The Socialist Judge: Elena Kagan and the Teachable Moment
By Jeffrey Lord on 5.12.10 @ 6:08AM, The American Spectator
“In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness.”
– Elena Kagan, Obama nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court
“This is a great opportunity to find out what’s in this woman’s mind.”
– Rush Limbaugh
The teachable moment on socialism is here.
Courtesy of Barack Obama and Elena Kagan..
The issue — the issue — of this confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court Justice should be not Ms. Kagan, but socialism. Socialism, the philosophy she professed such admiration for in her 1981 Princeton thesis titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”
“The Final Conflict.” Think of that.
Why focus on an undergraduate college paper written almost thirty years ago?
Because we are in the middle of a massively controversial presidency led by a man who has exhibited every intention of “transforming” America in the socialist image — leading the country away from its capitalist heritage. This Supreme Court nomination does not, after all, come in a vacuum. Since taking office, the Obama administration has taken control of everything from car companies to financial institutions to banks to your health care.
And no, the obvious intent of Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, her thesis adviser and himself a notable progressive, is not missed. In saying in the New York Times that “to study something is not to endorse it” Wilentz telegraphs that is exactly what Kagan — and he himself — thought then and now of socialism. They liked it. They like it still. A lot. It helps to understand when reading this particular bit of fantasy that the American Prospect has described Wilentz as “a distinguished historian active in Democratic politics.” His defense of Kagan is the plain attempt to engage in a little storytelling with a considerable partisan design — to convince the unwary that Kagan is not what her words and actions demonstrate she in fact is.
Around America, whether it is the struggles of California or New York, or abroad in Greece, the chickens of socialism are coming home to roost. And Solicitor General Kagan – by all accounts just peachy as a person — is an on the record believer in the philosophy that is behind all of this.
Socialism.
There is precedent for a fight of this nature.
In 1993, with Democrats in control of the Congress and the media wrapping the new President Clinton in the standard media gauze of affection and let’s-all-work-together, something happened. Something important.
While it is not often remembered, before there was a Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol in his inimitable style calmly lit the bonfire that signaled the launch of the historic 1994 election of a GOP Congress. He began by rejecting outright the intention of Congressional Republicans to respond to the introduction of HillaryCare — the health care debate of the day — by agreeing to the premise and tinkering and bickering around the edges. Serving as chair of a group called the Project for the Republican Future, Kristol wrote a memo that wound up shaking the political foundations of the day. Kristol’s startling recommendation: “kill” the bill. Don’t bicker about the details. Don’t fiddle at the margins. Just plain kill the bill outright and stand on conservative principles.
The reaction so startled, so clearly drew a bright line between conservatives and liberals, that in fact the decades-long somnolent establishment Republicans woke up. Prodded hourly by the rebellious Newt Gingrich, the case for opposing HillaryCare was made. And as a result the first Republican Congress since 1952 — 42 years earlier — was elected in the “Gingrich Revolution.”
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He has worked on the nominations of seven Supreme Court nominees. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.
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The Socialist Judge: Elena Kagan and the Teachable Moment
The Socialist Judge: Elena Kagan and the Teachable Moment
By Jeffrey Lord on 5.12.10 @ 6:08AM, The American Spectator
“In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness.”
– Elena Kagan, Obama nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court
“This is a great opportunity to find out what’s in this woman’s mind.”
– Rush Limbaugh
The teachable moment on socialism is here.
Courtesy of Barack Obama and Elena Kagan..
The issue — the issue — of this confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court Justice should be not Ms. Kagan, but socialism. Socialism, the philosophy she professed such admiration for in her 1981 Princeton thesis titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”
“The Final Conflict.” Think of that.
Why focus on an undergraduate college paper written almost thirty years ago?
Because we are in the middle of a massively controversial presidency led by a man who has exhibited every intention of “transforming” America in the socialist image — leading the country away from its capitalist heritage. This Supreme Court nomination does not, after all, come in a vacuum. Since taking office, the Obama administration has taken control of everything from car companies to financial institutions to banks to your health care.
And no, the obvious intent of Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, her thesis adviser and himself a notable progressive, is not missed. In saying in the New York Times that “to study something is not to endorse it” Wilentz telegraphs that is exactly what Kagan — and he himself — thought then and now of socialism. They liked it. They like it still. A lot. It helps to understand when reading this particular bit of fantasy that the American Prospect has described Wilentz as “a distinguished historian active in Democratic politics.” His defense of Kagan is the plain attempt to engage in a little storytelling with a considerable partisan design — to convince the unwary that Kagan is not what her words and actions demonstrate she in fact is.
Around America, whether it is the struggles of California or New York, or abroad in Greece, the chickens of socialism are coming home to roost. And Solicitor General Kagan – by all accounts just peachy as a person — is an on the record believer in the philosophy that is behind all of this.
Socialism.
There is precedent for a fight of this nature.
In 1993, with Democrats in control of the Congress and the media wrapping the new President Clinton in the standard media gauze of affection and let’s-all-work-together, something happened. Something important.
While it is not often remembered, before there was a Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol in his inimitable style calmly lit the bonfire that signaled the launch of the historic 1994 election of a GOP Congress. He began by rejecting outright the intention of Congressional Republicans to respond to the introduction of HillaryCare — the health care debate of the day — by agreeing to the premise and tinkering and bickering around the edges. Serving as chair of a group called the Project for the Republican Future, Kristol wrote a memo that wound up shaking the political foundations of the day. Kristol’s startling recommendation: “kill” the bill. Don’t bicker about the details. Don’t fiddle at the margins. Just plain kill the bill outright and stand on conservative principles.
The reaction so startled, so clearly drew a bright line between conservatives and liberals, that in fact the decades-long somnolent establishment Republicans woke up. Prodded hourly by the rebellious Newt Gingrich, the case for opposing HillaryCare was made. And as a result the first Republican Congress since 1952 — 42 years earlier — was elected in the “Gingrich Revolution.”
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He has worked on the nominations of seven Supreme Court nominees. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.
Like this: