It turns out that Charles Krauthammer, speaking of Van Jones during Thursday's Fox News All-Stars, suggested that:
I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist.Well, it's not that pathetic, at least not to all the young people enthralled with communist paraphernalia (Che chic comes to mind, but Obama-mania is Soviet-like in its cult of personality). These are the same young people who routinely demonstrate under the neo-Stalinist banner. I write about it all the time. I think that, actually, the further we're removed historically from the brutality of Soviet rule during the Cold War, combined with the popularization of a pseudo-hip antiwar-postmodernism, there's no real recoil against the idea of Marxist-Leninist ideologies. Folks even laugh when they hear the word "communism," since that's, well, ancient history for many. Now it's "progressive" to praise Castro's healthcare regime, and that's not just by idealistic college kids, but by members of Congress!
Anyway, McCarthy kindly takes exception to Krauthammer:
It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy and our other institutions. Does Charles not realize, for example, that Obama's friend Bill Ayers — who proudly calls himself "a small 'c' communist" — was in 2008 elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers? (See Sol Stern's profile of Ayers and education, here). I'm not sure "pathetic" is the right word, but what is a perilous intellectual anachronism is the belief that the communist threat ended 18 years ago.McCarthy then quotes from David Horowitz's, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, one of the best books on radical ideologies in the post-9/11 era.
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that "we had a communist in the U.S. government." To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the "green jobs czar." Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss. There's nothing covert about him. He didn't snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that's why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the "green jobs" initiative is an important part of the hard Left's agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract — under such mushy labels as "social justice" and "green jobs." That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.
What's interesting to me is how our netroots "progressives" see Van Jones as a perfectly decent guy - I mean a really, really good guy! (That's what Baratunde Thurston argued last night at his excreble post, "When Will This White House Learn You Cannot Negotiate With Terrorists?")
But here's Digby singing the praises:
Jones is a truly inspirational, exciting thinker and speaker and it looks like they are going to get his scalp and marginalize him ...Yeah, inspirational in the "chicken-coming-home-to-roost" style.
Then there's "Hammering" Jane Hamsher's take:
I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.Yeah, formidable. "Hammering" Jane also had kind words to say of the Baratunde screed, "It's an incredible piece." She also likes Carl Pope's allegations of a high-tech lynching of Van Jones.
And recall the fawning over at Gawker, "here we have a radical youth turned respectable liberal ... And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people ..."
See, he's just a "great guy." Except that, frankly, Jones isn't a "great guy." He's a mean, nasty guy, with a long history of anti-Americanism and hard-left-wing agitation. He is, thought, the real thing - a communist, and that fact has leftists slobbering all over him. That's what I mean when I say there are "no enemies on the left." By calling themselves "progressives," today's neo-communists seek respectability.
Mike at Cold Fury has more:
For far too long, Americans have tolerated encroachments on their liberty; expansions in the reach, size, and power of government; and the incremental abrogation of Constitutional restrictions on same because it was going on clandestinely, behind closed doors (below the radar might be a better way of putting it). It’s also why I said a while back that Obama’s ascension just might’ve been the best thing that ever could have happened to this country ....And see Ron Radosh as well, "The Lessons of the Van Jones Resignation." (And more at Memeorandum.)
To clean out a rats’ nest, you first have to be able to see the damned rats. Jones will slink off to another sub-surface “community organizer” type job, perhaps even on the federal payroll, and another just like him will take his place ... quietly, without much in the way of fanfare. It’s up to the rest of us to keep our eyes open for it — to stay awake, so the Democrat Socialist rats won’t find it so easy to steal what little remains of our freedom, and remake what’s left of our Constitutional republic.
3 comments:
DD, what's the significance of this title? Surely you're not playing off of Dian Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist?
Andrew McCarthy we need to bring back Senator Joe McCarthy for is group of communist in the White House.
I certainly get strange looks these days when I use the word 'communist'; some look at me like they were watching an old newsreel. I'm sure they think of me as a quaint anachronism. I have never understood why people on the Right went along with the myth that communism died with the fall of the Soviet Union, when clearly it was alive on the college campuses of The West and still the governing philosophy of a good number of nations. And, obviously, it stayed very much alive among the chic elite.
Realizing that the labels 'liberal' and 'communist' were poison, the Left decided to adopt the term 'progressive'. This has provided radical Leftists, who in the past could have never been allowed to hold respectable positions in government and business, to do so under the false skin of the word. Thus, the appointment of a Van Jones arouses no controversy among the great muddled middle. After all, he's a progressive, just a liberal. Or as you put it:
That's what I mean when I say there are "no enemies on the left." By calling themselves "progressives," today's neo-communists seek respectability.
Exactly. They are one and the same. The Left has been fairly successful is saying C is not C, but is, rather, P, as is L is not L [or, to be mischievous: C is CCCP].
Quoted from and linked to at:
http://www.thecampofthesaints.com/2009.09.06_arch.html#1252432875695
Post a Comment