theamericanconservative--2020-07-15--It’s Time for a Nuremberg Trial for Communism

Why did we punish the horrific crimes of the national socialists yet let the murderous international socialists off scot-free ?
In 1945 , the victorious Allies convened a trial in Nuremberg , Germany , in an attempt to come to legal terms with the crimes that had been committed by the National Socialists since the 1930s .
The event was unprecedented .
Criminality had outstripped the law .
While the jurists and justices at Nuremberg wrestled with how to mete out justice to some of the most heinous offenders in human memory , a cruel irony was brewing even in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were themselves guilty of crimes that in many ways were even darker than what the Nazis had done .
And yet , while Nuremberg put the stamp of humankind ’ s disgust on everything National Socialist , for reasons of political expediency and gullibility , there never was a trial for the international socialists , the Bolsheviks and Stalinists and other Soviets who racked up a death count some 10 times higher than their Teutonic socialist counterparts .
The Nazis sat in the dock and then swung from the gallows .
The Russians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the years after Nuremberg , they kept on killing .
Their communist counterparts in China , Eastern Europe , Africa , Latin America , Southeast Asia , Northeast Asia , the Middle East , and beyond kept on killing too .
There has never been a Nuremberg for communism .
It is time for that to change .
Last year , the world lost perhaps the greatest , bravest Russian dissident who ’ s ever lived .
Vladimir Bukovsky spent some dozen years in a psychiatric prison in the Soviet Union—hellish years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ literature , To Build a Castle—all for the “ crime ” of refusing to be a socialist .
Tortured , threatened , harassed , Bukovsky never backed down .
When he was finally released to the West , he spent the rest of his life telling the world what was really going on behind the Iron Curtain .
Few listened , for the same reasons that few at Nuremberg thought to throw their Soviet colleagues into jail where they belonged .
But now that the world can see , again , what communism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of lives as Party Central grows ever stronger , the police state spreading where communities and human life once thrived—the day is here when the Nuremberg Trial for Communism can , and should , be convened .
TAC contributor and legal history researcher Jason Morgan recently interviewed Italian professor of philosophy Renato Cristin , the leader of the worldwide movement to achieve Bukovsky ’ s dream and see communism , like Nazism , forever exiled from among the human race .
What first interested you in Vladimir Bukovsky and his work ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ because , together with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , Andrei Sakharov , Natan Sharansky and others , he was one of the main dissidents of the Soviet regime , and in particular because he had developed a pointed political criticism , as well as cultural and historical , of the communist system and ideology .
Did you ever have the opportunity meet Bukovsky ?
My meeting with Bukovsky was quite recent , dating back to 2005 , when I invited him to give a speech at a conference that I organized as director of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victims of both totalitarianisms , Nazi and Soviet .
It was then that Bukovsky told me about his idea to hold a Nuremberg Trial for Communism .
It seemed to me an exceptional idea , the expression of a historical , political , and ethical need that could no longer be postponed : an historical and moral judgment of condemnation , similar to the rightful condemnation and banishment of Nazism from the civilized world .
How did Bukovsky ’ s idea progress after that ?
In the summer of 2019 , I wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with an appeal .
I thought that this could serve as the basis for an international initiative .
Although debilitated by disease , he enthusiastically agreed to take part .
Together we wrote the text of the appeal and decided to launch it with a collection of signatures , to present it to the public on the symbolic date of November 9—the day in 1989 when the Berlin Wall began to be torn down .
Unfortunately , Bukovsky died on October 27 , two weeks before the appeal was to be announced .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of us , the many people around the world who had applauded his decades-long battle against communism .
But Bukovsky ’ s spirit was greater than his disease .
His legacy lived and stirred among us , and his commitment to hold communism accountable spurred his admirers to action .
What he dreamed of , we would finally achieve .
It is fitting , in a way , that the men who tormented Bukovsky , and the inhuman system they used to justify their torment , be judged after Bukovsky was already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about so much more than himself anyway .
Bukovsky argued that it was just one form of control that collapsed in 1991 in the Soviet Union , and before that in Eastern Europe .
He thought that the impulse to control other human beings outlived the fall of communism and continues to plague us today .
According to Bukovsky , the people who had been responsible for the misery of communism were almost never faced with consequences for what they had done .
Bukovsky was right .
This is the key point .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Soviet regime and its satellites in Eastern Europe was not accompanied by a systematic judicial action against the people who had been guilty of crimes in various regimes .
A particular regime fell , but nobody who was a part of it faced justice at all .
It ’ s as if the Soviet Union was the scapegoat for the people who actually committed all the crimes .
There are a few reasons for this strange disconnect .
First of all , the situation was objectively very complex .
It was simply not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single general court for all the formerly communist countries .
Also , since liberal-democratic development was different from country to country , the degree of infiltration of former communist leaders into the structures of the new societies was also different .
It would have been impossible to hold a real trial as one huge social structure was collapsing and morphing into two dozen other , smaller structures .
There was also the reluctance of the West to take a firm stand .
Many believed that the collapse of communist regimes entailed the disappearance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the general consensus today .
There was a huge sense of relief when East Germany and the Soviet Union fell , and many wanted to believe that with those regimes also fell the ideology which had made them .
However , there is a darker reason .
Many left-wing political and cultural movements supported communism and helped conceal the crimes of communists .
Many still do .
You have said that communism is a dangerous false religion .
What do you mean by this ?
Despite the undeniable evidence of the crimes committed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aura of mysticism , a sort of taboo : it is believed that the idea of communism is good , that its only fault is that it has not yet been fully realized .
This false millenarianism inspires the weak of mind and causes reason to be clouded by utopian romanticism .
This colors historical understanding , too .
Communist regimes are seen as merely unfinished forms of communism , and therefore the idea retains all its saving potential despite the horrors that communism brings to human societies everywhere .
This is nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary .
Thanks to its persuasive force , this form of secular mysticism has managed to penetrate even into authentic religion , into Christianity .
Catholic thought and response were not enough to defeat the anti-Christianism of Marxism-Leninism .
In fact , Catholic communism , which is in all respects an oxymoron , has become a point of reference for many people throughout the West , forming one of the aspects of neo-communism in circulation today .
After decades of collaboration between Liberation Theologians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the current forms of this Christian communism have overcome militant atheism but with apotheosized communism , and not with authentic Christian faith .
Our new , religious communism is not the hard-edged atheism of old , but a much more palatable , even “ spiritual atheism , ” which has the religious fanaticism of German Reformation preacher Thomas Müntzer ’ s all-out rebellionism .
This “ spiritual atheism ” is promiscuously polytheistic , as can be seen , for example , in the theses that accompanied the Synod for the Amazon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a communist , but if enough high-ranking Christians seem to be making it work then millions of others will be led along .
Who are the communists ?
What do they really want ?
The symbol of the communist regimes and of the ideology that underlies them is the Gulag , the analogue of the Nazi concentration camp .
The Gulag , where the state imprisoned anyone for any reason , even the mere suspicion of dissent , had different “ denominations ” according to the different communist states .
But the basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control of human lives .
The Gulag is the symbol not only of massacres , but also of the dictatorial control over individuals and societies that is the very essence of communism .
Total control over human life is what communists want .
It is who they are : controllers , insatiable and ruthless controllers of other human beings .
We must not be confused by terminology , though .
What is sometimes called “ real socialism , ” for example , is not an aberration of the Marxist-Leninist theory , but the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sometimes instantiated .
Therefore , criticism of real socialism , that is , of the Soviet Union and all those states which have continued to practice that theory even after the collapse of the USSR , must imply criticism of the communist ideology from the outset .
There is no difference , because the personnel are the same .
It is not what the thing is called , but what the people in a given system do , that ultimately matters .
Consequently , assuming towards this historical-political monstrosity an ambiguous or even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disease that has proved deadly for any people who have had the misfortune to experience it .
Do you see any trends or events or people in the world today , in 2020 , against whom or which Bukovsky would have been opposed ?
What would he have thought of the Wuhan virus situation , for instance ?
In 2001 , together with Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and German human rights champion Gerhard Löwenthal , Bukovsky published an article requesting that the International Olympic Committee reject Beijing ’ s candidacy to host @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was that the Olympics would provide Chinese communism with further legitimacy among the free world .
What Bukovsky , Wei , and Löwenthal here call Chinese “ tyranny ” repressed individual freedoms and civil rights and was rooted in the same Gulag archipelago as is found in every other communist state , past and present .
Disregard for human rights was , and is , the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party .
The Wuhan virus outbreak reflects all of this perfectly .
Communists simply do not care about any human life except @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions upon millions suffer and die .
What is the Nuremberg Trial and why should it be applied to communism ?
On September 19 , 2019 , the European Parliament resolved that Nazism and communism are equally at fault .
I think this resolution must be substantially and finally buttressed by a Nuremberg Trial for Communism .
But to have a trial we must have the courage and the intellectual honesty to call the crimes of communism by their real name .
The massacres and genocides , the murder of hundreds of millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the devastation of entire societies , the economic and moral misery visited upon continent after continent .
The mass graves , the shattered lives of entire generations .
All of these things happened .
Many who are alive today remember .
We must not be afraid to say that a horrific crime of world-historical proportion has taken place .
We must first prepare ourselves for the psychological toll it will take on us to learn the full truth about the communist past , and present .
To give just one example , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Soviet Union in order to clear the ground in the Ukraine for the Soviets ’ criminal ideology .
Seven million murders .
The world will never stop mourning the six million Jews killed by the Nazis : the Shoah is an authentic manifestation of absolute evil , and it is out of human solidarity with the living and the dead that we join our Jewish brothers and sisters in rejecting that evil completely .
By the same token , we must be strong enough to face the truth about communism , whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least that much .

