Canadian Cincinnatus

Stalinist folk singer died on Tuesday

Folk singer, Pete Seeger, died at the age of 94. While the mainstream media will no doubt be filled with praise for this ground-breaking folk singer, I suspect the dark side of his bio will be ignored.

For instance, he wrote propaganda songs denouncing FDR’s efforts to stop Nazi Germany, right up until the moment Hitler invaded Russia:

“Seeger was a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s through the 1950s. He left the party but never gave up the faith. He told the Washington Post in 1995 “I am still a communist.” Like his comrades and fellow travelers Seeger twisted and turned with every pronouncement from Moscow. Seeger supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact, a curious position for a noted “anti-fascist.” In 1941 Seeger along with Guthrie was a member of the Almanac Singers, a communist folk group. The group put out the anti-war album Songs from John Doe, containing songs that labeled Franklin Roosevelt a war monger. One of the songs had the following lyrics:

Franklin D, listen to me,
You ain't a-gonna send me 'cross the sea.
You may say it's for defense
That kinda talk ain't got no sense.

Of course when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Seeger and the Almanac Singer’s literally changed their tune to get in lockstep with Stalin’s new foreign policy. They pulled Songs from John Doe from the market and quickly replaced it with the pro-war, pro-Roosevelt album Dear Mr. President:

Now, Mr. President
You're commander-in-chief of our armed forces
The ships and the planes and the tanks and the horses
I guess you know best just where I can fight ...
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done!”

Another take on this revealing episode:

The film [a bio of Seeger] does not tell us what happened in 1941, when — two months after "John Doe" was released — Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union. As good communists, Mr. Seeger and his Almanac comrades withdrew the album from circulation, and asked those who had bought copies to return them. A little later, the Almanacs released a new album, with Mr. Seeger singing "Dear Mr. President," 

The ‘Songs from John Doe’ album is now extremely rare. Its existence was only rediscovered a few years ago after it had been deliberately buried by its creators, and replaced by one with the polar opposite message. There is a word for somebody who behaves like this. 

While it is true that he broke with the US Communist Party in the 1950’s, it was only because they denounced the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which he supported! Of course, he wasn’t all bad. He eventually denounced Stalin. In 1995! Talk about being behind the curve.

I think Da Tech Guy has the proper take on Seeger’s demise, in his article entitled “If Only Leni Riefenstahl was a Communist like Peter Seeger”:

On the show [MSNBC] they mentioned Seeger as a “Communist with a small ‘c’”. Perhaps Democrat National Committee member Bill Connor should have described himself as a “KKK member with a small ‘k’ ”, or Riefenstahl as a “Nazi with a small ‘n’’’?

I will acknowledge his skill as a singer & a songwriter and influence on American Music. Those are historical facts but I would no more celebrate his life than I would Riefenstahl.” 

I only note that Leni Riefenstahl was a much better film-maker than Seeger was a songwriter. 

Here is Ed Driscoll’s take:

In justifying his lifetime in support of Communism, Seeger once told the New York Times:

“I like to say I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.”

At least until the NKVD knocked upon their door.

Pete Seeger, good riddance.

Draconian gun laws and celebrity privilege in the District of Columbia

According to the Washington Times:

“A year ago this month, the attorney general for the District of Columbia let NBC News anchor David Gregory off scot-free for possession of a “high capacity” magazine because doing so “would not promote public safety.”

Now, Irvin Nathan refuses to use that same prosecutorial discretion for an average citizen who violated a bizarre technicality that makes empty casings and shells a crime as serious as having an illegal firearm.”

“Mr. Witaschek, a successful financial adviser with no criminal history, is the first known case of a citizen being prosecuted in D.C. for inoperable ammunition. Washington police and prosecutors have spent a year and a half trying to nail him for the possession of so-called unregistered ammunition.  

A hunter and gun owner, Mr. Witaschek has always kept his firearms at his sister’s house in Virginia. If convicted, he faces a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for having a single, inoperable shotgun shell in his home. The jury trial starts on Feb. 11.” 

This sort of idiocy is very familiar to Canadian gun owners. The number of stories of prosecutorial abuse – where perfectly harmless individuals are persecuted for miniscule violations of nonsensical regulations – is legion in Canada. When non-gun owning Canadians - i.e. people who have no clue about our gun laws - say that guns should be registered like cars, I reply: Great, I would be perfectly happy if guns were treated as sanely by the law as motor vehicles. These people, relying on the MSM for their knowledge about firearms laws, have no clue about the legal idiocy that exists around them.

I remember the David Gregory incident very well. In the media hysteria following the Newtown Massacre, Meet the Press host David Gregory waved a 30 round AR-15 mag on his show. His show was filmed in DC. The possession of a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia. Gregory was not even investigated, much less charged.

American gun owners should insist, if perfectly innocent nobodies like Mark Witaschek are put though the ringer for picayune offences, then so should TV celebrities.

