by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n ‘Oooh. Van Jones, alright!’<\/strong><\/p>\n Ah, the Dividends of a Yale Law degree:<\/p>\n The problems with Van \u201cchange the system\u201d Jones are not just his serial slurs against much of American society (\u201can apartheid regime\u201d) as we know it (e.g., capitalism, the coal industry, American farming, the white population, the Bush administration (for causing 9\/11), the Republican \u201c***holes\u201d, etc. \u2014 but that he simply cannot tell the truth about his own history, in disavowing almost everything he has said, written, or signed in the recent past. (His involvement with the 9\/11 \u201cBush did it\u201d lunacy has a heritage beyond just his written endorsement).<\/p>\n Worse still, by its own admission, the Obama administration seems to have monitored Jones and selected him for his czardom precisely because of, not despite, his flamboyant past.<\/p>\n Cf. Obama guru Valerie Jarrett\u2019s gush: \u201cOooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him, uh, really, he\u2019s not that old, for as long as he\u2019s been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones and other Obama radicals (the more middle- and upper-middle class the pedigree, the angrier the denunciations) have a strange tendency in the past to have slandered much of American society, then abruptly \u2014 once anointed into its highest echelons \u2014 to equate their own careerist ascendency with a positive referendum on America\u2019s sudden deliverance (the \u201capartheid\u201d U.S. in need of having its entire system \u201cchanged\u201d is now okay since a Van Jones is in the White House.)<\/p>\n Michelle Obama articulated that view with her trope about not previously being proud of America until her husband became a serious candidate, but apparently for the next few years we are supposed to endure lectures from a variety of leftists like Jones that their own success allows us to find (temporary) redemption from them.<\/p>\n I would assume that Jones will have resigned within 24 hours, given the crudity, surrealism, and venom of his serial invective.<\/p>\n I Could No More Disown Van Jones Than . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n When Van Jones talks of the aims of the civil rights movement and its initial minimalist agenda, he references the ultimate desire of ‘redistributing all wealth.’ When one collates that revelation with Obama’s own off-handed “spread the wealth” comment, his ‘fair share’ sermons, and his 2001 public radio interview thoughts on \u201cthe issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society,\u201d we begin to see a pattern in which one\u2019s income and wealth do not properly belong to the earner, but are seen as illegitimate and thus legitimately can be redistributed to others.<\/p>\n What is interesting about Van Jones\u2019 supposedly divisive comments are that many in fact dovetail with Obama\u2019s past revelations in more indiscreet moments. Aside from a shared rhetoric of spreading and redistributing wealth, I don\u2019t see how white polluters of the ghetto is that much different from anything Rev. Wright said, Obama\u2019s own \u2018typical white person\u2019, or his stereotyping of the Pennsylvania clingers or the Cambridge police.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 own deprecations of the U.S. are no more extreme than Michelle Obama\u2019s \u2018downright mean country\u2019 and for the first time she has become proud of America. When Van Jones talks about coal, he is simply amplifying Obama\u2019s own suggestion that he would \u201cbankrupt\u201d those who wished to build new plants.<\/p>\n So I do believe Valerie Jarrett that the administration had been looking at Van Jones for a long time, and liked what they saw.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner ‘Oooh. Van Jones, alright!’ Ah, the Dividends of a Yale Law degree:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[652],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Bh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2078,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-wheel-of-fortune\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Wheel of Fortune","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Has the president noticed his luck has changed? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online No one in the Obama throng has ever believed much in the Roman concept of a \u201cwheel of fortune\u201d \u2014\u00a0rota fortunae \u2014\u00a0so often alluded to by the likes of Cicero and Boethius.\u00a0 But that metaphor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2305,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/not-this-pig\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":1},"title":"Not This Pig","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media And On It Goes I support the President on Afghanistan and am relieved he did not pull out of Iraq as once promised (all combat brigades out by March 1, 2008 \u2014 he said during his initial campaigning). That said, almost a year ago,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1830,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trouble-with-elitist-theories\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":2},"title":"The Trouble with Elitist Theories","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration? In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites. We see this specifically, for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-bush-be\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":3},"title":"Let Bush Be","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The theme of the president's 2012 re-election campaign is that George W. Bush left such a terrible mess that Barack Obama could hardly be expected to clean it up in four years. In other words, 43 months of unemployment rates above 8 percent,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2272,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/deconstructing-the-whup-ass\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":4},"title":"Deconstructing the “Whup Ass”","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media New Communique from the Ministry of Truth At one point, the Obama administration was bragging about bagging one Van Jones; Valerie Jarrett, in fact, even gushed that they had been scouting the erstwhile mostly unknown Jones for quite a while. The word czar was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2301,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/once-upon-a-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":2311,"position":5},"title":"Once Upon a Time…","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Whatever happened to the old Barack Obama? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama \u2014 black, young, eloquent, and hip \u2014 soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. 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