Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Twain The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it – Mark Twain I’m going to try and say some non-twitter-like, intelligent things about progressivism, Connecticut’s media and what Karl Marx, were he alive today, might call the “correlation of forces” in our own state. By the way, I’m not sure how many people reading this know that for about four years in the 1850s, Marx, then living in London, was the European correspondent for the New-York Daily Tribune. He even exchanged letters with President Abraham Lincoln. Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote for a European, not an American audience. Their articles on the Civil War were later collected into a 325 page book, “ The Civil War in the United States.” It might be well to start this discussion with some undisputed claims.

The publication in the New Haven Register of one of my columns produced a letter of protest on 4/12/17 from climate scientist Michael Mann. Both the original column and Mann’s response may be found in Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State here “ The Curse Of Victimology .” The gravamen of the column and blog, put in a single sentence, is this: Scientific matters in dispute should not, and perhaps cannot, be decided by courts. The blog and column also touches on victimology. Corollary: Courts should not be used by “scientists” as a thumbscrew to silence legitimate scientific inquiry.

Be The Storm I’d like to thank Mary Ann Turner, the Chairman of the Enfield Republican Town Committee, for inviting me here today. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Enfield, everyone in the room may know, was the place where prominent theologian Jonathan Edwards delivered his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon. The sermon provided one of the sparks that lit the spiritual conflagration later called “The Great Awakening” and was  so fearful and effective a sermon that people in the pews broke out in tears. I think I can assure everyone in the room that my keynote may not have a similar effect. Republicans have just been through a bruising election. I’d like to touch very gently on a few sore topics, but we don’t want to end up at a funeral here. Mark Twain, asked if he had attended the funeral of a man he intensely disliked, replied – No, I didn’t. But I sent along a message to the grief stricken that I heartily approved of the ceremony.

I’d like to thank Bob Hurd for inviting me here so that we might have a chat together. I’d also like to congratulate Dan Champagne for wining a slot in the General Assembly. He will be stepping into state Senator Tony Guglielmo large shoes, but there is no doubt he will be able to fashion his own foot print. Welcome to the viper pit, Dan. You may want to stomp on a rumor that’s been floating around. It’s being said in some quarters that you ran for the state Senate because you missed butting heads with Mike Winkler. Michael is at a safe remove from Dan over in the House, but legislators sometimes bump into each other in the elevators and corridors of the General Assembly, not to mention its intersectional bathrooms.

The notion that Republicans this year lost heavily in the General Assembly because President Donald Trump sank them is a bit too facile. Mark Pazniokas, a writer for CTMirror, explores the notion in a story titled CT GOP had right message, but ‘Trump just trumped it .’ The quoted portion in the title, “Trump just trumped it,” is taken from a remark made by former U.S. Representative Chris Shays, the last Republican standing in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation. Shays, Connecticut’s U.S. Representative from the 4 th District from August 1987 through January 2009, lost to current U.S. Representative Jim Himes long before Trump appeared menacingly on the presidential horizon, and his loss, as well as the losses of longtime U.S. Reps. Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons, had nothing to do with Trump and much to do with changing political dynamics in Connecticut campaigns.

The trouble with bad manners, Bill Buckley used to say, is that they sometimes lead to murder. This is true in more than a metaphorical sense. Murder, in addition to being a crime, also is a serious breach in morals and manners. Frothing over with Democratic bumper sticker propaganda, Democratic State Representative Matt Lesser, addressing Republican Party opposition to what has been called “a pay equity bill” let loose on Republicans. Opposition to the bill, Mr. Lesser said, is “rooted in two things: ‘We’ve always done it,’ and bigotry.” Unfortunately for Mr. Lesser, Republican leader in the House Themis Klarides was within ear shot.

The address below was given at Meriden’s Fourth Annual Lincoln Day Dinner The day is named after Abe Lincoln, and well named too. I suppose this year those attending these remarks will thank God – who else? – that they are not called upon to celebrate the Jefferson, Jackson Bailey Dinner, which used to be a day of feasting and merriment for Connecticut Democrats. This was before conscience stricken Democrats re-named their annual event. They did so because Democrats decided, three quarters of a century after President Jackson died, that he had owned slaves – who knew? -- and was not kind to American Indians. Though somewhat debased, Jackson, revered as a populist, is still regarded as the founder of the modern Democratic Party. Lincoln owned no slaves and, in fact, prosecuted a bloody Civil War to emancipate them. He had a wicked sense of humor, unlike the stern, forbidding, disputatious and humorless Andy Jackson. On one occasion, in the midst of a speech, a heckler in the aud...

