presumption of the session was that the people whom the History Department has chosen to employ as teaching assistants are probably racists. In true “diversity” style, the language in which the presentation was couched was marbled with words like “inclusive”, “respect”, and “justice”. But the tone was unmistakably accusatory and radical. Our facilitator spoke openly of politicizing her classrooms in order to right (take revenge for?) past wrongs. We opened the session with chapter-and-verse quotes from diversity theorists who rehearsed the same tired “power and privilege” cant that so dominates seminar readings and official university hand-wringing over unmet race quotas. Indeed, one mild-mannered Korean woman yesterday felt compelled to insist that she wasn’t a racist. I never imagined that she was, but the atmosphere of the meeting had been so poisoned that even we traditional quarries of the diversity Furies were forced to share our collective guilt with those from continents far across the wine-dark sea. 

It is hardly surprising that any of us hectorees would feel thusly. For example, in one of the handouts that our facilitator asked us to read (“Detour-Spotting: for white anti-racists,” by joan olsson [sic]), we learned things like, “As white infants we were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda,” “…there was no escaping the daily racist propaganda,” and, perhaps most even-handed of all, “Racism continues in the name of all white people.” Perhaps the Korean woman did not read carefully enough to realize that only white people (all of them, in fact) are racist. Nevertheless, in a manner stunningly redolent of “self-criticism” during the Cultural Revolution in communist China, the implication of the entire session was that everyone was suspect, and everyone had some explaining to do. 

You have always been very kind to me, Prof. Kantrowitz, so it pains me to ask you this, but is this really what the History Department thinks of me? Is this what you think of me? I am not sure who selected the readings or crafted the itinerary for the diversity session, but, as they must have done so with the full sanction of the History Department, one can only conclude that the Department agrees with such wild accusations, and supports them. Am I to understand that this is how the white people who work in this Department are viewed? If so, I cannot help but wonder why in the world the Department hired any of us in the first place. Would not anyone be better? 

There is one further issue. At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students”. At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up. 

Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day. 

It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion.

I don't feel absolutely qualified to opine on transgender/genderqueer/WTF? issues except to say this: (1) the number of people who could plausibly count as members of these purported groups are so de minimus as to be not worth the fuss and (2) the transgender/genderqueer/WTF? types you may encounter (and even in SF they are rare) are so clearly mentally not alright as to be more pathetic than anything else. Sure, they and their enablers can talk a brave game about how they're exploring the outer boundaries of sexual expression and such, but really they are just not right. A man who thinks he's a woman? Indulge your whims all you want, but you are never going to look right. Same as for someone who can't figure out their gender. I'm sorry that's pretty basic stuff. Just look down! Again, if you can't figure this out, your problems are 100% mental, and said mental problems really have no proper succor in public life.

Great Guitars: Mick Jones

The Clash's lead guitarist would be an immortal based solely on that band's '77/'78 output when his power chords and punchy leads helped lay down the basic punk guitar template that everyone has followed since then, whether they like it or not. But, Jones was more than just a "3 chords and a dream" kind of player. London Calling and Sandinista are absolutely filled with inventive playing with Jones skipping effortlessly from punk to reggae (The Clash were easily the world's greatest white reggae band, and that wasn't even their goal) to ska to rockabilly to funk to rap and beyond. Even after The Clash broke down ignominiously*, he kept going for another decade with the underrated Big Audio Dynamite. Really a monster player, and if folks don't know that it's because he put out so much music in such a short time, that no one's really been able to catch up.

*it's never a wise career move for your band to break up right after your biggest hit when everyone is calling you The Only Band That Matters.

Leave Me Alone: The Introvert's Manifesto

Matt Walsh says what I've been thinking, but didn't want to say because, why bother: I'm an introvert and I don't need to come out of my shell

Kids who are homeschooled tend to be much better in “social situations” because they learned how to socialize from adults, rather than aping the personality traits of their peers. Public school doesn’t make kids “sociable,” and I think you could more accurately argue for the opposite. The whole concept that we need to send our children to government facilities to be “socialized” makes me shudder. Our children aren’t animals, and I wish we’d stop speaking about them as if they were. That said, I’m not looking to argue that point at the moment. Instead, I’d like to examine the idea that being “outgoing and extroverted” is some sort of universal ideal. 

