The founder of the #WalkAway movement, Brandon Straka, appeared last night on the Mark Levin show. His interview has been posted on YouTube, and a fascinating interview it is.
The entire interview is well worth watching, but the part that especially interested me was when he got to the heart of his “change” story. I’ve cued it up to show that part here. Although his story occurred recently and mine over fifteen years ago (!), there are certain resonances:
Here’s the whole interview:
Or the old guy playing the drums, for that matter?
First, we have some of the guys (Brian May on lead guitar and Roger Taylor on drums; they are featured starting around minute 2:00) when young:
Now for the old guys. They may be dressed more conservatively than before, but they’re still looking good and sounding great (at least, the ones who are still alive and kicking). The young guy they’re with as lead singer, Adam Lambert, isn’t trying to imitate Freddie Mercury. He’s got a powerful voice of his own and a lot of showmanship.
But although Lambert tries to be Dionysian, what seemed really Dionysian when Mercury did it seems somewhat plastic and contrived now on Lambert’s part. Note, also, the crotch grab by Lambert on “I’m a sex machine, ready to reload.” (at around 1:54). Hey, isn’t that lyric graphic enough? Do we really need a lewd gesture to go with it? Mercury, on the other hand, didn’t emphasize the line at all (in that first video, the line occurs at about minute 1:41). May and Taylor, on the other hand, (on both videos, separated by about forty years in time) are much more Apollian, although that may seem a contradiction for rockstars. But maybe it accounts for their longevity both as performers and as people:
This performance of the same song shows the Dionysian quality of Mercury even more. I’m talking mostly about the dance bit here, the part where Mercury jumps up from the piano for a little while—and you really do believe they might actually “call him Mr. Fahrenheit, traveling at the speed of light”:
I love to see and hear music and musicians after a passage of many years. Often the performances are much more poignant later. Sometimes there’s less technique, and voices almost always fade and grow quavery, with a smaller range as well. But often there’s something gained in terms of emotion. Simon and Garfunkel, for example, had a number of songs Simon wrote and they performed when young that were about aging, and those songs can be more moving when performed by people who actually are old.
Case in point, “A Hazy Shade of Winter.” Here they are when in their early 60s:
The brain’s reparative plasticity is especially marked in young people, such as this boy who had one-sixth of his brain removed when he was just six years old:
What happened to Collins is a remarkable example of neuroplasticity: the ability of the brain to reorganize, create new connections, and even heal itself after injury. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to strengthen or even recreate connections between brain cells—the pathways that help us learn a foreign language, for instance, or how to ride a bike.
The fact that the brain has a malleable capacity to change itself isn’t new. What’s less understood is how exactly the brain does it. That’s where Behrmann’s study of Collins comes in. Her research question is twofold: To what extent can the remaining structures of Collins’ brain take over the functions of the part of his brain that was removed? And can science describe how the brain carries out these changes, all the way down to the cellular level?
Collins’ brain seems to have rewired and is working just fine. Scientists have been studying him (as well as a few other children in similar situations) ever since his surgery. He is twelve now:
Just how the brain accomplishes this feat remains a central question. By analyzing brain scans using a neuroimaging technique known as diffusion tensor imaging, which shows how water travels along the brain’s white-matter tracts, Behrmann has found initial glimmerings that the white matter of the brain?—?the electrical wiring that underlines communication between multiple neurological regions?—?actually changes. Areas of the brain that weren’t connected before create new links, an example of neuroplasticity in action that may preserve brain functionality. But scientists still don’t know what triggers the cells of the white matter to behave in this way.
Some changes might be happening concerning the attitude of Hispanic voters towards Trump, a development that surprises the left:
…Trump is making an aggressive play for Hispanic-American votes in Florida and beyond. Meanwhile, polls suggest Marist might have been onto something—and that Democrats should be worried that Hispanic voters could help reelect Trump and keep the Senate in Republican control. If so, it would be a cosmic twist of fate: A party that has staked its future on a belief that America’s demographic picture is changing decidedly in its favor could find itself losing to a man whose politics of fear should be driving precisely those voters into the Democrats’ waiting arms.
There’s a viewpoint on the left that people should vote as blocs and only in their own self-interest as defined by the left. The idea that people might vote for someone because that candidate might be seen as benefiting the country as a whole, or that people in a minority might interpret “benefit” differently from the left, is a foreign one. Anyone who doesn’t vote with a bloc as the left has decreed is either stupid and/or voting “against interest” and/or collaborating with the enemy.