Bend over and cough, David. Time for your strip search.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s moderation doesn’t pay

Chris Christie first broke onto the political scene in the 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. Along with Scott Brown, he was part of the first wave of Tea Party politicians to be elected in the 2009 off-year elections. At first, he was their darling, with his Youtube confrontations with the teachers’ unions.

Then in a move that eventually proved to be too clever by a half, he ‘pivoted to the center’. This culminated in his embrace of President Obama in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. As I have argued before, Hurricane Sandy, making landfall a week before the 2012 presidential election, may have been what put President Obama over the top. Prior to Sandy, the same polls that correctly predicted Obama’s victory showed Romney with a small lead.

While many conservatives felt betrayed by this, well, betrayal; Christie’s pivot seemed to work – at least for a while: he got glowing reviews from the Mainstream Media – a rarity for a politician who rose up from the Tea Party ranks; his poll numbers were high; and he cruised easily to re-election in a heavily Democrat state.

Then came Bridge-gate. With polls showing Christie as the Republican’s best shot at defeating Hillary (I know, I know, I don’t think he’s the GOP’s best candidate either, but the point is that the political operatives in both parties believe in these polls), something had to be done. Therefore the Democrat Party’s courtiers in the MSM dredged up a minor abuse of office and turned it into the second coming of Watergate. 

The problem for Christie now is the problem created by his pivot: he has no allies left. His natural supporters – the Tea Party conservatives who first got him elected (I remember him featured on the Mark Levin radio show; Mark enthusiastically endorsed him back then; Rush Limbaugh once said he had a ‘man-crush’ on Christie) – have soured on him for his various political and policy apostasies. The Mainstream Media have turned on him. Apparently the MSM were just stringing him along. And from Barack Obama - who might not have been in office today without Christie’s last minute implied endorsement – there is just radio silence. 

Chris, you have been played. Just like every conservative politician who tries to court the media by ditching his more controversial conservative positions. 

The lesson here for conservatives is very simple. You must always tend to your core supporters first. Show them your greatest loyalty. To your lesser supporters, show loyalty as well, but not to the point where tending to their needs conflicts with the interests of your base. And so on, until you get to the Low Information Voters and the voting-booth coin flippers, who have no political memory and can be roped in a few days before E-day.

If Christie had remained true to that strategy, he likely wouldn’t have been re-elected with the same sky-high majority, but he likely would have been re-elected. But when the chips were down, he would have had a legion of supporters ready, willing and able to go to bat for him.

In politics, loyalty is a supreme virtue. Without it, you are just living on borrowed time.

A handy little compendium of thought-criminals

The Handleshaus blog has collected a list of individuals who have been “bullied and badgered, pressured and purged.” While many of them are on the right, more than a few are on the left and lot are simply apolitical victims of PC enforcers, who got blindsided and never know what hit them.

I have said it before but it bears repeating: one of the worst aspects of today’s intellectual climate is the eagerness with which people seek to win political and philosophical debates by trying to blacklist their opponents or get them fired. These days, it seems, not too many people have the same attitude towards their opponents that Thomas Jefferson had to his political enemies, as he expressed so eloquently in his First Inaugural Address:

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

While I am old enough to remember the seventies when liberals were fond of quoting Voltaire’s dictum, “I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," it is nevertheless true that most of the censoring and hectoring these days is done by left-wing thugs. In response to this, I have noticed one disconcerting trend among my fellow conservatives, that they apply Saul Alinsky’s Rule Number Four - “make the enemy live up to their own book of rules” - to their ideological enemies with a bit too much eagerness.

Personally, I am old fashioned enough to prefer Jefferson and Voltaire to a grubby acolyte of Al Capone, and believe free speech is a matter too important to be endangered by partisan score-settling. We need to start championing free speech, and that means for everybody, even our ideological enemies.

Gun crime soars in the land of no handguns

According to the Daily Mail:

“The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.

Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362. It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.”

Perhaps the UK should ban handguns. Just look at Jamaica! Oh well. But if Jamaica were an island nation with no land borders, maybe a gun ban would have worked there.

“Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.”

Oh oh.

“Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.”

The government response?

“With new recording procedures taken into account the actual overall rise was just 2%, the Home Office said.”

In other words, statistical trickery. 

“Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin said: "These figures are truly terrible.

"Despite the street crime initiative, robbery is massively up. So are gun-related crimes, domestic burglary, retail burglary, and drug offences. 

"The only word for this is failure: the Government's response of knee-jerk reactions, gimmicks and initiatives is not working and confused signals on sentences for burglary will not help either.” 

Perhaps if the Conservatives ran Britain, there would be a more substantive response to the crime problem.

Oh…

Chris Christie, Republican traffic cop

Before I begin, let me be clear: I do not approve of what Chris Christie’s aides did, and if Christie knew about the unnecessary lane restrictions on the George Washington Bridge, he is guilty of abusing his office; that is, using the public office, that the voters trusted him with, for personal gain. In adddition, I think that from the perspective of political strategy, ‘black ops’ capers such as this are too clever by a half: way too much downside (cratered presidential run) for only a limited upside (the punishment of an obscure mayor nobody outside his own town has even heard of).

