Shifting Political Nomenclature

THIS COLUMN RAN IN NEWSPAPERS THREE OR FOUR WEEKS AGO AND I'M JUST GETTING AROUND TO POSTING IT HERE.

“Left and Right” is the name of a small community TV show on which I argue from the right, but what does that mean in 2020 AD? Taking a long view, the best I can say is our left/right political spectrum is in flux. What political positions define the two sides? Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrats in a generation that worshiped John F. Kennedy (and into which I was born) didn’t see all Democrats as leftists or all Republicans as conservatives, but that has changed. There are still liberals in the Republican Party but are there any conservatives among today’s Democrats? I can’t name any. Can you?

JFK was a staunch anti-communist. His fellow Democrats in 1960 saw socialism as communism-lite and disdained both. That cannot be said of 2020 Democrats after a 2018 Gallup poll indicated that: “For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism… 57% today having a positive view… [with their] attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47%.” The same poll indicated Republicans with only a 16% positive view of socialism and a 71% positive view of capitalism.

When newly-elected Congresswoman Alexandria Occasion Cortez (AOC) proposed the Green New Deal last February there was consensus among Democrats that it was a radical-left proposal. Provisions like banning air travel, banning cheeseburgers, banning fossil fuels, rehabbing every building in America, eliminating 99% of cars, free education for life, guaranteed income without work, etc. seemed crazy to them. By spring and summer, however, nearly all Democrat presidential candidates endorsed the Green New Deal and sought AOC’s endorsement.

That most Democrats now favor socialism — and the massive expansion of government into nearly every aspect of life required to implement the Green New Deal — is more than enough to label them the party of the radical left. Now, however, political language has shifted. For example, the headline of a December 21 article in the Washington Post by Chelsea James declares: “Buttigieg shifts to center, embodying the Democratic primary’s rightward drift.” Janes cited shifting positions by Buttigieg on Medicare for all, abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, and decriminalizing illegal border crossings. He also claimed that:“Environmentalists complain [Buttigieg’s] climate plan is less sweeping than his early rhetoric suggested it might be.”

Conservative pundit and attorney Paul Miringoff of powerlineblog.com asked last week: “Is Medicare for all the liberal position? Is decriminalizing illegal border crossings? Is packing the Supreme Court? I would have called Medicare for all socialist, decriminalization leftist, and court packing radical. I would have expected the Post, at a minimum, to call them progressive. If, instead, these positions are liberal, the political ground has moved from under our feet.”

So then, what positions would be considered radical left today? Must someone be a bomb-tosser like Bill Ayers and advocate violent overthrow of the government? The Green New Deal would put government in control of how people eat, travel, reproduce, work, and what kind of house they live in. What else is there? That looks like total control to me — somewhere between socialism and communism lite.

The Washington Post is a big voice in mainstream media, all of whom are on board with the new labels. What was radical left only months ago is now liberal. What was liberal is now centrist. So, where do mainstream media want to put yesterday’s conservatives? Are they fascists now? If so, it was a short trip from Hillary Clinton’s racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic basket of deplorable to today’s fascists. 

At the end of Barack Obama’s two-year tenure as a US senator, the National Journal labeled him our most liberal senator. As president, mainstream media referred to him and his VP Joe Biden as “centrist” and “moderate.” Until lately, it would have been very hard to call Joe Biden anything but liberal over his 30+ year career in the senate, but liberal media outlets like the Washington Post think themselves moderate too and give plenty of coverage to leftists who charge that President Trump is fascist and compare him to Hitler.

John F. Kennedy would be called conservative today and wouldn’t likely feel comfortable in today’s Democrat Party He opposed Affirmative Action, was pro-2nd Amendment, and favored major tax cuts. He couldn’t possibly get the 2020 nomination for president. He was a US Senator in 1954 when President Eisenhower implemented “Operation Wetback” and deported over a million Mexicans from the United States. Maybe it’s there somewhere, but I could find no evidence that JFK or any other Democrat opposed it. His predecessor, Democrat President Truman, deported plenty of Mexicans as well at the end of World War II.

How far left will Democrats and their mainstream media go?

Do Democrats Want Open Borders?

Our government is divided over border control and so is our country. At least a thousand people a day are apprehended at the Mexican border. Some days it’s more than three thousand. More than twenty million people live here illegally. Some claim it’s double that. Most Democrats and not a few Republicans would make them all legal if they could. Conservatives accuse them of wanting open borders. They vehemently deny that but then advocated allowing the recent caravan of “asylum seekers” from Central America (and elsewhere) to enter and await court hearings on individual cases which take years to process.