The article quotes Trump as tweeting that his rising popularity with Hispanics “is because they know the Border issue better than anyone, and they want Security, which can only be gotten with a Wall.”
The article goes on to add this about the 2016 election:
Many expected Hispanics to vote overwhelmingly against Trump in 2016. A Latino Decisions poll conducted just before the 2016 presidential election found Trump had the support of just 18 percent of Hispanics. But the actual figure was 28 percent, which—given Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about immigrants—some analysts and pundits refused to believe from exit polls until further studies confirmed it. That was just as good as Mitt Romney, as the 2012 Republican nominee, did with Hispanics—and it was enough to help Trump squeak an Electoral College victory.
If Hillary Clinton had improved her share of the Hispanic vote by just 3 percentage points in Florida (from 62 percent to 65 percent of the Hispanic vote) and Michigan (from 59 percent to 62 percent), she would have won both states and their combined 45 Electoral College votes. That would have been enough to make her president.
And this is especially interesting, if true:
As a whole, Hispanic-Americans are becoming politically more and more like non-Hispanic white Americans. Two-thirds of the Hispanic electorate is now American-born, and Hispanic voters are far more likely to approve of Trump than naturalized immigrants, according to Pew Research Center data. They remain more Democratic than non-Hispanic white voters in part because so many of them are young adults and share many of their generation’s progressive views.
But as FiveThirtyEight recently noted, Hispanic Democrats are considerably less liberal than others in the party. Hispanics make up about 12 percent of those who identify as Democrats or who tend to lean Democratic; but they are 22 percent of Democrats who describe themselves as moderate or conservative. Hispanics, roughly half of whom are Catholic (and another quarter who are former Catholics), skew conservative on social issues…
I had always heard something of the sort—for example, that Hispanics are socially conservative. But it had never seemed to translate into many Republican votes. Also, the data on Hispanics born in this country is particularly interesting, and makes sense.
Yesterday I read this article about how requirements of diversity and inclusion are now utterly and completely dominant in classics departments at the university level. This is, of course, not a surprise, because the takeover has been increasing at a seemingly exponential rate recently.
Nevertheless, even if you are prepared, it may give you a cold chill to read it. A sample:
More and more, it seems, the study of classics—like the study of the humanities generally—has fallen under the spell of grievance warriors who have injected an obsession with race and sexual exoticism into a discipline that, until recently, was mostly innocent of such politicized deformations—largely, we suspect, because of the inherent difficulty of mastering the subject. (In this sense, classics is different from pseudo-disciplines like women’s studies, black studies, lgbtq studies, and the like, because classics can never be entirely reduced to political posturing. You actually have to know something.)…
Consider the fate of Eidolon, an online journal that was started in 2015 to demonstrate the relevance of classics to modern life. It wasn’t long before Donna Zuckerberg, the sister of the personal data magus and surveillance guru Mark Zuckerberg, engineered a palace coup and declared that henceforth Eidolon would “err on the progressive side,” dedicating itself to “the spirit of bringing politics into Classics.” Because, you know, the humanities have not been sufficiently tainted by signing up for every trendy progressive cliché going. From now on, Zuckerberg said, Eidolon would forgo objectivity—“often nothing more than a cover for upholding the status quo, and to hell with the status quo”—in its quest to become “a progressive, feminist publication with a commitment to social justice.” And how was this goal to be achieved?
Well, this year, Zuckerberg noted, the magazine would aim to make sure that “at least [at least] 70 percent of our contributors be women and 20 percent of our writers be poc,” i.e., “people of color,” i.e., not white. (But isn’t race merely a “social construction”? No, silly, that was last year.) And just how are those percentages going to be achieved? Well, going forward, Eidolon will ask people pitching stories for “demographics,” i.e., are you black or white? Male or female? “I have no interest,” Zuckerberg sermonized, “in providing bland and false reassurances that we only care about good ideas and good writing and not who our authors are.” Who would doubt it? And what about merit? “[A]ppeals to merit,” she said, are “often . . . white supremacist dog-whistles.” So: “If you’re white and we publish you, you will know, for maybe the first time in your career, that it was because of the merit of your idea and not because you’re white.”
We’d like to know if there are any cases of anyone anywhere being published in a classics journal because he (or even she) was white…
But of course, all achievements of white people are presumed to be the result of favoritism because of their privileged whiteness. It’s baked in the cake, as it were. And the hour of redress is at hand.
I’m not using hyperbole, either. The article goes on to describe a talk given at a recent classics conference:
Decrying the “hegemony of whiteness,” [Padilla] called for strategies to “decenter and displace white privilege and supremacy from its position of preeminence and priority in the discipline’s self-image.” According to him, “the most fundamental question for the future of knowledge production in Classics is this: how do we recognize, honor, and repair the silencing of the knowledge that people of color carry?” In fact, of course, every classics journal and every classics program in the Western world is on high alert, scouring the landscape for “people of color” they might employ, publish, and advance.
But that is not enough for Dan-el Padilla Peralta. He wants “reparative epistemic justice,” i.e., the expulsion of whites from the discipline and (like Donna Zuckerberg) the end to colorblind assessment of merit. “[H]olders of privilege,” he intoned, “will need to surrender their privilege. In practical terms, this means that . . . white men will have to surrender the privilege they have of seeing their words printed and disseminated; they will have to take a backseat so that people of color—and women and gender-nonconforming scholars of color—benefit from the privilege of seeing their words on the page.” Should that not happen, he has said elsewhere, “all options for reparative intellectual justice—including the demolition of the discipline itself [our emphasis]”—should be kept open. In other words, institute a new regime of prejudice or we’ll destroy classics.
I would say it’s probably already very close to being destroyed, like so many other disciplines. The very idea of merit is highly suspect and to be condemned, according to the SJWs that seem to dominate these fields. And what happens to those who disagree? This article describes an incident that occurred at that very same conference, in which the author had an encounter with the afore-mentioned Padilla (but please read the whole thing, if you can stomach it):
Padilla said nothing about merit, the content of the article in question, or how it was reasoned. He said that articles by white men should be excluded from consideration, regardless of their merit, if members of other ethnic or racial groups submitted work for publication at the same time.
Surely, this is just straightforward racism? Yet in response to these remarks, the entire audience of classicists applauded…[T]he conference program indicated that everyone in the audience was invited to speak as part of a discussion about “the future of classics,” [so] I decided to contribute a few sentences on the stated topic…
I only wanted to make four very brief points:
1) It is important to stand up for Classics as a discipline, and promote it as the political, literary, historical, philosophical, rhetorical, and artistic foundation of Western Civilization, and the basis of European history, tradition, culture, and religion. It gave us the concepts of liberty, equality, and democracy, which we should teach and promote. We should not apologize for our field;
2) It is important to go back to teaching undergraduates about the great classical authors—Cicero, the Athenian dramatists, Homer, Demosthenes, the Greek and Roman historians, Plato, and Aristotle—in English translation in introductory courses;
3) One way of promoting Classics is to offer more survey courses that cover many subject areas (epic, tragedy, comedy, rhetoric, philosophy, history, political theory, and art history), or to concentrate on one area such as in Freshmen seminars, or through western civilization classes;
4) It should help with securing funding from administrators to argue that such survey courses are highly cost-effective…
Unfortunately, I was interrupted in the middle of my first point by Sarah Bond, who forcefully insisted: “We are not Western Civilization!”
…I then attempted to move on and make my second point, [and] I was interrupted by her and others, and not permitted to finish what I had hoped would be four very brief statements. A member of the audience with no connection to the panel, Michael Gagarin (University of Texas Emeritus) rose, came over to me, and told me I wasn’t allowed to speak…
In the hope of making my position clearer—that race should not be a determining factor when it comes to assessing the value of scholarship—I said to Padilla, “You may have got your job because you’re black, but I’d prefer to think you got your job because of merit.” Admittedly, I was under stress and did not express myself as clearly as I might have done, but what I was trying to convey is that the principle he was advocating clearly didn’t apply to hiring decisions—and nor should it—because he had got his job on merit, not because he’s black. Indeed, if I thought the opposite, and I imagined there was a chance of him saying, “You’re right, I was only hired because I’m black,” that would have contradicted the point I was trying to make, which is that it would have been wrong to hire him based only on his race, just as it would be wrong for an academic journal to publish an article based on the race of its author.
Padilla did not respond to my point directly. Instead, he let out a whoop of what sounded like triumph. He then made the following statement:
“I did not interrupt you once, so you are going to let me talk. You are going to let someone who has been historically marginalized from the production of knowledge in the Classics, talk. And here’s what I have to say about the vision of classics that you’ve outlined: If that is in fact a vision that affirms you in your white supremacy, I want nothing to do with it. I hope the field dies, that you’ve outlined [sic], dies, and that it dies as swiftly as possible!”
