ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ INVITED BY POLISH MP TO SEE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ INVITED BY POLISH MP TO SEE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
In the open letter, Dominik told Ocasio-Cortez that he was writing to her "out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps."
BY ILANIT CHERNICK, JERUSALEM POST, JUNE 20, 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the Netroots Nation annual conference for political progressives in New Orleans. (photo credit: JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS)
Polish MP Tarcynski Dominik has invited US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to visit Poland following her remarks in which she compared migrant detention camps on the United States’ southern border to Nazi-era “concentration camps” during an Instagram Live with her followers on Monday.
Dominik, who is the vice president of European Conservatives in the European Council, tweeted the open letter to the democrat representative on Thursday evening.
"With this letter," he wrote, "I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland, where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies."
In the open letter, Dominik told Ocasio-Cortez that he was writing to her "out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps."
With this letter, I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland,where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies pic.twitter.com/ivOTfmiCfo
— TARCZYŃSKI Dominik (@D_Tarczynski) June 20, 2019
“As you should be aware, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi), who led Germany, were responsible for the darkest period in my country’s and our whole continent’s history by devising a chain of concentration camps in order to exterminate those who they believed were subhuman, or a threat to their imperialistic machinations - this included both Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles, and as a result we lost six million of our citizens," he penned.
Dominik explained that under German-Nazi occupation, "a number of concentration camps were set up in my country, Poland."
"It has caused a deep wound that persists on our proud Polish and European history that we must deal with every single day, and that we reaffirm to one another can never be forgotten, and never allowed to happen again," he continued. “This is why when someone cheapens the history, or uses it for political point-scoring, we become agitated and upset.”
“You speak often of bipartisanship, and I feel this is one area in particular where we can begin to live that ideal.”
Following Ocasio-Cortez's remarks on Monday, Yad Vashem encouraged her to educate herself about concentration camps.
“.@AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of "extermination through labor," the world Holocaust remembrance center tweeted on Wednesday evening.
“Learn about concentration camps,” Yad Vashem added, while including several links to information on Nazi concentration camps in the Holocaust.
. @AOC Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of "extermination through labor."
Learn about concentration camps https://t.co/oBPQsjf6FC #Holocaust #History pic.twitter.com/nmc9As2nlO
— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) June 19, 2019
In the Instagram video, the congresswoman said that the "United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.”
“That is exactly what they are: they are concentration camps and if that doesn’t bother you, then [I don’t know],” she said as she gestured, adding that she was speaking to those who “are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘Never Again’ means something and... that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free [United States].”
"Never Again" is a common phrase used when pledging to never allow the atrocities experienced in the Holocaust to occur again.
“We need to do something about it,” she told her viewers. “This is not just about the immigrant communities being held in concentration camps, it’s a crisis of if America will remain America in its actual principles and values.”
Following major backlash from several Jewish groups and politicians, as well as a call from House GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy for the congresswoman to apologize for her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Wednesday night to defend her actions.
DHS ripped 1000s of children from their parents & put them in cages w inhumane conditions.
They call their cells “dog pounds” & “freezers.”
I will never apologize for calling these camps what they are.
If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps - not the nomenclature. https://t.co/eJpJWeYiot
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2019
“I will never apologize for calling these camps what they are,” she said. “If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps - not the nomenclature.”
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Maybe those who disparage Trump for being an international embarrassment should look into their Democratic mirror and see that when one of their heroes TRIVIALIZES The Holocaust and the words "NEVER AGAIN", in her ignorance, she causes pain not only to the survivors and families of those who experienced The Holocaust, but to good people all around the world.
Great article and powerful post.
AOC will never accept the invitation from Poland. To do so invites the possibility that she could be wrong and be forced to admit it and I doubt she could stand to do that.
As the Polish MP wisely said, her comments were for "political point scoring". I wonder how many points she LOST (world-wide) with this latest bit of ignorance.
She won't lose anything.
Most people already recognized how foolish she can be, so this is almost expected.
For those who love her, I doubt anything she says or does will diminish that.
You're probably right.
She is quite intelligent and I understand why some would be intimidated by that.
She is quite right in her comparison of these detention facilities being comparable to concentration camps.
She gave a very strong and intelligent and coherent argument against the nonsense of the citizen question on the upcoming census also.
