Ben Weingarten

Reader. Writer. Thinker. Commentator. Truth Seeker.

Tag: Progressivism (Page 3 of 4)

This is What (de Blasio’s) Democracy Looks Like!

Progressivism: Progress for the politically connected and woe for everyone else.

Here’s what New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s politburo looks like, per the New York Post:

Mayor de Blasio’s patronage mill is churning out junk jobs funded with taxpayer money for longtime pals, campaign grunts and acolytes.

In addition to creating a $150,000 post for Stephanie Yazgi — the longtime girlfriend of his top strategist, Emma Wolfe — de Blasio has created positions to amp up his progressive agenda and national profile and spread propaganda touting his “transcendent” accomplishments.

The city’s television station — led by de Blasio buddy Janet Choi — devotes much of its taxpayer-funded $5.7 million budget to broadcasting his ribbon-cuttings, announcements and features about his friends, including his wedding singer.

His $105,000 digital director, Jessica Singleton, shapes his social-media image while his $69,000 media analyst, Mahen Gunaratna, measures the influence of his messages.

New York’s Community Affairs Unit is the biggest draw for de Blasio cronies:

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Obama’s Progressivism Requires A Zionistrein Democratic Party

Over at Commentary, Jonathan Tobin has a highly perceptive piece on the broader impact of the Obama administration’s scalping of the always outspoken though recently microphone-shy Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Here is how Tobin explains the Democrats’ visceral emotional reaction to opposition to the Iran deal:

One simple answer might be that it is merely a function of the president’s vindictive nature. It’s no secret that this is a leader who runs a top-down administration that does not encourage vibrant debate within its ranks. Obama is notoriously thin-skinned and seems to take criticism or opposition even more personally than most of its predecessors.

But that only goes so far in explaining why Obama is not respecting Schumer’s need to stay within the pro-Israel fold. After spending years covering for the president’s efforts to pick fights with the Jewish state by claiming that he will always be the guardian (shomer in Hebrew) of the U.S.-Israel alliance, you’d think Schumer was entitled to be cut some slack on Iran.

But that is not what is happening. The White House isn’t content to merely whip Democrats on the issue in an effort to obtain the one-third-plus-one votes they need to sustain a veto of a resolution of disapproval for the Iran deal. Instead, they are sending a rather pointed message to the pro-Israel community that no one, not even a good Democratic soldier and future leader like Schumer, can get away with crossing the president when it comes to his plans for détente with Iran.

Rather than merely another Obama tantrum at the chutzpah of critics, the singling out of Schumer seems to be the beginning of an effort to rid the Democratic leadership of a staunch pro-Israel figure. If we assume, as perhaps we should that the Iran deal will not be stopped, the White House may have already skipped ahead to fighting future battles with Israel over what will happen once the pact is put into effect. Obama has already done his best to isolate Israel and its government and to brand opponents of Iran détente as either mindless GOP partisans or guilty of dual loyalty to Israel. The logical next step is to ensure that no one like Schumer becomes Democratic leader, or at least to inflict the sort of beating on him that will ensure that no many members of his party ever challenge his effort to create daylight with Israel again. The attacks on Democratic opponents of the deal illustrate the depths to which the administration is prepared to sink to win this fight. But it also reflects its desire to downgrade the alliance with the Jewish state and start chipping away at the heretofore solid and bipartisan pro-Israel consensus.

The progressive movement that has overtaken the Democratic Party gains its moral authority in a morally relativistic world in part based on its support of the “oppressed” over the “oppressor.” As Joshua Muravchik ably argues in his Making David Into Goliath, in this construct, Israel has morphed into the
oppressor, swapping roles with the Muslim countries that have wished to destroy her from the time of her founding.

The Leftist-Jihadist nexus of which Andy McCarthy writes, on display from elite college campuses to the president’s cabinet, is perhaps stronger than it has ever been. It believes in punishing the ultimate oppressor, the decadent Judeo-Christian West, by redistributing power to its enemies, including notably Islamic supremacists. The Iran deal under such a formulation is the quintessential example of global social justice.

While many bury their heads in the sand, in its efforts to delegitimize Israel — the West’s first line of defense against those who wish to destroy it — and strengthen its enemies, the Leftist-Jihadist nexus shows that the distinction it makes between anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred is without a difference.

The natural endpoint of all of this, which Tobin hints at, is that the progressive Democratic Party must be Zionistrein. The proof is in the pudding of the Obama era.

The Progressive Cult of Victomology’s Tears for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio

Have you noticed that the passive voice — as in “Mistakes were made,” or “The YouTube video caused the attack,” — has become ubiquitous in American political discourse?

