Liberals and Van Jones: Why Are They Defending Him?
By now we all know most of what there is to be said about Van Jones. What is most interesting, however, is how so many representatives of mainstream liberalism have no compunction at all about honoring Jones as one of their own, and of condemning Barack Obama for casting him to the wind, as if the administration had no good reason to do so.
First, as one might suspect, is Arianna Huffington. She writes with anger about what she calls the “vile and vicious smear campaign” against Jones waged by Fox News star Glenn Beck. Not one word about what Jones believes and who he is, aside from her claim that he is “a thoughtful leader who knows how to use words to move people to action.” A leader? Perhaps. But thoughtful? Maybe she means words like these, spoken by Jones in January of 2008:
“The environmental justice community that said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you know, you’re regulating, but you’re not regulating equally.’ And the white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities, because they don’t have a racial justice frame.”
Of course Arianna is a “good friend” of Jones, so she either overlooks what he believes, or agrees with his unreconstructed radicalism. Reading Huffington, one gets the impression that all he is doing is trying to purse “a clean energy future for America,” and building coalitions on its behalf. So although she was his friend at the time, she somehow misses his candid description of his own proclaimed strategy, spoken in April of 2008:
Right after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat if the civil rights leaders had jumped out and said, ‘OK now we want reparations for slavery, we want redistribution of all the wealth, and we want to legalize mixed marriages.’ If we’d come out with a maximum program the very next day, they’d been laughed at. Instead they came out with a very minimum. ‘We just want to integrate these buses.’
But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we’re not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that’s a process and I think that’s what’s great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.
The above is a frank admission of Jones’ prescription for a stealth radicalism—making a minimum demand that others will agree with, all for the purpose of achieving the real demand of revolution. And of course, one does this by never revealing the real goal at the start. Well, at least Huffington doesn’t pretend that he did not sign the 9/11 truther petition, only rationalizing that we shouldn’t let that mistake “define him.” Yes, no one is “foible-free,” as she writes. But Jones is all foible and no merit.
On the same site, the CEO of CREDO Mobile, Michael Kieschnick, calls for “progressives” to understand that the real issue is “how the right wing media echo machine works.” In other words, ignore what Jones stands for. Beck has forced him out; let’s make that the issue. And let us not let Obama get off the hook for canning Jones. Jones is to be commended for “using strong language in tough times.” Not one word in his blog what that language is. The Right, he argues, denounces “progressives and Democrats with demonstrably false and outrageous claims.” But of course, they were not false; and it was Jones’ statements that are outrageous. Rather than explain what Jones means, he and others simply attack Jones’ critics without letting readers know what he thinks. And we are supposed to believe that it is only the right-wing that is dishonest.
Most surprising, however- and sadly- is the defense of Jones by the usually brilliant writer John McWhorter, who from his perch at the conservative Manhattan Institute, has been for some time now written off by many as a “black conservative.” McWhorter actually writes “The Republican smears against Obama of late are nonsense, pure and simple.” But instead of trying to prove this, he attacks (rightfully) the ignorance of those conservatives who attacked Obama for his speech to public school children on the first day of school. What, pray tell, does that have to do with any criticism of Jones?
After devoting the next four paragraphs of his article to the education speech, he asks why does anyone have to take criticism of Van Jones seriously? Well, for one, these are different issues. Some conservatives who stupidly attacked the education speech (just as Democrats and liberals blasted George H.W. Bush in 1997 for his speech to school children) are not always the same as those who attacked Van Jones. And many conservatives in fact attacked those on the political Right who condemned the Obama speech in advance in the same terms as did liberals.
The issue, then, is not a simple “general animus against Obama.” The issue is Van Jones, and why someone like him was given this appointment in the first place. But McWhorter compounds his defense by even approving Jones signing of the 9/11 truther petition, suggesting that “the charge is plausible enough to require investigation.” Does McWhorter actually believe this? Is it a sufficient rationale to write that “support for that idea is hardly unknown among people of the left.” Precisely. What does that say about people of the left, other than that they can be as irrational as conspiracy theorists of the right?
