A Response to My Liberal Neighbor
Irecently received this email from a neighbor:
I want to share the following words from Boston Globe “Fast Forward” columnist Teresa Hanafin about the upcoming election. I know it won’t make a difference to your way of thinking — which is a mystery and a deep disappointment to me — but I think it is important for you to understand how many of us who have been your friends feel. This is not just a difference in politics or ideology, it is a difference in fundamental values.
This neighbor’s children grew up with mine. We were once good friends. We socialized and traveled together. No more. But we are civil toward each other. I don’t remember ever talking with him much about politics, but I know him to be center- left — certainly no radical, let alone a revolutionary.
Curiously, my neighbor thinks I do not know what my former friends feel about me. How could I possibly not know? I regularly run across people who hate Trump as much as my former friends do. Either my neighbor doesn’t know that he lives in a bubble, or he doesn’t know that I do not. He can easily avoid conservative news. I, on the other hand, cannot avoid his sources of news because they saturate the air I breathe. I could not avoid them even if I tried. He can avoid conservatives, or turn conservative friends like me into erstwhile friends.
He says there is a difference between us in “fundamental values.” He doesn’t define “fundamental values,” but it sounds as if he is saying he has better values than I have, or even that he is a good person, and I am not. Liberals have always said this of conservatives. For the record, I doubt my values really are different from his, and his values are, by and large, good — although there is one value he might work on: humility.
He is not accusing me of a good-faith error, because my error, in his view, can only have been made on purpose, the consequence not of ignorance but of malevolence. It seems impossible for him to entertain the possibility that the error is his — a good-faith error perhaps, but an error all the same. He is as imprisoned in his liberal bubble as was the film critic Pauline Kael, who was reported to have said about the 1972 election, “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”
I was recently honored at a dinner sponsored by the Claremont Institute, of which I am the chairman . My own siblings refused to come. They could not bear to spend a few hours in the presence of people, many of whom have said good things about Trump. One of my siblings said the Claremont dinner was over “her line.” Now, my siblings say they respect me, but it is not easy to square respect with their assumption that I was involved in, indeed the chairman of, an organization so vile that they could not in good conscience be in any way associated with it. And they cannot understand why I am insulted.
As I have told them, I would come to any event of theirs, whether they were being honored or not. I would assume that any group in which they are involved consisted of good people, even if I thought them misguided. But my siblings were unwilling to return the respect. Like my neighbor, it seems my siblings cannot entertain the possibility that there is a legitimate view different from their own. Because it is impossible to change the views of people who are so certain, and at the same time because I value family very highly, I have returned to the family fold.
By contrast to my siblings, I have a cousin who came to the dinner. His politics are not radical; I suspect they are similar to those of my siblings. Sadly, it took courage and open-mindedness for him to come to the dinner, — “sad” because today it takes courage to listen to intelligent people with whom one disagrees.
I fear for my country when there is so little common ground between citizens, even within families. America today seems to consist of enemies and friends, not fellow citizens who struggle forward toward a common end. That said, I still have some hope, because this seemingly unbridgeable chasm seems mostly to apply to the elite. Average Americans — and I include the majority of Democrats can still live together in peace. But for that to happen the elite must stop encouraging them to fight.
My neighbor thinks my values have changed, but I doubt it. What I think has changed is my assessment of the current situation.
I now believe (and have believed for any number of years) that America is being attacked by an enemy regime that wants to destroy our way of life . Former President Trump is a warrior who has a constellation of assets well suited to meet our current situation. My neighbor, on the other hand, does not believe we are in a war, and he hates Trump. He assumes Trump would be a very bad president at any time. He might be right, but he doesn’t assess Trump in light of the circumstances. He looks at Trump in a vacuum; whereas I judge him, as one must, in the context of the current situation. In politics one can never say “never.” Those who call themselves “Never-Trumpers” betray an ignorance about politics. As I have written any number of times, I believe Trump would have been the worst president at any other time in our history, when circumstances were very different than they are today, but he is the best president we could have hoped for in these times; indeed, we are blessed to have him.
The email from my neighbor included an article from a Boston Globe pundit which began as follows:
So here we are, 6 days away from Election Day, and we have to somehow come to terms with this appalling fact: Tens of millions of Americans will spurn an experienced prosecutor, US senator, and vice president with concrete plans for helping women and families and small businesses and first-time homebuyers, and will instead fill in a little oval or tap a touchscreen next to the name of a convicted rapist and serial fraudster who embraces fascism and autocracy, admires Hitler, and thinks women should be jailed for having an abortion.
