How long can the media fool the public about “mostly peaceful protests”?

The New Neo Posted on by

The MSM tried to frame the riots in the summer of 2020 as mostly peaceful protests. Sure, many of the people involved that summer were indeed peaceful protesters, but many were not. That means a lot of destruction was caused; after all, it’s not necessary that every single participant be violent in order to have a very dangerous situation.

In 2020 the coverage seemed to fool a lot of people, though. I know intelligent people who follow the news (although only CNN and the like) who were unaware of the damage done by protesters/rioters in 2020. So the MSM is trying the same approach now, hoping for the same result with the same group of viewers.

But can you fool many of the people much of the time, over and over and over? I don’t know the answer. But to us on the right, who get a fuller picture because we watch news sources that show the mayhem, it seems ludicrous that anyone could still believe that there was no need for more crowd control in LA than initially provided, or that the call for the Guard was not needed.

Then there are the facts about what it was that the protesters/rioters were actually protesting. Who are the people ICE was apprehending? As Trump would say, “not their best”:

These arrests occurred June 9 and 10 despite prolonged violent riots and assaults on ICE and other federal law enforcement officers.

“Murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers. These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that rioters are fighting to protect. How much longer will Governor Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass continue to prioritize these criminal illegal aliens over their own citizens?” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Secretary Noem has a message to the LA rioters: you will not stop us or slow us down. ICE will continue to enforce the law and arrest criminal illegal aliens.” …

Gerardo Antonio-Palacios, an illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE Los Angeles. He has criminal convictions for homicide and burglary. He was previously deported.

Mab Khleb

ICE Los Angeles arrested Mab Khleb, a 53-year-old illegal alien from Cambodia. Khleb’s criminal history includes a conviction for transport of a controlled substance, possession of controlled substance, lewd action with a child, and battery.

Sang Louangprasert

ICE Los Angeles arrested Sang Louangprasert, a 66-year-old illegal alien from Laos. Louangprasert’s criminal history includes a conviction for lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 in Fresno, CA and inflicting corporal injury, spouse or cohabitant in Santa Barbara, CA.

Antonio Benitez-Ugarte

Antonio Benitez-Ugarte, an illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE Los Angeles and has been convicted of drug trafficking.

Alberto Morales-Mejia

Alberto Morales-Mejia, an illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE Los Angeles and has criminal convictions for manufacturing amphetamine. He also has previous arrests for document fraud and possession of a weapon.

And more. It’s not a list to engender a great deal of sympathy among the public. But the Democrats and the press hope the public never get these sorts of details.

And here’s a poster boy for the mostly peaceful demonstrators:

“Emiliano Garduno-Galvez is a criminal illegal alien from Mexico who threatened the lives of federal law enforcement officers by attacking them with a Molotov cocktail during the violent riots in Los Angeles. ICE arrested Garduno-Galvez, and he is now being charged with attempted murder. These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that rioters are fighting to protect,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Wednesday statement.

Attempted murder sounds about right.

ADDENDUM:

And Jimmy Kimmel says there are no riots. Well, I bet they don’t center around his neighborhood, so out of sight, out of mind:

Los Angeles-based comedian Jimmy Kimmel told his audience on Tuesday that “there’s no riots outside” and slammed “mentally ill” President Donald Trump for deploying troops to quell what he claims is exaggerated unrest in the city.

Trump sent over 700 Marines to Los Angeles in an effort to quash anti-ICE protests that have ravaged parts of the city on Tuesday. Images from L.A. showcase masked protesters blocking roads, destroying vehicles and engaging with police, while Mayor Karen Bass issued a curfew for a portion of the city’s downtown area.

Kimmel mocked the media for portraying the anti-ICE protests as “some kind of totalitarian hellscape” and condemned the Trump administration for deporting “people who have lived here their whole lives.”

It’s irrelevant how long they’ve lived here, if they are criminal illegal aliens – although I also think many of the deportees have not lived here their whole lives. I’m also fairly sure that Kimmel is unlikely to have met any of the above rogue’s gallery, although they’ve certainly done damage to other people. Kimmel couldn’t care less.