In 1945, the victorious Allies convened a trial in Nuremberg, Germany, in an attempt to come to legal terms with the crimes that had been committed by the National Socialists since the 1930s. The event was unprecedented. Criminality had outstripped the law. While the jurists and justices at Nuremberg wrestled with how to mete out justice to some of the most heinous offenders in human memory, a cruel irony was brewing even in their company. Soviet jurists at Nuremberg were themselves guilty of crimes that in many ways were even darker than what the Nazis had done.
And yet, while Nuremberg put the stamp of humankind’s disgust on everything National Socialist, for reasons of political expediency and gullibility, there never was a trial for the international socialists, the Bolsheviks and Stalinists and other Soviets who racked up a death count some 10 times higher than their Teutonic socialist counterparts. The Nazis sat in the dock and then swung from the gallows. The Russians, however, walked off scot-free. In the years after Nuremberg, they kept on killing. Their communist counterparts in China, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, the Middle East, and beyond kept on killing too. There has never been a Nuremberg for communism.
It is time for that to change. Last year, the world lost perhaps the greatest, bravest Russian dissident who’s ever lived. Vladimir Bukovsky spent some dozen years in a psychiatric prison in the Soviet Union—hellish years detailed in his classic work of zek literature, To Build a Castle—all for the “crime” of refusing to be a socialist. Tortured, threatened, harassed, Bukovsky never backed down. When he was finally released to the West, he spent the rest of his life telling the world what was really going on behind the Iron Curtain. Few listened, for the same reasons that few at Nuremberg thought to throw their Soviet colleagues into jail where they belonged.
But now that the world can see, again, what communism really looks like—cover-ups that cost hundreds of thousands of lives as Party Central grows ever stronger, the police state spreading where communities and human life once thrived—the day is here when the Nuremberg Trial for Communism can, and should, be convened.
TAC contributor and legal history researcher Jason Morgan recently interviewed Italian professor of philosophy Renato Cristin, the leader of the worldwide movement to achieve Bukovsky’s dream and see communism, like Nazism, forever exiled from among the human race.
What first interested you in Vladimir Bukovsky and his work?
I knew the works of Vladimir Bukovsky because, together with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and others, he was one of the main dissidents of the Soviet regime, and in particular because he had developed a pointed political criticism, as well as cultural and historical, of the communist system and ideology.
Did you ever have the opportunity meet Bukovsky?
My meeting with Bukovsky was quite recent, dating back to 2005, when I invited him to give a speech at a conference that I organized as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in memory of the victims of both totalitarianisms, Nazi and Soviet. It was then that Bukovsky told me about his idea to hold a Nuremberg Trial for Communism.
It seemed to me an exceptional idea, the expression of a historical, political, and ethical need that could no longer be postponed: an historical and moral judgment of condemnation, similar to the rightful condemnation and banishment of Nazism from the civilized world.
How did Bukovsky’s idea progress after that?
In the summer of 2019, I wrote to Bukovsky proposing to launch his idea with an appeal. I thought that this could serve as the basis for an international initiative. Although debilitated by disease, he enthusiastically agreed to take part. Together we wrote the text of the appeal and decided to launch it with a collection of signatures, to present it to the public on the symbolic date of November 9—the day in 1989 when the Berlin Wall began to be torn down.
Unfortunately, Bukovsky died on October 27, two weeks before the appeal was to be announced. His death left a great void in all of us, the many people around the world who had applauded his decades-long battle against communism.
But Bukovsky’s spirit was greater than his disease. His legacy lived and stirred among us, and his commitment to hold communism accountable spurred his admirers to action. What he dreamed of, we would finally achieve. It is fitting, in a way, that the men who tormented Bukovsky, and the inhuman system they used to justify their torment, be judged after Bukovsky was already at peace. His fight was always about so much more than himself anyway.
Bukovsky argued that it was just one form of control that collapsed in 1991 in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern Europe. He thought that the impulse to control other human beings outlived the fall of communism and continues to plague us today. According to Bukovsky, the people who had been responsible for the misery of communism were almost never faced with consequences for what they had done.
Bukovsky was right. This is the key point. The collapse of the structures of the Soviet regime and its satellites in Eastern Europe was not accompanied by a systematic judicial action against the people who had been guilty of crimes in various regimes. A particular regime fell, but nobody who was a part of it faced justice at all. It’s as if the Soviet Union was the scapegoat for the people who actually committed all the crimes.
There are a few reasons for this strange disconnect. First of all, the situation was objectively very complex. It was simply not possible at the time to establish a single general court for all the formerly communist countries. Also, since liberal-democratic development was different from country to country, the degree of infiltration of former communist leaders into the structures of the new societies was also different. It would have been impossible to hold a real trial as one huge social structure was collapsing and morphing into two dozen other, smaller structures.
There was also the reluctance of the West to take a firm stand. Many believed that the collapse of communist regimes entailed the disappearance of communist ideology. This is still the general consensus today. There was a huge sense of relief when East Germany and the Soviet Union fell, and many wanted to believe that with those regimes also fell the ideology which had made them. However, there is a darker reason. Many left-wing political and cultural movements supported communism and helped conceal the crimes of communists. Many still do.
You have said that communism is a dangerous false religion. What do you mean by this?
Despite the undeniable evidence of the crimes committed by communist totalitarianism, communism has an aura of mysticism, a sort of taboo: it is believed that the idea of communism is good, that its only fault is that it has not yet been fully realized. This false millenarianism inspires the weak of mind and causes reason to be clouded by utopian romanticism. This colors historical understanding, too. Communist regimes are seen as merely unfinished forms of communism, and therefore the idea retains all its saving potential despite the horrors that communism brings to human societies everywhere. This is nothing less than a secular religion. One must continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.
Thanks to its persuasive force, this form of secular mysticism has managed to penetrate even into authentic religion, into Christianity. Catholic thought and response were not enough to defeat the anti-Christianism of Marxism-Leninism. In fact, Catholic communism, which is in all respects an oxymoron, has become a point of reference for many people throughout the West, forming one of the aspects of neo-communism in circulation today.
After decades of collaboration between Liberation Theologians and Latin American revolutionary and terrorist movements, the current forms of this Christian communism have overcome militant atheism but with apotheosized communism, and not with authentic Christian faith. Our new, religious communism is not the hard-edged atheism of old, but a much more palatable, even “spiritual atheism,” which has the religious fanaticism of German Reformation preacher Thomas Müntzer’s all-out rebellionism.
This “spiritual atheism” is promiscuously polytheistic, as can be seen, for example, in the theses that accompanied the Synod for the Amazon. One cannot be a Christian and a communist, but if enough high-ranking Christians seem to be making it work then millions of others will be led along.
Who are the communists? What do they really want?
The symbol of the communist regimes and of the ideology that underlies them is the Gulag, the analogue of the Nazi concentration camp. The Gulag, where the state imprisoned anyone for any reason, even the mere suspicion of dissent, had different “denominations” according to the different communist states. But the basic idea is always the same: total control of human lives. The Gulag is the symbol not only of massacres, but also of the dictatorial control over individuals and societies that is the very essence of communism.
Total control over human life is what communists want. It is who they are: controllers, insatiable and ruthless controllers of other human beings.
We must not be confused by terminology, though. What is sometimes called “real socialism,” for example, is not an aberration of the Marxist-Leninist theory, but the political-state form with which this theory is sometimes instantiated. Therefore, criticism of real socialism, that is, of the Soviet Union and all those states which have continued to practice that theory even after the collapse of the USSR, must imply criticism of the communist ideology from the outset. There is no difference, because the personnel are the same. It is not what the thing is called, but what the people in a given system do, that ultimately matters.
Consequently, assuming towards this historical-political monstrosity an ambiguous or even simply neutral position means giving voice to a disease that has proved deadly for any people who have had the misfortune to experience it.
Do you see any trends or events or people in the world today, in 2020, against whom or which Bukovsky would have been opposed? What would he have thought of the Wuhan virus situation, for instance?
In 2001, together with Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and German human rights champion Gerhard Löwenthal, Bukovsky published an article requesting that the International Olympic Committee reject Beijing’s candidacy to host the 2008 Olympic Games. Their argument was that the Olympics would provide Chinese communism with further legitimacy among the free world.
What Bukovsky, Wei, and Löwenthal here call Chinese “tyranny” repressed individual freedoms and civil rights and was rooted in the same Gulag archipelago as is found in every other communist state, past and present. Disregard for human rights was, and is, the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party. The Wuhan virus outbreak reflects all of this perfectly. Communists simply do not care about any human life except their own. As a result, millions upon millions suffer and die.
What is the Nuremberg Trial and why should it be applied to communism?
On September 19, 2019, the European Parliament resolved that Nazism and communism are equally at fault. I think this resolution must be substantially and finally buttressed by a Nuremberg Trial for Communism.
But to have a trial we must have the courage and the intellectual honesty to call the crimes of communism by their real name. The massacres and genocides, the murder of hundreds of millions of consciences, the destruction of religion, the devastation of entire societies, the economic and moral misery visited upon continent after continent. The mass graves, the shattered lives of entire generations. All of these things happened. Many who are alive today remember. We must not be afraid to say that a horrific crime of world-historical proportion has taken place. We must first prepare ourselves for the psychological toll it will take on us to learn the full truth about the communist past, and present.
To give just one example, seven million Ukrainians were exterminated—subjected to genocide—by the Soviet Union in order to clear the ground in the Ukraine for the Soviets’ criminal ideology. Seven million murders. The world will never stop mourning the six million Jews killed by the Nazis: the Shoah is an authentic manifestation of absolute evil, and it is out of human solidarity with the living and the dead that we join our Jewish brothers and sisters in rejecting that evil completely. By the same token, we must be strong enough to face the truth about communism, whatever it costs us. Justice demands at least that much.


