Remember When Leftists Were Peaceniks? No Seriously, They Were Once
As a father I take seriously the solemn responsibility of teaching my children how things used to be — how I myself remember them, and the history I learned from my teachers and my family. Augustine wrote that memory is the most distinctively human attribute. It separates us from animals that live always in the moment.
Likewise, a culture’s memory is one of the best bulwarks against manipulative leaders, enflamed mass hysterias, and powerful institutions. George Orwell knew this in his bones, which is why in his nightmare vision 1984, the ruling Party constantly adjusts and revises history, smug in the awareness that “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
The Lessons You’ll Find it Hard to Pass on to Your Children
So I feel the need to sit down with my children and give them some lessons that surprise them. “Did you know,” I’ll tell them for instance, “that left-wingers used to promote racial reconciliation? And a color-blind society?”
That one is hard to sell, but it really was true once. (There’s film footage of civil rights marchers to prove it. Look it up on Youtube.)
Here’s another: “Did anybody ever tell you that liberals used to care about clean air, clean water, and keeping the environment safe for their grandchildren to live in?” Expect some skeptical stares after sharing that, since now the Climate Cult considers human beings a blight on the planet, and opposes us having children, much less grandkids. (Maybe dig up some old footage of Earth Day to prove you’re not making this up.)
Another mind-bender to share with your Gen Z friends: “There was a time, not so long ago, when liberals favored free speech — even formed a Free Speech Movement on college campuses — and distrusted government spy agencies. In fact, they opposed letting spooks listen in on our conversations, letting bureaucrats censor them, or imprisoning people for venting unpopular ideas.” (Suggest that your students stream Snowden, which I don’t think Netflix has banned yet.)
Or try this one: “Did you know that lefties once were all about natural foods, organic medicine, and keeping a close eye on huge pharmaceutical companies that try to sell us untested, experimental medicines?” As opposed to today, when the left is obsessed with dosing young people with mRna vaccines and opposite sex hormones.
The One Pill Too Big for Your Kids to Swallow
If you’re passing on all this samizdat in a single listening session, by this point you’re out on thin ice, with young eyes narrowing at you as if you’d insisted that the Tooth Fairy brought Elvis and Sasquatch over last night for some pickleball. But here’s the truth bomb which when you drop it might shatter your credibility. So deploy it carefully: “At one point, left-wingers were peace activists, who favored cutting military budgets, marched against U.S. military interventions, and called for us to work to abolish nuclear weapons.”
If I tried sharing that, I’m afraid that my kids would just leave the room shaking their heads. “No way, Dad. That’s a Trump talking point.”
And that much is true. Trump is offering the first realistic peace plan for the futile, grinding war in Ukraine that broke out on Joe Biden’s watch, which the left and right wings of the War Party are desperate to continue. But Trump’s going much further, as Axios reports:
President Trump said Wednesday he’s going to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss slicing all three countries’ military budgets in half.
Trump is looking to convince the U.S. adversaries to cut their defense spending while also getting them to commit to denuclearization.
“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
The president said he’s going to meet with China and Russia, “and I’m going to say there’s no reason for us to be spending almost a trillion dollars on military.”
He added, “We’re going to have them spend a lot less money. We’re going to spend a lot less money. And I know they’re going to do it. They agreed to it.”
Trump said he plans to discuss global defense spending with the leaders of the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Trump said he spoke to Putin about denuclearization and claimed they both agreed “to do it in a very big way.”
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” he added. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
Trump said that if the nuclear weapons were ever used, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
The Real Party of Peace
Now I’ve been calling for the end of city-busting, strategic nuclear weapons for more than a decade. Read my white paper laying out why and how that should happen, arguing that it’s deeply immoral and recklessly dangerous to premise our defense of American civilians on plans to wipe out hundreds of millions of civilians in other countries. I didn’t note then but I’d like to point out now who else had the same idea, and proposed it to a Russian leader: President Ronald Reagan.
I never really expected was to see another Republican administration take up the idea, and run with it. Or to see Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. facing hostile Democrats in the Senate, eager to defend Big Pharma, the Deep State, and the military-industrial complex. I remember when the Left actually served a useful purpose in American public life, back before it captured our big money and power-bloated institutions and decided … “Hey, it’s good to be the king.”
Now it falls to populists, the MAGA movement, and the Trump team to salvage the things that the Left was once actually right about. And the more we insist on those things, the louder they’ll call us “fascists.” Some things never change.