Good job defending the indefensible.
She did NOTHING of the sort.
WTF did YOU read?
Do you HONESTLY believe that America is working people in detention to DEATH, that America is conducting medical experiments on people, that America is GASSING people by the millions, that America is STARVING people to DEATH????????????????????????????
If so, then there is no point in ever addressing you again.
If your definition of quite intelligent is being a moron then you are correct.
I will be surprised if she ever gets anything factually correct
No and Ms. Cortez never said or implied that either.
Per Arkansas Hermit
'According to the Merrian Webster dictionary, a concentration camp is “a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined.” The definition of a concentration camp describes exactly what happened to the Japanese Americans during WWII, where they were political prisoners confined in a camp.
One of the reasons people are reluctant to use the term is because they don’t want to imply what happened in the United States was similar to what happened to Jews and others in Europe. But I believe what happened in Europe was not a concentration camp but much much worse. A more accurate term would be “death camp,” because the main purpose of the European camps was to torture and kill its prisoners.'
Promises, promises
I understand that you're intimated by an intelligent educated woman [deleted]
You continuously mistake intimidation for out and out disgust!
[Deleted]
I CALL BS! If AOC is in fact comparing detention facilities on our Southern border to Nazi concentration camps in Poland during WW II, she is in fact implying that the U.S. is routinely starving, torturing and murdering people! I strongly suggest you pick up a good history book on Nazi German concentration camps in WW II before making blanket assumptions like you just did I can suggest several.
Nice deflection. This not about Trump. This is about a ignortant and uninformed statement by AOC. Do try to stay on topic please...
Call BS all you want. She never implied that and neither did I.
[Deleted]
Nonsense. I like and respect intelligent women. I’ve been married to extremely intelligent women whom I loved having the ability to have real dialogue and debate with
ive worked for and with very intelligent and accomplished women who I hold in great respect.
i would eagerly vote for a woman who represents American Constitutional principles and indivialism
AOC is an insult to the very idea of intelligent.
[delete]
Amazingly accurate comment.
Have you seen the American border camps? Do they look like the concentration camp photos I posted above? If they do, you may be right, but if they don't, and somehow I don't think they do, then your comment is made of the same stuff you describe Trump as being.
That's why anyone who has a brain in their head would NEVER use that term to describe the American border camps - they might use "internmemt camps" instead. However, perhaps a "brain in their head" is wishful thinking in this case.
Certainly not by one who can't spell correctly.
(By the way, SP, her WHOLE comment was meant to be a personal insult as well.)
I think the answer is a unqualified no to both your questions above. I have serious doubts she lives anywhere near the Mexican border. I live 6 blocks from the border fence in AZ and I can absolutely guarantee there is no similarity whatsoever. She is going solely on what she is being spoonfed by the hate mongering progressive leftist liberal MSM.
[deleted]
You have no idea how those who survived those camps and their relatives feel. The amount of pain and suffering is beyond description.
[deleted]
If it so bad, why is she sitting on her ass in Washington.
POS she is.
Why are there no GREEN FLAGS to MORE than thumb-up a comment?
Ed - she obviously doesn't recognize the depth of her statement -
“This is not just about the immigrant communities being held in concentration camps, it’s a crisis of if America will remain America in its actual principles and values.”
Initially, they were called RESERVATIONS, started by the U.S. government to "control" the Native American population. Germany loved the idea and put them in action in Europe. The U.S. followed suit by building containment centers for Japanese Americans during WWII.
You go AOC - continue showing us just how stupid you are.
Well said 1st.
And here is the thing. She has this offer to educate herself but will she take the Polish gov up on this? I doubt it.
While I don't like what is going on at our border, I also hate false equivalencies. Those are not concentration camps plain and simple.
Thank you. The main point now being made by a neutral observer.
Voted up. She needs to be educated!
LOL. It's been pointed out to me previously that in fact she's had LOTS of education. That doesn't say much for the American educational system.
Hey, hey!
Just because some nutjob got a degree doesn't make the education poor--it means, perhaps, the student was deficient.
Way deficient in her case....
Maybe she cheated.
Apparently education about The Holocaust is deficient, especially taking into consideration the percentage of Americans who don't know anything about Auschwitz, or even what the word means.