theamericanconservative--2020-07-17--Modern Jacobism: A Defense of Columbus

Modern Jacobism: A Defense of Columbus

Although the iconoclastic madness in the old continent has not reached the levels of the United States , Europe has also suffered the activity of modern censors who want to erase and rewrite history by demolishing statues and monuments .
Italy was hit by the iconoclastic movement as they targeted a statue dedicated to the most important Italian conservative journalist , Indro Montanelli , in Milan .
They smeared it with red paint and covered it with insulting words .
Montanelli was accused of being a racist and even a pedophile after marrying a young girl in Africa during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Montanelli shook Italian public opinion because in the seventies the journalist had been the victim of an attack by the Communist terrorist group of the Red Brigades , who shot him in the legs .
It is impossible not to make a connection with the new attack , this time to erase his memory , claimed by a student group on the extreme left-wing .
However , Italians were most struck by the wave of hatred and demolition of a statue that took place in the United States against one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Christopher Columbus .
The images of the defaced and dismembered statue of Columbus , Ohio , in a city that takes its name from the Genoese explorer , has outraged public opinion in Italy .
Italians , have continued to take pride in the most famous Italian explorer .
Along with some of the most influential Italian intellectuals , journalists including the famed Marco Valle , conservative university professors , we decided to promote an appeal entitled “ Giù le mani da Colombo ” ( Hands off Colombo ) , in collaboration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thanks to the director Alessandro Sallusti and the deputy director Francesco Maria Del Vigo .
The appeal has generated considerable interest in Italy and also in Europe ( for example the journalist Dalma Janosi wrote about it on Magyar Hirlap , one of the main Hungarian newspapers ) and hundreds of citizens shared this idea , tired of having to hear calls to erase our identity .
The political world has also joined the appeal with parliamentarians , mayors , and Giorgia Meloni , leader of the Fratelli d ’ Italia party ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over 15 percent of votes ) .
The requests of the appeal are as simple as necessary and urgent : to celebrate the National Day of Christopher Columbus ( already introduced by a statute in 2004 , but almost unknown ) on October 12th , in institutions , schools , universities , and ask for adequate penalties for those who vandalize statues and monuments .
Columbus , after having faced and defeated the judgments and prejudices of his era , is forced to suffer those of our time .
On the front line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longer the “ junta dos mathematicos ” —the commission of the wise men of King Joao II of Portugal— or the erudite men of Salamanca who had considered him an ignorant and visionary sailor , rejecting his idea of “ buscar el Levante por el Ponente.
” Over 500 years after his death , Don Cristobal Colòn , as they call him in Spain , must suffer new insults .
With a senseless simplification , the wave of outrage at George Floyd ’ s unjust death in Minneapolis has transformed into the damnatio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the one who has changed the course of world history and started the modern era by discovering America , but only an exterminator of native peoples .
A couple of years ago , Melissa Mark-Viverito , then speaker of the city council of New York City , when establishing a municipal commission to decide whether to remove the famous Columbus Circle statue donated to the city by the Italian-Americans in 1892 on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America , explained : “ In Puerto Rico , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the fact that there should not be monuments in honor of Christopher Columbus , considering what the oppression of native people means and all the dramatic consequences that have generated.
” Bill de Blasio , the Italian-American and ultra-liberal mayor of the Big Apple , has reiterated in recent days that he will leave the statue where it is , but in other cities , the anti-Columbus madness does not subside .
Despite civil and measured protests by the National Italian American Foundation , they even abolished Columbus Day in Los Angeles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Denver , and Washington D.C .
Politically correct intolerance has targeted Christopher Columbus for some time now , but blaming the Genoese explorer for the racial tensions of American society and thinking that it is fair to destroy the statue and erase his memory for such problems , is hypocritical and wrong .
Moreover , censorship campaigns can strike anyone with a dangerous rewriting of history : Gandhi , for example , whose statue was removed from a university campus in Ghana where he is considered a racist ; Admiral Horatio Nelson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ column in Trafalgar Square as a supporter of imperialism ; Captain James Cook , considered by some fanatics who have ruined his statue , not as the discoverer of Australia , but his invader ; Cecil Rhodes , brutally evicted as a colonialist from the University of Oxford , which for more than a century has benefited exclusively from the generous scholarships of the “ Rhodes Exchange ” , heir to the immense fortune of Rhodes and established to finance the studies of deserving young people from all Commonwealth countries .
The same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ J.R , described in some recent investigations based on Hoover ’ s FBI reports as a male chauvinist and predator .
Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar whose statues , in London , and Belgium were smeared with insults , not to mention Indro Montanelli in Italy .
A grotesque escalation that is transforming the dystopias of George Orwell ( “ Ignorance is strength ” , 1984 ) and Aldous Huxley ( “ History is all nonsense ” , Brave New World ) into reality .
We are witnessing the pretense of wanting to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by throwing events into a blender that grinds and mixes them out of context by simplifying , trivializing , transforming and then returning them in the form of a rewriting and elementary narration that pits the good against the alleged bad guys , who must be erased from historical memory .
Fanatics and zealots are now becoming champions of justice and acts of vandalism like destroying statues and desecrating cemeteries are considered commendable actions , rather than gestures to condemn .
This is something to which we can not remain indifferent and to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the first name on the list : Christopher Columbus , the great Genoese navigator and Italian .
At a time when an attack on the history , culture , and identity of the Western world is underway , Europe and the United States must collaborate in a common battle of civilizations to avoid the prevalence of the ideas of those who would like to use the same criteria of censorship that are adopted in dictatorships , to Western democracies .
The images of the demolished statues bring to mind the darkest moments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who define themselves as conservatives , can not help but recall the period of Jacobin revolutionary terror .
Get your hands off Colombo and our story .
Francesco Giubilei is an entrepreneur , author , and independent journalist based in Rome , Italy .
He is founder and president of the Nazione Futura magazine and foundation .

Although the iconoclastic madness in the old continent has not reached the levels of the United States, Europe has also suffered the activity of modern censors who want to erase and rewrite history by demolishing statues and monuments. Italy was hit by the iconoclastic movement as they targeted a statue dedicated to the most important Italian conservative journalist, Indro Montanelli, in Milan. They smeared it with red paint and covered it with insulting words. Montanelli was accused of being a racist and even a pedophile after marrying a young girl in Africa during the Italian colonial period. The smeared statue of Montanelli shook Italian public opinion because in the seventies the journalist had been the victim of an attack by the Communist terrorist group of the Red Brigades, who shot him in the legs. It is impossible not to make a connection with the new attack, this time to erase his memory, claimed by a student group on the extreme left-wing.
However, Italians were most struck by the wave of hatred and demolition of a statue that took place in the United States against one of the most famous personalities of the Bel Paese: Christopher Columbus. The images of the defaced and dismembered statue of Columbus, Ohio, in a city that takes its name from the Genoese explorer, has outraged public opinion in Italy. Italians, have continued to take pride in the most famous Italian explorer.
Along with some of the most influential Italian intellectuals, journalists including the famed Marco Valle, conservative university professors, we decided to promote an appeal entitled “Giù le mani da Colombo” (Hands off Colombo), in collaboration with Il Giornale—the main Italian conservative newspaper— thanks to the director Alessandro Sallusti and the deputy director Francesco Maria Del Vigo. The appeal has generated considerable interest in Italy and also in Europe (for example the journalist Dalma Janosi wrote about it on Magyar Hirlap, one of the main Hungarian newspapers) and hundreds of citizens shared this idea, tired of having to hear calls to erase our identity. The political world has also joined the appeal with parliamentarians, mayors, and Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party (among the main Italian political forces with over 15 percent of votes).
The requests of the appeal are as simple as necessary and urgent: to celebrate the National Day of Christopher Columbus (already introduced by a statute in 2004, but almost unknown) on October 12th, in institutions, schools, universities, and ask for adequate penalties for those who vandalize statues and monuments.
Columbus, after having faced and defeated the judgments and prejudices of his era, is forced to suffer those of our time. On the front line to judge him, there are no longer the “junta dos mathematicos” —the commission of the wise men of King Joao II of Portugal— or the erudite men of Salamanca who had considered him an ignorant and visionary sailor, rejecting his idea of “buscar el Levante por el Ponente.” Over 500 years after his death, Don Cristobal Colòn, as they call him in Spain, must suffer new insults. With a senseless simplification, the wave of outrage at George Floyd’s unjust death in Minneapolis has transformed into the damnatio memoriae of this great sailor, considered not the one who has changed the course of world history and started the modern era by discovering America, but only an exterminator of native peoples.
A couple of years ago, Melissa Mark-Viverito, then speaker of the city council of New York City, when establishing a municipal commission to decide whether to remove the famous Columbus Circle statue donated to the city by the Italian-Americans in 1892 on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, explained: “In Puerto Rico, where I come from, there are discussions about the fact that there should not be monuments in honor of Christopher Columbus, considering what the oppression of native people means and all the dramatic consequences that have generated.”
Bill de Blasio, the Italian-American and ultra-liberal mayor of the Big Apple, has reiterated in recent days that he will leave the statue where it is, but in other cities, the anti-Columbus madness does not subside. Despite civil and measured protests by the National Italian American Foundation, they even abolished Columbus Day in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Denver, and Washington D.C.
Politically correct intolerance has targeted Christopher Columbus for some time now, but blaming the Genoese explorer for the racial tensions of American society and thinking that it is fair to destroy the statue and erase his memory for such problems, is hypocritical and wrong.
Moreover, censorship campaigns can strike anyone with a dangerous rewriting of history: Gandhi, for example, whose statue was removed from a university campus in Ghana where he is considered a racist; Admiral Horatio Nelson, who should be dismissed from his column in Trafalgar Square as a supporter of imperialism; Captain James Cook, considered by some fanatics who have ruined his statue, not as the discoverer of Australia, but his invader; Cecil Rhodes, brutally evicted as a colonialist from the University of Oxford, which for more than a century has benefited exclusively from the generous scholarships of the “Rhodes Exchange”, heir to the immense fortune of Rhodes and established to finance the studies of deserving young people from all Commonwealth countries.
The same thing happened even to Martin Luther King J.R, described in some recent investigations based on Hoover’s FBI reports as a male chauvinist and predator. Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar whose statues, in London, and Belgium were smeared with insults, not to mention Indro Montanelli in Italy.
A grotesque escalation that is transforming the dystopias of George Orwell (“Ignorance is strength”, 1984) and Aldous Huxley (“History is all nonsense”, Brave New World) into reality. We are witnessing the pretense of wanting to deny, modify, and manipulate history by throwing events into a blender that grinds and mixes them out of context by simplifying, trivializing, transforming and then returning them in the form of a rewriting and elementary narration that pits the good against the alleged bad guys, who must be erased from historical memory.
Fanatics and zealots are now becoming champions of justice and acts of vandalism like destroying statues and desecrating cemeteries are considered commendable actions, rather than gestures to condemn. This is something to which we cannot remain indifferent and to which we should react with the defense of the first name on the list: Christopher Columbus, the great Genoese navigator and Italian.
At a time when an attack on the history, culture, and identity of the Western world is underway, Europe and the United States must collaborate in a common battle of civilizations to avoid the prevalence of the ideas of those who would like to use the same criteria of censorship that are adopted in dictatorships, to Western democracies. The images of the demolished statues bring to mind the darkest moments of the last centuries and, for those who define themselves as conservatives, cannot help but recall the period of Jacobin revolutionary terror. Get your hands off Colombo and our story.
Francesco Giubilei is an entrepreneur, author, and independent journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is founder and president of the Nazione Futura magazine and foundation.


