by Victor David Hanson In February, New York was the world’s most dynamic metropolis. By August, the city was more like the ruins of Ephesus. It is not all that hard to blow up a culture. You can do it in a summer if you haven’t much worry about…
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Commentary: Fully Woke Joe
On the identity politics that used to be known as “civil rights” Sleepy Joe is fully woke.
Just as he prioritized sex and race identity for his vice presidential pick, Joe Biden would racialize his monetary policy by remaking the Federal Reserve banking system. Biden is thereby the most identity-focused candidate in American history since the 19th century. And with the force of the Democratic Party behind him, he lacks any guard rails.
Read MoreCommentary: The Worship of Power Over Truth
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about “purity spirals.” That’s what the journalist Gavin Haynes calls the familiar “moral feeding frenzy” that occurs whenever ideology triumphs over truth. The French Revolution provides vivid historical examples, as did Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Those caught in a purity spiral, I observed, invariably find themselves embarked on an endless search for enemies, “a concerted effort to divide the world between the tiny coterie of the blessed and the madding crowd of the damned. The game, Haynes notes, ‘is always one of purer-than-thou.’”
Read MoreCommentary: When Enough is Enough, the ‘Woke’ Are ‘Awakening’
Recently, I read with great interest James Lindsay’s essay called “The Woke Breaking Point.” There, he invites his readers to ask friends and acquaintances “What would it take for you to say that the Woke movement has gone too far?” This, he suggests, is a way to help people keep themselves honest: if you consider in advance what state of affairs, specifically, would be “too far,” then you will be able to recognize better the excesses of the totalitarian Left and more ready to resist them at the point when it becomes absolutely necessary.
Read MoreCommentary: Rowling and King Slam Into the Woke Diversity Cult
Nothing is more appetizing than watching the limbs of progressive icons mulch between the jaws of the Woke.
Read MoreCommentary: Dear NBA, You Can’t Get ‘Woke’ by Ignoring China’s Tyranny, Concentration Camps and Slave Labor
It is time for D.C.’s political pundits to get woke on the economy, while one particularly obnoxious group of wealthy virtue signalers are finding their true selves revealed.
Read MoreCommentary: The Left and Their ‘Woke Racism’
Well before Sigmund Freud formalized the idea of “projectionism” – the defense of one’s own shortcomings and sins by attributing them to others – it was a common theme in classical literature and the New Testament: the ridiculing of the mole on someone else’s nose to hide one’s own boil.
Read MoreCommentary: Crack-ups at the Crossroads of Intersectionality
by Victor Davis Hanson Progressives do not see the United States as an exceptional uniter of factions and tribes into a cohesive whole – each citizen subordinating his tribal, ethnic, and religious affinities to a shared Americanism, emblemized by our national motto e pluribus unum. Instead, they prefer e uno plures:…
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