It isn’t. If a kid is introverted he doesn’t need to be broken like a dog. He doesn’t need to change his personality. He doesn’t even need to “come out of his shell.” He’s not hiding in a shell. He just doesn’t feel the need to chatter incessantly with everyone in the room. If that makes you uncomfortable — that’s your problem. There’s nothing objectively preferable or superior about extraversion. 

Maybe we should define our terms. People throw these labels around without understanding what they mean (what else is new?). Being an introvert has nothing to do with being anxious in “social situations”. Any personality type can suffer from social phobias. Put simply, an introvert is energized by being alone or in small groups, where he or she can think, create and contemplate. An extrovert finds fulfillment primarily in large groups, and generally hates being alone. It’s more complicated than this, obviously, but I’m just hitting the basics. The crucial point is that introversion has nothing to do with fear, and extraversion has nothing to do with boldness or courage.

Walsh's more serious point is that, while modern American society never stops noisily proclaiming its tolerance, a person who seems abnormal in anyway, whether in thought or deed, will quickly find that tolerance will turn on him with a vengeance. Really, the only social "skill" an introvert needs to learn is to act engaged when you are at a party or some other social group (which it virtually any gathering of humans whether in Congress, in jail, at a bar or wherever). That way people won't think you are a jerk and you might actually meet someone who shares (some of) your interests. It happens!

There is an enormous amount of unnecessary chatter out there, both in public and private life. Sociability is fine, but not mindless nattering. 

We Can't Do Anything Right: The GOP and the Civil War

Mackubin Thomas Owens reviews a new book with the thesis that "The South Was Right and Historians Are Wrong" vis a vis what motivated the Southern States to secede from the Union and initiate the Civil War/War Between the States (trying to be ecumenical here). As we all learned in 4th Grade - and was understood back in 1860 - the Confederate States believed the election of Abraham Lincoln represented the end of the line for their efforts to preserve and extend the "peculiar institution." 

Post-war historians and commentators, however, while allowing that slavery was a factor in secession, have filled libraries with alternative explanations for the Civil War's origins. It has even become a leftist trope to denigrate Lincoln himself as a moral monster who had no interest in ending slavery, or protecting the rights of American blacks, except to the extent needed to further his own career. This, of course, is nonsense, but nonsense is never in short supply in America's public debate, especially when it's time to denigrate or diminish the achievements of the Republican Party. 

In his remarkable new book, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes argues that the historians who deny the antislavery origins of the war are mistaken. He contends that from the outset, Republicans had slavery in their sights. Southerners understood that the antislavery threat to the South was real. Accordingly, secession was not an hysterical overreaction to Lincoln’s election but an understandable response to the fact that an antislavery majority in the North had elected an antislavery president. And indeed, Oakes contends, from the very beginning of the conflict, the Republicans worked assiduously to destroy slavery. The problem with the dominant narrative, he argues, is that too many historians have refused to take the Republicans at their word. 

Oakes expands the work of Allen Guelzo, who in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argued that from the first day of his presidency, Lincoln had his eye firmly set on ending slavery. Oakes takes nothing away from Lincoln, but demonstrates that Lincoln’s approach was reflective of the Republican Party as a whole. While there were many differences between Lincoln and the Radicals within the Republican Party, they were of far less import than those between the Democrats and the Republicans. As Lincoln himself once remarked, the difference between Charles Sumner, the Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, and himself was six weeks.

Yeah, God forbid anyone read the 1856 Republican Party platform:

Resolved: That, with our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction; that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the Territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislation, of any individual, or association of individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present Constitution shall be maintained. 

Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.

Everyone in American political life can plausibly link themselves to the Founders, but only the GOP can claim credit for the hard-won achievements of the second founding, no doubt an intolerable truth for the left to abide. 

Sotto Voce: Syrian Civil War Edition

Probably Obama's jerkiest moment during the 2012 campaign was when he smirked during an interview on 60 Minutes that his opponents were "new" to foreign policy...as if a globe-trotting financier and the chairman of the House Budget Committee were rubes who had never crossed the county line. F*** you very much and enjoy your crow, jerk.

