The Left: Only Anti-Government Until They ARE the Government

Hypocrisy for #MemeMonday

“Those are our planes now.”
—Ron Silver

As the story goes…

Actor Ron Silver was at the Clinton inaugural when a formation of U.S. fighters flew over. At first, he was bothered by the militaristic display. Suddenly, his discomfiture was soothed when a thought occurred to him: “Those are our planes now.” A Democrat was back in the White House, so he was free to like the military again.*

Obviously, this sort of ideological inconsistency is not desirable. If you have problems with militarism, those problems do not go away depending on the ideology or political party of the commander in chief.

Yet such ideological inconsistency—rooted, no doubt, in our instinct to pick teams and stick with ‘em—is quite common. I have been guilty of it myself.

There is plenty of guilt to go around on this front, but leftists have been especially big offenders over the decades…

Various communist revolutionaries started out as the most ideologically committed anti-government activists. Those who were successful in their efforts went on to form, and then violently impose, the most governmenty governments ever to exist in the history of governments.

In the 1960s, Berkley had its Free Speech Movement—a protest whose goals were widely shared by activists across the nation. Many of those same people are now in positions of power and doing their level best to silence any speech they don’t like.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were once anti-war protesters. Once they achieved positions of authority, they promptly set about growing the size and power of government. They also developed a disturbing penchant for assassinating foreign leaders and murdering civilians with drone strikes.

Che Guevara was an activist and anti-government guerrilla, hiding in the hills and butchering people in his fight against oppression. Then he got into a position of power and kept butchering people…only then, it was official butchering.

It is a characteristic of the left that they are anti-authority right up to the moment when they become the authorities. Dissent goes from being patriotic to being seditious. The speed at which they go from being radicals to being conservatives—as in, conserving the status quo of their own power—makes your head spin.

At that point, talk about “the revolution” becomes pure lip service. There is no “revolution” anymore in North Korea, just like there was none under Stalin. Just like rank-and-file lefties’ favorite hobbies today are war, censoring opponents, and doing whatever government says.

You see some of this on the conventional right as well, though the gap between their stances when in power and not in power tends not to be nearly so chasmic.

Today’s #MemeMonday meme is a simple visual paean to ideological consistency.

Anarchists: anti-government and pro-peace…yesterday, today, tomorrow, and always!

* Interesting tidbit: After 2001, Silver left the Democrats and became a staunch Republican. He even narrated one of Citizens United’s films (on which my wife and I worked as researchers).