Having got my disclaimers out of the way, I nevertheless think Christie is being given a bum deal by the media. Look at what the Mainstream Media does not consider a big deal: During the last US government shutdown, it was widely known that the Obama administration had unnecessarily shut down access to public monuments in order to make the government shutdown as painful as possible. Even though no money at all was saved by fencing off Mount Rushmore or the World War II Memorial in Washington, the MSM was silent. As this is an equivalent situation to Christie’s traffic woes, consistency demands that if Christie must suffer for his traffic jam, Obama should suffer exactly the same way.

An even worse abuse of public trust by the Obama administration was when it ordered the IRS to target its political opponents en mass. This behaviour not only calls into question the 2012 federal election results, but also calls into question the independence and impartiality of the IRS  (both critical qualities when the government requires widespread voluntary compliance to collect most of its taxes). 

Another example that dwarfs bridge-gate in terms of moral turpitude is Fast and Furious, where Eric Holder’s ATF forced gun dealers to sell weapons to Mexican drug cartels, guns that have been used to kill hundreds of Mexicans and at least two federal agents. If Christie were forced from office for bridge-gate, Holder should be thrown in jail for Fast and Furious. But to date, the MSM has been mostly silent.

A further example of the MSM’s double standard is its reticence in the Benghazi affair. There are credible rumours that the ambassador and the three other casualties at the Benghazi consulate were left to wither on the vine because a military rescue force was vetoed by either the State Department or the White House. If this is what in fact had happened, then Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions should be thrown onto the dung-heap of history, long before Chris Christie is similarly cast aside.

One of Ann Coulter’s best observations is that the left is so much more effective than the right because it fights for its champions when they get into trouble and we don’t. They circle the wagons while we throw our black sheep to the wolves. While it may be too much to defend Chris Christie (if he in fact did order those lane restrictions), it is nevertheless incumbent on conservatives to insist that public officials with a D behind their name be held up to the same standards – and to be meted out a punishment proportionate to their crimes.

The courageous vs. the cowards: the real Republican civil war

According to the Mainstream Media, there is a civil war brewing between the Tea Party purists (i.e. blinkered fanatics) and the pragmatic GOP politicians. 

Normally, journalists have even less use for ‘pragmatic’ Republicans then conservative Republicans, but they know well enough to support a conservative weakling if he is challenged by a more substantial man. Conservative activists see things substantially the same way, except that they view the Tea Partiers as principled rather than fanatical, and mainstream Republican politicians as corrupt rather than pragmatic. I think they are both off the mark: the two factions are divided by something other than public policy. 

Rather, I think war is between the timid and the courageous. Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. With the unpopularity of Obamacare, one would think these would be heady times for the soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader. But no. In spite of the wind at the Republicans’ back, McConnell will be lucky to keep his seat. He has credible challengers on both the left and right.

If one were to press them, I don’t think Tea Party conservatives could come up with too many actual policy differences between themselves and the Establishment (other than amnesty). Rather, I think the real problem Tea Party conservatives have with Congressional leaders is that they feel they have been outwitted by the Democrats, have caved into their demands too easily, and are unwilling to fight for principle. In other words, their differences with establishment Republicans is more personal than doctrinal. They perceive the GOP leadership in Congress to be weak, cowardly and ineffectual.

It would be a mistake to believe that this disappointment can be confined to the GOP base. Consider this:

Only 31 percent of the survey’s participants say they approve of McConnell’s job performance, the same number that approve of President Obama’s performance. Obama maintains a slightly higher disapproval rating, 64-61. 

For McConnell to be doing this badly overall, he must be disliked by ‘independents’ as well as conservatives. If one believed that independent voters are ‘moderates’ who are repelled by ‘extremists’, one would be hard pressed to explain how McConnell could be unpopular with the extremists and the moderates simultaneously.

Of course, if you understand that most unaffiliated voters are not moderates but rather Low Information Voters, there is no paradox at all. Conservative voters dislike McConnell because he doesn’t fight for their values; Low Information Voters dislike him because he doesn’t fight, period. Absent any interest in policy, Low Information Voters look for alpha male leaders instead. Seeing that McConnell is somebody who can be pushed around, they are not impressed. An important data point used by Low Information Voters when they are making up their minds is the extent to which each candidate can motivate his followers. When Obama excited his supporters to a state of orgiastic rapture, they were impressed. When they see that Mitch McConnell is only able to inspire distrust, they are repelled. Some of the voters who might potentially vote for him have drifted to the Democrats, and others to his primary challenger. This explains the popularity of both his left-wing and right-wing opponents. 

To survive, McConnell must nurture his inner Clint Eastwood. Rapidly.