Actually, I remember being impressed with Paul Ryan's contributions to the foreign policy portions of his VP debate with Joe Biden. It really brought home the fact that foreign policy skills are more about having the right principles, rather than knowing who is president-for-life in this or that particular hellhole.

And, am I the only one who remembers "Scranton Joe" faux-bellowing, "Oh! So you want to start another war!" in response to some point Ryan made about the Obama administration's feckless retreat from Afghanistan? It's just amazing how these preening liberal peace-niks want to start major combat operations within a year of their successful election victories premised, at least in part, on "keeping up out of war."

It shouldn't be that hard to make political hay out of this fundamentally political duplicity, but the best the GOP has been able to come up with in the past 100 years has been Bob Dole's bicentennial-era crack about "Democratic Wars." (forehead slap)

(And let's hear it for our history of victorious "Republican Wars" back in the 19th century!)

Should Republicans vote to support Obama's vague proposals for punitive strikes against the Assad regime? Hell if I know, but I do know this: if all Obama wants to do is lob some cruise missiles or lead an air campaign, he doesn't need Congress to approve that.

I mean, Reagan invaded Grenada on 48 hours notice without asking permission, even killing some Cuban military "advisers" along the way. He also sent a punitive air strike against Libya, (remember Qaddaffi's "Line of Death?"), and waged a naval campaign in the Persian Gulf that decimated the Iranian navy.

On the other hand, when Iran (booooo!) and Iraq (booooo!) used chemical weapons on each other, Reagan did precisely nothing except let them bleed one another dry. That's an option, you know.

Also, I don't have time to look this up, but I am 99.99% sure that Bush 41 invaded Panama*, ostensibly an ally, without any great debate beforehand.

Not coincidentally, this was a time when America's international standing and military might was unquestioned.

Now we've got a president of the United States who acts like a senior associate who missed a filing deadline, and whom we're all supposed to treat as the smartest guy to ever hold the office.

The argument that we need to support Obama in order to preserve the prestige of the office of the President is falling on deaf ears here at Free Will HQ. Obama's the only guy whose prestige is on the line, and everyone knows it.

And put away your columns about "Munich moments" and how this is "like" the Spanish Civil War. It's nothing like the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War featured two cognizable adversaries whom you could support or work against depending on your ideological leanings. Who in Syria is the Franco? There is none.  

The effort to define some of the rebels as "moderates" is little more than desperate spin. Do we even know these peoples' real names?! At least when America had a civil war, curious Europeans could visit Washington and Richmond and get a sense of how the two sides were thinking and doing. John McCain visiting some desert encampments doesn't do that. (although all credit to him for actually going over there).

And, I hate to be politically incorrect, but Arab militants have a well-deserved reputation as fabulists depending on which set of westerners they're talking to.

Most important, there is no way our "intelligence," such as it is, can pinpoint who unleashed the chemical weapon attack that crossed Obama's red line. It very well may be that it was rebels, not Assad, who launched the attack. Looping YouTube videos of dead children won't change that. We have no business doing anything militarily on anything less than evidence that establishes Assad's fault beyond a reasonable doubt.

I continue to hold out hope that Obama might surprise us all either by (1) leaving Syria alone or (2) actually launching an effective attack that bloodies Assad enough to chasten him, but doesn't give the Islamists among the rebels the opportunity to seize power. Please at least tell me that they have been monitoring traffic around suspected WMD sites and that we have a vague idea whether Assad's stockpiles are being moved around!

This is, needless to say, a priceless opportunity for Republicans to use Obama's shrunken international standing (and the public's angry opposition to any proposed Syrian attack) and derail or roll back all of Obama's noxious domestic "achievements." That's certainly what liberals did when Nixon, Ford, and W were president. I'm sure the GOP has absolutely no intention of pursuing this for fear of harming the prestige of the office of the president during wartime.

It's just amazing how quickly Obama's fortunes have turned. A month ago, I don't think anyone would have guessed that a Syrian chemical attack would lead to the very real prospect of the president losing a congressional authorization vote opposed by dozens of members of his own party, not to mention conservative "warmongers" (who are usually skeptical of military adventurism, too. It's the moderates like McCain and Colin Powell who like to get gung ho). You can call people isolationists all you want, but the fact is that the US doesn't literally have an interest in every stupid conflict on the planet.

* yes, kids, this really happened.