Leave aside instances in which its usage reflects an unwillingness or inability for individuals to take responsibility for failure. There is another set of circumstances in which it is used to pernicious effect.

Exhibit A comes to us courtesy of the New York Times, in an article written about the declining popularity of Warren Wilhelm, aka New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

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20 Signs You Are Living in a Progressive Utopia

It can be said that progressivism at its core seeks to turn the world upside down.

It is an ideology and a tactic of modern-day Sophists who seek to replace facts with narrative, justice with injustice, morality with immorality and virtue with vice — but it does so with a smile on its face.

Consequently, in order to identify whether one is in fact living in a progressive Utopia, one merely needs to identify instances in one’s society, economy and political system, themselves a natural outgrowth of the culture (itself an outgrowth of the ideas that a people has imbibed), in which facts, logic and history have been shoved aside in favor of the whims of the wise collective.

Here are 20 signs that you might be living in such a blissful place:

1) When the executive branch has effectively become the legislative branch

President Obama has been pushing executive actions as a means of working around Congress in 2014. (Image Source: heartland.org)

President Obama has been pushing executive actions as a means of working around Congress in 2014. (Image Source: heartland.org)

2) When the notions of secure borders and national sovereignty are considered thinly-veiled euphemisms for racial hatred

3) When justice means determining a person is guilty before seeing any evidence, then rioting, looting and destroying property when said person does not even make it to trial

4) When those who riot, loot and destroy property are considered freedom-fighters, and those who peacefully assemble are considered radical extremists

In this June 19, 2013, photo, Tea Party activists attend a rally on the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 19, 2013. (Photo: AP)

In this June 19, 2013, photo, Tea Party activists attend a rally on the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 19, 2013. (Image Source: AP)

5) When criminals advise law enforcement on how to do its job

Continue reading at TheBlaze…

Putting Constitutional Lipstick on a Progressive Pig

In a Washington Post op-ed, E.J. Dionne calls for progressives to reclaim a document that was never theirs, the principles of which are anathema to his fellow progressives. That document is the Constitution.

Dionne is responding to National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, who wrote that there is “popular interest in constitutionalism,” and its arbiters should extend beyond lawyers and judges to “legislators, and even citizen-activists, [who] have an independent duty to evaluate the constitutionality of legislation.”

Such a concept should not seem revolutionary. The Constitution derives its power from the consent of the governed who elect representatives tasked with expressly delegated powers. All else falls to the states or the people.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock

Why shouldn’t individuals take an interest in the Constitutionality of legislation passed on their behalf? After all, law is force and represents an encroachment on the people’s liberty – it must be scrutinized under the Constitution or law will lose legitimacy.

But Dionne sees things differently:

“One plausible progressive response is to see Ponnuru’s exercise as doomed from the start. The framers could not possibly have foreseen what the world would look like in 2014. In any event, they got some important things wrong, most glaringly their document’s acceptance of slavery.”

On the first charge, Dionne overlooks the fact that those who created our system of government were astute students of history with a keen understanding of human nature. Dionne neglects the founders’ understanding that the winds of public opinion would inevitably change, they also knew that human nature was unchanging.

The framers studied the governments of great nations that came before them, and formulated a system rooted in the Judeo-Christian principles on which Western civilization is based.

Their emphasis was on ensuring power be divided, checked and balanced to prevent tyranny. They did so because they were wisely mistrustful of fallible man, having studied the classics and seen man’s tendency towards folly.

Not only were they reverent of the past but humble as to their ability to see into the future. Although the founders may not have seen the advent of the federal income tax or the creation of the IRS, EPA, NSA, DOE and the rest of the alphabet soup of bureaucracy, they created a structure that would allow for the system to develop within bounds. They sought to ensure that such changes would be highly difficult to make so as to limit capriciousness, protect the rights of the minority, and again, ultimately prevent tyranny.

Continue reading at TheBlaze…

Dinesh D’Souza’s dire warning: Americans ‘are being prepared for a political and financial shakedown’

In connection with the release of his new book “America: Imagine a World Without Her,” we conducted an interview with bestselling conservative author, filmmaker and recent Real News guestDinesh D’Souza.

In the interview, we covered such topics as the left’s disingenuous championing of the “little guy,” the twisted historical narrative being taught in schools today, illegal immigration, the man who shaped the dastardly tactics of both the current…and if the left gets their way, future president, D’Souza’s upcoming movie and much more.

The transcript of our interview, conducted via phone, can be found below. The interview has been modified for clarity and links.

And for more content like this, follow Blaze Books on Facebook and Twitter.