I really don’t know my country.
How can one not cry when an ally of a candidate for president casually calls the home of 3.2 million fellow Americans, a place with an industrial high-income economy and thriving tourist industry, “a floating island of garbage?”
How can one hold back tears when the candidate himself refers to desperate migrants as vermin, garbage, and animals?…
You get the drift. There are hundreds of pundits on both Left and Right who write polemics of this sort. I’m not sure why my neighbor thinks this one is an authority. As far as I can tell, she is a soldier in the propaganda unit of our enemy regime. The rhetorical strategy of that regime at present is to call Trump “Hitler.” And so, she dutifully complies. It doesn’t seem to dawn on my neighbor that this author might be biased, perhaps even grossly so. I, for one, think almost all of her claims are wrong or outright lies. It seems my neighbor, on the other hand, takes every statement as a fact . My neighbor is very intelligent, but his thinking has become very lazy — the result, I suppose, of being in contact only with those who believe as he does.
I realize why he agrees with the author, but why would he think that such an unserious piece of work would have any chance of changing my views? So, my suggestion is that he find a serious person to represent his views (or represent them himself) and let me, or some other serious person, respond.
For argument’s sake, I shall stipulate that what the author says is true — all but the bit about Trump admiring Hitler. Leaving that aside, I would still vote for Trump, just as I would accept water from him were I dying of thirst, and he was the only one offering water. I might well not invite him to dinner, but the current election is not about which candidate you would rather have for dinner, or even which one has the better character. It is about which one will likely save America and which one will likely destroy it. This is a contest not between representatives of different political parties within the same regime, but between representatives of different regimes. In other words, this is a war.
What makes it a war? At root, each side has a different understanding of what constitutes a just society. For one side — their side — a just society is based on group outcome equality, while our side believes that a just society is based on individual merit; that is, giving each person their due. Now, the latter society will always produce outcome differences. Thus, the two understandings of justice are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t admit people to college (or anything else) based both on group quotas and merit at the same time. It’s one or the other.
Admittedly, determining whether we are in a war, or how perilous is the current situation, is not easy. But it has been made immeasurably easier with the revelation of a recently unearthed video by a man named Brian Lozenski.
Lozenski, an associate professor of urban and multicultural education at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was selected by Governor Tim Walz’s Education Department to help write the statewide “implementation framework” for Minnesota’s new “ethnic studies” standards, which will provide the foundation for ethnic studies curricula for all public schools in Minnesota. Lozenski is the foremost authority on ethnic studies in Minnesota, and the de facto leader of Walz’s ethnic studies initiative.
In the video, Lozenski explains that:
The first tenet of critical race theory is that the United States as constructed is irreversibly racist. So if the nation-state as constructed is irreversibly racist, then it must be done with. It must be overthrown. And so we [proponents of critical race theory] can’t be like, “Oh no, critical race theory is just about telling our stories, and diversity.” It’s not about that. It’s about overthrow. It’s insurgent. And we need to be, I think, more honest with that. … You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro-U.S.
My neighbor and siblings may well approve of CRT. M ore likely, they would claim that it is not being taught. Regardless, they do not believe that CRT is about destroying America. But that is what the destructive Left believes.
What critical race theory teaches is that racism has seeped, mostly unnoticed, into every nook and cranny of American life: every value, every custom, every law, every policy, every bit of history, and even our language. If America really were this racist, this evil, then Lozenski would be right: it ought to be overthrown. After all, why would we wish to live in such an evil country?
The Right must understand that the charge of systemic racism is the Left’s most powerful weapon, for it is that charge that justifies overthrowing America. The Right must do a much better job than it has of refuting this claim. Unfortunately, the Right, no less than the Left, is hamstrung by white guilt. Fortunately, Trump is not. He has no white guilt and therefore has no trouble calling the charge that America is racist to the core what it is: “horse manure.” Most Americans do not believe they are racist or have white privilege, but they need their leaders, Trump foremost, to confirm what they know and give them permission to say it.