The following day, Helen Cullyer, the SCS Director, sent me an email in which she forbade my attendance at the meeting on Sunday, the last day of the conference…
Her stated reason for expelling me was “harassment”: the SCS executive had unilaterally introduced a new measure about two months previously, stating that any people could have scholars kicked out of the annual general meeting for “stalking, queer/trans bullying, or hostility or abuse based on age, disability, religion, race or ethnicity.”
Cullyer gave me no chance to explain or defend myself, and since she was present in the audience, she knew what had happened. In her view, I had violated SCS policy by disagreeing with Padilla. A grown man with a position at Princeton was apparently unable to endure the trauma caused by a woman disagreeing with him and by asking rhetorically if he got his job based on his race. Yet it was fine with the SCS Director (a woman) for a man (Michael Gagarin) to try and prevent a woman from speaking—that’s not harassment, apparently.
Much much more at the link.
The rot is wide and the rot is deep. The banning occurred because it sounded as though she was saying Padilla got his job because of race, not because she actually had thought he had or that she actually was asserting that he had. Furthermore, Padilla himself seemed to actually be saying that people in minority groups should get jobs based on race, and that white people (and especially white men) should be banned because of race.
So, who is the real racist here? It’s completely obvious. But since the left decides who is a racist and who isn’t, and because the left also claims that people of color cannot be racists (unless, I suppose, they’re self-hating racists who are prejudiced against fellow people of color, or unless they are Republicans), academics are not allowed to answer that the real racist is Padilla, although it’s glaringly obvious.
As I said, this sort of thing has been going on at universities and in academia for a long, long time. But I think that during the last couple of years it’s become more extreme or at the very least more openly stated by more people.
I’ve noticed something else lately, too. I get a couple of alumni magazines regularly, and they’ve all become completely saturated with articles full of boilerplate jargon about inclusion and diversity. Not just the occasional article, but piece after piece, until now whole issues are devoted to nothing but that topic and how to implement it.
Western Europe seems determined to ally itself with Russia:
Weeks after getting the European Union’s approval for a gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea, Russia is moving ahead with its plans to construct a new Black Sea pipeline into Western Europe. Moscow intends to extend the existing Turk Stream pipeline that links Russia and Turkey to supply Western Europe with gas, German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported…
The move will further strengthen Russia’s position as a geopolitical player in Europe. President Donald Trump has been critical of Germany over its dependence on Russian gas. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” he said during the NATO summit meeting last summer.
Currently, Russia amounts to 40 percent of gas import to Europe. This energy dependence is expected to grow further as Chancellor Angela Merkel moves ahead with a radical environmentalist agenda, phasing out all the existing coal and nuclear power stations in the country.
The German political establishment is deeply implicated in Moscow’s plans to expand its energy infrastructure westwards. Chancellor Merkel’s predecessor, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, is head of NordStream AG, the multi-billion dollar Russian company that owns the Russia-to-Germany pipeline.
While Berlin continues to entangle itself into Russian pipelines, it increasingly relies on Washington for its security needs.
Note Germany’s antipathy to nuclear power plants, although power plants are probably the cleanest efficient energy source today.
…was the longed-for silver bullet to kill the monster Trump.
I think it must be very frustrating for the left and the NeverTrumpers. If they truly believe the man is corrupt and an idiot (and I think that most of them do believe that), then why is he so difficult to dispatch? Why does he keep escaping from the traps they’ve set?
Well, one of their many problems is relying on someone like Michael Cohen to be believed. Of course, Trump made the mistake of relying on Cohen for a while. But back then, Trump was using Cohen for some rather dirty tasks, such as paying off people threatening lawsuits or salacious stories.
Now we learn that Cohen is in further trouble. His testimony may end up earning him additional criminal charges.
And then there’s this from Trump:
Wow, just revealed that Michael Cohen wrote a “love letter to Trump” manuscript for a new book that he was pushing. Written and submitted long after Charlottesville and Helsinki, his phony reasons for going rogue. Book is exact opposite of his fake testimony, which now is a lie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 1, 2019
All in all, I think we can safely say that Cohen has been a disappointment to Trump’s opponents, whether they admit it or not.
And threatening those who’ve been naughty not nice:
After more than two dozen moderate Democrats broke from their party’s progressive wing and sided with Republicans on a legislative amendment Wednesday, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reportedly sounded the alarm in a closed-door meeting Thursday and said those Democrats were “putting themselves on a list.”
