Giggling Past the Gulag
Whatever you do, don’t mention the Communists.
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Today in Free Expression, columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon finds the bittersweet joy in the cycle of family life; Jack Butler wishes “Young Washington” hadn’t been so didactic; and Nicole Ault discusses an underrated dispatch from the World War II home front.
But first, democratic socialism is just communism with a nose ring . . .
When the Red Shoes Fit
—Matthew Hennessey
It’s an iron rule of political journalism. What the left does is never the real story. The real story is always the right’s response to what the left does.
We didn’t have to wait long for the rise of socialism in the Democratic Party to become a story about the Republican Party’s response to the rise of socialism in the Democratic Party. To hear the media tell it, a new and ugly McCarthyism is on the boil.
Check under the bed! There might be a communist under there. Hardy har har.
“GOP reboots the Red Scare as young Democrats embrace socialism,” screamed the headline in Axios last week. The story—which is really more like the outline of a story—comes complete with a helpful “reality check” from breaking news reporter Avery Lotz. “Democratic socialism is not communism,” she writes with the confidence of a “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” contestant locking in her final answer. Ms. Lotz graduated college in 2023 so you can be sure she knows what she’s talking about.
“As socialism rises in popularity, GOP turns to a new attack: ‘Communists,’ ” was the headline of a triple-bylined Washington Post story published online Sunday. Two of the three writers seem old enough to be off their parents’ health insurance plans, but not by much. The piece credulously repeats the claims of Megan Romer, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, that the average person isn’t moved by all this Donald Trump-led red-baiting.
You can almost see the look of smug satisfaction on Ms. Romer’s face as she tells the hard-boiled trio of WaPo journalists that Republicans should chill with all the “communist” talk because—and this is a real quote—“No one has been gulagged.”
Not yet, I think she means.
In her bio on X.com, Ms. Romer calls herself a “proud member” of the Red Star Caucus, which in turn calls itself the “Marxist-Leninist caucus building revolutionary politics” in the DSA. Earlier this year Ms. Romer gave a speech at the Party of the European Left conference in Brussels, in which she referred to the U.S. military as a “supervillain holding civilization at gunpoint.” She quoted the Chilean Communist Victor Jara and said the DSA is fighting “to end economic sanctions that impact the sovereignty of countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.”
For anyone keeping score, that’s two explicitly communist countries and one Islamic theocracy.
The president of the Party of the European Left, which hosted Ms. Romer, was national chairman of the Communist Party of Austria. The organization’s “political secretariat” is composed of communists and thinly veiled communists. Its membership includes the French Communist Party and the Workers Party of Belgium, which, despite its vanilla-sounding name, is a Marxist-Leninist outfit run by a self-declared communist.
In other words, they’re all communists.
“The majority of the DSA’s governing board, the National Political Committee (NPC), openly identifies with Communist ideology,” writes Stu Smith in a piece for City Journal. The title of Mr. Smith’s piece gives the punchline away: “Actually, a Lot of DSA Members Are Communists.”
Mr. Smith’s reporting helpfully tracks the recent evolution of the DSA, which under founder Michael Harrington was in the 1980s an explicitly anticommunist organization. Ms. Romer’s claims to the contrary, the DSA has abandoned its soft social-democratic roots and embraced the full Marxist-Leninist revolutionary playbook.
But maybe the 20-somethings in the press are right and it’s all another Republican Red Scare. I guess we’ll have to wait to be gulagged to find out for sure.
The Chill of Collectivism: What’s better than air conditioning in a heat wave? A.C. that cools you down outside. That’s China’s solution to triple-digit temperatures in Shanxi province, where high-rise buildings have been fitted with nozzles that spray a mist of water into the air above public squares. The technology can reportedly lower temperatures in the surrounding area by several degrees. It’s like an industrial-size, city-wide version of the Home Depot misting devices you can install on your front porch or at an outdoor cafe. Seine-swimming Europeans might drool, but don’t be totally charmed by the snazzy system: Chinese state media is extolling it as an example of the Communist Party’s “grass-roots governance” and “deeply human touch.” — Mary Julia Koch
Hungry, Hungry Hobbits: Scientists have been enamored in recent years of Homo floresiensis, a protohuman species once found in Indonesia and distinguished largely by its diminution. These “hobbits,” as researchers jokingly call them, were once thought to hunt and use fire to cook meals. But a more thorough examination of hobbit habitats, published in the journal Science Advances, suggests that they mostly scavenged their food, eating what area Komodo dragons killed but didn’t finish. And they likely didn’t cook anything. The study concludes that they “did not engage in a behavioral repertoire as diverse or as flexible as in modern humans or Neanderthals.” Despite their limitations, they managed to survive. Sneaky little hobbitses. — Jack Butler
Shucks: It may be time to stick a cocktail fork in Graham Platner’s salty, slimy political career. A woman has accused the Maine Democrat of sexually assaulting her in 2021. The Hotchkiss Oysterman denies the charge but is nevertheless “reassessing” his campaign, which has already somehow managed to survive a Nazi tattoo, revelations of past misogynistic comments, insults to dead veterans, the claim of a former girlfriend that he treated her roughly and that thing about his willingness to rape a guy who broke into his apartment but “not in a gay way.” What a short, strange trip it’s been. — M.H.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ratchet Effect
Meghan Cox Gurdon
One day you will strap a son into his car seat for the last time, because he’s outgrown it. Often—and this is the bittersweet part—you have no idea in the moment that you and your child have reached a milestone.
A thing that you had to do every day no longer needs doing by you.
Read Meghan’s Column ⧁
Show, Don’t Tell, Washington’s Greatness
“Young Washington” is no shallow agitprop, which is why the filmmakers’ impulse to hold the audience’s hand is so disappointing.
Fighting for Blueberry Pie
We know that marvelous American industrial fervor sprang from World War II, but it’s enlightening to read Alistair Cooke’s dogged account of lives and industries uprooted for the war effort.
Louis C.K. Is Uncanceled
His comedy career got caught in Weinstein’s wake despite a relatively tame set of accusations.
By Kyle Smith
Pete Buttigieg’s Child Protective Services Nightmare
An anonymous allegation of abuse briefly upended the former transportation secretary’s life.
Windmills Can’t Handle the Wind
Powerful gusts crushed turbines in South Dakota, illustrating the intermittency problem plaguing renewable wind energy.
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Great piece, as always! The historical and economic illiteracy of the DSA and its supporters, especially its young supporters, is simply breathtaking!
1. Socialist - check
2. "From the river to the sea," "Globalize the intifada," and other calls for genocide of Jews - check
They may or may not be communists, but they clearly are Nazis.