RIP Brian Wilson

The New Neo Posted on by

A musical genius, gone at 82. Then again, who ever thought Brian Wilson would reach the ripe old age of 82? But he did, and gave us a lot of music along the way.

The Beach Boys were a family act that featured harmonies and had a fresh sound when they came on the scene:

Encapsulating the group’s import in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll,” critic Jim Miller wrote, “In the ’60s, when they were at the height of their original popularity, the Beach Boys propagated their own variant on the American Dream, painting a dazzling picture of beaches, parties and endless summer, a paradise of escape into private as often as shared pleasures. Yet by the late ’60s, the band was articulating…a disenchantment with the suburban ethos, and a search for transcendence.”

In other words, they went from early 60s music to late 60s music, much as the Beatles did only in their own special way, led mostly by Brian Wilson.

Wilson was a troubled guy and spent a lot of time dealing with that:

The product of a torturous relationship with his father, Wilson from the early ’60s on experienced a series of mental breakdowns (which led to his early withdrawal from live performances with the group), struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, thickets of litigation, and deepening acrimony with his bandmates, who included two brothers and a cousin. In 1982 he was officially fired by his own group.

However, Wilson fought off his demons and opened a bright second chapter in the late ’80s, cutting a string of solo albums and receiving renewed acclaim via live performances of his masterpieces “Pet Sounds” and “Smile.” On the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ founding, he took to the road again with the band after a decades-long absence.

The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Brian Wilson also gave the 1997 introduction for the induction into the same institution of another family group featuring harmonies and falsetto: the Bee Gees.

In trying to decide which Beach Boys song to feature here, I would think the obvious choice would be “Good Vibrations,” their later magnum opus. Or perhaps “God Only Knows,” a song whose lead vocalist was Brian’s brother Carl. For me, though, it’s the early-60s songs of the Beach Boys, full of optimism and fun, and a time when California was a dreamy place to be. My favorite of all was this one – “I Get Around.” This video has the song followed by two bonuses: a short interview, and then a performance of “When I Grow Up.” Note the outtro lyric to that second song: “won’t last forever.”:

Thanks for the music and the memories, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

The beleaguered and persecuted heroes of CBS

The New Neo Posted on by

A reporter at CBS exhibits his delusional self-aggrandizement combined with paranoia:

“The most important thing is to have the courage to speak, to not let fear permeate the country so that everyone suddenly becomes silent,” the former “CBS Evening News” anchor added. “If you have the courage to speak, we are saved. If you fall silent, the country is doomed.” …

Cooper asked Pelley, a nearly 40-year veteran of CBS: “Do you still believe in journalism? Do you still believe in the role of journalists?”

“It is the only thing that’s gonna save the country,” Pelley responded. “You cannot have democracy without journalism. It can’t be done.”

What do they mean by “journalism”? They mean their own brand, which “saves” democracy by lying to the people. The news must be filtered through those “journalists” who controlled the spigot for so long and have now lost that ability, to a large extent. Pelley would like to keep his finger in the dike.

The article goes on to add:

Trump filed a legally dubious lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris last fall.

CBS News journalists and executives have sought to fight the suit and its allegations of “election interference.”

The authors fail to mention that the reason for the suit was deceptive editing on the part of CBS in order to make Harris’ performance look much better than it was. It is always possible and even easy to get some legal “experts” on the left to say a Trump lawsuit is dubious, and I actually doubt he will be victorious in this one. But at least let the reader know what Trump is alleging and why.

And yes, there was plenty of “election interference” in 2024 – that’s what the news networks now do best.

What is the left’s goal in staging these LA riots?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Bauxite” wonders:

Understanding that this is being driven by the leftmost flank of the American left, I still can’t see how it makes sense. Trump is at his strongest on law and order and illegal immigration. They’ve changed the subject from tariffs and the the so-called big beautiful bill to illegal immigration and leftist rioting.