In your book, you take on the left on their own terms, focusing on those at the bottom of society, or as the left describes it, looking at “history from below.” Why did you choose to go that route?

D’Souza: The left is very successful at appealing to the principle of justice, and justice for the man lowest down. Sometimes, as conservatives, we miss the force of that. We reply by chanting “Liberty!” But we have to remember that justice is a key principle. Right, the Pledge of Allegiance: “With liberty and justice for all.” So we can’t ignore justice, and what I do in the book and film is to engage the left on its own terms. I go “Ok, let’s really look at whether or not America has been good for the common man.” Forget about the rich guy, he’s going to do well everywhere. Let’s judge a society by the kind of life it makes available to the ordinary fellow. So I’m willing to argue that the left is actually attacking ordinary people.

Let me give an example of what I mean. The left says that the wealth of America is stolen. So here’s the first question: Who stole it? Was it the one percent? Now if we look at American history, who are the people who moved West and displaced the Indians? The immigrants. Who are the people who benefited from slavery? Well everybody who bought a cotton shirt. Who are the people who defeated the Mexicans in the Mexican War? Ordinary immigrants and settlers.

So the point is that the critique of America is not one that is aimed at wealthy aristocrats who had beautiful cottages or mansions on the East Coast. The progressive critique is an attack on the immigrants themselves – it’s an attack on people like me. And so, what I’m doing here is making a defense of the ordinary American against these malicious charges that are leveled by the left, which are untrue and the prelude to shaking us down economically.

You frame that thesis, ironically enough, around two Frenchmen, Alexis de Tocqueville and Michel Foucault. Can you expound upon the dichotomy represented by these two men — and the “spirit of 1776″ versus that of 1968?

D’Souza: Yeah, we see the “spirit of 1776″ and 1968 by looking at two French guys, both of whom came to America at very different times. Tocqueville came in the early 19th century, and what he saw was the American founding principles in action, basically half a century after they had been put into effect. And what Tocqueville noticed was that America was a very entrepreneurial society, America was a society where people rely very little on the government, and America is a society deeply infused with Christian values. So Tocqueville saw, if you will, conservative America. Now, fast-forward 150 years when Michel Foucault came to America in the 1970s. And what he liked about America – he, like Tocqueville, grew to love America — but he loved America because he saw America as a mecca of gay liberation. The things that Tocqueville saw about America, like its entrepreneurship or its Christianity, Foucault hated. He hated that America. But what he liked is a different America, that he saw in the Castro district of San Francisco, which he called “laboratories of sexual experimentation.” So these are really two different Americas. In Foucault, you get just a glimpse of a different kind of America that progressives might prefer to the principles of 1776.

In moving from the 1776 ethos to that of 1968, you speak to Saul Alinsky’s playbook. And one of the things you say, and something that I hadn’t seen elsewhere, is that Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” effectively are derived from the same playbook as that of the devil, which kind of explains why he dedicated “Rules for Radicals” to Satan. Can you expound upon that?

D’Souza: Well, something strange is going on here because Alinsky was obviously not a Christian; in fact, he was an atheist. So why would an atheist dedicate a book to Lucifer? I think to discover the answer, you have to pay careful attention to what Lucifer represents in the Western tradition. So I did a close reading of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and you begin to see how Lucifer operates. First of all, Lucifer is a master of organizing resentment, and so is Alinsky. Lucifer is also a master at making G-d the bad guy. So even though Lucifer rebels against G-d, even though G-d justly expels Lucifer from Heaven, Lucifer goes, “G-d, you’re a tyrant. I don’t have to follow you. I want my own kingdom.” So Lucifer practices, you may say, demonization against G-d. And finally, Lucifer is a liar. He is a master of dishonesty and deceit.

Now, Alinsky adopted these Luciferian techniques, and so, for example, Alinsky openly advocates deceit. He tells the radicals of the ‘60s, “You know you people are middle class, but you hate the middle class, you hate middle class values, and that’s very good. But what you should do is pretend to be a friend of the middle class, pass yourself off as middle class, and use your position in the middle class to rub raw the sores of discontent. Try to radicalize the middle class by feigning or pretending to share their values.” And I think here, we begin to see the Obama and even the Hillary playbook, which is to say the ways in which Hillary and Obama both started out as Bohemians or Hippies, and then quickly adopted the Alinsky-ite approach of as Alinsky says “dressing square:” Seeming very respectable, being very self-disciplined, and ultimately pretending to be a friend of the middle class, whose values you are trying to undermine.

