The political designations of Left and Right come from the bloody French Revolution, the 240th anniversary of which France commemorates this month, with Bastille Day on July 14. The radical leaders of the French Revolution used force — even resorting to thousands of judicial murders with the guillotine — to ensure that their will prevailed.
Modern leftists in America haven’t brought out the guillotines — yet — but they are certainly exhibiting the same intolerant attitude expressed by their ideological ancestors who did not believe a person should be able to express a contrary political viewpoint without strong, even physical, consequences.
Several recent examples can be cited, such as the recent attack by Antifa on Andy Ngo, a freelance journalist, who was recognized by leftist protesters in Portland and physically assaulted by mask-wearing radicals (reminiscent of the heyday of the extremist Ku Klux Klan, members of which also wore masks to hide their identities while they physically attacked those with whom they disagreed).
In National Socialist Germany, police allowed physical assaults on the person and property of Jews by Nazi thugs — the Brownshirts and other Nazi supporters. Likewise, in left-leaning Portland, nothing was done by local law enforcement to restrain the attacks on Ngo.
No longer is civil discourse the standard. Another method used by the Left is to not allow political figures they do not like to even have a nice evening out in a restaurant undisturbed. One can recall Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his wife, Heidi, being harassed in a Washington, D.C., suburb restaurant by other patrons shouting insults.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders and others with her were thrown out of a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, in June of last year. Instead of denouncing the incident, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Stephanie Wilkinson, the leftist owner of the restaurant, the Red Hen, defending the practice of not serving those of contrary political viewpoints.
“If you’re directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering,” Wilkinson explained, “maybe you should consider dining at home.”
Wilkinson even mentioned the incident at The Aviary, a Chicago bar, where a waitress spat on Eric Trump, the son of the president. She said she did not condone physical assaults, but she did offer sympathy — for the employee, calling her a “frustrated person.” Wilkinson explained, “If you’re an unsavory individual, we have no legal or moral obligation to do business with you.”
“Unsavory individual” is remarkably similar to Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of Trump supporters as “deplorables.”
Wilkinson justified the refusal to serve — or even be civil to — those who hold political views that do not match hers. “The fact remains that restaurants are now part of the soundstage for our ongoing national spectacle.… At bottom this isn’t about politics. It’s about values, and accountability to values, in business.”
While one would think that a restaurant is simply a place in which persons of all political persuasions can eat without harassment, Wilkinson offered a different view in the op-ed: “The rules have shifted. It’s no longer okay to serve sea bass from overfished waters or to allow smoking at the table.… A hatemonger with murderous intent doesn’t deserve anyone’s hospitality.”
Reginald Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said that only members of “a protected class” have any rights to be served in a restaurant. In other words, Trump supporters, conservatives in general, maybe Christian ministers who have cited the Bible in denouncing homosexual behavior, can all legally be denied service in a public restaurant.
Can one imagine if, say, one of President Barack Obama’s daughters was spit upon by a waiter in a restaurant?
When Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot by an avowed supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a baseball practice, the national media did not bring up the “anti-Republican” hate coming from Democrats or themselves. But can one imagine the coverage had a supporter of, say, Ted Cruz had shot a Democrat member of Congress? Or, imagine how much greater the outcry would have been had a Democrat member of the Senate been attacked in his own front yard by a conservative Republican neighbor. Yet, the media worked overtime to downplay any ideological motivation when Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was brutally assaulted by a neighbor, who was also an avowed supporter of Sanders?
Lest one think that one need not worry about all of this, unless one is the president’s son or press secretary, or a prominent politician such as Scalise, Cruz, or Paul, think again. Kate Cronin-Furman, an assistant professor of human rights at University College London, was afforded space in the New York Times to call for publicly identifying and shaming employees of the federal government who are simply doing their jobs.
Cronin-Furman compared U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees to those who implemented the Holocaust. She calls for publicly shaming such employees by exposing “their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms.”
An example of such “strong social pressure” contributed to the refusal of Denmark officials to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens, Cronin-Furman wrote.
Can one be surprised that such incendiary language leads many to such actions as spitting on the president’s son, refusing to serve the president’s press secretary a meal, or even the extreme case of gunning down a U.S. congressman? After all, who would want to serve a meal to Heinrich Himmler?
When will this madness subside? Perhaps Wilkinson gave a clue when she wrote, “When the world returns to its normal axis, these encounters will disappear.”
In other words, when leftist ideologues are no longer opposed, perhaps we will let you let you leave your home to eat out. That is the ultimate goal — no opposition to the socialist and secularist future they have planned.
Steve Byas is a college history instructor and author of History’s Greatest Libels. He can be contacted at [email protected]
