Tag: Van Jones

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ideological culture national politics & policies

A Great Big “Request”

Van Jones, racist, racism, replacement theory, race, immigration

“You are witnessing the rise of an American demagogue,” said Van Jones.

He was not referring to himself.

The CNN talking head was reacting to something Vivek Ramaswamy said during the last Republican presidential candidates’ forum — another one lacking the main candidate, the overwhelming favorite Donald Trump.

Van Jones, who is African-​American, called Vivek, who is Indian-​American, “a very, very despicable person.”

At issue is something the Republican candidate discussed: “Great Replacement Theory,” which is the notion that politicians and other insiders are using a variety of means to discourage white people from having babies while encouraging brown people to have babies … and for non-​Europeans to come into the country both legally and illegally. The idea is that with a white minority in America, a different (or same-​old/​same-​old?) politics will emerge (solidify). 

The theory is plenty controversial, in no small part because a few racists have listed it as an excuse to “justify” mass shootings.

But also controversial? It looks like it is more than a theory, it is a plan.

Vivek pointed this out in a tweet. He produced a video from two years ago in which Van Jones himself outlined the “theory” as a strategy: “The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request, and change is hard.”

Yet Jones regards this “request” as something it would be demagogic — even racist — to refuse.

Jones’s leftism does not look like “racial justice” so much as a racial vendetta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
ideological culture too much government

Are You My Father?

Van Jones, the president’s controversial former green jobs czar, must have been struck by lightning yesterday en route to taping ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Discussing President Obama’s new “My Brother’s Keeper” program to “build pathways to success” for at-​risk “children of color,” Van Jones embraced a notion of corporate personhood far beyond anything previously expressed … well, by anyone.

First, Jones advanced the new Obama initiative as just another bailout: “Listen, everybody else … got in trouble in America. Wall Street got in trouble; we were there for them. The auto industry got in trouble; we were there for the auto industry. You got a whole generation of young kids who are clearly in trouble.”

A bailout isn’t a dad, though.

And functioning fathers are “essential,” argued Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald. Noting that fatherless kids are 20 times more likely to go to prison and nine times more likely to drop out of school, she applauded the president’s statement that “nothing keeps a young man out of trouble like a father who takes an active role in his son’s life.”

MacDonald also highlighted that a whopping 73 percent of black children are now born to single mothers, and that three decades of social programs “haven’t made much difference.”

“Do you think you need anybody to tell us how terrible this is?” Van Jones, who is black, pointedly asked Mac Donald. “We work on it every day. We need corporate America to step up.”

Jones wants corporations to be fathers to our children? That’s taking personhood for corporations too far.

And asking too little of men.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Agreeing with a Communist

There’s not much I have in common with Van Jones, the Yale-​educated lawyer, community organizer, former advisor to President Barack Obama, author of a new book, Rebuilding the Dream, and self-​proclaimed communist. But that doesn’t make him wrong on everything.

Yesterday, as I was fixing lunch and experimenting with political hormesis by watching “Now with Alex Wagner” on MSNBC, I caught a discussion about leftwing frustration with the president.Van Jones

“We thought we had a movement that was for the people,” Jones said about electing Obama.

“We have the wrong theory of the presidency,” Jones explained. “LBJ did not lead the civil rights movement.… You have to have two kinds of leadership, not just one, if you want to change the country. You got to have a head of state who’s willing to be moved, but you have to have a movement willing to do the moving.”

Rolling Stone magazine writer Tim Dickinson told the story of President Franklin Roosevelt, who responded to organized labor’s complaints, by saying, “Make me do it.” Dickinson explained, “He meant: ‘I need you guys to go out and create the conditions that force the government to act.’”

Van Jones has a frightening agenda, but on political strategy, he’s correct.

Remember when conservative activists, led by the late Paul Weyrich, stood up to block Bush from nominating Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court, giving us Justice Samuel Alito, instead?

Those of us fighting for freedom at the grassroots cannot rely on those we elect to do the right thing. We have to make them do it.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.