Somewhere along the line, national and state Democrats discovered that most Americans do not cotton to extremists. For this reason, progressives in the state of Connecticut – nearly all politically active Democrats -- have taken to calling “extremists” those who oppose some of their more radical political positions. V. I. Lenin, an extremist of the first water, knew that if you effectively labeled an opponent or an idea, you did not have to argue with either. If you have successfully identified in the public mind as an extremist anyone who disagrees with you on a political or social point, you need not address his nuanced arguments. You need not bother to confront his arguments at all; the mud you throw – knowing full well that some of it will stick – will be sufficient to convince a majority of people that your position is superior to his, because you are superior to him: He is an extremist, and you are not. In cases such as these, arguments are won not through debate or the pr...

Russians Mull Burying Soviet Leader Lenin The corpse if V.I. Lenin has been awaiting burial since the Soviet Union was thrown on the ash heap of history during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Comments by Russia’s new culture minister suggest, according to a report in the Washington Times , that Mr. Lenin is, finally, on his way out: “But recent comments by Russia ’s new culture minister have brought closer the possibility that the father of the Bolshevik Revolution could finally be laid to rest, signaling an end to the cult of Lenin . “’Many things in our life would symbolically change for the better after this [burial],’ Mr. Medinsky said, adding that he thinks Lenin should be buried with full state honors and his Red Square mausoleum turned into a museum of the Soviet era.” Nancy Pelosi Rakes In The Dough Borrowing a page from the 1912 election featuring socialist Eugene Debs on the far left, William Howard Taft in the center,   Woodrow Wil...

The promo for WNPR’s “ Lifting The Veil ” conference at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) promised: • “A prominent political figure grills political reporters (how’s it feel now?) • New media organizations team up on high-quality, investigative journalism • An influential national reporter covers one of the toughest beats: The media.” As it turned out, the prominent political figure grilling reporters was Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s inoffensive left of center heartthrob described in the promo as: “…an upstart challenger to Senator Joe Lieberman, he rallied an online base of support that allowed him to beat Lieberman in the Democratic primary, and barely lose that seat to the Senator in November. In 2010, he ran a tight race for the Democratic nomination for governor. All along the way, he had to face tough questions from the capitol press corps, local and national talk show hosts, bloggers and thousands of others.” The reporters Mr. Lamont turned the tables on were, for...

Linda McMahon, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, presents a problem for her opponents, both those within the Blumenthal campaign and their sympathizers in the media. It is very difficult, for various reasons, for them to plot an effective campaign of attack. Politically, McMahon has no past. She is a tabula rossa, unlike Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has a record in office, a highly flattering account written mostly by himself, with the help and concurrence of much of Connecticut’s media. Lately, Blumenthal has taken some wacks concerning his fictitious and highly romanticized record of service in the Marine Corp. Many of the people writing about Blumenthal more or less concede that the attorney general will weather a storm that has caused other politicians to loose their positions. There is little security in stealing the valor of heroic Marines. But according to the prevailing calculus, Blumenthal has, over a period of 20 years, accumulated favors enough to ove...

Money is important in political campaigns because it buys face time. Most incumbents have face time in abundance. They also collect political contributions in abundance, some of it donated by groups the incumbent is supposed to be regulating. That was the case with Chris Dodd, the favorite candidate of every Republican running against him. As head of the Banking Committee, Dodd was supposed to be regulating big banks and financial institutions. When the Journal Inquirer publicized the role played by Dodd in the termination of the Glass-Steagall Act , the skids were greased and Dodd found himself on the wrong side of an accepted political narrative: that campaign contributions corrupt, and big campaign contributions corrupt absolutely. This is the dark side of political contributions: They are swords that may cut both ways. Self financed campaigns are a different kettle of fish. Self financing gets rid of toxic middle men. The self-financer can only corrupt himself. There is no ti...

