RUTHFULLY YOURS

IN THE LATE 1930’s A HARVARD STUDENT TRAVELED TO Europe to see its brutal dictatorships firsthand. He visited Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany. Writing in his diary, the young man confided that he had come “to the decision that Facism ((sic)) is the thing for Germany and Italy, Communism for Russia and Democracy for America and England.” But when he ran for President in 1960, John F. Kennedy never had to explain that isolationist view. Nor would raising the issue have made much sense, because the mature Kennedy had long since outgrown the jottings of his impressionable youth.

Time Magazine in 1992, defending Bill Clinton

But of course it makes a lot of sense to raise O’Donnell’s comments on Politically Incorrect about witchcraft today. Because JFK flirting with fascism or Bill Clinton with Communism were just “youthful indiscretions”, but when it comes to O’Donnell, we’re going full Salem here.

The hypocrisy is stunning, but that’s only par for the course.

The media is not covering Coons’ left wing thuggery.

This is about evil. It could be a lot worse. . . . But it’s evil enough in [its] own little way and the person currently causing our problems, New Castle County Executive Chris Coons, wants to be a United States Senator and apparently has the support of many people who don’t know what he really is.

A key point I want to make is that Coons, a rich boy with a law degree and a Master’s in Ethics from Yale Divinity School, is actually a much nastier, more manipulative, more dangerous, more special-interest-serving person than his thuggish predecessor Tom Gordon.

That by the way comes from a liberal who had personal experience with Coons. And he’s not the only one.

There Coons is accused of leaking private medical information to silence an attorney. Again a far more serious allegation than quotes from Politically Incorrect. The same media which made bales of hay out of Troopergate, a story in which Sarah Palin supposedly got a state trooper fired for tasering his 11 year old stepson, of course isn’t interested.

Again par for the course.

Not that it will change anything. The left is on the wrong side of the American people just now. They can invite Colbert as a witness on amnesty hearings, to make a circus out of what’s left of Pelosi’s term, but it won’t save them.

For some context, let’s take a look at some of the letters of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the last great Democrats. Monyihan’s replacement by Hillary Clinton was a profound insult to his legacy and the State of New York. And Monyihan’s letters reveal just what a gap there is between him and the Democratic party of today.

Let’s just glance at a few out of line statements by a man who was a United States Senator not all that long ago.

He described the Peace Corps as: “a rip-off by the upper middle classes. Fortunes spent to send Amherst boys for an interesting learning experience in Venezuela,” paid for by “men equally young pumping gas on the New Jersey Turnpike.”

…

Mr. Moynihan wrote to Mr. Johnson, perhaps invoking their shared upbringing: “You were born poor. You were brought up poor. Yet you came of age full of ambition, energy and ability. Because your mother and father gave it to you. The richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life.”

…

He would later describe Mr. Johnson as “the first American president to be toppled by a mob. No matter that it was a mob of college professors, millionaires, flower children and Radcliffe girls.”

Monyihan warned about the rising power of the left, the elitism and arrogance that detaches them from their country, and the disenchantment of the ordinary American with a government run by such elites, and serves their whims.

But here is some of it unfiltered… from the man himself…and much of it is altogether relevant today.

There is a longer-term development contributing to the present chaos which bears mentioning. Since about 1840, the cultural elite in America have pretty generally rejected the values and activities of the larger society. It has been said of America that the culture will not approve that which the polity strives to provide. For a brief period, associated with the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, there was something of a truce in this protracted struggle.

That, I fear, is now over. The leading cultural figures are going—have gone—into opposition once again. This time they take with them a vastly more numerous following of educated, middle-class persons, especially young ones, who share their feelings and who do not need the “straight” world. It is their pleasure to cause trouble, to be against. And they are hell bent for a good time.

…

I think you are entirely right to have been disturbed by Pete Hamill’s article: “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class” [published in this magazine]. To be frank, I would have sent it to you myself, save that it seemed to me this is just what you were talking about during the campaign. “The Forgotten Americans.”

A new voice is being heard in America today. It is a voice that has been silent too long. It is a voice of people who have not taken to the streets before, who have not indulged in violence, who have not broken the law.

These forgotten Americans finally have become angry. They have not really found a voice in American politics, but they are indeed angry. And have reason to be. You ask, “What is our answer.” To which I suppose my first reaction would be to ask, “What is their question?” …

What is the question? It is this: How is the great mass of white working people to regain a sense of positive advantage from the operation of American government, and retain a steady loyalty to the processes of American society, at a time when those above and below them in the social hierarchy seem simultaneously to be robbing the system blind and contemptuously dismissing all its rules. …

…

To a degree that no one could have anticipated even three or four years ago, the educated elite of the American middle classes have come to detest their society, and their detestation is rapidly diffusing to youth in general. The effects of this profound movement of opinion will be with us for generations. It will, for example, drastically limit the role that the United States can play in world affairs—in contrast with the past three decades or so during which the national government has been really extraordinarily free to do what it thought best. There will be indirect effects. The movement of the American youth away from business will almost surely affect business. If it continues, I would imagine it almost certain, for example, that by the year 2000 the Japanese will have a higher per capita income than do the Americans. In one way or another, we are involved in a change of cultural dimensions that will be pervasive in its consequences …

… In the best universities, the best men are increasingly appalled by the authoritarian tendencies of the left. The inadequacies of traditional liberalism are equally unmistakable, while, not least important, the credulity, even the vulgarity of the supposed intellectual and social elite of the country has led increasing numbers of men and women of no especial political persuasion to realize that something is wrong somewhere.

On one point, Monyihan was not quite correct. There was not a tendency away from business, but rather a takeover of business, a move away from sound business models, and toward rent seeking behavior and speculation in every area, irresponsibility and contempt for concepts such as duty and accepting responsibility. Jobs were outsourced, the goal was to sell cheaply and never mind about the quality of the product. That was the impact on the American corporation of leadership by people without the values and discipline of hard work.

We don’t know what he would have made of Obama, but I think he would have been horrified and repulsed, because while Clinton was the left with the mask on, Obama is the left with the mask mostly off. The revulsion toward America, its values and its history, its traditions and its laws, are out in the open now. The left is no longer satisfied being alienated from America, it insists on alienating Americans from America.

Finally this will be the last update before the holidays, until Saturday night. Since this is a several day gap, here are a few older articles you may find it worthwhile to reread.