Ya, sadly that's Boston University. Someday I'll tell you what goes on there when they're not partying.
My late sister-in-law got her Bachelor of Music degree there more than half a century ago - maybe that was before American universities became liberal propagandists.
She just made it. I sat my kids down before they went to college and told them what to expect and how to play it.
In AOC's case, one should never equate education and degrees held with logic, wisdom, and common sense. In AOC, they are utter oxymorons to each other!
Or this:
Apparently someone else fell asleep in class since they're confusing socialism with communism. Anyone who has even a cursory understanding of the two recognize them as no where close to synonymous.
Thanks for describing AOC.
I think we have a triad in Congress with an antisemitic agenda. Do you think anyone with such an agenda can be educated?
Edit to add, yes, there are some things we should handle better, especially in this day and age. But This is a case of drawing a very wrong comparison.
She may be incorrigible, but your'e right it's more a problem of ideology than ignorance.
Oh, but she is "educated"! She graduated with honors with degrees in International Relations and Economics from BU. She even has an asteroid named after her!
Here's what she was supposed to have learned:
Maybe she chose options that did not prepare her for public service.
I love AOC. FFS she needs to run for president, I mean how bad can a junior Senator be?
She probably will when eligible.
If she keeps getting reelected, and in THAT district, probably no problem!
she will be eligible at the end of Trumps second term to run in the 2024 election
I know. I just hope sanity prevails and she never wins another election of any kind.
That would be perfect. She could run as a independent socialist against Biden.
But if she becomes the Democratic candidate, it could be a real gift to the Republicans.
I would never wish to leave that choice up to a bunch of known idiots.
Actually, I'm quite happy with everything AOC is saying and doing. Besides her, there are Omar, Tlieb and Sanders who are most likely the Republicans' best inside weapon they could ask for.
So now we're going to let the Nazis warp the meaning of Concentration Camps the same way they did the swastika?
AOC's, (and most of Americas), outrage over what is going on with these "Human Dog Pounds" , "Interment Camps" , or "Concentration Camps" , what ever the hell one wants to label them, is warranted
.
armytimes.com
Oklahoma base set for migrant site was WWII internment camp
.
The Difference Between Internment Camps and Concentration Camps
.
I’m a Jewish historian. Yes, we should call border detention centers “concentration camps.”
It isn’t just accurate. It’s necessary.
.
Feds Tell 9th Circuit: Detained Kids ‘Safe and Sanitary’ Without Soap
Of course it is, but some apparently feel the need to have a dick measuring contest as to what "real" concentration camps look like, because just going by its definition isn't enough anymore. They have to get them out and measure the horror of genocide with the internment of large groups of ethnic minorities in cages as if "concentration camp" should now only be synonymous with the murder of 7 million innocent civilians. So apparently, to them, if you're not murdering millions in your cages, then it can't be considered a concentration camp. Seems rather silly to me to be bitching over someone using the term "concentration camp" to refer to a caged facility where apprehended ethnic minorities are concentrated in large groups in detention, many separated from their children, to await an uncertain future. To claim "Well that doesn't rise to the level of 'real' concentration camps" seems rather pathetic, and can really only be seen as a defense of such internment camps.
The words "concentration camp" have taken on a commonly understood meaning just as the word "antisemitism" has. Most intelligent people would know the words to mean the horrible Nazi concentration camps, notwithstanding a dictionary definition, just as they would know that "antisemitism" means "Jew-hatred" notwithstanding that the term might specifically mean hatred of all Semites, including Arabs. Common sense should be the rule in interpreting what she said so that MOST people (other than those who HAVE to continually defend her "brilliant and educated" comments) would know exactly what she means.
Tell your dictionary definition to the survivors and their families who may well have been STUNNED by her use of the words "concentration camps" and "never again" - trivializing their pain and loss.
As far as I know there were 2 camps that I know of here in Wyoming , the more famous of the 2 was heart mountain up by cody where Japanese Americans were interned and another up the mountains by dubois which was basically a voluntary work camp for those of German or Italian decent and all male, they worked at cutting down trees for railroad ties for the war effort. and there could have been others .
I have to agree that American sensabilities made them shy away from calling these camps concentration camps because of what was happening in what the germans called concentration camps , there was also another different type of camp the POW camps comprised of enemy combatants , the civilian and military detainees were kept separated .
