Conservative: ‘Saluting’ the Republic of CHAZ
At Canada’s National Post, Rex Murphy mocks the “newly freeborn citizens” of the “Republic of the CHAZians” — the protesters who have occupied a six-block section of Seattle, initially called the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone. The “infant state and its infant citizens,” he sarcastically cheers, have finally “liberated themselves from the demonic oppression” of their “notoriously fascist” city, “a principality known to all as veering to the right of North Korea.” Their “cause is good,” he snarks, though it serves as an “excusatory blanket” for looters, vandals and thugs. For his part, Murphy believes in the “ancient idea” that criminals should be “punished.” But “we are in a strange and potentially dangerous time, especially when we give . . . approval to street vandals. Protesters think they are licensed to do anything.”
History desk: The Big Lie About America
“The orgy of destruction” in “the wake of George Floyd’s death has been justified by a lie” that “our educational system has peddled” for “more than a generation,” fumes Mackubin Owens at the Providence Journal: “that the United States is irredeemably racist to the core.” At the time the nation was founded, “slavery was a worldwide phenomenon.” Yet America’s inception was based on the claim that “human beings are equal in their possession of natural rights and that, accordingly, no one has the natural right to rule over another without the latter’s consent.” It’s true we “have not always lived up to our own principles.” But while racism lives “among individuals,” the fact remains that “the founding principles of the United States are explicitly non-racist.”
From the right: The Affluent vs. the Rich
The current “squalor” in “militia-occupied Seattle,” where “the idiot children of the American ruling class” are “playing poor,” is “class camouflage,” quips National Review’s Kevin Williamson: The real class war in this country is not between “the poor and excluded” and “the rich and the powerful,” but rather the “seriously rich” and the “merely affluent.” It’s “business class vs. first class,” in which all the participants are “comfortable.” The call for firing New York Times opinion editor James Bennet, for example, “did not come from America’s poor black communities” but from Bennet’s own “underlings and juniors.” His replacement, unsurprisingly, was “a well-off white woman” who attended “elite colleges.” Meanwhile, “George Floyd is still dead. Jacob Frey is still mayor of Minneapolis. Medaria Arradondo is still the chief of police.”
Mom: NYC Schools Taught My Son He’s Racist
“At the direction of Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza,” charges Libby Emmons at The Post Millennial, a New York City public school used George Floyd’s killing to teach her fourthgrade son and his class about “systemic racism and white privilege” — in a lesson that, far from decreasing racism, actually “verges on instilling it.” Her son, “the only white kid in the class,” discovered that he and his “whole family” are racist, “even if they don’t think they are.” The entire lesson was “indoctrination,” she blasts — one that will make kids “think they should divide themselves” on racial and other grounds. Instead of teaching 10-year-olds “critical race theory,” why not teach them “how all people are created equal” and that “we should meet each other where we stand”?
From the left: Biden’s ‘Boring’ Advantage
President Trump may not want to keep “smearing” Democratic nominee Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” Keith Naughton warns at The Hill: For Biden, the term is “not an insult” but “an asset.” In fact, coming off as “boring and sleepy” after the “tumultuous” Trumpian years may wind up winning the ex-veep the presidency — just as being “the nice, safe, boring alternative” to Bernie Sanders won him the nomination. Trump’s decision to “amplify the storm” amid the pandemic and the protests has led Americans to give him “poor marks in dealing with both issues.” And “the public is sick” of his tweeting. “All this adds up to a public looking for a respite from the tempest.” Yes, “Biden is boring — and it’s working.”