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Hamburg, Germany, July. As world leaders gather for the G20 summit, far-left anti-fascist (antifa) rioters set fire to cars and property, terrorize residents and injure more than 200 police officers attempting to keep the peace. Did you miss it? CNNs initial reports referred to the protesters as eclectic and peaceful.

But you need not cross the shining seas to experience violence, destruction of property and a general dismantling of liberal values from the political left. You could simply visit Americas elite college campuses like Yale or Middlebury or Berkeley, where tomorrows leaders attempt to shut down conservative voices with protest or riots. At Middlebury, rioting students landed liberal professor Allison Stanger in a neck brace for the crime of defending a conservative academics right to speak. At Berkeley, mobs of students created a war zone ahead of a planned visit from conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, injuring Trump supporters and causing $100,000 in damages.

Or head to Portland, Ore., one of the most liberal cities in the nation in the heart of the progressive Pacific Northwest, which this month Politico labeled Americas Most Politically Violent City. The progressive paradise where Republicans are virtually an extinct species has witnessed millions in damages attributed to the same types of anti-fascists-in-name-only that kept Hamburg residents paralyzed in fear this month. A counter-protest to a planned pro-Trump rally landed 14 antifa in jail for attacking the police with explosives and bricks.

Witness the blood-soaked congressional baseball field in Alexandria, Va., site of the June attack on U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and other Republicans batting up for their annual bipartisan game. James Hodgkinson, a fervent supporter of progressive politics, showed up to the field with a rifle, a handgun and a hit list of Republicans. As Scalise fought for his life, MSNBC host Joy Reid felt conflicted: The attempted assassination was a delicate thing because of Scalises conservative views like opposition to gay marriage. Are we required in a moral sense to put that aside in the moment? she wondered. Yes, Joy, you are. The shooting of a mainstream, congressional Republican leader is reprehensible, and in no way justifiable.)

Now cross the Potomac and visit the halls of Congress, where Democratic lawmakers have accused Republicans of murder for supporting an overhaul to the spiraling, ruined Obamacare program, which by next year will leave dozens of counties without a single option for insurance. Reasonable people can disagree about how much our Medicaid program should grow without comparing the Republican bill to 9/11, as Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, did recently. Or saying the health care bill is paid for with blood money of dead Americans, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted shortly after the Scalise attack. If our sitting senators dont act more responsibly, who will?

Instead of retweeting, liberals who care about preserving our political system should be outraged that these are the standard-bearers of their party.

Nobody is directly responsible for a shooting except the shooter, and nobody throws a brick except the person who picks it up. No side has a monopoly on political violence. There are loonies at the fringes of every political movement mentally ill, perturbed and paranoid who can be stirred toward violence or dissuaded from it.

But when we have Democratic senators accusing political opponents of murder, when our college campuses descend into assault zones for conservative speakers (or those who defend them), when our major cities become playgrounds for far-left rioters and the news media gloss over it, we move toward a more violent and fractured society, not a safer one.

If gay people were pouring into bars and punching straight people, I as a gay man would speak out. If Jews were propagating terror in the name of our religion, I would condemn it vociferously. And when violence has come from the conservative side, I dont hesitate to stand against it. But its not.

There have been no right-wing groups storming campuses and flinging feces at speakers we dont like; no tea party mobs destroying property, assaulting police officers, and paralyzing our major cities; and no Republican senators calling their colleagues murderers just weeks after a political assassination attempt.

From Portland to New Haven to Washington, the violence were witnessing is largely a product of the hard left, and the reaction from mainstream liberals mostly silence, dismissiveness, equivocation means it will continue to flourish.

To move toward a less violent and hyper-charged society, we must be clearheaded about violence where we see it, and not avoid the subject. We must condemn it without conditions.

If you think Republicans are murderers, youre an extremist. If youre trading in that kind of rhetoric just to shut the other side up or raise a buck, youre giving cover to extremists. And if you object to political violence but fail to speak out, your weakness is causing our society to fracture.

Its time for liberal America to speak out against violence and the rhetoric that incites it.

Tribune Content Agency

Albert Eisenberg is the former communications director for the Philadelphia Republican Party.

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Liberal America has a political violence problem - Chicago Tribune - Chicago Tribune

However disappointed Full Frontal With Samantha Bee was with Donald Trumps presidential victory, the show has remained skeptical of just how much the #Resistance thats sprung up since his inauguration will accomplish. And in its July 19 episode, the show took aim at one Resistance goal in particular: impeachment.

In a segment taped at a recent march for impeachment in Los Angeles, Full Frontal correspondents Mike Rubens and Ashley Nicole Black talked to some of the outraged liberals protesting the Trump administration by advocating for their wildest dream of getting the president kicked out of office.