V.I. Lenin used to say that if you label an idea properly, you do not have to argue with it. On a similar line, if you find that a proposed amendment in Connecticut’s General Assembly is “not germane,” even when it is germane, you do not have to consider it. That is what was done by Majority Leader in the House of Representatives Chris Donovan in the case of a Republican alternative budget submitted by Republicans as an amendment after Democrats and Governor Jodi Rell had decided to skip school. Rather than confront the serious problems facing the state, which include but are not limited to a vanishing surplus and mounting spending, the Rell-Democrat combine chose not to tinker with a budget that later will require either severe spending cuts or crippling increases in taxes. This dereliction of duty, some have speculated, is related to the coming elections. Democrats, some critics have said, are loathed to raise taxes to cover anticipated deficits and burgeoning spending increases bef...

The present state of Iran – calamitous, full of barking imams and led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently, at the invitation of President of Columbia University Lee Bollinger, entertained the assembled students with his fictions – is former President Jimmy Carter’s present to the world. Carter facilitated the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, once friendly to the United States, now become the Great Satan among Middle Eastern men who like their women wrapped in burkas, like human hotdogs in wool buns. Oriana Fallaci is the first and only woman journalist to pull off her chador while interviewing the Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, Iran’s answer to the Shah, throw it to the ground and declaim, “I will not be imprisoned.” Jimmy Carter is no Oriana Fallaci. After the fall of the Shah, Khomeini, the Lenin of the Iranian revolution, returned to Iran from France, where he had been in exile, and quickly took over. In this he was assisted by then President ...

“In a vote of 113 to 36, ‘SB 1343: An Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault’ passed the CT House this evening. The bill’s next stop is Governor Rell’s desk ” – from Connecticut Local Politics The bill was well named, with a view towards getting it passed. Whenever we see titles of this kind, we should lift up their skirts and have a look-see. George Orwell would have done the same. Orwell was instinctively mistrustful the whole bag of rhetorical tricks deployed by the 20th century’s clever advertisers, and his approach to the whole matter of propaganda is that of a poet who realizes that thoughts, the springs of human action, can be corrupted by language. V. I. Lenin, who had a genius for concision, put it this way: “If you name a thing properly, you do not have to argue with it.” The artfully named Compassionate Care For Victims of Sexual Assault bill is a legislative devise designed to force Catholic hospitals to provide Plan B to rape victims. Depending on ...

Herbert Meyer’s essay on the Iraq war, first printed in The American Thinker , has been circulating in Canada and Europe. December 27, 2006 How to Think About the War By Herbert E. Meyer Whether we are winning or losing in Iraq is open to debate, but it's clear that our national conversation about the war has begun to fail. Today our elected leaders, our most influential commentators, and even ordinary Americans chatting among themselves at work or at their dinner tables, have begun to repeat their lines like wind-up dolls. All of them, and all of us, are saying the same things over and over again; what started as a conversation has become a shouting match. And when everyone is on "transmit" - but never on "receive" - we cannot hear and so we cannot learn. And if we cannot learn, we've stopped thinking. We need to start all over again to think about the war, and we mustn't be afraid. After all, we do this with our computers all the time. When a program b...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, finding herself among reddish ideological compatriots – a “Women for Hillary” gathering at a midtown hotel that added $250,000 to her political coffers – threw off her recently acquired “moderate” corset and unwound. Samplings of the senator’s spicy rhetoric follow: • “There has never been an administration, I don’t believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further (sic) their own agenda. I know it’s frustrating for many of you, it’s frustrating for me. Why can’t the Democrats do more to stop them? I can tell you this: It’s very hard to stop people who have you shame about what they’re doing. It’s very hard to tell people that they are making decisions that will undermine our checks and balances and constitutional system of government (sic) who don’t care. It’s very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth.” • According to a report from the Clinton friendly New York Times News Service, the se...

"What we did during the last 30 days was a tribute to our ancestors. I know they are looking at us from heaven and they are applauding." -- Viktor Yushchenko Several years ago, I was contacted by a Ukrainian in New Britain, Connecticut who wanted to send me a film on the 1932-33 famine in that country. He asked me to view the film and let him know if I could think of any reason why it should not be shown in the United States. The film, " Harvest of Despair ," had been widely shown in Canada. That was my first exposure to the greatest man made disaster ever recorded, and the first time in history that famine on such a scale was used as an instrument of war and oppression. I was stunned by "Harvest of Despair." The film contained footage of both the famine in 1932-33 and an earlier famine that had been stopped in its tracks by Lenin, who had imported food into the stricken areas. The 32-33 famine -- the Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, roughly translated...