I am quite sure that neither my neighbor nor my siblings have the least interest in overthrowing their country, which they love despite its sins. If this is true, then as good citizens they have an obligation to ensure that CRT values do not infuse the education of our children. But they don’t. Why? Because, like most of us, they go with the flow; they fear that, were they to investigate, they might find something in need of correction. But they know they would not have the courage to try to fix it, and then their conscience would indict their cowardice. Better to lie low. In their defense, the courage it would take for them, all of whom live within confines of the destructive Left, to take a strong stand against critical race theory would be immense, much more than a society can expect of its average citizen.
Although many on the Right have long understood the purpose of critical race theory, to my knowledge, never has a leading advocate said it out loud. Lozenski is not a marginal figure; he is a nationally known activist and academic and the foremost authority on ethnic studies in Minnesota. And, as I noted, he is Tim Walz’s top education advisor. And Lozenski’s call for the destruction of America is a call for war. If someone says they want to destroy you, then you are in a war. This is the most significant thing about the Lozenski video: it shows clearly that there exists in America an enemy regime that wants to destroy us. Republicans do not know this. Now they should. That would be a good start. You can’t win a war if you don’t know you are in one. Trump often says, and quite correctly, that the enemy within is far more dangerous than the enemy without. Here, right in front of us, is the enemy within: Brian Lozenski and his friends.
Conservative education expert Stanley Kurtz writes:
Lozenski is no outlier. On the contrary, he has been the leading voice advocating the addition of a radical version of “ethnic studies” to Minnesota’s social-studies standards (citizenship and government, economics, geography, history, and now ethnic studies). Lozenski is also the key organizer and thought leader for the radical leftist advocacy groups that Governor Walz has effectively put in charge of rewriting Minnesota’s social-studies standards.
Lozenski is an unabashed revolutionary. Of this there can be no doubt. He says so explicitly. Since Lozenski is Walz’s top education advisor and is shepherding his most important education program, ethnic studies, through the approval process, there can be no doubt that Walz himself is a revolutionary.
Under Walz, ethnic studies (which is to say CRT) will be embedded in every subject, including the sciences and physical education, in every grade, in every public school in Minnesota.
Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the Center for the American Experiment gives us a flavor of the new standards:
- “First-graders must ‘ identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power’ and ‘ use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.’ ” Yes, first graders. I can’t imagine how these standards will be translated into a first-grade curriculum, but it’s frightening to even think about it.
- “Fourth-graders must ‘ identify the processes and impacts of colonization and examine how discrimination and the oppression of various racial and ethnic groups have produced resistance movements.’”
- “High-school students are told to ‘ develop an analysis of racial capitalism’ and ‘ anti-Blackness’ and are taught to view themselves as members of ‘ racialized hierarchies’ based on ‘ dominant European beauty standards.’”
These standards are obscurant — intentionally so — but for those of us who study such things, they all are unmistakably intended to lead students to disdain America and join in the overthrow of their country.
There is no doubt Walz knows the destructive purpose of ethnic studies. Minnesota’s ethnic studies initiative did not bubble up from below. It was Tim Walz’s brainchild. Kersten writes:
Walz has used both legislation and administrative rulemaking to achieve… radical Ethnic Studies instruction in every grade and every required subject. Between 2021 and 2023, Walz proposed and pushed Ethnic Studies in a series of “governor’s policy and budget bills” at the Minnesota Legislature. He finally succeeded in 2023, after Democrats won a “trifecta” in the 2022 elections.
Because of Walz, school boards across Minnesota are now required to review curricula and instructional materials in all required subjects to ensure they are compliant with ethnic studies standards. In addition, new teachers must demonstrate competence in ethnic studies in order to obtain a teaching license. (Walz appointed the majority of the teacher standards board members.) If Walz has his way, he will even mandate ethnic studies for students being homeschooled or attending private religious schools.
Prominent education experts, Minnesota House Republicans, and 30,000 citizens have called on Walz to modify his ethnic studies curriculum. These calls have all been ignored.
I trust this is enough to establish Walz as a revolutionary who wants to overthrow America. Of course, from his perspective, he only wants to improve America. But his idea of “improving” is identical to my idea of “overthrowing.”
I would never vote for a ticket in which the vice presidential candidate aims to destroy America. Here is an exception to my “never” rule.