theamericanconservative--2020-07-17--Foreigner and Fascist: Malaparte in Paris

Diary of a Foreigner in Paris , Curzio Malaparte , NYRB Classics , May 2020 , 288 pages In a century when so many intellectuals made the leap from communism to the Right , Curzio Malaparte was one of the few who traveled in the opposite direction .
Born in 1898 , he was a wunderkind of Italian fascism in his twenties , haunting the cafes of Florence with Filippo Marinetti and the Futurists and taking part in Mussolini ’ s March on Rome at the age of 24 .
His career as a fascist intellectual peaked in the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a more populist direction from the editor ’ s chair of various periodicals , including the daily La Stampa .
World War II put a seal on a decade of gradual disillusionment , and by the time of his death in 1957 , Malaparte had become such an enthusiastic Maoist that he left his house in Capri to the Chinese people for use as an artists ’ colony .
The last place someone with Malaparte ’ s past would want to be , one would think , was Paris in 1947 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Robert Brasillach had recently been tried and executed and Charles Maurras sentenced to life in prison , proving that even writers could be punished for crimes of collaboration .
Yet Malaparte was drawn to the city despite the risks , and in his two years there he managed to produce two plays for the Paris stage , write at least one book , and meet such luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre , Jean Cocteau , and André Malraux .
Unsurprisingly , the luminaries greeted him coldly .
Diary of a Foreigner in Paris , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ records a scathing dinner party encounter with Albert Camus , who fixes Malaparte with a death stare from the moment he walks in .
Another guest asks Malaparte to give his opinion of one of Mussolini ’ s former cabinet ministers .
“ Camus , without looking at me , replied that all these men , assassins , etc.
, should be shot.
” Malaparte shrugs off the insult as a young man trying “ to give himself the air of a Saint-Just , ” but can ’ t resist describing for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points a rifle at his blindfolded head in a one-man firing squad—and misses .
The left-wing intellectuals ’ contempt for Malaparte was amply returned .
“ I wonder what the hell Camus ever did to have the right to shoot others , ” Malaparte scoffs .
He dismisses Sartre as a man of postures rather than ideas , and not even good postures at that .
“ It seems to me excessive to trouble Kierkegaard , Jaspers , and Heidegger , the concepts of angst and existence , to justify an entire generation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pretend to be , who are not poor but pretend to be , who are not bohemian but pretend to be , ” he sneers .
The Parisians seemed to him like creatures of fashion , and Malaparte was the opposite of fashionable .
He was a true contrarian .
All of his ideological gyrations , otherwise so baffling and self-contradictory , can be explained by that .
How else to make sense of spending an entire career as an anti-communist only to turn into a Soviet sympathizer in the 1950s , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perversity in the Diary .
“ I believe in noble sentiments only before they become rhetoric , ” he writes .
This claim to have struggled against fascism , which he repeats often in his Paris diary for obvious reasons , is not quite the whole truth .
True , Mussolini exiled Malaparte to Capri for sedition in 1933 , but that was more of a factional squabble than genuine rebellion .
True , the Gestapo kicked him out of the Ukraine in 1941 for writing about German atrocities in the Corriere della @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and reassigned him to cover the war in Finland .
Malaparte would not have been welcomed in 1942 as an honored guest at the diplomatic court of Hans Frank , Nazi governor-general of Poland , if he had not been a fascist in good standing .
Malaparte was a chronic embellisher , and not only when political self-interest demanded it .
His two best works , Kaputt and The Skin , are thinly fictionalized versions of his war experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe and Allied-occupied Naples , respectively .
The books ’ power to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lake in Finland where half-submerged horses lay trapped in grotesque attitudes after a flash freeze ; the dictator of Croatia offering Malaparte a basket of human eyeballs , calling them “ Dalmatian oysters ” ; an American officers ’ dinner in Naples where guests feast on the choicest fruits de mer from the local aquarium , including manatee .
But Malaparte should not be dismissed as a mere fabulist .
For one thing , his varied career did take him to all the places he wrote about .
He really was in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as he describes in Kaputt .
He did not invent stories from whole cloth .
For another thing , wartime Europe was a more surreal place than the modern reader may appreciate .
American officers really did eat the tropical fish out of the Naples aquarium ; fresh fish were unavailable because the harbor was mined and boats weren ’ t allowed out .
When the Germans invaded Budapest in 1944 , an Italian fascist diplomat named Giorgio Perlasco pretended to be “ Jorge ” the Spanish consul and , with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passable Spanish he had picked up fighting for Franco in the 1930s , manufactured exit visas for thousands of escaping Jews .
Malaparte ’ s war experience was less unique than one might think , both in its bizarre spectacles and in his willingness to resist the Nazis despite being a fascist himself .
Diary of a Foreigner in Paris is neither as surreal nor as satisfying as Kaputt and The Skin .
It is disappointing in much the same way as Ernst Jünger ’ s Paris diaries , also recently translated into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When A German Officer in Occupied Paris : The War Journals 1941–1945 was published last year , American readers searched it eagerly for insights into Jünger , that most intellectual of fascists , whose aristocratic dignity always stood in such contrast to Hitler ’ s rabble .
Alas , there was none to be found .
Jünger , like Malaparte , met with the cream of Parisian artists and intellectuals , from Pablo Picasso to Sacha Guitry , and like Malaparte he was the rare fascist intelligent enough to converse with them as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspicion remained .
Even with all the incentives of occupation urging the French to make Jünger feel welcome , they gave him little beyond superficial chit chat .
Whatever maelstrom of emotion these Frenchmen were feeling , they were not about to reveal to a German .
This barrier of reserve remained after the war , and Malaparte , for all his social butterflying , never managed to break through it .
At one point in the Diary , Malaparte is introduced to Henriette Caillaux , the notorious murderess who shot the editor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paper ’ s repeated slanders of her husband , finance minister Joseph Caillaux .
The now aged Madame Caillaux does not extend her hand when they meet , and Malaparte deduces that it is because “ assassins are always afraid that people will refuse to shake a hand that has killed.
” He is so convinced that his own hands are clean that he never quite grasps that Frenchmen , too , might be particular about the hands they shake .
Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative .

Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, Curzio Malaparte, NYRB Classics, May 2020, 288 pages
In a century when so many intellectuals made the leap from communism to the Right, Curzio Malaparte was one of the few who traveled in the opposite direction. Born in 1898, he was a wunderkind of Italian fascism in his twenties, haunting the cafes of Florence with Filippo Marinetti and the Futurists and taking part in Mussolini’s March on Rome at the age of 24. His career as a fascist intellectual peaked in the early 1930s as he tried to push Mussolini in a more populist direction from the editor’s chair of various periodicals, including the daily La Stampa. World War II put a seal on a decade of gradual disillusionment, and by the time of his death in 1957, Malaparte had become such an enthusiastic Maoist that he left his house in Capri to the Chinese people for use as an artists’ colony.
The last place someone with Malaparte’s past would want to be, one would think, was Paris in 1947. The Épuration was in full swing. Robert Brasillach had recently been tried and executed and Charles Maurras sentenced to life in prison, proving that even writers could be punished for crimes of collaboration. Yet Malaparte was drawn to the city despite the risks, and in his two years there he managed to produce two plays for the Paris stage, write at least one book, and meet such luminaries as Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and André Malraux.
Unsurprisingly, the luminaries greeted him coldly. Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, published this month by NYRB Classics, records a scathing dinner party encounter with Albert Camus, who fixes Malaparte with a death stare from the moment he walks in. Another guest asks Malaparte to give his opinion of one of Mussolini’s former cabinet ministers. “Camus, without looking at me, replied that all these men, assassins, etc., should be shot.” Malaparte shrugs off the insult as a young man trying “to give himself the air of a Saint-Just,” but can’t resist describing for the reader an elaborate fantasy scene where Camus points a rifle at his blindfolded head in a one-man firing squad—and misses.
The left-wing intellectuals’ contempt for Malaparte was amply returned. “I wonder what the hell Camus ever did to have the right to shoot others,” Malaparte scoffs. He dismisses Sartre as a man of postures rather than ideas, and not even good postures at that. “It seems to me excessive to trouble Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger, the concepts of angst and existence, to justify an entire generation of misfits who are not pederasts but pretend to be, who are not poor but pretend to be, who are not bohemian but pretend to be,” he sneers.
The Parisians seemed to him like creatures of fashion, and Malaparte was the opposite of fashionable. He was a true contrarian. All of his ideological gyrations, otherwise so baffling and self-contradictory, can be explained by that. How else to make sense of spending an entire career as an anti-communist only to turn into a Soviet sympathizer in the 1950s, of all decades? Malaparte admits his willful perversity in the Diary. “I believe in noble sentiments only before they become rhetoric,” he writes.
If it seemed to me right to fight the Germans and the Fascists when they were powerful, today I cannot bear the rhetoric that has been made of the struggle against the Fascists and the Germans. Above all I disdain those who have turned their participation in that struggle into a profitable occupation, and the sole reason for their existence.
This claim to have struggled against fascism, which he repeats often in his Paris diary for obvious reasons, is not quite the whole truth. True, Mussolini exiled Malaparte to Capri for sedition in 1933, but that was more of a factional squabble than genuine rebellion. True, the Gestapo kicked him out of the Ukraine in 1941 for writing about German atrocities in the Corriere della Serra, but Mussolini quickly rescued him and reassigned him to cover the war in Finland. Malaparte would not have been welcomed in 1942 as an honored guest at the diplomatic court of Hans Frank, Nazi governor-general of Poland, if he had not been a fascist in good standing.
Malaparte was a chronic embellisher, and not only when political self-interest demanded it. His two best works, Kaputt and The Skin, are thinly fictionalized versions of his war experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe and Allied-occupied Naples, respectively. The books’ power to mesmerize lies in their surrealistic flourishes: a lake in Finland where half-submerged horses lay trapped in grotesque attitudes after a flash freeze; the dictator of Croatia offering Malaparte a basket of human eyeballs, calling them “Dalmatian oysters”; an American officers’ dinner in Naples where guests feast on the choicest fruits de mer from the local aquarium, including manatee.
But Malaparte should not be dismissed as a mere fabulist. For one thing, his varied career did take him to all the places he wrote about. He really was in Jassy the night of the 1941 pogrom, as he describes in Kaputt. He did not invent stories from whole cloth. For another thing, wartime Europe was a more surreal place than the modern reader may appreciate. American officers really did eat the tropical fish out of the Naples aquarium; fresh fish were unavailable because the harbor was mined and boats weren’t allowed out.
When the Germans invaded Budapest in 1944, an Italian fascist diplomat named Giorgio Perlasco pretended to be “Jorge” the Spanish consul and, with the help of stolen embassy stamps and the passable Spanish he had picked up fighting for Franco in the 1930s, manufactured exit visas for thousands of escaping Jews. Malaparte’s war experience was less unique than one might think, both in its bizarre spectacles and in his willingness to resist the Nazis despite being a fascist himself.
Diary of a Foreigner in Paris is neither as surreal nor as satisfying as Kaputt and The Skin. It is disappointing in much the same way as Ernst Jünger’s Paris diaries, also recently translated into English after decades out of print. When A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals 1941–1945 was published last year, American readers searched it eagerly for insights into Jünger, that most intellectual of fascists, whose aristocratic dignity always stood in such contrast to Hitler’s rabble. Alas, there was none to be found.
Jünger, like Malaparte, met with the cream of Parisian artists and intellectuals, from Pablo Picasso to Sacha Guitry, and like Malaparte he was the rare fascist intelligent enough to converse with them as an equal. But a wall of suspicion remained. Even with all the incentives of occupation urging the French to make Jünger feel welcome, they gave him little beyond superficial chit chat. Whatever maelstrom of emotion these Frenchmen were feeling, they were not about to reveal to a German. This barrier of reserve remained after the war, and Malaparte, for all his social butterflying, never managed to break through it.
At one point in the Diary, Malaparte is introduced to Henriette Caillaux, the notorious murderess who shot the editor of Le Figaro in 1914 over the paper’s repeated slanders of her husband, finance minister Joseph Caillaux. The now aged Madame Caillaux does not extend her hand when they meet, and Malaparte deduces that it is because “assassins are always afraid that people will refuse to shake a hand that has killed.” He is so convinced that his own hands are clean that he never quite grasps that Frenchmen, too, might be particular about the hands they shake.
Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative.


theamericanconservative--2020-07-17--Against Modern Jacobinism: A Defense of Columbus


theamericanconservative--2020-07-20--The Tyranny of Tenderness

The Tyranny of Tenderness

Last month in the Washington Post , Georgetown professor Christy E. Lopez explained what “ defunding the police ” actually means .
Apparently it does not mean the abolition of police forces , but a redirection of their existing funding to more compassionate and concerned social welfare providers .
In other words , let ’ s stop using force and start using more compassionate methods to address the gang violence , drug abuse , homelessness , human trafficking , prostitution and crime that pollutes our cities and brings misery to so many .
No doubt better housing , health care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ programs ” would help .
but the help social welfare programs offer is a band-aid on cancer .
The problems in our society are far deeper , and materialistic solutions are not only inefficient , they are often ineffective in the long term .
While they can be part of the solution , if social programs are driven by a naive and tenderhearted ideology they can actually be dangerous .
The novelist Walker Percy snatched a quote from his fellow Southern Catholic writer Flannery O ’ Connor to provide the theme for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Manners O ’ Connor wrote , “ In the absence of… faith , we govern by tenderness .
It is a tenderness which , long cut off from the person of Christ , is wrapped in theory .
When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness , its logical outcome is terror .
It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.
” Percy picks up the ball from O ’ Connor and runs with it .
Rather than the typical horrific dystopia , Percy ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Feliciana parish , old-fashioned Southern gentility saunters in seersucker and sips bourbon while planning a congenial genocide .
A psychiatrist , Tom More , observes that something strange is going on .
His wife and former patients are behaving in a bizarre fashion .
They seem emotionally dead , answer questions with simplistic speech patterns and engage in simian sexual behaviors .
They seem strangely happy and have lost their old anxieties , phobias , neuroses and unique personality traits .
They have become cheerful zombies .
Dr. More figures out that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the brain and he tracks its genesis to the local water supply .
The artificial happiness is caused by a high dosage of heavy sodium in the water , and the conspirators are the leading figures of the town , including two of Tom ’ s colleagues .
They try to get him on board with the conspiracy saying they have government funding and secret backing .
Their plan is social engineering .
By secretly suppressing certain behaviors they claim to have reduced crime , cured AIDS and gotten rid of anxiety @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By controlling the libido they have eliminated sex crimes and homosexuality , and by modulating the female reproductive cycle they have a built in population control mechanism .
Suddenly there are no more teen pregnancies , no need for sex education or contraceptives , and abortion is a thing of the past .
The tenderhearted utilitarians argue that a dose of heavy sodium in the drinking water is no worse than putting fluoride in the water supply .
Father Smith—an eccentric priest who lives in a fire watcher ’ s tower—opens Dr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiences as a young student visiting Germany in the 1930s .
Smith mingled with a set of charming , sophisticated Germans .
Well educated and cultured , the German doctors quote Rilke , play Brahms and discuss the rise of Hitler and the Jewish problem .
When Smith returns as a G.I .
he finds that his sophisticated friends were the very ones involved in eugenics , euthanasia and genocide .
It is an unfortunate shorthand in our Twitter age that we dismiss our opponents by calling them Nazis , so not knowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to label her , nor would I wish to write off her proposals for mental health facilities , community mediation and violence interruption programs as the nefarious schemes of the Gestapo de nos jours .
However , if the only thing the tenderhearted have to offer is utilitarian and materialistic solutions , one has to ask how those solutions will be implemented .
Will the homeless and drug addicted be removed from the streets by “ community care workers ” instead of the police ?
What if the care workers meet resistance ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental health facilities ” and be held there against their will ?
Will the “ mental health facilities ” have security systems ?
Locks on the doors ?
Bars at the windows ?
Guards ?
Fences ?
Who exactly will determine whether a person is mentally ill and needs to be retained ?
What will be the criteria for determining mental illness ?
Might citizens who need “ re-education ” be sent to such facilities ?
Who would need re-education ?
Anyone who opposes the tender new world ?
When dealing with murderous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and drug pushers how exactly does “ community mediation ” work ?
Who are the community mediators ?
Do they have any authority ?
Do they have the backup of sanctions of any kind ?
What kind of sanctions are they ?
Financial ?
Physical ?
Incarceration ?
Are there any checks and balances to keep an eye on the community mediators ?
One wants to ask , “ What precisely is a “ violence interruption program ” and how does it work ?
Will those who are interrupting a violent event simply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good talking to ?
What if the violent person is high on drugs or surging with irrational rage ?
If the violence is collective will the people interrupting the violence have the use of body armor ?
Shields ?
Tear gas ?
Tasers ?
Firearms ?
The problem with replacing the police with social workers is that there would be even less control over those assigned to maintain public safety .
Why should we assume that when social workers , community mediators and violence interrupters are under stress that they would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than a man in a blue uniform ?
For that matter , the roots of racism are part of human nature .
Why should we assume that social workers would be any less racist or bigoted against members of some other ethnic , religious or political group ?
It is this naivety of the tenderhearted reformers that history teaches us to beware .
In Percy ’ s novel , the “ fire watcher ” Fr .
Smith is the one who reveals what is really going on .
There are no death camps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There are no mass graves , ovens , or corpses stacked like cordwood on the bayou .
Instead , the humanity of the town folk is being chemically dissolved , and in the climactic comic-horror scene we see the final result : in a kind of retro-evolution , the main villains of the piece—child abusers who run a seemingly wholesome school—revert to apelike behavior .
Their plan to eliminate human unhappiness has eliminated humanity .
Without their phobias and foibles , without their neuroses and nastiness , the residents of the town have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beasts .
Fr .
Smith sums it up in his warning : “ Tenderness is the first disguise of the murderer … Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century … More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together … Do you know where tenderness always leads … To the gas chambers.
” Fr .
Dwight Longenecker is a Catholic priest working in Greenville , South Carolina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Heart of Darkness examines the problem of collective violence and its solutions .
dwightlongenecker.com

