When Burr shot Hamilton Weehawken Hudson River , Hamilton
This apparently was
something similar when the actor playing Burr in the musical “Hamilton
Freedom of speech is
among the most precious rights Americans have.
So I can't disparage the
actor who played Burr in Hamilton
This is similar to the
stunt Terry Gross from Fresh Air pulled a few decades ago when she lured then
Mrs. Reagan onto her show to talk about a book and then hit her with a barrage
of questions that eventually had Reason leave the studio
Gross went on to become a
hero of the political left for her attack on the former First Lady, and
recently was even honored by President Obama, even though what she did was
considered a gross abuse in journalistic ethics.
The left loves
bushwhacking its opponents.
So Burr, who plays a
character not unlike today's Donald Trump, followed the ignoble tradition of
lecturing to a captive audience in which included the upcoming vice president.
This idea that the left
has the right to lecture people is as offensive to me as the Jesus Freaks I
used to meet on Hollywood
Boulevard
Artists are particularly
guilty of stretching their platform so as to believe they had been given a
special voice with which to inspire opponents to give up their pre-determined
views and take on the views that the artist and the left appears to want.
Leftists, as I said, love
to lecture.
I remember having to
attend summer school one year to retake math because I had cut the class so
regularly during the school year, I could not pass the final. The summer school
teachers, who were leftist radicals of that time, wanted to teach us anti-war
stuff instead of math, and apparently were willing to pass us if we didn't
squirm too much during their lecture.
I learned a lot about the
number of bombs that fell on Hanoi
Most of the time, the left
preaches to itself, trying to pump its follows up into some kind of
non-religious frenzy to somehow justify their point of view.
Even protests are
designed for their own and for the media with the vain hope that they can
somehow shame the elite into doing what the left wants.
President Trump, like
Nixon and LBJ, plays right into their hands by taking insult to their remarks,
giving the left an opportunity to capitalize even more on his reaction. Reagan
and Bush ignored it and got on with whatever business they had in mind.
The Burr lecture,
inappropriate or not, raises serious and legitimate questions about free
speech, questions the politically
correct left largely ignored when pushing to ban the flying of the Confederate
flag in some public locations.
The left is also largely
behind the banning of certain words as offensive or indelicate again raising
the question as to just how much they really believe in the concept of Free
Speech at all or whether it is more that they support free speech provided they
agree with it.
This zealot approach to freedom
of speech or thought somehow recalls the most troubling scenes of a Tale of Two
Cities where there were acceptable things to the revolution, all else were
banned.
This means that politics
is no longer about policies, but what people believe in as good and evil.
One Democrat spin doctor
tried to claim that the vice president's positions involving gays was evil,
because like many religious people, the vice president does not see gay
behavior as normal -- and needs treatment, a clearly outdated concept that time
and heavy political lobbying by the gay movement has made as unacceptable as
any of the naughty words nobody dares speak aloud in public for fear of being
called racist, sexist or a bigot – labels the left throws around anyway,
tagging anybody who disagrees with their extreme positions.
Many of the Trump
appointees represent factions of American society that have been suppressed by
a largely liberal agenda since the 1950s, such as the KKK.
Even Democratic presidents
like Obama had a similar problem when they took office when the right
questioned some of his questionable connections to radical left, characters who
espoused ideas that seemed out of character with American mainstream.
Obama, however, did not make
the mistake of naming any of these to his cabinet.
Many the Trump appointees
were leaders in his campaign, but the left did not rail against them with the same
shrill voice on the mistaken belief that Clinton
This also comes against a
backdrop in which Democrats are largely supportive of the protests in the
streets.
One Supreme Court justice
even encouraged the practice, suggesting just how far left the court would go
if Clinton
Is it appropriate for a
sitting justice to express a political view when she is supposed to rule
without bias? In some ways, she is like the actor abusing her platform to
express views that are better left to other people in other venues.
The justice, of course
has the privilege of immunity and cannot be replaced just as the actor and cast
has the immunity of an immensely popular Broadway success, a liberal icon
nearly as powerful ion his left-leaning message as Hair in my time had been.
Calls to boycott the play
are foolish, as well as un-American, since it as much censorship as taking down
the confederate flag.
With the exception of the
vice president, most of those in the crowd were wealth enough to feel immune as
well, wealthy enough to afford the ticket, most likely liberal enough to agree
with (as the boos indicate) the actor's position.
This was not the same as
screaming fire in a theater, and those who were wealthy enough to afford a
ticket and yet conservative enough to find the actor's lecture offensive,
merely had to put up with it for a short time, as the actor got his radical
credit the way Terry Gross did long ago, just one more bushwhacker striking out
from safety and getting applauded for it.
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