It's official! Not only is the American left embracing violence in the streets, but so are its seemingly "responsible," Gucci-wearing pseudo-intellectual professorial class – and what we have heretofore euphemistically called the "mainstream media."
I give you as Exhibit 1 in my case – and I won't need to offer any others – a commentary piece published in the Washington Post Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, by N. D. B. Connolly, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, which you can read for free as it was reprinted in the far leftist publication unambiguously called "Portside." (The Washington Post charges a ridiculously high subscription price to access it, revealing it is not yet entirely adverse to capitalism despite its editorial content.)
His major conclusion can be boiled down to this: Throw more rocks. Commit more violence. Cause more mayhem.
But here's how he warmed up to it: "The white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, a city that boasts 'diversity makes us stronger,' made a lot of things clear. One of them is that generic solutions to the racial problem – bland affirmations of inclusiveness, tolerance and 'free speech' – will no longer work. Indeed, they have never worked, at least not on their own. The problem of discrimination and equality in America has been far more dynamic, operating like an oversized historical game of paper-rock-scissors. And in such a game, throwing the same thing over and over again is never a good idea."
In accord with his juvenile premise, Connolly employs the analogy of the childhood game of "rock, paper, scisssors."
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"For a long while, we've been throwing a lot of 'paper,'" he explains. "Liberalism – our paper – preserves our country's long commitment to contracts. Under liberalism, citizens stand in contract with their government. The government's job, in turn, has been to enforce contracts between individuals and groups. Truly, when people ask for rights, be they women's rights, gay and transgender rights, or rights as people of color, they are asking for contract rights. Capitalism, for better and often for worse, is that baked-in to our political system."
I won't bore you with the details of his "thesis." Be my guest and read it free of charge at Portside, as I suggest. But let me bottom-line this for you if you don't have the stomach for this kind of thinly disguised advocacy of fascist thuggery from the confine of the faculty lounge at Johns Hopkins. Here are the lowlights with boldface emphasis added:
- "Resistance, be it forceful or clandestine, threatened or explicit, stands as our 'rock,'" he explains. "Rocks can look like armed self-defense or nonviolent direct-action campaigns. They appear, too, as blunt, bald public speech about the hatred arrayed against the dispossessed."
- "No matter its form, rock breaks scissors. A half-century ago, nothing less than radical anti-racism could reduce white supremacy to an outlaw religion. Paper could not do that. The contract logic of liberalism, on its own, was not built for that. On matters of racism and discrimination, capitalism can never serve as the great social fix, because in many instances, the very sectors of the economy that have historically been the most profitable in American history – for instance, slavery, real estate – have also been the most discriminatory."
- "Then, in April 1968, amid a flurry of other 'rocks,' riots shook American cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It took that rolling unrest, not the promise of further economic growth, to spur President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to action. Within a week they had passed the Fair Housing Act."
- "Over the past century, liberalism, vexed by an ever-sharp, ever-cutting white supremacy, has needed these rocks. We owe our country's very existence as an enduring political experiment to the work and sacrifice we now call the civil rights movement or the black freedom struggle, and not just for the freedom it secured for people of color. In considering the origins of movements for gay rights, women's rights or disabled rights, we must acknowledge that it was challenges against white supremacy that first shook the grip of those people holding fast to their scissors, that first chastened those insistent on shearing other people from their rights."
- "Yet despite the rights hard won by rock, we returned to paper. During the 1970s, we covered and concealed any historically specific grievance with a general promise of 'equal opportunity,' ownership, and with law and order. Under liberalism, property rights were still king."
- "Consider that the Klan and neo-Nazis are again out and about in daylight, wielding not so much torches as scissors. We can keep on throwing paper. Even after a couple of centuries of trying, we can keep hoping a commitment to commerce can still be the great fix. We would do well, however, to wise up and start throwing rock – public denunciations of white supremacy, clear anti-racist institution building, and fighting for policies that undo the money made off racism, especially with an ancient hatred now standing unhooded."
- "Segregationists have again assumed their pedestals in the Justice Department, the White House and many other American temples. Paper alone won't drive them out. Start throwing rocks."
That a professor at a distinguished institution of higher learning wrote this is hardly surprising.
That it was published in the Washington Post is hardly surprising.
That it was republished in leftist publications across the country is hardly surprising.
I haven't noticed that anyone else, even in the alternative, free media even blinked an eye that a leftist professor at a major university wrote this, or that a leftist newspaper owned by one of the richest men in the world published it, or that it was widely disseminated by avowedly Marxist digital rags.
What you see here is the mainstreaming of leftist violence as a legitimate tactic – even a liberal stratagem.
When you can't get what you want, throw more rocks.
I'm left wondering: Why then not burn crosses? Why not then lynch the adversaries? Why not then run over your opposition? Why not then just shoot the bastards?
Maybe I shouldn't give the likes of Connolly, Jeff Bezos and the alt-left any ideas.
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].