What was the day you decided that Trump should be impeached? Black asked one woman, who immediately insisted that she was certain on day one that it needed to happen. So its not so much that you wish for impeachment, Black responded, as it is that you wish for a different outcome to the election.

Outlining exactly how hard the road to impeachment is especially given that the process relies on broad bipartisan support Rubens then provided a handy reality check by pointing out that more presidents have been removed from office by cholera than impeachment.

You do realize that being a dick is not an impeachable offense? Black asked a different protester, who countered, It should be.

Its not exactly that Full Frontal disagrees that Trump is unfit for office; its more that the show doesnt believe marching in support of impeachment is actually going to solve anything. Maybe the allure of an impossible dream was much easier to get behind than the reality of fighting for incremental change, Rubens mused in his voiceover, his tone joking even as his words were grounded in palpable frustration.

Rubens and Black therefore attempted to guide protesters efforts toward a more practical approach with signs like Go Vote! and Pay attention to local elections! a strategy that falls right in line with Full Frontals demonstrated insistence of pointing out the power of local politics to shape Americas policies.

Original post:
Full Frontal With Samantha Bee confronts liberals who #resist by fantasizing about impeachment - Vox

By Andrew Hartman By Andrew Hartman July 20 at 6:00 AM

Andrew Hartman is professor of history at Illinois State University and author of two books: "A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars" and "Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School."

The left is back and millennials are leading the way. Socialism was the most searched word on the Merriam-Webster website in 2015, and a 2016 poll showed that 43 percent of Iowa Democrats described themselves as socialists. Despite the setback of President Trumps electoral victory, the left continues to grow. Publications like the magazine Jacobin, launched by millennial Bhaskar Sunkara, now reach more than 1 million website visitors each month.

But the millennial left is not a return to the New Left of the 1960s the student radicals, hippies and Yippies who raised hell in their efforts to end the Vietnam War and change American culture to make it less racist and sexist and more authentic. Rather it invokes the ideas of the Old Left of the 1930s the militant labor unions, socialists and even communists who, in the context of the worst economic depression in American history, sought a genuine alternative to capitalism.

The Old Left of the 1930s grew out of a 19th-century socialist movement and focused its political energy on the problems of capitalism. It was also deeply critical of Franklin D. Roosevelts brand of liberalism. Although Roosevelt championed the common man and pushed through New Deal reforms that became the bedrock of 20th-century American social democracy, the 1930s left criticized FDR and liberals for the compromises they made with capitalism.

The gulf between liberalism and Old Left ideas socialist ideas has only grown since the 1930s. Unlike liberals, who emerged from the 1960s prioritizing the political freedoms associated with individual rights, the socialist left has posited that most people the working class remain effectively powerless if capitalists control work, wages and welfare. In their view, the lefts mission the reason for its existence ought to be expanding the idea of political freedom to include economic freedom. This historical distinction between liberalism and socialism has resurfaced with the millennial left.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made waves as a democratic socialist presidential candidate. Here's what you need to know about being a democratic socialist and how it's different from socialism. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

One of the better representations of the millennial left is Chapo Trap House, a wildly popular podcast that boasts the most paid subscribers on Patreon. Around 15,000 people pay $5 per month for weekly subscriber-only episodes, in addition to the tens of thousands of listeners who tune in to the episodes Chapo makes public. Founded in March 2016, the podcast is a sometimes hilarious, often angry, mostly smart and always irreverent conversation about politics and culture.

Sincere in its democratic socialist leanings, Chapo is best known for its mocking and sarcastic tone, made clear by its very title, which combines a reference to Mexican drug lord Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn with the hip-hop slang term for a drug house (trap house). While it often takes on Trump and the alt-right with a sense of comedic genius, Chapo saves its most derisive material for the libs.

At first blush, the most obvious model for this iteration of the millennial left is the New Left of the 1960s young activists who attacked the hypocrisy of liberals with similar tactics. And indeed, Chapo could easily be mistaken for the Internet Age version of the Yippies the Youth International Party, led by 1960s left-wingers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, famous for theatrical political high-jinks. In 1968, the Yippies playfully advanced a pig for president, Pigasus the Immortal, and advocated group joint-rolling and nude grope-ins for peace.

But actually, the Chapo left advocates for Old Left socialism.

In the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of workers joined the mass labor unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Even the Communist Party, always suspect in American political life, enjoyed a surge in its American ranks thanks to the relatively common view that the Great Depression sounded the death knell of capitalism.