McWhorter also writes that Jones’ “flirtation with Communism was brief and partly rhetorical.” Really? Evidently McWhorter has not done his homework. Jones said the following in his 2005 interview in The East Bay Express:
First, he discarded the hostility and antagonism with which he had previously greeted the world, which he said was part of the ego-driven romance of being seen as a revolutionary. “Before, we would fight anybody, any time,” he said. “No concession was good enough; we never said ‘Thank you.’ Now, I put the issues and constituencies first. I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward. … I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.” His new philosophy emphasizes effectiveness, which he believes is inextricably tied to unity. He still considers himself a revolutionary, just a more effective one, who has realized that the progressive left’s insistence on remaining a counterculture destroys its potential as a political movement.
This is only four years ago. Has Jones ever said he repudiated this statement? It certainly sounds to this reader as a candid explanation of his own way of functioning. Working in the administration was in these terms a new way of fulfilling his unreconstructed revolutionary goals while avoiding the stigma of being a mere movement activist.
How does McWhorter know that Beck was calling Jones out for “inconsequential” things that have “nothing to do with competent execution of his job,” or that the job “wasn’t even a position of any particular power?” A job with no power is not usually one in which the person holding the job gets to administer a $9 billion budget and can use those funds to finance the activities of the radical activists he favors. At least David Sirota, whom I cited in my last blog, is honest enough to make the case that the dismissal of Jones was important because he was anything but a “low-level Administration functionary,” as McWhorter claims was the case.
The issue is not one of Glenn Beck affecting White House staffing decisions. It is that the administration had no right to give a job to anyone with Jones’ background. That the issue rose to the forefront because of Beck is only a black mark on the failure of the mainstream media to cover the issue at all. What is wrong with our press when it takes a Beck, whom at times does indeed sound a bit crazed, to deliver news that the media blacks out? (Actually, others raised the issue of Jones before Glenn Beck, in particular, David Horowitz, on his own website.)
That someone with the character and brilliance and insight of John McWhorter can write that Obama should have “made sure Van Jones stayed just where he was” is itself a reflection on the sad state of today’s liberalism, in which if someone on the Right makes a charge, it is automatically seen as untrue, and meant to produce a reflex response in defending the person attacked.
It reminds me of the old supposedly unimportant issues of the 50’s, in which some liberals argued that if a right-winger attacked people like Alger Hiss, it was the duty of liberals to defend him and others as innocent. At least then we had brave anti-Communist liberals, who like Hubert Humphrey, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and others formed Americans for Democratic Action, to create a liberal group that understood the old Popular Front alliance of liberals with Communists had to be destroyed. They understood that many condemned by HUAC, like Hiss and others, were not good allies just because it was a group of conservatives who first exposed them. John McWhorter, a great linguist and writer, should take some time out to study some history.
Update: Sept.10th, 5:30 pm east coast time
A distinct difference between the two major strands of American liberalism, and the response of their representatives to the Van Jones affair, can be seen in two new discussions posted on the internet today. The first is from Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, which can be read here. Pointing out that it is a matter of what he calls the “ethics of politics,” Peretz writes: “The fact is that Jones is a communist, an identity (which like “fascist”) carries deep and authentic historical and moral opprobrium. Today’s communists want to ignore the mass murders, the gulags, the ideological strait jackets, the sheer viciousness of their (sometimes subliminal) heroes. But they are vicious enough themselves.”
Peretz understands that Jones “does not wish America well, and all of his rhetoric points to a revolutionary stance.” He also describes Jones as a “racialist” and a man “smitten by the anti-Israel bug.” And he notes Jones’ similarity to both Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In other words, Peretz gets it, and in so doing, rescues the reputation of American liberalism from those who seek to allow it to descend into unworthy far left radicalism.
The other is the editorial that appears in the new issue of The Nation, the flagship publication of the American Left. Titled “The Ambush of Van Jones,” the journal’s editorial. Compare their description of Jones with that offered by Peretz and TNR. They call Jones “an activist, organizer, visionary, and charismatic leader of the environmental justice movement.”
They complain that Jones was made a “right-wing bogeyman” by Glenn Beck, who they assert singled Jones out only because he was getting back at the Obama administration because of the condemnation Beck received for his stupidly calling Barack Obama a racist. Ignoring all the evidence that has been assembled, the editors say that “the idea that Van Jones…was some kind of crypto-radical bent on subverting American capitalist democracy from the inside has as much relationship to the truth as the assertion that Obama is hatching a plan of mandatory euthanasia for American seniors.”
