Conservative: Will the Backlash Kill Joes Bid?

When the hard-left theorist Noam Chomsky thinks bedrock American principles like free speech are under threat, Matthew Continetti observes in The Washington Free Beacon, it is a sign that ... things have gotten out of control Joe Biden better be paying attention. The wokesters are going too far: Social media has become a system of surveillance, policing and stigma, news media the vehicle for an attack on the American Founding. This could all spell doom for Bidens presidential bid. There is only so much self-abasement a nation can take. And when the winds of woke start to blow, millions of Americans find that there is one way left for them to oppose political correctness: pulling the lever for the man in the White House.

As street violence spikes in big cities across America, writes The Chicago Tribunes John Koss, its becoming clear that Black Lives Matter is a mere political and fundraising arm of the Democratic Party, not the civil-rights movement it claims to be, and its largely young, white and woke supporters cant work up much concern about black children being slaughtered in big-city gang wars. Indeed, even while protesters are shouting loudly and passionately about defunding or abolishing the police, they arent saying a word to pressure big-city Democratic mayors to do anything about the spiking urban violence probably because they live several degrees removed from the killings and see no political advantage for the November elections in drawing attention to them. Thats not cynicism, sadly. Thats reality.

Much of modern social protest is psychological and spiritual need dressed up as revolution, Mark Judge argues at The Stream. Because many young people dont have a grounding principle like religious faith in their lives, theyre easy prey for toxic ideologies, such as Marxism. Thats nothing new: For many believers, Communism became like a father, providing both love and acceptance and a totalizing solution to all the worlds (and each persons) problems. And like their 1960s predecessors, many antifa rioters are really out there looking for their fathers after coming from broken homes. All of these broken souls share the same distant, soulless nihilism and rather than taking up the difficult task of making themselves more whole, they latch on to radical movements.

Kanye Wests recent pledge to remove extraneous chemicals from deodorant makes me like Americas last rock star even more than I did before he announced last Saturday that he was going ahead with his presidential campaign, half-jokes The Weeks Matthew Walther. Would anyone really expect, much less want, Kanye to run on lower taxes and block-granting Medicare to the states? Kudos, too, for his unabashed pro-life stance: At a time when social conservatism is mostly an unedifying series of non-debates about the flag and kneeling, the rapper sounds like Pat Buchanan in 1992, arguing for prayer in public schools and insisting that We have to stop doing things that make God mad. And he sounds more genuine than more conventional conservatives. Whats not to like?

With COVID resurging, warns Dr. Joel Zinberg at City Journal, we must acknowledge data showing that lockdowns themselves contributed to the death toll. If we dont learn from this, doctors will need a new cause of death on death certificates public policy. Economic recession led to increased drug and alcohol abuse and increases in domestic abuse and suicides. Meanwhile, inpatient admissions in Veterans Administration hospitals were down 42 percent for six emergency conditions, including stroke, heart failure and appendicitis, during one six-week period during the pandemic, a change not seen last year. These and deaths from chronic conditions increased because people had to shelter in place, were too scared to go to the doctor or were unable to obtain care. Bottom line: Public-health experts cant go on pretending lockdowns dont kill.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Free speech is under threat and other commentary - New York Post