OPINION:
Today’s left was born in the 1960s era of protest when to have toxic emotions and to act on them — regardless of reason or the rights of others — was to be “authentic.”
The anti-Vietnam War movement legitimized political violence for a new generation. Protesters believed U.S. involvement in the war was so evil that any tactic was justified to oppose it, including assaulting police and burning down buildings.
After the war, the movement didn’t die. It went underground.
New left mobs have reemerged angrier, more irrational and more violent than ever. Their cadres include academics, advocacy journalists and so-called community activists.
The “woke” left is aided by the culture it helped to create, which has turned much of the nation into mewling crybabies crawling around their symbolic playpens.
In Peabody, Massachusetts, all of the elementary schools will soon have “think spaces” to help students calm down if they’re feeling anxious and need to “sort out their emotions.”
This tells children that their emotions are so important that they must be dealt with immediately — that they can’t wait for a more appropriate time and place. When it comes to educating our kids about the primacy of feelings, you can’t start too young.
At New York City’s Hunter College, a professor demolished an anti-abortion display that included fetal models. She shouted that the pro-lifers were “triggering my students.” Later, she held a machete to the throat of a reporter who had obviously triggered her by asking for an interview.
“Triggering” is a psychological term that used to be applied to stimuli that related to trauma. Today, it can be any idea that someone doesn’t want to confront. When the House passed legislation that protected women from having to compete with biological males in athletic events, Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California charged that even debating the issue was “traumatizing.” In other words, someone’s hurt feelings are more important than another’s rights.
As the concept has evolved, the triggering phenomenon is as dangerous as it is daffy. Warning labels are being slapped on movies and books once considered classics. The publisher of “Gone With the Wind” included a warning in the latest edition that it could be offensive to some readers because it didn’t portray every slave as Nate Turner.
In Boston, a gang of enviro-terrorists deflated the tires of SUVs parked in tony Beacon Hill to express outrage over the owners’ fuel consumption. The childish behavior led a firefighter to be late for work (what if there’d been a blaze?) and a number of older adults to miss medical appointments. Not that the climate change thugs cared.
So incensed are they by the perceived harm of fossil fuels that nothing else matters. Little Greta Thunberg, the movement’s petulant voice, sobbed that adults had ruined her life by failing to provide her with a pristine environment. Woe is us.
All of this furthers the “woke” agenda.
The campus has become an echo chamber where discussion is limited to ideas approved by the establishment. The mob has convinced administrators that for a speaker to defend the right to life or criticize reparations is simply too traumatizing to be allowed. Thus, debate is increasingly circumscribed.
When it advances the cause, violence is condoned.
Feminists feel justified in expressing their fury over the overturning of Roe v. Wade by attacking pro-life pregnancy centers and churches. The Justice Department agrees. While it lands like a ton of bricks on parents protesting indoctrination in public schools, allies of the administration such as Black Lives Matter and Jane’s Revenge get a pass.
The left wants us to feel like children, so Big Brother can give us milk and cookies and tuck us into bed at night with our teddy bear. If adult children are allowed to indulge their emotions, it makes it easier for them to overlook activists’ foibles — like threatening the lives of Supreme Court justices.
After the fall of Rome, it took centuries to reach the Age of Reason, when logic was prized and rights were respected. Modernity is the foundation of science, free markets and self-government.
Now, the cave dwellers are dragging us back.
Walking through Harvard Square around 1969, I spotted a sign in a bookstore window that announced: “Barbarians, mystics, bread and circuses — Save your candles, the Dark Ages are coming.”
No kidding.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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