Last month in the Washington Post, Georgetown professor Christy E. Lopez explained what “defunding the police” actually means. Apparently it does not mean the abolition of police forces, but a redirection of their existing funding to more compassionate and concerned social welfare providers.
Lopez, the co-director of Georgetown’s Innovative Policing Program, writes:
For most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety… defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs.
In other words, let’s stop using force and start using more compassionate methods to address the gang violence, drug abuse, homelessness, human trafficking, prostitution and crime that pollutes our cities and brings misery to so many.
No doubt better housing, health care, community mediation and “violence interruption programs” would help. but the help social welfare programs offer is a band-aid on cancer. The problems in our society are far deeper, and materialistic solutions are not only inefficient, they are often ineffective in the long term. While they can be part of the solution, if social programs are driven by a naive and tenderhearted ideology they can actually be dangerous.
The novelist Walker Percy snatched a quote from his fellow Southern Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor to provide the theme for his novel The Thanatos Syndrome. In Mystery and Manners O’Connor wrote, “In the absence of… faith, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”
Percy picks up the ball from O’Connor and runs with it. Rather than the typical horrific dystopia, Percy’s nightmare world is easygoing. In dozy Feliciana parish, old-fashioned Southern gentility saunters in seersucker and sips bourbon while planning a congenial genocide. A psychiatrist, Tom More, observes that something strange is going on. His wife and former patients are behaving in a bizarre fashion. They seem emotionally dead, answer questions with simplistic speech patterns and engage in simian sexual behaviors. They seem strangely happy and have lost their old anxieties, phobias, neuroses and unique personality traits. They have become cheerful zombies.
Dr. More figures out that the syndrome is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and he tracks its genesis to the local water supply. The artificial happiness is caused by a high dosage of heavy sodium in the water, and the conspirators are the leading figures of the town, including two of Tom’s colleagues. They try to get him on board with the conspiracy saying they have government funding and secret backing. Their plan is social engineering.
By secretly suppressing certain behaviors they claim to have reduced crime, cured AIDS and gotten rid of anxiety, suicides and repeat offending by criminals.
By controlling the libido they have eliminated sex crimes and homosexuality, and by modulating the female reproductive cycle they have a built in population control mechanism. Suddenly there are no more teen pregnancies, no need for sex education or contraceptives, and abortion is a thing of the past.
The tenderhearted utilitarians argue that a dose of heavy sodium in the drinking water is no worse than putting fluoride in the water supply.
Father Smith—an eccentric priest who lives in a fire watcher’s tower—opens Dr More’s eyes by recounting his experiences as a young student visiting Germany in the 1930s. Smith mingled with a set of charming, sophisticated Germans. Well educated and cultured, the German doctors quote Rilke, play Brahms and discuss the rise of Hitler and the Jewish problem. When Smith returns as a G.I. he finds that his sophisticated friends were the very ones involved in eugenics, euthanasia and genocide.
It is an unfortunate shorthand in our Twitter age that we dismiss our opponents by calling them Nazis, so not knowing Professor Lopez, I would not wish to label her, nor would I wish to write off her proposals for mental health facilities, community mediation and violence interruption programs as the nefarious schemes of the Gestapo de nos jours. However, if the only thing the tenderhearted have to offer is utilitarian and materialistic solutions, one has to ask how those solutions will be implemented.
Will the homeless and drug addicted be removed from the streets by “community care workers” instead of the police? What if the care workers meet resistance? Will the homeless be removed to “mental health facilities” and be held there against their will? Will the “mental health facilities” have security systems? Locks on the doors? Bars at the windows? Guards? Fences?
Who exactly will determine whether a person is mentally ill and needs to be retained? What will be the criteria for determining mental illness? Might citizens who need “re-education” be sent to such facilities? Who would need re-education? Anyone who opposes the tender new world?
When dealing with murderous gang members, human traffickers, pimps and drug pushers how exactly does “community mediation” work? Who are the community mediators? Do they have any authority? Do they have the backup of sanctions of any kind? What kind of sanctions are they? Financial? Physical? Incarceration? Are there any checks and balances to keep an eye on the community mediators?
One wants to ask, “What precisely is a “violence interruption program” and how does it work? Will those who are interrupting a violent event simply give the gun or knife wielding citizen a good talking to? What if the violent person is high on drugs or surging with irrational rage? If the violence is collective will the people interrupting the violence have the use of body armor? Shields? Tear gas? Tasers? Firearms?
The problem with replacing the police with social workers is that there would be even less control over those assigned to maintain public safety. Why should we assume that when social workers, community mediators and violence interrupters are under stress that they would be any less prone to brutality and oppression than a man in a blue uniform? For that matter, the roots of racism are part of human nature. Why should we assume that social workers would be any less racist or bigoted against members of some other ethnic, religious or political group?
It is this naivety of the tenderhearted reformers that history teaches us to beware. In Percy’s novel, the “fire watcher” Fr. Smith is the one who reveals what is really going on. There are no death camps or gas chambers in sleepy Louisiana. There are no mass graves, ovens, or corpses stacked like cordwood on the bayou.
Instead, the humanity of the town folk is being chemically dissolved, and in the climactic comic-horror scene we see the final result: in a kind of retro-evolution, the main villains of the piece—child abusers who run a seemingly wholesome school—revert to apelike behavior. Their plan to eliminate human unhappiness has eliminated humanity. Without their phobias and foibles, without their neuroses and nastiness, the residents of the town have not become best. They have become beasts.
Fr. Smith sums it up in his warning: “Tenderness is the first disguise of the murderer … Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century … More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together … Do you know where tenderness always leads … To the gas chambers.”
Fr. Dwight Longenecker is a Catholic priest working in Greenville, South Carolina. His book Immortal Combat: Confronting the Heart of Darkness examines the problem of collective violence and its solutions. dwightlongenecker.com


theamericanconservative--2020-07-21--Will New Yorkers Get Desperate Enough To Vote for Trump?