The legislation that prompted the infighting was a bill that would expand federal background checks for gun purchases, the Washington Post reported. But a key provision requiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be notified if illegal immigrants attempt to purchase guns saw 26 moderate Democrats side with Republicans.
According to the Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scolded her wayward center-leaning colleagues, telling them: “We are either a team or we’re not, and we have to make that decision.”
But Ocasio-Cortez reportedly took it a step further. She said she would help progressive activists unseat those moderates in their districts in the 2020 elections, the report said. Her spokesman Corbin Trent told the paper that she made the “list” comment during the meeting.
“She said that when activists ask her why she had to vote for a gun safety bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects kids with psychotropic drugs, they’re going to want a list of names and she’s going to give it to them,” Trent said, referring to ICE.
There are at least three things about this story that I find of interest. The first is how it illustrates AOC’s sense of her great power. She’s a freshman House member, very freshman. But she’s not the least bit reluctant to threaten her seniors and the people who are supposedly fellow members of a party that would like to present a united front and often does present that front.
But it makes perfect sense that AOC would have no qualms about challenging any of them—and that even includes Pelosi (who on this particular occasion was also chiding the wayward members, but without the explicit threats to primary them). After all, AOC got her political start by primarying a man who was almost as powerful in the House as Pelosi, and winning. She knocked him off his high horse and never looked back. This takes remarkable and overwhelming self-confidence and assertiveness, and AOC has those things to spare. She is unafraid—that is, arrogant and swollen with pride at her accomplishments, as well as her huge popularity. This makes her extra-dangerous to more moderate Democrats, the few relics of that type who happen to remain in office.
It also makes AOC dangerous to the Democratic Party as a whole—if in fact she is miscalculating on the readiness of Democratic voters and of America to make a Great Leap Forward into Our Glorious Socialist Future.
The second thing the story illustrates is her ruthlessness. That’s somewhat related to the first characteristic, but somewhat separate as well. I don’t think any consideration of kindness or restraint would hold AOC back from doing whatever she found necessary politically or otherwise, and she would do it to fellow Democrats without batting an eye.
The third thing I noticed is embedded in this quote by AOC’s spokesperson: “She said that when activists ask her why she had to vote for a gun safety bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects kids with psychotropic drugs, they’re going to want a list of names and she’s going to give it to them…”. Note the vague mention of “activists.” Who are these activists, and isn’t AOC one of them? Of course she is. But there are plenty more behind the scenes (for example, I have written a post about the Justice Democrats who have been promoting and advising AOC for quite some time). She is fully on board with them (and they with her) and is their telegenic frontwoman. And it is likely that there are other activist groups that she is tight with as well.
If you think about it, though, why would AOC have to give a list of this type to any leftist activist worth his or her salt? It’s not as though the way members of Congress voted on the bill is a secret. The list itself, and the handing over of the list, is just window-dressing. What she is really saying to these people is not about handing over a list; it is a warning that she and the Justice Democrats et al will unleash the activist kraken on them.
In one sense this is good. Who on the right doesn’t want to see the Democrats shoot themselves (metaphorically) in the foot? Only thing is—the damage depends on whether the growing number of leftist officeholders and would-be officeholders in the Party have overestimated the eagerness of the American public to elect them. It also depends on what else those leftist activists may have up their sleeves. I have no doubt that they are not just going to slink off into the sunset if AOC herself is primaried next time, and loses.
NOTE: For those who didn’t get the kraken reference, or just want to watch again:
This is exactly why due process matters. It’s not just an altruistic abstraction. The crocodile may eat you and your loved ones last, but the crocodile will eat you because it’s insatiably hungry:
A few days ago, Lisa Borders, the CEO of Time’s Up, a group affiliated with the #MeToo movement to fight for victims of sexual harassment and abuse, resigned from her position. The reason was startling. Her son, Garry “Dijon” Bowden Jr., had been accused of groping a woman during a “healing session” in Santa Monica.
Borders didn’t step down as CEO because of embarrassment or proximity to someone accused. She stepped down because she is planning to vigorously defend her son, and this wouldn’t align well with the work of an organization that preaches zero tolerance for “discrimination, harassment or abuse.”
Or, in the words of Sir Thomas More:
For decades, North Korea has been an intractable problem. President after president, both Democratic and Republican, tried and failed to secure a deal that made sense, and yet deals that didn’t make sense were made.