Citing a Gallup poll, The Washington Examiner claimed last month that 158 million people worldwide want to come to the United States. Democrats criticize President Trump for being too restrictive of illegal immigration, asylum seekers, refugees, and the rest but when asked how many of the millions who want to enter America should be allowed in, they dodge the question. Meanwhile, they continue to advocate for whatever migrant group is dominating the news cycle and call anyone who would seal the border “racist” and “xenophobic.”

Ellison is Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party

So, what can we conclude? That they’re against any limits? It would seem so, but for Democrats to state that openly would be political suicide. While claiming to support border security, they defend sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that harbor illegal immigrants including criminals. They want to abolish ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls a proposed border wall “immoral.” Many Americans consider support for these contradictory positions incongruous, disingenuous, and deceptive.

Portland, Maine homeless shelters are full of African “asylum seekers” who came over the Mexican border and made a beeline for Maine. The Portland Press Herald blames President Trump in a Sunday editorial last week, but should perhaps blame itself. In story after story, the paper has been extolling the “benefits” of people coming to Portland from all over the world, legally and illegally, for years. Benefits for migrants of all kinds are obvious: cash, food, housing, medical care, education, and so on.

Why are they coming to Maine? A previous PPH article states: “because the city and state are among the few that offer shelter and financial assistance to the immigrants while their asylum cases are being processed.” Mainers who pay for this chafe while the Press Herald lectures them about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism. In the paper’s online edition, comments are disabled for most of the stories because whenever they’re enabled, hundreds of Mainers voice their frustration.

Open-borders activists calling themselves “advocates” have spread the word around the world: You don’t have to cross a desert and hop a fence or wade the Rio Grande to sneak into the United States anymore, although many still do that. If you can make it to the US/Mexican border, just say the magic words: “I need asylum” and border guards will let you in, then send you anywhere in the country you want to go, including Maine. “About three or four families from African countries such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo arrive at Portland’s Family Shelter each week after crossing the southern U.S. border, according to David MacLean, the city’s social services director,” in the Press Herald two weeks ago. MacLean is evidently in touch with “advocates” in Texas who send them north.

Much of liberal media portray legal and illegal migrants as oppressed, impoverished, desperate, starving, or otherwise deserving of taxpayer assistance. Many conservative outlets point out criminal and terrorist elements masquerading as refugees and playing on America’s heartstrings. A similar media duality exists across Europe and the result is political turmoil on both continents.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans watch reports of healthy-looking, fairly well-dressed crowds of people who don’t look desperate at all. They’re not starving; many are overweight and carry cell phones. Are the millions coming northward on both sides of the Atlantic really “refugees” and “asylum seekers?” Some probably are. Most probably aren’t. They’re simply seeking better jobs and welfare benefits.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans have been watching all this for years. In 2010, I flew down to our Mexican border to see for myself. After observing the chaos on our side of the fence for five days and talking to border patrol guards, I came away convinced that we need much stronger border security than the flimsy bits of wall that any reasonably fit person could easily scale. I wrote about all that here and here.

More recently I’ve watched video of Africans in overloaded boats heading to Italy and Spain and wasn’t surprised when Italians elected a government promising to turn those boats back. Last spring I spent a few days in Barcelona and visited ports in Italy and France. At every port, I saw hundreds of African men aggressively hawking cheap trinkets to tourists all day long. The same was true at the inland city of Florence, Italy. They were everywhere.

Immigration will likely remain the most divisive issue in the western world through 2019.

Border Matters

Do borders matter? Over the weekend I crossed from Maine to New Hampshire and spent $250 on wine and beer. There’s no bottle law there and prices are better because of that state’s tax policies. Real estate agents advertise homes in Lovell, Maine where I live, and in other towns within the Fryeburg area, as “in the Fryeburg Academy school district.” That means high-school-aged children living within district borders can attend Fryeburg Academy, a private school, at taxpayer expense.

From Maine Sunday Telegram

In Portland, two thousand people demonstrated enthusiastically in support of illegal immigrants last Saturday. They chanted and held signs reading: “No Human Being Is Illegal,” and “We were just following orders – Holocaust prison guards 1943 – ICE Officers 2018.” ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency struggling to enforce laws governing who can cross our national borders and who cannot.

Other demonstrations were held in Brunswick, Augusta, and Farmington. On my way back to Lovell I saw people in Bridgton waving and carrying signs protesting President Trump’s border enforcement policies. A friend told me of another demonstration in Conway, NH in which a young woman carried a sign proclaiming: “Imagine a World Without Borders.” There were similar demonstrations in cities all across the United States that day.