Read more at TheBlaze…

America’s Submission to Islam and the Censorship of the Left

By now you are likely aware of the recent events at Brandeis University.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an Islamic apostate with a fatwa on her head, a fearless critic of Islam and a stalwart defender of women’s rights was slated to receive an honorary degree and deliver a commencement address at Brandeis. The degree was summarily revoked due to “past statements…inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Image Source: Getty/Michel Baret/Gamma-Rapho)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Image Source: Getty/Michel Baret/Gamma-Rapho)

Many folks have admirably opined on this matter:

John Podhoretz spoke with a candor sorely lacking in this age of intolerant “tolerance,” when he said that the decision by Brandeis President Fred Lawrence was “nothing less than the act of a gutless, spineless, simpering coward.”

Charles Cooke spoke incisively to the irony of the situation that Ms. Ali was targeted despite tending “to side with a favored group — women — against a favored foe — religion,” in one of the “peculiar outcomes” of the “Left’s hierarchy of victims.”

Professor Jay Bergman spoke passionately to the hypocrisy of the matter in light of the honorary degrees awarded to Tony Kushner and Desmond Tutu despite their respective anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic remarks, seemingly in direct conflict with the school’s “core values.”

All of these critiques are legitimate, but what underlies them is something more fundamental: dhimmitude.

Dhimmis are non-Muslim citizens living as second-class citizens under an Islamic state, subjected to various social, political, and economic restrictions, along with a tax called a jizya. Dhimmitude is a phrase coined by author Bat Ye’or to reflect as one author puts it, “an attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands.”

What Brandeis did in caving to the likes of CAIR (Council of Islamic Relations) — an unindicted co-conspirator with Hamas in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case — whose primary work seems to be to smear as “Islamophobes” and drown out all those critical of Islam (including abused Muslim women themselves), along with Brandeis’ Muslim Students Association (MSA), an organization which  was founded in America by Muslim Brotherhood members in 1963, represents nothing less than the epitome of Western dhimmitude.

Continue reading at TheBlaze…

Why does Allen West wish that more top generals would resign from the military?

Former Congressman and retired Lieutenant Army Colonel Allen West has a new book out titled “Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin’s Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom.”

Yesterday Blaze Books spoke with Rep. West about his new book, and a wide variety of issues ranging from the military, a message he hopes the military sends to civilian leaders and Russia, to education and Common Core, to how the congressman believes Republicans can go about garnering support in the black community, the potential for a third major political party and much more.

Below is the transcript of our interview, edited for clarity and length. For more, be sure to check out the 12 most provocative quotes from Rep. West’s new book, and if you’d like to keep abreast of similar content, give us a follow on Facebook and Twitter.

Give your elevator pitch for why Blaze readers should pick up “Guardian of the Republic.”

West: Well I think it defines me and it also defines why I fight so passionately for this country. Which I think all Blaze readers really believe passionately in this country. So I think it’s so important right now when you see the American people really not fundamentally understanding what America is about and its established principles and values, that’s what I try to do in this book and it really is not an autobiography, it’s a philosophical biography. 

If there were one or two takeaways from your book that you would like to emphasize, what would they be?

West: Number one to understand that I’m living the American dream. To have been brought up out of the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, to be where I am today sitting here with you looking out over New York City. That’s incredible, and that’s what is part of American exceptionalism. Number two is to understand that fundamentals of America is principles and values, and we’ve got to be able to get that message out there. Because right now we’re on the wrong path and we need to take the exit ramp. Number three, being a black conservative is not something new, it’s not trendy, it’s been around. As a matter of fact, some of the most conservative people in America are black, but we’re viciously attacked and demonized because the other side cannot stand for us to exist. And then the last thing is about – you always have to talk about the future, solutions, and I believe that the future of this nation can be brighter once we once again re-connect with our principles.

One of the things you speak to in this book is the lack of principled leaders in Washington.

West: Just think about what recently happened when the president comes out yesterday [Tuesday] on the Rose Garden and says you know we never went out and tried to sell Obamacare to everyone. We just kind of let people make their own choice. Well that’s a gross exaggeration of the truth. I mean think about the billions of dollars [the Obama administration spent on its healthcare efforts]. So I think that we need to get honor and and integrity and character restored back to Capitol Hill. This guy testifying right now Mike Morell who lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee; you know Susan Rice going out and saying what she said [on Benghazi]…there’s a perpetual lying – and this is bipartisan of course – that we have got to get people that are concerned about the American interests, not their own self-interest, not special interests. And that’s what I want to try to bring out. We have to get back to servant leadership.

Why are fewer military folks seeking public office at least at the national level?

