Richard Fernandez warns that the take-over of the democrat party by the radical left which that party’s leadership has allowed to become its base features consequences going beyond nominations and platforms. We have been seeing some of those consequences recently, as violent, masked ANTIFA protests have become routine. “Doxing” and pressuring corporations to fire political opponents, a little while ago, seemed to mark extraordinarily extreme expressions of political opposition, but more recently physical attacks in public places have escalated from thrown milkshakes to quick-drying cement shakes and punches. Last Saturday’s attack by ANTIFA demonstrators on Quilette editor Andrew Ngo, a harmless Gay wimp, has been widely suspected of being effectively condoned by Portland’s democrat mayor’s office. Portland police did not interfere in the attack, and are assumed to have been operating in accordance with a hands-off ANTIFA demonstrations policy in place since at least last year. A spokesman for Portland police defensively told reporters there was “no evidence” that the police stood by deliberately and let people be attacked, and said that three people had been arrested in connection with the demonstration, including one for assault. They did not identify the person charged, however, as being involved with the attack on Andrew Ngo.
[T]he magnitude of Hillary’s 2016 loss is only now becoming apparent. Clinton didn’t just lose the White House, she also lost the Democratic center to the radical ornaments. The diminution of Brooks, Stevens, Kristof, and even Biden are the consequence of that defeat. The radicals who once served the useful purpose of putting fear into the other side are taking center stage. It’s not surprising that the French Terror began with the purge of the moderates and the urgency of virtue. As Robespierre put it, virtuous men have no choice but to employ any means necessary:
If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.
The Thing is older than one would think. And more voracious. The intellectual Old Bolsheviks thought their illustrious records would protect them from the ruffian Stalin. Bukharin, who was eventually executed by Stalin, once said: “Koba, you used to be grateful for the support of your Bolshevik comrades.” “Gratitude is a dog’s disease,” Stalin shot back.
It won’t stop at Andy Ngo. There is no safety from It.
As Burke observed: “In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.”