Some one says the words concentration camp , whats the first thing that comes to mind as a picture? though an internment and concentration camp are the same thing saying internment denotes a different level of care given to those being detained , if the first picture you thought of when concentration camp was used was of one in Nazi germany , you would equate that to abuse , ill medical care , starvation ,and forced labor, but the use of the word internment doesn't invoke that picture , why , because people like to think better of themselves and don't like to think as a nation we would be capable of the atrocities associated with a concentration camp in the style of Nazi germany.
it also can be said the difference in terms suggests a different level of humanity. stories I have herd from some of the real old timers tell how the internees at heart mnt could be cleared to work in the local areas during the harvest and planting seasons , could hire out as ranch and farm hands and make some extra money to provide for their families to provide more than what was rationed and allotted to them as internees. I also understand that even some pows could be cleared to work local in the same capacities and there were POW camps scattered all across the Midwest, though the process was a little harder to get through.
I tend to agree with what was posted that J/A were primarily interned because of their race and looks as well as fear , and for germans or Italian americans citizens required not the fact that they were ethnically german or Italian but from something they might have said to raise a suspicion.
I think the use of the term concentration camp can be equated to another euphemism, Re education center, what picture does that bring to mind ? a soviet era or Chinese detention center/ gulag? or a Cambodian concentration camp under the khemer rouge ? all of which were basically to some degree or another death camps .
AOC and her equally anti-semitic gal pals, Tlaib and Omar, have proven themselves to be dangerous to American and world freedom.
AOC will never accept the invitations, because to do so would be admitting that she was wrong. To date, what she's done is arrogantly double down on trivializing the deliberate tortures and murders of millions of Jews and non-Jews.
They're not anti-semites and the dangers to America and world freedom is this current corrupt administration.
If she and her Democratic fellow-travellers support BDS, then they ARE antisemitic. BDS is being condemned around the world as antisemitic, and even my Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was at a rally in Canada, as indicated in a seed I posted a month or so ago.
You keep telling yourself that.
I certainly wish that AOC had not used this sort of imagery or language to describe the border detention camp conditions, particularly the "Never Again" phrase, but her words are hardly "indefensible", nor are they anti-semitic.
It IS arguable that the detention camps today fit the definition of "concentration camp" , and thats really all that matters in terms of her being "defensible". And there is NO honest interpretation of what she said that shows her to be anti-semitic. That charge is almost ridiculous.
However, I would say her words were ill advised and immature.
Only in the left's warped mind. If you and the rest of the left are so concerned about it get with your congress critter and tell them to speed up an appropriations bill for funding to improve and expand the border detention facilities.
Of course someone will have to tell that to Kamala Harris in the Senate.
That is an excellent and intelligent comment, JR, but I don't entirely agree with her use of those words "concentration camp" and "never again" as being even arguable - it is only to those who feel they have to defend her unfeeling ignorance in using them. I also never even considered that her comments were antisemitic and never said they were. I just think that it took an ignorant inconsiderate person to have used those words.
We are going to have to disagree on this point Buzz.
It was a clear swipe at minimizing what the nazi death camps were.
I don't think AOL was focusing on The Holocaust - I think her focus was on the refugees on the border. She probably used those words because of the severity that the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis and attempted to adapt that to the refugees by means of exaggeration, but I believe that the TRIVIALIZING those words and what they REALLY meant was totally absent from her brain, and of course the trivializing of them is what is antisemitic. She inadvertently, through unbelievable ignorance and insensitivity, used those expressions. It was just plain ignorant, not antisemitic. Her support of BDS is antisemitic.
Buzz, I will agree with a lot of what you said there...I will even get a little chuckle out of the AOL typo. Come on, we all do those funny little things.
(quick note I am about to paraphrase a string of your words)
Now, I will pose this: Substitute any other historical or present day hateful, destructive, dehumanizing events/activities/cultural behaviour against any other protected class, THEN substitute in place of Holocaust, any inadvertent, through unbelievable ignorance and insensitivity by any activity/statements/declarations which minimize, trivialize those any other protected classes.
When this happens, what terms are thrown around? Not just here, but everywhere. I see terms like racists, mycologist, nazi, white supremacist, etc.