West: We don’t want to deal with the BS. I mean we’re very straightforward, we’re mission-oriented, we’re task-oriented, and we just don’t have time for charlatans, usurpers and jokers or pranksters. But what you are finding is that there is a clarion call out there to get more to take off their uniform, put on a suit and tie and run, because as someone told me “the oath of office that you took does not have a statute of limitations.”

Read more at TheBlaze…

An interview with Instapundit on ‘The New School’: ‘Smart people make better electricians,’ and other musings from the prolific Professor Reynolds

In a wide-ranging interview with Blaze Books in connection with his just-released title, “The New School,” prolific professor Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) provided his insights on the 19th century Prussian industrial model of education that predominates to this day, the bursting of the education bubble, sage advice for students, parents and academic institutions, his predictions for new models in education, and much more. Below is our interview which was conducted via phone. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. If you missed it, be sure to check out our review of “The New School” as well.

Can you give a brief background for readers as to what compelled you to write “The New School?” 

Reynolds: Compelled is kind of the right word. I really wasn’t ever planning to write anything significant about education. I mean you know I was a student and now I’m a professor and so I live in that world, but it was never anything I had much interest in writing about. But then I wrote a couple of newspaper columns on the higher education bubble, and I wrote a law review article about where legal education was going, and then I wrote a couple more columns about K-12 education, and then the reaction to all that stuff was huge, and it made me see that there was really a lot of interesting stuff going on that I didn’t feel like was being looked at at quite the right angle, which is to say my angle [laughs]…and I went ahead and did that.

Why should the man on the street pick up your book?

Reynolds: Well you know education is a big piece of the economy. Everybody talks about how you can’t get anywhere without education. We have over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. We have massive urban K-12 systems on the verge of collapse because students are leaving in search of something better. So it’s pretty important. We’re in the midst of a big social change. Most of the people who talk about it or write about it, focus on particular aspects of it. And I try to sort of provide a universal field theory on what’s going on.

I’m curious, when you were writing this book, had you read for example Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart?” Murray advocates that a lot of ails us stems from the culture. Culture is influenced by and then reinforces ideas. The education system of course is where people develop their ideas. Do you see a link between the problems in education and the problems throughout the rest of society?

Reynolds: I think that’s right. The book is not at all political, in sort of a left-right sense, but it’s certainly true that some of the problems we have come from having sort of an intellectual monoculture behind a lot of these issues. And one of the things that I think – the changes I describe in the book will be good about is that we’re gonna see a lot of diversity – and I mean real diversity in terms of educational models. And I think that’s all to the better. I think monocultures when you’re farming are bad because one pest can wipe out the whole thing, and intellectual monocultures are bad too because one bad idea spreads like wildfire and causes all kinds of havoc.

Read more at TheBlaze…

Of Israelis and Republicans

Israelis and Republicans suffer from the same fundamental afflictions. At root, they misunderstand their enemies, while doubting themselves. The consequences of such delusions are fatal.

For the Israelis believe that ultimately, despite all history and reason, their enemies will seek peace. Republicans too believe that their opponents seek peace. They believe Democrats can be reasoned with; that Democrats merely have genuine ideological differences, while seeking the same goals of peace and prosperity.

Both Israelis and Republicans fail to see, either out of wishful thinking or naiveté, that their enemies want to destroy them. In fact it is an ideological imperative to destroy them.

The recent easing of sanctions on Iran and so-called two-state peace negotiations being driven by the Obama administration, and Israel’s inability to effectively counter such efforts, are just the latest in a series of disastrous blunders epitomizing the suicidal mindset of the Israelis that find their American analogue in Republicans. (AFP PHOTO/GALI TIBBON/POOL GALI TIBBON)

Beyond the PLO charter or Iranian calls for pushing Israel into the sea, at root it is a dedication to Islam that animates Israel’s enemies, Jew-hatred of which is an integral part. Islam must be at perpetual war against infidels, and especially Jews, in order to reach its goals for a global ummah under sharia. The ummah is achieved through violent jihad and/or ideological deception via taqiyya.

The Democratic Party has become the progressive party, which in order to obtain its ends must destroy the Republicans, both by defeating Republicans in elections and turning Republicans into progressives themselves. The end of progressivism is also world dominance, under the rule of men as opposed to the rule of Allah.

The war against the Israelis and Republicans is waged in similar ways. The media and academia, both worldwide and in America, are pro-Islamic and progressive. By spewing propaganda overtly and covertly, the media and academia are able to influence generation after generation of useful idiots, turning the West against itself and weakening the mental defenses of the Israelis and Republicans.

Continue reading at TheBlaze…

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