With elderly Caucasian Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate , November 3 will be less about the rise of progressive politics than the noise of the last four years would have you believe .
But while the shine of AOC and her ilk winds down , progressive thought will find at least a petri dish to fester in during a Biden administration , and perhaps even a second media wind if Trump wins .
Since it ’ s not going away , seeing what would happen if progressives escape the lab and go viral is important .
For that case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-laced New York .
COVID is supposed to be , finally , Trump ’ s white whale , the thing that will bring him down after he wriggled out from under the Russians and the Ukrainians and Stormy Daniels .
Not enough ventilators !
Not enough tests !
Mass graves in Central Park !
And it is all Trump ’ s fault .
( See the headline : “ Donald Trump is the Most Successful Bio-Terrorist in Human History.
” ) That set the stage for Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political than medical .
New York today is a laboratory for what happens when progressive ideology displaces reality .
But first a quick reality check : For every death in this global epidemic , it is critical to remember the virus did not strike masses down in the streets like the Black Plague , and did not create hideous sores like the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that tore through this city .
It is unlikely to infect a third of the world ’ s population like the Spanish Flu .
An overwhelming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know they have COVID , surprised by an antibody test months later .
Most infected people do not pass on the virus .
On July 12 , New York had zero virus deaths for the first time since the pandemic started .
But keeping the emphasis on “ cases ” and not conclusions keeps the fear alive .
But enough of reality ; we ’ re talking progressivism here .
Lockdown has left New York economically devastated , mired in “ the worst economic calamity since the 1970s , when it nearly went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Times .
The unemployment rate nears 20 percent , a figure not seen since the Great Depression ( during the 2008 recession it was about 10 percent ) .
The newly unemployed strain food banks and soup kitchens .
Policy described as a “ pause ” in March morphed into a semi-permanent state to keep things bad ahead of the election .
While de Blasio authorized nail salons to reopen , he ’ s kept the city ’ s core sectors , the stuff that symbolizes New York—Broadway , tourism , conventions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sacrifices to The Cause .
Look what Trump wrought !
So people are leaving .
More than 10,000 Manhattan apartments were listed for rent in June , an 85 percent increase over last year .
The super wealthy neighborhoods have seen 40 percent migration out , the biggest outward migration from the once economically strongest neighborhoods in midtown and the Upper East Side .
Enough rich New Yorkers have left that it is affecting the census .
The situation mirrors the outflow of the 1970s which decimated the tax base and led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insurance because they could not collect rent .
So it matters that 25 percent of New York tenants have not paid their rent since March .
Those overdue payments left 39 percent of landlords unable to pay property taxes .
A new NY law prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants facing pandemic-related financial hardships may help on the micro level while contributing to the destruction of the greater economy , which of course will eventually devastate everyone .
Progressive zeal created an economic tide to sink all boats .
The mayor who threw his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gatherings through September .
He did however say Black Lives Matter protests would be allowed , claiming “ the demonstrators ’ calls for social justice were too important to stop.
” The mayor himself , maskless , took time off to help paint “ Black Lives Matter ” on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower .
The central thoroughfare in Manhattan was then closed to traffic to let the paint dry .
Some are more equal than others ; the mayor criticized Trump for putting politics first in his coronavirus response .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ occupation ” to continue at City Hall , where a mix of activists and homeless ( attracted by donated food ) live in makeshift tents .
It stinks , a throbbing health-hazard island of human feces and drugs and food scraps even before you get to the COVID part .
The city allows them even as , until recently , it sent goons to chase unwoke citizens in twos and threes from playgrounds .
A woman at the occupation asked my preferred pronouns while behind her a half-naked homeless man screamed .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ graffitied courthouse and laughed .
Maybe they just like graffiti ; it too is back across New York .
So what else are the cops up to ?
A former police commissioner criticized city and state leaders for abandoning the police ( de Blasio pushed through a $ 1.5 billion cut to the NYPD on BLM demand ) and for helping create a “ crime virus ” to go along with the coronavirus .
Amid defunding elite NYPD units in spite of a 205 percent rise in shootings this year ( one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caught in gang crossfire ) , so many NYPD officers are seeking retirement the department has been forced to slow-walk applications to get out .
The state legislature meanwhile is proposing a new law to hold cops ( not the city , as it is now ) personally liable for events on duty even as New York City made the use of certain restraints by cops a criminal act .
De Blasio and Cuomo found ways to put more criminals on the streets .
New York state recently eliminated bail for many crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to POC without resources to pay .
Adding to the criminal population , Mayor de Blasio supported the release of some 2,500 prisoners due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus .
At least 250 of those released have been re-arrested 450 times , meaning some have been re-arrested more than once .
Since they can not be held for bail , most are returned to the street under Governor Cuomo ’ s fairness policy .
The next battleground will be the schools .
With only weeks to go in summer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ largest public school system will reopen with an unspecified mix of in-person and online classes .
Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean , keep students healthy , and run active shooter drills while maintaining social distancing have not been answered .
There have been no directives on how to handle online classes , no published best practices , not much of anything .
Quality of education , like quality of life , is not on the agenda .
One certainty is New York ’ s students will have fewer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to low enrollment and financial issues .
That affects more than religion .
Many of those schools represent the only neighborhood alternative to the failing public system .
Closures will drive middle class flight .
And there ’ s always something more .
With indoor restaurant dining prohibited , many places are setting up sidewalk tents .
In addition to adding to the Hooverville atmosphere , all that food has brought out the rats , who are attacking patrons .
There is no sense we will ever end this .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too fast , but they had the right underlying idea : we can ’ t live like this forever .
People need to work , not just for money ( though they need the money ) but to have purpose .
So much of what has been done in the name of justice feels more like punishment—suck on this bigots—racial score-settling under the guise of progressive social justice .
A lot of us are just sitting around like the Joad family , waiting for something to happen .
The thing is , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waiting for .
The lockdown was , we were told , to flatten the virus curve .
We did that .
COVID hospitalizations and actual deaths in NYC are at their lowest levels since March .
But the lockdown is still here and nobody seems to know when to declare victory—is the end point zero new cases before we can re-open Broadway ?
A vaccine ?
We just wait , the days violent , hot , and liquid .
De Blasio and Cuomo are waiting , too , but for November 3 to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continuing crisis after Biden wins .
But maybe the New York case study will serve as a different turning point in the election .
Imagine enough purple voters who look at New York and become frightened of what the Left will do with power in Washington .
They want to work .
They want their kids in school .
They might just vote for Trump .
Peter Van Buren , a 24-year State Department veteran , is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hooper ’ s War : A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad : A Story of the 99 Percent .

With elderly Caucasian Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, November 3 will be less about the rise of progressive politics than the noise of the last four years would have you believe. But while the shine of AOC and her ilk winds down, progressive thought will find at least a petri dish to fester in during a Biden administration, and perhaps even a second media wind if Trump wins.
Since it’s not going away, seeing what would happen if progressives escape the lab and go viral is important. For that case study, we’ll look to COVID-laced New York.
COVID is supposed to be, finally, Trump’s white whale, the thing that will bring him down after he wriggled out from under the Russians and the Ukrainians and Stormy Daniels. Not enough ventilators! Not enough tests! Mass graves in Central Park! And it is all Trump’s fault. (See the headline: “Donald Trump is the Most Successful Bio-Terrorist in Human History.”) That set the stage for Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to craft a response far more political than medical. New York today is a laboratory for what happens when progressive ideology displaces reality.
But first a quick reality check: For every death in this global epidemic, it is critical to remember the virus did not strike masses down in the streets like the Black Plague, and did not create hideous sores like the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that tore through this city. It is unlikely to infect a third of the world’s population like the Spanish Flu. An overwhelming number of those infected today never even know they have COVID, surprised by an antibody test months later. Most infected people do not pass on the virus. On July 12, New York had zero virus deaths for the first time since the pandemic started. But keeping the emphasis on “cases” and not conclusions keeps the fear alive.
But enough of reality; we’re talking progressivism here. Lockdown has left New York economically devastated, mired in “the worst economic calamity since the 1970s, when it nearly went bankrupt,” according to the New York Times. The unemployment rate nears 20 percent, a figure not seen since the Great Depression (during the 2008 recession it was about 10 percent). The newly unemployed strain food banks and soup kitchens. Policy described as a “pause” in March morphed into a semi-permanent state to keep things bad ahead of the election. While de Blasio authorized nail salons to reopen, he’s kept the city’s core sectors, the stuff that symbolizes New York—Broadway, tourism, conventions, restaurants, hotels, and museums—shut, sacrifices to The Cause. Look what Trump wrought!
So people are leaving. More than 10,000 Manhattan apartments were listed for rent in June, an 85 percent increase over last year. The super wealthy neighborhoods have seen 40 percent migration out, the biggest outward migration from the once economically strongest neighborhoods in midtown and the Upper East Side. Enough rich New Yorkers have left that it is affecting the census. The situation mirrors the outflow of the 1970s which decimated the tax base and led to landlords torching buildings to collect the insurance because they could not collect rent.
So it matters that 25 percent of New York tenants have not paid their rent since March. Those overdue payments left 39 percent of landlords unable to pay property taxes. A new NY law prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants facing pandemic-related financial hardships may help on the micro level while contributing to the destruction of the greater economy, which of course will eventually devastate everyone. Progressive zeal created an economic tide to sink all boats.
The mayor who threw his city out of work also banned large gatherings through September. He did however say Black Lives Matter protests would be allowed, claiming “the demonstrators’ calls for social justice were too important to stop.” The mayor himself, maskless, took time off to help paint “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. The central thoroughfare in Manhattan was then closed to traffic to let the paint dry. Some are more equal than others; the mayor criticized Trump for putting politics first in his coronavirus response.
De Blasio is also allowing an “occupation” to continue at City Hall, where a mix of activists and homeless (attracted by donated food) live in makeshift tents. It stinks, a throbbing health-hazard island of human feces and drugs and food scraps even before you get to the COVID part. The city allows them even as, until recently, it sent goons to chase unwoke citizens in twos and threes from playgrounds. A woman at the occupation asked my preferred pronouns while behind her a half-naked homeless man screamed. A few cops stood in front of a graffitied courthouse and laughed. Maybe they just like graffiti; it too is back across New York.
So what else are the cops up to? A former police commissioner criticized city and state leaders for abandoning the police (de Blasio pushed through a $1.5 billion cut to the NYPD on BLM demand) and for helping create a “crime virus” to go along with the coronavirus. Amid defunding elite NYPD units in spite of a 205 percent rise in shootings this year (one of the most recent shootings was a one-year-old caught in gang crossfire), so many NYPD officers are seeking retirement the department has been forced to slow-walk applications to get out. The state legislature meanwhile is proposing a new law to hold cops (not the city, as it is now) personally liable for events on duty even as New York City made the use of certain restraints by cops a criminal act.
De Blasio and Cuomo found ways to put more criminals on the streets. New York state recently eliminated bail for many crimes, claiming alongside BLM it was unfair to POC without resources to pay. Adding to the criminal population, Mayor de Blasio supported the release of some 2,500 prisoners due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. At least 250 of those released have been re-arrested 450 times, meaning some have been re-arrested more than once. Since they cannot be held for bail, most are returned to the street under Governor Cuomo’s fairness policy.
The next battleground will be the schools. With only weeks to go in summer, the mayor announced the nation’s largest public school system will reopen with an unspecified mix of in-person and online classes. Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students healthy, and run active shooter drills while maintaining social distancing have not been answered. There have been no directives on how to handle online classes, no published best practices, not much of anything. Quality of education, like quality of life, is not on the agenda.
One certainty is New York’s students will have fewer options—26 Catholic schools will not reopen due to low enrollment and financial issues. That affects more than religion. Many of those schools represent the only neighborhood alternative to the failing public system. Closures will drive middle class flight.
And there’s always something more. With indoor restaurant dining prohibited, many places are setting up sidewalk tents. In addition to adding to the Hooverville atmosphere, all that food has brought out the rats, who are attacking patrons.
There is no sense we will ever end this. It’s easy to criticize places that have moved too fast, but they had the right underlying idea: we can’t live like this forever. People need to work, not just for money (though they need the money) but to have purpose. So much of what has been done in the name of justice feels more like punishment—suck on this bigots—racial score-settling under the guise of progressive social justice.
A lot of us are just sitting around like the Joad family, waiting for something to happen. The thing is, we’re not sure what we are waiting for. The lockdown was, we were told, to flatten the virus curve. We did that. COVID hospitalizations and actual deaths in NYC are at their lowest levels since March. But the lockdown is still here and nobody seems to know when to declare victory—is the end point zero new cases before we can re-open Broadway? A vaccine? We just wait, the days violent, hot, and liquid. De Blasio and Cuomo are waiting, too, but for November 3 to free us. No need for a continuing crisis after Biden wins.
But maybe the New York case study will serve as a different turning point in the election. Imagine enough purple voters who look at New York and become frightened of what the Left will do with power in Washington. They want to work. They want their kids in school. They might just vote for Trump.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.