But we cannot stop here. What do we make of the fact that Kamala chose as her running mate a man who wants to overthrow America? Could it be that she didn’t know whom she was choosing? No, it couldn’t be. After all, she passed over candidates more likely to get her elected. Why would she do this unless she believed that his ideology was the most compatible with hers? It may strike one as odd that she chose Walz over candidates more likely to help her win, but it is not so odd when one remembers that revolutionaries are absolutists who are prepared to lose an election before they compromise their principles.
It is sometimes the case that a presidential candidate fails to detect some aspect of their running mate — for example, personal failings — but a candidate does not choose, say, a Marxist, or in this case, a revolutionary running mate by accident
Walz’s revolutionary record is there for all to see. His ethnic studies program that calls for the overthrow of America has been visible for years. Walz has a long history of cozying up to CCP entities. He favors illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. He even considered investing in a ladder company which would have made it easier for illegal immigrants to scale the border wall. Bringing in immigrants with cultures different from our own — and then insisting they not be assimilated — is part of the “destructive Left’s” effort to destroy our culture. Walz and Harris, on the other hand, would have said before the election season that it is “racist” to keep people out of the country. Where do they get such ideas from? From Lozenski and his friends. It is these ideas that will be taught to Minnesota public school students.
In Minnesota, children can get abortions without parental consent. Walz supports transitions and effectively encourages people from other states to have transitions in Minnesota. In so far as transgenderism denies a universal human nature, Walz is undercutting the very foundation of the Founders’ regime. Walz has no idea of the connection between transgenderism and the Founders’ political philosophy, but he is undercutting the foundation of the country all the same. The “brains” of the movement — I would exclude Lozenski in this case — do understand.
Walz set up a hotline to allow Minnesotans to snitch on those fellow citizens who were not abiding by Walz’s draconian Covid diktats. This is one way a totalitarian regime ensures compliance.
Walz is a socialist. He is on video saying, “O ne man’s socialism is another man’s neighborliness.” We should have learned by now that socialism must be enforced by tyranny.
During the 2020 riots, Walz delayed bringing in the National Guard until Minnesota had suffered more than $500 million of property damage. Like Pelosi and Harris, Walz fanned the flames and looked the other way at criminal activity. In this case, he was literally destroying America.
Walz is a revolutionary, and he was likely chosen for just this reason. Kamala, too, was chosen to replace Biden at the behest of the destructive Left, precisely because she herself is a revolutionary. Like Walz, she was not the best candidate the Democrats had to offer, but she satisfied the destructive Left while other candidates didn’t.
My neighbor is surely no revolutionary. He thinks his party, the Democratic Party, is not revolutionary and has nothing to do with the Lozenski crowd. But it does. The Lozenski wing of the party, the destructive Left, controls the Democratic Party. The decent, well-meaning Democrats like my neighbor go along. These go-alongers don’t necessarily agree with the entire agenda of the destructive Left — say biological men competing with women in sports — but as they don’t rebel, or even object strenuously, they might as well themselves be part of the destructive Left.
One of my siblings, no doubt on the authority of the New York Times, noted that the Founders were wary of demagogues and populism. That is true, but what the New York Times did not tell her is that the Founders more intensely feared that the government would deprive citizens of their rights. If the deprivation was serious enough, the Founders believed there existed a right of revolution, a right they appealed to when they forcibly parted ways with England.
My neighbor and siblings would no doubt wonder what rights citizens are being deprived of today. They know that those who object to the prevailing woke wisdom are called “racist.” But what they probably don’t know is that, if being called a “racist” does not shut up the objector, they are censored, intimidated, fired, deprived of financial service, subjected to lawfare, even imprisoned. I would guess my neighbor and siblings think my concerns are irrational, but again, they must consider that there exists a world outside of their own.
And my silent interlocutors should keep in mind that it takes punishing only a high-profile few, a John Eastman or an Amy Wax (have they heard of her?), to keep everyone else from stepping out of line. What young lawyer of average courage and good sense would decide to be an election lawyer after seeing Eastman disbarred, knowing that The 65 Project seeks to disbar and disgrace every lawyer who simply worked for Trump on election cases. Obviously, The 65 Project will not stop once it has finished its work on the 65 Trump election lawyers. I very much doubt my neighbor has even heard of The 65 Project. He should look it up. Somewhat surprisingly, Wikipedia has a balanced account.