Trump’s enemies ride to the rescue again. Credit to Trump for sending in the national guard right away this time.

It would indeed seem to play into Trump’s hands, and Bauxite is hardly the only person making such an observation. For example, there’s this from Democrat strategist Chuck Rocha, saying very much the same thing (I can’t embed the video, but that’s the link; it’s about a minute long).

So why does the left do this? I think there are many reasons. First of all, their base loves it. Secondly, it sows chaos and might actually impede some of the deportations, which stymies Trump and causes more chaos. But I believe the deeper desire is to provoke a strong reaction from Trump that can then be labeled in all the ways they love to label Trump: he’s a fascist and a power-mad brutal dictator. Today it’s the illegal criminal aliens, tomorrow it will be you!

It’s a classic leftist move. Their playbook – in US history, anyway – is the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I wrote a piece back in 2006 about this leftist strategy. Most of the remainder of the present post will be quotes from that 2006 article, and I believe the relevance is obvious (the Horowitz link no longer works, however).

This contemporaneous article from Time magazine (hardly a right-wing fringe publication) discusses the intent of the leaders of the 1968 Chicago Convention demonstrations:

“[The protestors] left Chicago more as victors than as victims. Long before the Democratic Convention assembled, the protest leaders who organized last week’s marches and melees realized that they stood no chance of influencing the political outcome or reforming “the system.” Thus their strategy became one of calculated provocation. The aim was to irritate the police and the party bosses so intensely that their reactions would look like those of mindless brutes and skull-busters. After all the blood, sweat and tear gas, the dissidents had pretty well succeeded in doing just that.”

Some demonstrators came prepared; defensively:

“…many were equipped with motorcycle crash helmets, gas masks (purchasable at $4.98 in North Side army-navy surplus stores), bail money and anti-Mace unguents.”

And a few, offensively:

“A handful of hard-liners in the “violence bag” also carried golf balls studded with spikes, javelins made of snow-fence slats, aerosol cans full of caustic oven-cleaning fluids, ice picks, bricks, bottles, and clay tiles sharpened to points that would have satisfied a Cro-Magnon bear hunter.”

The leaders were also prepared:

“Most of the protest leaders stayed in the background. Mobilization Chairman David Tyre Dellinger, 53, the shy editor-publisher of Liberation, who led last fall’s Pentagon March, studiously avoided the main confrontation before the Hilton. His chief aide, Tom Hayden, 28, a New Left author who visited Hanoi three years ago, was so closely tailed by plainclothesmen that he finally donned a yippie-style wig to escape their attentions. Nonetheless, he was arrested. Rennie Davis, 28, the clean-cut son of a Truman Administration economic adviser, took a more active part as one of the Chicago organizers: his aim, he said, was ‘to force the police state to become more and more visible, yet somehow survive in it.’ At Grant Park on Wednesday afternoon, he both succeeded and failed….”

And here’s David Horowitz’s insider-turned-apostate version:

“In fact, the famous epigram from ’68 ‘Demand the Impossible’ which Talbot elsewhere cites, explains far more accurately why it was Hayden, not Daley, who set the agenda for Chicago, and why it was Hayden who was ultimately responsible for the riot that ensued. The police behaved badly, it is true and they have been justly and roundly condemned for their reactions. But those reactions were entirely predictable. After all, it was Daley who, only months before, had ordered his police to ‘shoot looters on sight’ during the rioting after King’s murder. In fact the predictable reaction of the Chicago police was an essential part of Hayden’s calculation in choosing Chicago as the site of the demonstration in the first place.”

… The organizers of the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 … [had this intent]: to act from a weakened position to provoke, by their actions, a repressive response from authorities (in this case, the police) that would then further inflame public opinion against those authorities, and engender more sympathy for the cause of the planners.

In that endeavor, they were wildly successful in Chicago, but that success required an overreaction on the part of the Chicago police, who kindly obliged and played their predicted part in the drama.

