Yale students confront Silliman College Master Nicholas Christakis
Victor Davis Hanson tends to chuckle when he sees the Revolution devouring its own.
The West is ablaze with protests not just because of the failure of the Left in the cities, on campuses, and across Europe to offer a workable paradigm, but also because of the Left’s canonic assurances that it could and would.
Deans and mayors promised utopia. When it did not arrive, the only concession they had left was more failed efforts to achieve the unachievable. People turn on their own more violently than they turn on others, as if a liberal, paternal dean should be able to snap his fingers and make liberal students happy. When he so promises, his ensuing failure only makes things worse.
All the banned micro-aggressions, all the safe spaces, all the trigger warnings, and all the fired deans will not make today’s postmodern students happy, much less appreciative, any more than would mandating authentic ethnic cooks and more year-round hot-tubs. Like addicts, they believe one more cheap fix from a compliant supplier will finally do the trick. Don’t expect the addict to show gratitude to his dealer.
Leftist revolutionaries cannot be satisfied, because they have long ago been given all they asked for, and are now rebelling for the idea of rebelling against something, even if it is reduced to a micro-aggression or founded on a myth like “Hands up, don’t shoot.†Millions of inner-city youths are as furious as are elite students. They got the liberal city and the liberal university they wanted — only to rage that human nature is not liberal and that contentment cannot be found through mirror-image government, but only within themselves. How can you rebel against that age-old truth?
James Mitchell, the CIA interrogator who interviewed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who also beheaded Daniel Pearl, told Fox News that KSM predicted what the liberals would do and warned him.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told me personally, ‘Your country will turn on you, the liberal media will turn on you, the people will grow tired of this, they will turn on you, and when they do, you are going to be abandoned.’ â€
The riot in Ferguson reminds me, I hate criminals, but I hate liberals more. They planned this riot. They stoked the fire, lied about the evidence and produced a made-to-order riot.Every other riot I’ve ever heard of was touched off by some spontaneous event that exploded into mob violence long before any media trucks arrived. This time, the networks gave us a countdown to the riot, as if it were a Super Bowl kickoff.
From the beginning, Officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown wasn’t reported like news. It was reported like a cause.
The worst thing about living under liberals isn’t the deliberate erosion of the Constitution, the disastrous nationalization of medical insurance, the ever-shrinking percentage of Americans in the workforce, the monstrous debt, the looming hyperinflation, America’s diminished status in the world, the degradation of military preparedness and morale, the disintegration of education, or the horror of realizing that the insolent, self-satisfied punk who pokes a finger in your eye every time you turn on the TV is the President of the USA.
The worst thing is what they are making us into as a people.
Jonah Goldberg takes a poke at the myth of liberal tolerance.
There is a notion out there that being “socially liberal†means you’re a libertarian at heart, a live-and-let-live sort of person who says “whatever floats your boat†a lot.
Alleged proof for this amusing myth (or pernicious lie; take your pick) comes in the form of liberal support for gay marriage and abortion rights, and opposition to a few things that smack of what some people call “traditional values.â€
The evidence disproving this adorable story of live-and-let-live liberalism comes in the form of pretty much everything else liberals say, do, and believe.
Social liberalism is the foremost, predominant, and in many instances sole impulse for zealous regulation in this country, particularly in big cities. I love it when liberals complain about a ridiculous bit of PC nanny-statism coming out of New York, L.A., Chicago, D.C., Seattle, etc. — “What will they do next?â€
Uh, sorry to tell you, but you are “they.†Outside of a Law and Order script — or an equally implausible MSNBC diatribe about who ruined Detroit — conservatives have as much influence on big-city liberalism as the Knights of Malta do.
Seriously, who else do people think are behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men? Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? Your cigarettes? Heck, your candy cigarettes? Who’s in favor of speech codes on campuses and “hate crime†laws everywhere? Who’s in favor of free speech when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized “art†and pornography (so long as you use a condom, if liberals get their way) but then bang their spoons on their high chairs for strict regulations when it comes to political speech? Who loves meddling, finger-wagging billionaires like Michael Bloomberg when they use state power and taxpayer money to herd, bully, and nudge people but thinks billionaires like the Koch brothers who want to shrink government are the root of all tyranny?
At the national level, who bypassed Congress to empower the EPA to regulate the atmosphere? Oh, and who pushed Obamacare on a country that didn’t want it? Who defends bending the entire country — including religious institutions — into a national health-care scheme dedicated to the proposition of live and let live so long as you live the way the Department of Health and Human Services says you should?
Did legislative and bureaucratic gremlins sneak into government buildings at night and pass all of these rules and regulations while the social-liberal free-thinkers were off not judging people and refusing to harsh anybody’s mellow?
Sure, today’s liberalism does carry within it some genetic lineage to the classical liberalism — i.e., libertarianism — of J. S. Mill and John Locke. But genetic ties are overrated. After all, humans share half of our genes with bananas.