Who exactly is the enemy weaponizing the law (lawfare) and depriving the citizens of their rights? It is not primarily the Democratic Party, though it plays a meaningful role. Unlike the well-known totalitarianism of the twentieth century — where the state alone was the enemy — in our soft but growing totalitarianism the regime is a loose confederation of the country’s major institutions.
The 2020 riots were a good example of the enemy regime in action. The regime’s paramilitary operation, BLM and Antifa among others, sparked the fire that lit the riots; the regime’s intellectuals justified them; corporations and foundations funded them; the media covered them over; politicians fanned the flames; and the regime’s justice apparatus, including Kamala herself, freed law breakers. Even the military got into the act, denying Trump needed resources.
Among the best evidence that we are living in a soft totalitarianism is the witness of those who lived under the totalitarian regimes of the last century. One such person is the mother of a friend of mine who is a refugee from communist Bulgaria. What she sees in today’s America reminds her of her homeland. She watched President Trump’s so-called “hush money” trial on television. When the guilty verdict was handed down, she cried. She understood the verdict as the regime trying to rid itself of its most formidable enemy. For her, Trump represents the American dream, not only the opportunity for material gain but the freedom from tyranny, the freedom to live as one chooses — subject, of course, to God-given moral constraints. She knows that Trump himself may not always live by such constraints. Just the same, she feels blessed to have him to hold onto. She believes his virtues far outweigh his vices, which, by the way, she thinks are overplayed by our corrupt media.
I doubt my neighbor has tried to put himself in the shoes of the 80 million people who voted for Trump in the 2020 election, and ask what they see in Trump. If I had to distill it to one thing it would be this: Trump is, like his supporters, a bona fide outsider who gives the middle finger to the establishment; and that establishment includes those, like my neighbor, who treat the New York Times as their Bible. Perhaps my neighbor’s hatred for Trump is because he is telling my neighbor to “f” off.
Biden recently called Trump voters “garbage,” reminiscent of Hillary’s “deplorable” accusation and Obama’s comment that Trump voters “cling” to their religion and their guns. Trump voters can feel the disdain.
Something similar happened during Covid. Anthony Fauci censored the statement of 940 epidemiologists and public health experts, who questioned the scientific rationale for lockdowns. These scientists were every bit as eminent as Fauci. No doubt my neighbor applauded Fauci, who thought the American people were too stupid to weigh conflicting opinions. More disdain.
Trump is authentic. Like him or hate him, he is what he is. Can you imagine him orchestrating a fake hunting expedition, as did Tim Walz? Not a chance. Authenticity in politics is very rare. And Trump is a real man. When, after the first assassination attempt, he spontaneously leapt up, fist raised, and encouraged his supporters to fight, Trump was behaving like a real man — refreshing in a world of effeminate men and metrosexuals like Gavin Newson and Anthony Blinken
I have a friend in Maine who looks in on his 81-year-old neighbor every day. She was so unnerved after the first assassination attempt, that she took to bed for three days. I doubt my neighbor can understand how anyone can have such loyalty and commitment to President Trump.
The mainstream media tells us over and over that the 2020 election was “the most secure ever.” The enemy regime operates under Goebbels’ principle that a lie becomes the truth if you tell it frequently enough. This is a favorite tactic of totalitarian regimes. The election may not have been stolen (I honestly don’t know) but given the circumstances there can be no doubt that the 2020 election was not by a long shot the most secure ever: long periods of mail-in voting, unsecured drop boxes, unproven computer tabulators, counting votes after the election, the absence of voter ID and signature verification.
The destructive Left tells us morning to night that if Trump is elected, we should fear a coup. This is projection, another favorite tactic of the destructive Left. It accuses the Right of things the Left has already done or plans to do. My neighbor should take seriously the suggestion that the Left has already effected a coup. Non-stop character assassination, bogus investigations, impeachments, disloyal intelligence agencies, crimes, fraud and lies amounted to the overthrow of a duly elected administration. When the Left warns us that Trump will effect a coup, we on the Right should say, “You have already effected a coup.”
I fear that a Trump victory will put my safety at risk. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood with only a handful of Trump voters. My neighbor would think my fear is paranoid, but given the history of both local and national governments encouraging rioting, I believe my fears are perfectly justifiable. I fear my neighbor is simply unable to see things from my point of view. This serious, detailed response deserves a rejoinder. I am not holding my breath.