As for Jones’ signing the 9/11 truther petition, they accept the apologia offered by Jones that he did not then and does not know think that their ideas are anything he believes. They, of course, offer no reason why Jones signed it in the first place. Their real complaint is that “anything smacking of left-wing ideology is beyond the pale” in the Washington DC establishment, or in the Obama administration. And of course, they suggest he was fired because “he’s black.” The idiocy of the last claim needs no comment.
Jones’ dismissal, they write, is a “kick in the gut” to the “environmental justice” movement—whatever that is, as distinct from those who believe in creating a healthy environment. Now they write that Jones joins “a long list of would-be public servants “deprived of public office because right-wing demagogues have targeted them and distorted their views.” The problem they have is that Jones’ critics have depicted his views accurately, citing his own words and even copied on the internet a CD in his own recorded voice. It is not surprising why The Nation does not allow its readers to see examples of just what Jones does believe, and recently so. In their eyes it is just a “fabricated controversy,” meant to pull America further to the right.
Claiming that Jones wants merely an “alternative energy future,” they complain he has ended up being branded “an untouchable radical.” I think that most of us would not want to live in the alternative future held out for us by Van Jones. If that makes me another “hysterical extremist,” so be it.
It is no wonder that the “liberalism” of The Nation is rejected ever more by a majority of Americans.
“she calls the “vile and vicious smear campaign” against Jones waged by Fox News star Glenn Beck.”
Glenn Beck is very cautious with his evidence. He double checks and triple checks everything before he goes public. Unlike Joe McCarthy, Beck is a reformed alcoholic and not likely to ever get careless. He is really getting it together regarding the damaged caused by the Progressives of the early to mid 20th Century. Beck even occasionally cites Herbert Croly.
John McWhorter is increasingly moving over to the dark side. He apparently is married to a Jewish woman—but that does not deter him from taking some cheap shots at Israel. The center-right of the Democratic Party is mostly a thing of the distant past. Those currently in power are stark raving loons. Van Jones literally does speak for them! He now represents the mainstream.
Van Jones is a wordsmith like Obama. Crafting smooth rhetoric around Socialism or in Van Jones case, radical activism and Communism. They do not have to make a case that really reflects fact, it just has to hit some liberal highlights and the media carries it the rest of the way.
Two slick and nimble guys!
Because they agree with him?
And regarding Beck – the reporting on this (including this article) implies without ever coming out and saying that Beck went after Jones’ scalp. False. Jones went after Beck’s scalp over his statements regarding Obama and Gates. Jones clearly threw the first punch.
That Beck ended up with Jones’ scalp (but not really; he’s already got another job) was simply the way it worked out; it wasn’t because of any jihad that Beck declared against Jones. The “Beck is a bad guy” argument is a red herring.
And for good measure:
Among the liberals apologizing for Jones, add Charles Johnson. He must have fallen on his head biking, or something.
far right wing, clown, republican,sensationalist…yes Glen Beck has a wide range of emotional and intellectual responses to the current BS that passes for political discourse…but we are lucky to have him. He is sharp, unafraid and relentless in his efforts to get at the truth regardless of who is going after. Van Jones was so obviously a bad penny but the media and a variety of Liberals were too fearful or stupid to expose.
None of the Van Jones quotes in this post struck me as a reason to vilify him. Yes, Mr. Jones can certainly be described as passionate, with a solid dose of radicalism, but… so what? Does anyone seriously doubt that there is and has been difference in how pollution has been dealt with in much of this country, depending on the socio-economic status of the neighbors? Perhaps the rest of you live in a different world than I, but in my home town of Austin, Texas the concentration of polluting industries has always been on the east (Predominantly African-American, Hispanic and poor) side of town. When one considers that perhaps the very future of humankind rests with the changes we need to make, I would think a little passionate radicalism is not unwarranted. But that’s just me. Perhaps the rest of you don’t believe that global warming is a threat to the survival of our species?
Calvin ball:
Charles at LGF is no liberal. In his mind, he is doing his best to hold back the tide of Obama Derangement Syndrome among conservatives. He’s attempting to preserve his credibility and that of other conservatives to the extent that he thinks he can. Personally, I think that he’s over doing it. I fell out with him when I maintained on LGF that the Tea Party movement was a worthwhile exercise in political democracy. Charles condemned the entire movement because too many Ron Paul types seemed to him to be too involved with it. Sorry Charlie, but ants are going to show up to a picnic but that’s no reason not to have one anyway.
