Some have accused Democrats of voting while dead, but can Democrat politicians also run for office while dead? Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) just implied as much, saying recently that Republicans amended the Constitution to prevent liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt from running for reelection — two years after his earthly demise.
As Fox News reports, “‘They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt did not get reelected,’ Ocasio-Cortez said Friday during a night hall event with MSNBC with Chris Hayes.”
“Ocasio-Cortez was referring to the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution which passed in 1947,” Fox continues. “The text of the amendment states, ‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.’ FDR died in 1945, meaning he was dead for a full two years before presidential term limits were implemented.”
This is just another example of Ocasio-Cortez’ “arrogant ignorance,” as Professor Thomas Sowell would put it, her habit of stating falsehoods with cocksure authority and then sneering at calls to be “factually” correct. It’s vaguely reminiscent of what theologians might call “invincible ignorance,” thus named because it cannot be overcome. The difference is that arrogant ignorance can be overcome but won’t be — not as long as the one exhibiting it remains too haughty to recognize need for self-improvement.
Thus is Ocasio-Cortez a mistake machine. As I wrote last year, she’s very much “like the simpleton Chance character in the 1979 film Being There.” She has been good for gaffes and laughs, with lowlights such as nattering on about the “three chambers of government” and how she’s going to be “inaugurated,” saying employment is only low “because everyone has two jobs” (and she boasts a Boston U. economics degree!), and claiming that her Medicare-for-All plan would cut down on “funeral expenses.” (Well, she won me over: I’m definitely supporting the candidate who can cure death).”
The congresswoman isn’t alone, either. Barack Obama once said that people speak “Austrian” in Austria and touted our “intercontinental railroad” (so, hey, we can pursue Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal idea of eliminating air travel, after all!). His vice president, current Democrat hopeful Joe Biden, recently characterized the long-debunked “rule of thumb” myth as fact in a speech. But Gropin’ Joe has a history of silly statements, including, like Ocasio-Cortez, mangling FDR history: Biden implied that Roosevelt was president in 1929 and said that he got on TV (which didn’t exist yet commercially) to address the stock market crash.
Then, the left-wing AP initially claimed in an article published just today that Spanish was the “native language” of Texas’ Irish Bob (O’Rourke) the Mexicon.
Yet Ocasio-Cortez has distinguished herself in articulating the mindset leading to such errors, complaining in a January 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper (video below) that people were emphasizing her being “factually” correct when what mattered was her being “morally right.”
While Ocasio-Cortez did say that facts matter somewhat, it appeared an obligatory concession from someone who considers them burdensome details. The point missed is that facts are little snippets of Truth, the small pictures that constitute the big picture. It’s as with a jigsaw puzzle: Only when you have enough of the pieces, assembled properly, can you see the image the puzzle conveys.
Likewise, properly “assembled” facts allow us to understand reality — and we’re out of touch with reality insofar as we’re ignorant of or deny the facts.
Since the same is true of moral reality, factual correctness is a prerequisite for moral correctness. For example, whether or not it’s moral to give a homeless person money can be fact dependent: Will he use it to buy food or to buy drugs? And the fact of when human life begins is central to the question of abortion’s morality.
One reason the aforementioned Thomas Sowell left the commentary business (he’s 88 now), he said, is that doing it justice requires you know what you’re talking about — and this takes time and effort. Quite true, and Ocasio-Cortez’ attitude reflects today’s too-common slacker mentality. This sometimes, by the way, is the reason you get a poorly made hamburger, shoddy work done on your home, or a subpar auto repair. It also indicates a lack of virtue.
That is to say, conscientiousness is a prerequisite for competence, as we don’t become schooled in or proficient at something through disinterest or apathy. If you don’t care about the piano, you no doubt won’t practice hard enough to become a concert pianist; likewise, not caring about the facts doesn’t yield good command of the facts.
Ocasio-Cortez’ expressed philosophy also smacks of the “ends justify the means” idea. It’s that old leftist attitude: My cause is so great and good that anything advancing it is justifiable, and all else must be subordinated to it — including inconvenient facts.
This just reflects leftists’ characteristic relativism, mind you. Since they generally don’t believe in Truth (absolute by definition), it follows that those little snippets of it — facts — won’t be that important to them.
But, hey, since winning is important to them, and Ocasio-Cortez has shown that even death is relative, here’s a candidate and slogan for next year’s election: “Franklin Delano Roosevelt 2020 — Because New Deals Never Get Old — and Never Die.”
Photo: AP Images