And what of other intents of the demonstration leaders, and other consequences? Horowitz again:

“In a year when any national ‘action’ would attract 100,000 protestors, only about 10,000 (and probably closer to 3,000) actually showed up for the Chicago blood-fest. That was because most of us realized there was going to be bloodshed and didn’t see the point. Our ideology argued otherwise as well. The two-party system was a sham; the revolution was in the streets. Why demonstrate at a political convention? In retrospect, Hayden was more cynical and shrewder than we were. By destroying the presidential aspirations of Hubert Humphrey, he dealt a fatal blow to the anti-Communist liberals in the Democratic Party and paved the way for a takeover of its apparatus by the forces of the political left, a trauma from which the party has yet to recover.

One reason the left has obscured these historical facts is that the nostalgists don’t really want to take credit for electing Richard Nixon, which they surely did.”

That’s the end of my excerpts from my own 2006 post. And yes, many of the excesses of the left during the Biden administration helped re-elect Donald Trump. At this point, however, the left is well aware (despite their rhetoric) that this is Trump’s final term as president. They seem to be playing a longer game. Will they succeed? It depends on the American public. The way in which we get information, and the attitudes with which we digest that information, are quite different these days than in 1968. But although I don’t think the left is so stupid as to not understand how bad the current riots look to a lot of people, and that there is indeed a danger of playing into Trump’s hands, I suspect they think there may be some distinct advantages for the left in the long run.

I certainly hope they are very very wrong about that. But I believe that is their calculation.

Bathtub magic

The New Neo Posted on by

And now for a commercial break.

I have a bathtub that’s somewhat porous. I suppose it’s old and has lost some of its finish. I have no wish to replace it, but it seems that it gets dirty quite quickly from my showers, with stains that I think may be mostly soap scum but which have been almost impossible to get out.

Actually, they have been impossible to get out with any product that I have tried, homemade or store bought – till now. That includes several things that are supposedly specially formulated to remove soap scum, as well as buying three – count ’em, three! – special tools for the purpose, one of which was battery-operated.

Oh, I could reduce the intensity of the stains. But a significant amount remained.

Enter Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser for the bath. I wouldn’t say I had zero expectations, but let’s just say my expectations were almost non-existent. It had a perfumy smell I’m not fond of, as well. But let me just say that the thing worked like nothing else has. I am astounded.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few developments of interest:

(1) As Hamas fades, what group will rise? Of one thing you can be sure: it won’t be the equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Almost certainly, all the possible candidates are pretty awful. Which are the least awful? Perhaps this bunch, which Israel is said to be arming in order to help protect the aid distribution:

The concept of using Yasser Abu Shabab’s militia was approved because it was already an existing, anti-Hamas armed group independent of Israeli assistance. Contrary to some reports, it is not connected to ISIS or extremist Salafi groups.

Notably, the militia was already armed prior to the current conflict. Members of the militia, all from the same tribe, have long opposed Hamas’ rule in the area. The militia has been defined as an armed group even before the start of the war.

In the Rafah area, very few terrorists remain, and most of the terror infrastructure has been dismantled. This improved security situation now allows for easier control of the area without Hamas governance.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Not necessarily.

(2) Israel detains the self-aggrandizing publicity hound, Greta Thunberg – who is no longer a teenager – and one condition of her release is that she will be watching the video of Hamas atrocities. I doubt it will make a particle of difference to her:

Her boat carried less than one truck-full of food, which she claimed she was bringing to Gaza to stop the genocide.

They needed all that space for their videocameras, phones, and make-up kits.

(3) Macron changes his tune – somewhat – on Palestinian statehood:

An international conference, the brainchild of France, to recognize a Palestinian state, has lowered its sights.

Scheduled for June 16-18 at United Nations headquarters in New York, it will now focus on determining steps toward recognition rather than recognition itself.

The redefined goal signals a retreat from the conference’s earlier ambition of seeing a large bloc of countries, including France and the United Kingdom, recognize a Palestinian state, The Guardian reported on June 7.

French President Emmanuel Macron said recognizing “Palestine” “was not only a moral duty but a political necessity,” speaking during a press conference in Singapore on May 30.