Last week, another young woman named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset victory in a New York Democrat congressional primary on a platform pledging to eliminate ICE. US Senator and presidential contender Kristin Gillebrand (D-NY) is also campaigning to abolish ICE. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is also Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party, paraded last week with a T-shirt proclaiming: “Yo No Creo En Fronteras”— Spanish for “I don’t believe in borders.” In a commencement speech for Northeastern University two years ago, former Secretary of State and Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry told graduates to get ready for a “borderless world.”

On Sunday, Mexicans elected a new president who said: “We will defend migrants all over the American continent and the migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their towns to find life in the United States; it’s a human right we will defend.” A headline in Monday’s San Diego Tribune declared: “Californians cross border to vote in Mexican election.” Are they Californians or are they Mexicans? Can they vote in both countries?

Britons voted two years ago to leave the EU — largely to control their borders. Italians just chose a new prime minister in an election the BBC called “dominated by [the] immigration debate.” Austria recently elected Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who wants to strengthen Austria’s border against illegal immigrants. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is in danger of breaking apart over border issues in neighboring Germany. President Donald Trump was elected here in 2016 promising to build a wall on the Mexican border.

If border enforcement is not the biggest issue in the entire western world, I don’t know what is. Trying to imagine a world without borders as the Conway, New Hampshire young woman advises, seems problematic. Should a Fryeburg cop arrest people over the border in Conway? What about gun laws? They’re very strict in Massachusetts but not in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont. What about sales taxes and income taxes? New Hampshire doesn’t have any but Maine and Massachusetts do. Who is obligated to pay them and who isn’t? Who should determine that? Will states just abandon their sovereignty?

We purchased fourteen acres on which we built our home in Lovell. Do we have the right to say who can come onto it or who cannot? Can anyone camp out here? Can they cut firewood? How about our dooryard? Does a dog have the right to bark at intruders? New Hampshire poet Robert Frost wrote: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Family members have rights to come into our home, but do we have to take anybody? How about our home town? Our home state? Our home country? Are taxpaying citizens obligated to support whoever takes up residence? What is a citizen? Does that designation mean anything?

If people from other parts of the world come into our home town, home state, or home country, are we obligated to pay for their health care and their education? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got 57% of the vote by declaring medical care, housing, education, and a federal job as “rights,” but for whom? Everybody in the world? There’s serious disagreement about those questions in North American and in Europe. So far, those disagreements are being dealt with through the political process — peacefully, that is — so far.

Here’s hoping it stays that way, but I have little confidence that it will.

Left & Right June 20, 2018

We discuss "family separation" on the southern border which dominates media lately. We agree on most points, but Gino suggests that Guatemala, Honduras, etc. are suffering because of too many MS-13 members deported back there from the US.

I contend Democrats want open borders but won't say it outright. The "asylum" scam is widening and accelerating. Awesome display of media/Democrat, pro-illegal-immigration propaganda.

What is in Trump's core? Gino says he lacks one, that he's completely opportunistic.

I describe anti-white-men bias at Harvard Medical School, and in undergraduate university admission procedures. Lawsuit by Asians who have been discriminated against is proceeding.

Tariffs past and present -- good or bad? Trade war? I say Calvin Coolidge hands-off policies more effective than Hoover's or Roosevelt's federal control policies.

Gino compares the Great Depression to the financial collapse in 2008.  I contend the feds should have done nothing in both cases and let businesses collapse. Let other private firms pick up pieces after bankruptcies. That's what Coolidge did and it worked very well. Government intervention prolongs recessions/the depression with central control.

Left and Right Show February 28, 2018

We start by discussing the voluntary arming of teachers to make schools safer from school shooters; "Gun-free school zones"; Again, the Florida high school shooting; those who reside within the Mainstream Media bubble demonstrate their ignorance of firearms; Google and DNC won't hire "cisgender white men" which would describe both Gino and me -- heterosexual white guys; are students juvenile delinquents or "disabled"?; Jails and prisons full of addicts and mentally ill as well as criminals; Curling competition in recent Olympics; Janus vs AFSCME in Supreme Court; Parkland Florida police ineptitude; numbers of illegals coming over the southern border.

Left & Right Show January 24, 2018

Gino and I argue about DACA, Sh**hole countries, evidence for FBI and DOJ corruption in the 2016 election. Gino compares Trump to Hitler and calls him racist. Gino claims Trump didn't pay taxes for twenty years. I ask for evidence to support that claim.