theamericanconservative--2020-07-21--Rising Diversity Is Joe Biden’s Worry, Too

So we are told .
Yet , even before America becomes a majority-minority nation , 25 years from now , recent changes in the composition of the country are going to impact both parties in 2020 .
According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey , between 2010 and 2020 , while America ’ s population grew by 20 million , our white population fell for the first time since the 1790 census .
White Americans fell as a share of the population in all 50 states , in 358 of 364 metropolitan areas , in 3,012 of 3,141 counties .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ population grew by 3 million , our Asian population by 4 million and our Hispanic population by 10 million .
What ’ s the significance of those numbers ?
In presidential elections , Hispanics and Asians vote 70 % Democratic and African Americans vote 90 % .
White folks , who made up 69 % of the U.S. population in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected , have fallen today to 60 % .
For children under 16 , the white share has fallen to less than half .
Minority kids are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , New Mexico , Arizona , Texas , Florida , Georgia , Hawaii , Mississippi and Maryland .
Whites are also the oldest Americans , with a median age of 44 .
For Asian Americans , it is 37 , for Black Americans , it is 35 , and for Latinos , it is 30 .
Bottom line : The pool of Democratic voters is growing inexorably while the largest pool of potential GOP voters is aging , stagnating and shrinking .
For the GOP , this is an existential crisis .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does not either increase its share of the white vote or attract millions more Black , Asian or Hispanic voters , then its national fate and future are sealed .
All one need do is look to California .
There , Democrats occupy every statewide office and two-thirds of both houses of the legislature .
Both senators are Democrats as are 45 of the 52 members of the U.S. House .
Nor are Democrats unaware of the opportunity demography offers .
As persons of color in America — Asians , Blacks , Hispanics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race — grow in number , the Democrats ’ job is a simple one .
Get more people of color registered and voting .
So , today , Democrats are pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship not only for the DACA “ Dreamers ” but also the 11 million to 22 million other immigrants here illegally .
Democrats may be found enlarging the electorate anywhere they can , even if it means allowing convicted felons and prison inmates to vote .
If Democrats capture the White House and Senate , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history , and America ’ s doors will be opened anew .
But Joe Biden and his generation of Democrats have their own problem .
Even as people of color make up a growing share of the nation , around 40 % , they are an even larger , and still growing , share of the Democratic base .
Without the huge majorities Asians , Blacks and Hispanics give them , Democrats could not win the White House .
Yet , in this year ’ s primaries , the six top finishers in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mike Bloomberg , Elizabeth Warren , Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar .
All are white , as are the two top Democratic leaders in the House , Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer ; the two top Democratic leaders in the Senate , Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin ; and the overwhelming majority of the 47 Democratic senators and 24 Democratic governors .
Democrats may prattle on about their glorious “ diversity , ” but a closer look reveals a predominantly white senior officer corps , atop an army of minorities , whose shock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lives Matter , antifa and The Squad , the latter consisting of four women of color .
There is something else of interest here .
While the statues being torn down in the revolution of the Democratic left are a variety of explorers , conquerors , colonists , missionaries , Confederates and presidents , all appear to have one thing in common .
The Democratic left wants to terminate the succession of white folks making the history of the country .
Thus the Democrats ’ problem that comes with Biden ’ s choice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are being made that minorities , who deliver half of all Democratic votes , be represented on the ticket , Biden is said to be leaning toward a white woman , Elizabeth Warren .
Choosing Warren would make this Democratic ticket like every other one in 220 years , save for Barack Obama ’ s — an all-white ticket .
It would pass over half a dozen women of color and put a white woman first in the line of succession to the presidency .
And the 77-year-old Biden is promising to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the women of color being considered as running mates and picks a white woman , the rumbling of the coming rebellion of the minorities inside the Democratic Party will be heard loud and clear .
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “ Nixon ’ s White House Wars : The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever .
”

Is her racial diversity America’s greatest strength?
So we are told. Yet, even before America becomes a majority-minority nation, 25 years from now, recent changes in the composition of the country are going to impact both parties in 2020.
According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, between 2010 and 2020, while America’s population grew by 20 million, our white population fell for the first time since the 1790 census.
White Americans fell as a share of the population in all 50 states, in 358 of 364 metropolitan areas, in 3,012 of 3,141 counties. During that same decade, our Black population grew by 3 million, our Asian population by 4 million and our Hispanic population by 10 million.
What’s the significance of those numbers? In presidential elections, Hispanics and Asians vote 70% Democratic and African Americans vote 90%.
White folks, who made up 69% of the U.S. population in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected, have fallen today to 60%.
For children under 16, the white share has fallen to less than half.
Minority kids are now the majority in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Maryland.
Whites are also the oldest Americans, with a median age of 44. For Asian Americans, it is 37, for Black Americans, it is 35, and for Latinos, it is 30.
Bottom line: The pool of Democratic voters is growing inexorably while the largest pool of potential GOP voters is aging, stagnating and shrinking.
For the GOP, this is an existential crisis. If demography is destiny, and the party does not either increase its share of the white vote or attract millions more Black, Asian or Hispanic voters, then its national fate and future are sealed.
All one need do is look to California. There, Democrats occupy every statewide office and two-thirds of both houses of the legislature. Both senators are Democrats as are 45 of the 52 members of the U.S. House.
Nor are Democrats unaware of the opportunity demography offers.
As persons of color in America — Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and people of mixed race — grow in number, the Democrats’ job is a simple one.
Get more people of color registered and voting.
So, today, Democrats are pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship not only for the DACA “Dreamers” but also the 11 million to 22 million other immigrants here illegally. Democrats may be found enlarging the electorate anywhere they can, even if it means allowing convicted felons and prison inmates to vote.
If Democrats capture the White House and Senate, the “Muslim ban” on immigration is history, and America’s doors will be opened anew.
But Joe Biden and his generation of Democrats have their own problem.
Even as people of color make up a growing share of the nation, around 40%, they are an even larger, and still growing, share of the Democratic base.
Without the huge majorities Asians, Blacks and Hispanics give them, Democrats could not win the White House. Yet, in this year’s primaries, the six top finishers in delegates were Biden, Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.
All are white, as are the two top Democratic leaders in the House, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer; the two top Democratic leaders in the Senate, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin; and the overwhelming majority of the 47 Democratic senators and 24 Democratic governors.
Democrats may prattle on about their glorious “diversity,” but a closer look reveals a predominantly white senior officer corps, atop an army of minorities, whose shock troops are the Black Caucus, Black Lives Matter, antifa and The Squad, the latter consisting of four women of color.
There is something else of interest here.
While the statues being torn down in the revolution of the Democratic left are a variety of explorers, conquerors, colonists, missionaries, Confederates and presidents, all appear to have one thing in common.
All are white men.
The Democratic left wants to terminate the succession of white folks making the history of the country.
Thus the Democrats’ problem that comes with Biden’s choice of a running mate. Though demands are being made that minorities, who deliver half of all Democratic votes, be represented on the ticket, Biden is said to be leaning toward a white woman, Elizabeth Warren.
Choosing Warren would make this Democratic ticket like every other one in 220 years, save for Barack Obama’s — an all-white ticket. It would pass over half a dozen women of color and put a white woman first in the line of succession to the presidency. And the 77-year-old Biden is promising to be a transition president.
If Biden overlooks the women of color being considered as running mates and picks a white woman, the rumbling of the coming rebellion of the minorities inside the Democratic Party will be heard loud and clear.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”