Europe is hopelessly lost on this issue as well as on so many others. And it’s not as though Europe has a stellar past record, either.

(4) Speaking of which, here’s a video on why Ireland is so rabidly anti-Israel.

(5) Iran claims to have some secret Israeli nuclear intelligence:

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday that the information Iran claimed it seized regarding Israel’s nuclear program “seems to refer” to the country’s Soreq Nuclear Research Center, the first acknowledgment outside of Tehran of the theft.

The Prime Minister’s Office had no immediate response to the remarks by IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who spoke during a news conference in Vienna.

The alleged theft comes at a time of renewed tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, which enriches uranium a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels and looks poised to reject a US proposal over a possible deal on its atomic program.

Insurrection, LA style

The New Neo Posted on by

This is the way it goes.

First you realize that summer is coming, and it’s the best season for riots. Next, you prepare the ground by choosing your favored cause, and make sure the MSM misrepresents it properly. Protecting criminal illegal aliens and opposing their arrest and deportation is a cause that’s a mite tricky to convince people to rally around. But after all, you don’t just want disruption and chaos – although you do indeed want that – but you also want the ordinary Democrat voter and even a few Independents to be sympathetic to your side. If the MSM does its job the way you want, they have delivered the message over and over that ICE is deporting ordinary illegal aliens (you call them “undocumented workers,” of course) and not dangerous people or criminals.

Once that’s done, you organize the riots. There’s no dearth of people willing to riot for money and/or for fun and/or for the leftist cause du jour. The venue is a blue city in a blue state, so that the mayor and governor won’t rein you in very much or very hard, if at all.

And there you have it:

The Los Angeles anti-ICE riots have erupted into a soft civil war in the streets. President Trump isn’t waiting for the local Democrats to get a handle on this; they can’t. They won’t. Some have even called agitators to escalate their actions against federal law enforcement. Around 2,000 National Guard units have been deployed for a riot that the media and the LAPD have called “mostly peaceful.”

There is a great deal of coverage of some of the details, so here are just a few articles: about CNN’s coverage, about ABC’s coverage, on the funding, and on the LAPD chief’s admission of being overwhelmed:

One day after President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guardsmen to the city — over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats who have insisted they have the situation in hand — Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell admitted that his officers were “overwhelmed” by the scale of the riots, which have continued for four consecutive days in Los Angeles.

“We are overwhelmed,” McDonnell said at a Sunday evening press conference. “Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers. That can kill you.”

“They’ll take a backpack, and the backpack will have a cinderblock in it,” he continued. “They’ll break up the cinderblock and use that, pass it around to throw at officers, to throw at cars and other people.”

Around 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, a crowd of at least 2,000 rioters blocked both lanes of traffic on the 101, prompting authorities in riot gear to create a line to prevent them from moving forward. They pushed the crowd onto an exit ramp, though two motorcyclists attempted to break through the skirmish line, injuring two officers.

The road was reopened around 5 p.m., but had to be shut down again around 7:30 p.m. when rioters started throwing objects and damaging police vehicles.

In downtown L.A., rioters were seen destroying self-driving Waymo taxis and spray painting anti-ICE messages on them. At least three were set on fire while protesters slashed tires and smashed windshields. Lime electric scooters were also thrown into the flames. One rioter appeared to have a makeshift flamethrower, according to the Los Angeles Times.

You can bet that neither the city of Los Angeles nor the state of California will be treating these people harshly. What the federal government will do remains to be seen. But with the J6 defendants, the feds had a venue – DC – that was very friendly to the prosecution. Not so now.

Governor Newsom says he’ll sue Trump for calling in the National Guard, and that the action was illegal. But the provisions of the Insurrection Act, which Trump invoked, seem to cover it:

Section 251 allows the president to deploy troops if a state’s legislature (or governor if the legislature is unavailable) requests federal aid to suppress an insurrection in that state. This provision is the oldest part of the law, and the one that has most often been invoked.