On the Jones thing, I’m with you in that he completely jumped the shark. Jones is a vile piece of human garbage. Regarding the Truther biz, which is the main part of Charle’s defense, Jones signed on to not just one but two such statements from different groups at different times. Sorry again, but the Yale alum who was too stupid to know what he was signing thing is kaput, even if you were gullible to buy in to it once.
I go and lurk at LGF from time to time and I see Charles becoming ever more defensive and thin-skinned. He won’t brook any dissent on his site and has taken to sarcastically calling anyone a RINO who has a neutral to positive remark about the ONE. Those who have been allowed to remain at LGF have been whittled down to his own little Greek chorus.
In short, in a conscious effort to keep sanity, he’s gone and lost it.
Charles Dinnes, I do not believe in man made “global warming” (by the way, your folks are calling it “climate change” now because global temperatures have fallen over the past 12 years). I also do not believe that Van Jones’ real ambition was to bring about a “green revolution”. Jones wants revolution alright, but it has nothing to do with energy.
Please Charles, go read what this man has said, the organizations he has joined, helped create, or led. He is a Marxist, self-avowed. But maybe you do not have a problem with a “passionate” Marxist controlling a $9 billion budget and being a close adviser to the U.S. President. If that is the case, we do live in different worlds.
9. MJBrutus, perhaps. But Johnson notwithstanding, there’s a trap in too much self-criticism; it ends up being self-defeating.
8 years of paper-mache heads and Code Pink nutsos all over the media didn’t hurt the donkeys, it seems to have helped. Even if I don’t agree with the whackadoodle crowd, I disagree with the argument that they’re a liability. If that were true, the donkeys would have gotten creamed in ’08.
I think the tea party movement has been wildly successful precisely because it’s organic and emotionally resonant. Anything with emotional resonance is going to devolve into hyperbole to some degree. Where I disagree with the establishment is that this is a feature, not a bug.
You’ll never win the argument on intellectual grounds alone. Look at the Libertarian Party. All ethos. No pathos. They can’t organize a kegger in a brewery.
Whack ‘em back hard with Alinsky’s rules for radicals. We just need to be willing to look like idiots and put paper mache heads on. That’s where this movement hasn’t quite come to a boil yet. When rednecks don paper mache heads, the the commies better have bomb shelters, because they’re going to need to hide.
Normally, this Jones affair should go away – remember Clinton dumping Lani Guarnier (?).
The cause behind liberals’ still howling and lamenting is the fact that the Jones affair has became a symbol for them of their impotence, about how things are slipping from their control, and how marginal their potpourri of causes has became, Obama’s standing including here – I’ll call it, “Liberals, the fiery re-enter.”
Let’s review the past two weeks:
*Obama major gaffes & problems:
1) involvement in the Lockerbie scandal -
2) absurd, if not outright seditious decision in the Eastern European missiles shield (hey, we’ll sure be liked more now!) -
3) health care, an ugly agony -
4) Obama’s unstoppable slippage in polls -
5) the unfortunate cease of providential deaths (like Jackson’s and Kennedy’s), which have been grossly played by media to distract the viewership from many issues, and particularly from:
6) an economy that stubbornly remains in an ugly shape, unemployment-wise (today’s adjusted numbers: thanks god, only 500.000 claims, not 570.000) –
7) and finally! The US District Court (Central Calif) accepting for hearing in January a matter derived from Obama’s dubious presidential legitimacy (and accepting the addition of David Kreeps to the plaintiffs’ legal team) –
… then a few other recent, little things:
8) loss of grip on media, or rather having a grip on an increasingly useless instrument – the White House action initiated against Glenn Beck returned with a vengeance, Van Jones having to be kicked out from the office (This is unfair, it was supposed to be the other way around!)
9) today’s Obama’s Congress speech – was this a game changer? My!
10) the NEA gate, affair which showed what a collection of thugs & creeps are Obama’s followers -
11) topping the NEA thing, we got today the ACORN arrest – a crew of 11 taking bribes and giving consultations on how you can run your pimping business better, on taxpayers money -
And again, another, just developing big one – the CNN raving poll about Obama’s today speech, poll which when examined showed that only 18% republicans were queried there, vs. 40+ % democrats!
Oh, lordy! Martha, who are these people?
So, no wonder that the left are now caught in a frenzy about Van Jones who has became a sort of symbol of their impotence, and run after their own tail, barking. (Also, foolish & superstitious natures, they spend long hours sticking needles in photographs).
