In the wake of Van Jones resignation, there has been some backlash on the part of supporters of the embattled ex-Green Jobs Czar. Indeed, a recent editorial published in The Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph (www.nashuatelegraph.com) pointedly stated, with much derision, that Jones resigned “after TV host Glenn Beck and others accused him of ‘radical,’ ‘communist’ tendencies.”
The use of quotes by the author around the words radical and communist are meant to suggest that it is only Beck and others of his “ilk” who ascribed Jones thusly, but that’s not true. The real issue is not that Glenn Beck or anyone else “called” Van Jones a communist; the real issue is that Van Jones called himself a communist, and it was Beck and a small handful of others who were alert enough to point it out to the rest of the sheeple.
The simple truth is that there are just some affiliations and labels, historical though they may be in the lives of the wearers, that rightfully get you kicked out of the biggest dances thrown by the good ‘ol U.S.A. Being a communist is one of them. Being a Nazi (a real Nazi…not the “anyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi” Nazi) is another. Oh, and we can surely put “card-carrying member of the KKK” on that list, can we not (which, by the way, beckons the question why Democrat Senator Robert Byrd is still Senator Robert Byrd lo these many years later)?
I’ve never been one to trot out the usual hyperbolic examples of Worst People in the History of the World (again, not Keith Olbermann’s version, for which, apparently, you need only qualify on the basis of disagreeing with his politics) to which to compare those with whom I disagree, but you ask for it when you suggest to me that I should overlook Jones’ well-documented radical beliefs, to include his self-avowals as a communist, because, in an embarrassingly-simplistic expression of his positions, he wants us all to enjoy equality and breathe clean air. OK…fair enough. On that note, clear-thinking citizens of the world should still be outraged at the demise of Adolph Hitler, so dedicated was he to fuel-efficient and economically-efficient cars for the people…or are some of you unaware from whence the Volkswagen sprang? All of that other “stuff” for which Hitler is rather well-known? Perhaps it should be nothing more than a footnote to his contributions on behalf of automotive progress.
Just as I am (hopefully) unable to sell you on the idea that the loss of Adolph Hitler was a loss to automobile consumers everywhere, so it is that you’ll have to forgive me my disinclination to accept a self-proclaimed Marxist as a member of my current president’s administration on the basis that he’s all for clean air. Surely one need not be a communist…or a Nazi, or a serial killer, for that matter…in order to spearhead the pursuit of that noble goal from within a U.S. presidential administration.
That said, perhaps next we can focus on just why a former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan is still a U.S. Senator…a Democrat U.S. Senator, no less…when there’s presently an opening for the position of Green Jobs Czar.
Agree or disagree; please register your comments below.
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/robertyetman.
Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com
Comments