The 1930s left critiqued the limits of New Deal reforms. Some Old Leftists wanted workers to have complete autonomy in their workplaces. Still others, inspired by Soviet Russia, wanted the working class to control the state and command the economy. Many leftists did not go that far, yet at the very least wanted what they called industrial democracy a political and economic system accountable to the needs and desires of the industrial working class. New Deal liberals, who seemed to prefer technocratic tinkering, were considered barriers to such a left-wing vision of America.

Chapos commentary during the 2016 presidential campaign exposed just how much millennial left ideology resembles 1930s left ideology. Chapo attacked Hillary Clinton and the centrists who have dominated the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992. To the Chapo left, Clinton represents the neoliberal takeover of the Democratic Party. Neoliberalism, from their perspective, is a term of derision for a political philosophy that combines support for things leftists like, such as racial diversity, alongside ideas that run counter to everything they believe, such as the notion that the market is the best mechanism for sorting social goods like education.

In this view, the role of Clinton Democrats is to administer the decline of the New Deal, not fight for its expansion through different means. For example, instead of advocating for single-payer health care, Democrats passed Obamacare, a largely ineffective market-based solution. Instead of helping unions build a mass movement that might reshape American society to the benefit of millions, they see the Democratic ethos as technocratic and meritocratic.

Which is why Chapo has dedicated entire episodes to lambasting The West Wing, Aaron Sorkins popular television show that fetishizes the liberal view that a smart, dedicated, well-meaning elite will save us from right-wing Neanderthals. As Chapo often makes clear, this is a naive understanding of politics that ignores power, thus helping facilitate Republican domination.

Chapo reflects the broader generational divide on the left side of the American political spectrum between millennials and their neoliberal predecessors. Like their Depression-era forerunners, Chapo-listening millennials have moved closer to socialism in response to an economic crisis. Millennials are likely to be worse off economically than their parents or grandparents, especially those who have become job-seeking adults in the years since the Great Recession of 2008. A left-wing political response to such conditions makes sense.

A podcast does not make the left, any more than little magazines made the Old Left. But in the same way that historians now think about The Masses, Max Eastmans experimental little magazine that gave voice to the hopes and dreams of the socialist left in the years proceeding World War I, we might come to think about Chapo as the voice of a new left, the millennial left, coming into being.

See more here:
The millennial left's war against liberalism - Washington Post

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren wants to know why Hollywood hates Trump.

I find most liberalsespecially in Hollywood, they dont know why they hate President Trump so muchthey just do. I want to know why, she told Stuart Varney on FOX Business.

Lahren will face off with comedienne Chelsea Handler later this month, during a live debate at the Politicon politics convention in Pasadena, California.

Its like the Comic-Con for political nerdsIm excited about debating Chelsea Handler, she said.

Lahren said her heated exchange with The Daily Shows Trevor Noah has taught her how to deal with comedic demagogue.

Chelsea obviously is an opponent of this president and his agenda and America first agenda so for me its going to be probing her as to why she has such a disdain for the president, she said. Comedians are tricky. Ive dealt with a couple of them at this point and what they do is that when they are not solid on the issues of the policy then they revert to the humor and then they make a mockery of you, she added.

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Handler, a vocal critic of Trump, led the Womens March at Sundance, in conjunction with the Womens March on Washington, protesting his inauguration. Lahren said if Handler asked why Trump hated women she would respond: If Trump hated women so much, why did he have the first successful campaign manager in Kellyanne Conway, who is a female. He entrusted her to run his campaign and lead him to victory but he hates women? Find that hard to believe.

While there may be no winner or loser of the debate, Lahren plans to hold her ground and defend Trump and his America first agenda.

Originally posted here:
Tomi Lahren: Hollywood liberals don't know why they hate Trump - Fox Business

Paul Blousteins July 15 letter (Which party has the power to bend minds?) contains so many tired myths of the right, its hard to know where to begin. So Ill try to meet myth with fact:

Liberals prize independence, fending for ourselves, and self-respect every bit as much as conservatives. We do disagree, however, with the contention that the federal governments efforts to help and protect the people are oppressive.

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Every single inhabitant of this country accepts help from the federal government that is, from his or her fellow citizens every single day. Ten minutes spent reviewing what federal money is spent on utterly explodes the idea that some are more independent or self-reliant than others. We are all in this together.

When liberals describe the current economy as unfair, they are not demonizing; they are saying the economy is unfair. Nor do academics like Jeffrey D. Sachs think they are better than Bloustein or that he is evil for liking Ronald Reagan.

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There are millions of well-meaning Americans who think the Reagan administration was a disaster for America for very sound reasons. I honor Blousteins right to disagree, but I deeply resent his insinuation that our opinions are based not on facts but on animosity.

Bob Binstock

Cambridge

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In views of liberals and conservatives, can we steer clear of the animosity vortex? - The Boston Globe