Expect more fun. We’ve been only eight months in this presidency and it really looks bad, no good, bad, bad, rotten, crappy, accursed, jinxed, bad, bad, bad (to quote a yesterday PJM article lead) -
11, you’d prolly be smart to drop that #7 thing. My attorney friend looked at the WND article, and said that that’s ordinary procedure, and the odds of the case not getting tossed on the set date are about the same as the trolls all getting brains.
Snot gunna happen. And even if it doesn’t get tossed right away, they have about 43 metric shitloads of legal duct tape that they can use to tie it up until Capt. Kirk shows up.
Amazing that the ex-Green Jobs Czar is never identified as the genius behind the “cash-for-clunkers” (CfC) debacle which dropped US $3 Billion in three weeks of borrowed money buried deep in the $800 B “stimulus” bill.
The benefits flowed mostly to the relative handful (about a half million clunker owners) who cleverly cashed in), with the new vehicles then purchased being primarily from Japanese, Korean, and German manufacturers.
Along the way, we got to see those appalling videos all over the Internet of impeccable-looking Volvos and Corvettes having their engines not-so-rapidly euthanized in real time, just when the Obamazoids were trying to peddle extending their tender mercies into the health care sector. Bad idea. Would never get past Don Draper.
An not least, from a strictly enviro perspective the CfC program was completely irrational as well, as the basic energy costs entailed in replacing the machinery intentionally so destroyed required a half dozen operable vehicles to be “glassed” to equal the construction and lifetime fuel costs of a single replacement vehicle.
This guy was the toast of the Best and Brightest much as Jim Jones, late of Jonestown, Guyana, was the toast of SF Bay Area lefty pols a generation ago. From whence came the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid”. Kinda evocative of “under the bus”.
Ron I read the article by Martin Peretz. He seems to be hyper-ventilating when he says:
“Jones’ vulgar hatred of Israel is, alas, also a hatred of Jews.”
I’ve no doubt that Jones is very anti-Israel. Does that mean that he hates David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel? I don’t think so.
Dave M
I’m pretty sure we live in the same world, albeit with very different perspectives. You’re correct that “Global Warming” is an inaccurate label. It is very difficult for many people to imagine that a warming trend, could also make many things colder. So, you’re right, I should have used the term “climate change”.
I must admit that I am mystified that anyone could think that humankind could not affect climate change. Of course the climate was/is going to change anyway. Any sixth grader who has watched a National Geographic program on ice cores knows that. Ice Ages come and go, no reason to suspect that pendulum will not continue. The concern is therefore what humankind’s exacerbation is of that pendulum. To contend that all of human activity in the industrial age did not have an affect on our climate? Really? Okay. Like I said, I am mystified by that conclusion, but this is not the thread to discuss that.
I hear that you were upset that a “self-avowed Marxist” was a close adviser to our President. It must have driven you crazy to have so many adherents to Unitary Executive Theory as close advisers to our previous President.
Radical chic pretensions. It is titillating to dally with freaks on the extreme. It demeonstrates their internationalist bona fides and reinforces their sense of elitism. Of course the intellectual shallowness of their scribblings actually demonstrates an enormous ego deficiency and desperate need to be loved and admired. What was that old song, The Great Pretender?
Why? They are really, really stupid. Simple as that.
They’ve bought into the program. They are sponsors, not independent observers. Their ego is invested in the presidency. Failure would mean a mortal wound. It would require admitting their own stupidity, and culpability in empowering the most unqualified president in US history.
My theory on Van (should you decide to accept it) is that he got in as a function Obama Sycophant Valerie Jarrett enthusiastically promoting him. (gushing, really)
Reportedly (although unverified) Michelle Obama is also a big fan of Van.
My theory further postulates that Michelle is largely responsible for the family’s long continued involvement with Jeremiah (Bullfrog) Wright, and only when Wright made some bordering-on-vulgar comments about Hillary did political expediency force Barack to finally toss him under the bus.
Anyway, liberals are notorious for forgiving outrageousness, even criminality, in any and all individuals on their side of the fence.
The only standard they employ for acceptance/rejection is ideology.
My theory on Van (should you decide to accept it) is that he got in as a function Obama Sycophant Valerie Jarrett enthusiastically promoting him. (gushing, really)