While Section 251 requires state consent, Sections 252 and 253 allow the president to deploy troops without a request from the affected state, even against the state’s wishes. Section 252 permits deployment in order to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Section 253 has two parts. The first allows the president to use the military in a state to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws” that any portion of the state’s inhabitants are deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy relied on this provision to deploy troops to desegregate schools in the South after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The second part of Section 253 permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” This provision is so bafflingly broad that it cannot possibly mean what it says, or else it authorizes the president to use the military against any two people conspiring to break federal law.

You can find another discussion of the legal issues here.

ADDENDUM: RedState also has a great deal of coverage.

Okay, so why is it raining every weekend? and other complaints

The New Neo Posted on by

Rain, rain, rain here in New England – for the past few weekends. Today is the same.

It doesn’t matter all that much to me, since I set my own hours and weekends are not especially special. But I know it matters to the vast majority of people. And in New England, with its long winters, spring and summer and fall are especially precious, with summer and warm sunny weather a particularly looked-forward-to part of the year.

I know rain is good for the flowers (the weeds, too). Except that the blossoms on the trees – now mostly past – drop quickly in all the rain, and therefore their time is shortened. And vacationers who’ve planned weekend visits and made reservations, as well as the shop and restaurant owners in resort areas – what of them? The businesses need to make a lot of money in the summer in order to keep afloat.

While I’m complaining, I might as well add another gripe: why do so many good events come all at once? I can experience lengthy periods when there’s not much that’s happening in the social sense, and then bingo! Four competing invitations, or several out-of-town visitors on the same day, and no ability to do it all. I realize it’s hardly the worst problem in the world, but it still makes me grind my teeth in frustration that it’s not more spaced out.

Have a nice weekend, folks.

Neo-neocon versus The new neo

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Jamie” has an interesting observation:

I am reminded that this blog used to be called NeoNeocon, and I used to read it as eagerly then as I do now – and I believed to my bones something approximately the opposite of the paragraph above: I believed that if the troublemaker nations in the Middle East just experienced a taste of Western life and freedom, they’d love it, want it, and change their ways to get it. I was not all that young, but certainly foolish.

The lesson I take from all this is that the effects – even fairly short-term, such as the “12 years to climate disaster” claims – of large and complex problems are more or less impossible to predict with any confidence. And therefore, when considering solutions, we MUST be conservative, like rock-ribbed conservative, or risk bringing about new horrible problems in our attempts to solve the one we see as most important at the time.

When I changed the name of this blog to “the new neo” it was because my use of the “neocon” moniker had been misunderstood from the start. My original reason for calling the blog “neo-neocon” was that I was newly conservative – really really newly conservative. Of course, I was no longer newly conservative after a few years.

But as far as my neoconnish foreign policy beliefs went, I had always felt that spreading liberty and democracy by military conquest would be difficult and to have any chance at success it would require an occupation of that country as well as a lengthy time commitment. Fairly quickly it became apparent that the US was unwilling to do either and certainly not both. Plus, democracy without something like the Bill of Rights – and a population educated in why this was important to defend – was often just another road to tyranny.

The larger question was and is: do people really want liberty? Some certainly do, but whether it’s a majority I can’t say for sure and rather doubt – and have come to doubt even more. That’s why I’ve quoted Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” passage so many times on this blog, even long ago when it was “neo-neocon.” Let’s have another go-round with that quote.

In this passage the Grand Inquisitor is addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Although the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is freedom. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.

I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said:

Command that these stones be made bread – and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone – was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee …

Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee – a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel …

… It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread? … In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them – so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!

The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).

I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.

A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important. Nevertheless, in the US and Western Europe, hunger is not what drives people towards the left. What does? The left has been labeled as virtue, and people wish to feel good about themselves. Being on the left also gives people the sense that they can control others and make a better world, and many people love the idea of the power to dictate to others. They may want freedom for themselves, but not for others.

And maybe it’s time to repeat another favorite passage of mine, this time from Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:

… [H]uman beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of har­mony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.