Of course, I’m not sure what deal makes sense when you’re dealing with someone who is willing to break his word and is not dealing in good faith, as North Korea’s leaders (not just one, but two) have both been over many decades. My personal opinion is that Kim Jong-un will only make a bona fide deal if enough pressure (including economic pressure) is brought to bear on him by enough parties (including China) that he sees no alternative to a bona fide deal. And even then, who knows what lurks in the heart and mind of Kim Jong-un?
However, walking away from a deal that is really no deal at all is a necessary move, to show that North Korea is not just going to automatically get the lopsided deal that it wants.
“It was about the sanctions,” Trump said. Pompeo expressed optimism that they would ultimately reach a deal, as did Trump. They are now headed back to the United States.
Here’s Trump’s press conference:
[NOTE: There’s been a lot of arrogance and ignorance about history lately, particularly from the “woke” crowd. Which makes me think that a repeat of this old post might be in order right about now.]
I’ve just spent a fruitless hour trying to find the source from which I’d copied the following Allan Bloom quote some time ago. Somehow I’d lost the link, and now I can’t find it again.
But I thought I’d present the quote anyway because—like so much of Bloom’s oeuvre—it shows his uniquely facile mind and brilliant observations.
It was from an audio recording of a lecture that Bloom had given back in (to the best of my recollection, anyway) the mid-1980s. I had tried to transcribe it faithfully, complete with hesitations and idiosyncrasies and audience reaction. Bloom—whom I’ve written about before several times, mostly in the context of discussing his wonderful and highly-recommended book The Closing of the American Mind, was a professor of philosophy for most of his life. He was exceedingly familiar with the outlook of university students, primarily in America but also in Europe. Note that what he said back then describes trends that have only intensified since:
You know, we’ve all read history. Everybody, you know, world history, and weren’t all past ages maaaad? There were slaves, there were kings—I don’t think there’s a single student who reads the history of England and doesn’t say that that was crazy. You know “that’s wonderful, you gotta know history, and be open to things and so on,” but they’re not open to those things because they know that that was crazy. I mean, the latest transformation of history is as a history of the enslavement of women, which means to say that it was all crazy—up till now.
Our historical knowledge is really a history which praises, ends up praising, ourselves—how much wiser [voice drips with sarcasm] we are, how we have seen through the errors of the past…Hegel already knew this danger of history, of the historical human being, when he said that every German gymnasium professor teaches that Alexander the Great conquered the world because he had a pathological love of power. And the proof that the teacher does not have a pathological love of power is that he has not conquered the world. [laughter] We have set up standards of normalcy while speaking of cultural relativism, but there is no question that we think we understand what cultures are, and what kind of mistakes they make.
Bloom was not a cultural relativist; he believed it was a pernicious influence that had taken over American education. Time has proven him correct, hasn’t it?
Of course it is. Isn’t that obvious?
They both are walls. They both are high. They both are strong. They both have towers with guards ready to shoot anyone who—okay, scratch that.
They both are built to imprison the people of the country that constructed them—okay, scratch that, too.
Here’s what AOC said:
I think it’s [Trump’s proposed border wall] a moral abomination… I think it’s like the Berlin Wall. I think it’s like any other wall designed to separate human beings and block out people who are running away from the humanitarian disasters. I just think it’s wrong.
I wonder whether AOC thinks the locks on her door are a moral abomination. After all, many of the people who might try to get in without her permission are probably poor or otherwise suffering in some way. Who is AOC to keep them out?
AOC is hardly alone in her argument; it’s actually quite popular on the left, and has been heard long before AOC burst on the scene. And yes, it would be nice to have endless compassion for every suffering human being in the world and mend their broken lives, whether they are in fact dealing with “humanitarian disasters” or not (poverty and leftism in Latin America is certainly a disaster, but it’s one that AOC would like to inflict on all of us).
We don’t have the power to mend the lives of every human in the world, of course. And as a country we (just like AOC with the locks on her doors) have not only a right but a duty to make decisions about who comes into our house, why, and in what numbers. That’s what legal immigration is all about.
And that is most definitely not what the Berlin Wall was about. One doesn’t have to know much history to know that. AOC is either ignorant of the barest basics of history, or she thinks that her constituents are ignorant, or both (yeah, yeah, the old knave/fool question). But don’t imagine that her argument falls on deaf ears. Many people—mainly young, perhaps, but not limited to the young—are indeed just that ignorant.
[NOTE: A post on a related subject can be found here.]