Those terms are easy enough to toss around when what looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a quacks applies.
I am failing to see why the same methodology and standard of identification is not applicable to antisemitic behaviour.
If AOC did not and has demonstrated antisemitic behaviour, then I am stating there is a clear cut double standard of calling a duck a duck, as it were.
I don't know what the hell happened there however, mycologist = misogynist AND strike the "not".
LOL. The mind and body were awake but the fingers must still have been asleep - AOC, not AOL. It's a sign of laziness to prefer to use the acronym rather than typing out the whole name. Interesting that the computer program red-underlines AOC, but not AOL. Maybe if my computer program were smarter than me it would have done it differently. Of course, since I spell Canadian/British English, not American English, I'm constantly getting words red-underlined.
I really think she's just too insensitive and ignorant to have meant or even realized using the words "concentration camp" and "never again" as applied to the border refugees was being antisemitic. But that does not mean that having done so is not an exaggeration that trivializes The Holocaust and injures those who suffered because of it. I just don't think the trivialization, the injury to those who suffered due to The Holocaust even entered that cavity where her brain is supposed to be.
Lets see if Nancy and her fellow congressmen explain it to her and require her to make an unmeant apology for her indiscretion, as they required Omar to make for her outright antisemitic canards. Actually, they probably think more in the line of some of the NT members here who posted defences of the ignoramus.
What is ridiculous about the interpretation of her comparison which minimizes the nazi death camps as an antisemitic act?
I don't think that SHE minimized the Holocaust, that is an interpretation that people who dislike her are putting on it.
Well that is loud and clear.
BTW, the underlined part is a blanket generalization in my opinion. Sometimes people just call things they way they see them.
Sorry, "wide sweeping generalization".
Who do you think you're kidding? She damn will DID trivialize The Holocaust by applying the words "concentration camp" and "Never Again" to the border camps. I'll give you that she may not have realized that by using those words for that purpose she in fact did trivialize The Holocaust, in other words she may not have meant to do that, but due to her insensitivity and ignorance, she DID.
Sorry, Buzz, but I won't be giving her a pass on that. She is a college-educated woman and I don't believe she didn't know exactly what she was doing when she made that heinous comparison.
I don't feel people like that deserve any passes or sympathy from anyone.
The woman is a lunatic.
Well, I have to agree that there are members here who defend her to the extent of indicating her extensive education and intelligence, so taking into consideration your opinion, if she is so educated and intelligent as her supporters here profess her to be, then she MUST have known she was trivializing The Holocaust in which case she WAS being antisemitic, especially since when anyone does intentionally trivialize or deny The Holocaust they are most likely to be an anti-Semite. Now, either she is as intelligent as her supporters say she is, so therefore she IS an anti-Semite, or else she is so ignorant she did not realize what she was saying, in which case, and in fact in either case, it was a big mistake for her to be elected to Congress.
Well, sure, idiots will defend the indefensible.
The woman may be educated, but she is very ignorant.
Not only is AOC a lunatic, she is a lunatic attempting to score political points at the expense of other people's misfortunes.
She cares about her career. She doesn't care how many actual victims of real crimes she offends. She also doesn't care about the potential consequences of labeling things as worse than they are. Anything becomes "racism" or a "concentration camp" and any person you don't like is a "nazi." Then any action is justified.
The deconstruction and breakdown of US education: AOC as a product
AOC is so very much like so many tens of thousands of young Americans who now receive an education that costs families $40,000-$60,000 per year and yet fails to teach how to think instead of spouting the false narratives they are taught.
By Rabbi Prof Dov Fischer, INN (Reported by Israpundit)
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. . . .‘Never Again’ means something.” – AO-C
“Concentration camps were places where Nazis inflicted slave labor, torture and death upon innocent Jews removed from their homes at gunpoint and transported there in cattle cars. To use Holocaust terminology regarding the refugee situation at the border is deeply offensive, an d for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to first use the term ‘Never Again’ and then deny making the comparison is compellingly dishonest.”
– Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Chairman of the 1,000-member Rabbinic Circle of Coalition for Jewish Values ( CJV )
“Trivializing the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial. Jews were not sneaking into countries illegally, nor did they anticipate incarceration like these illegals do. Neither are illegal immigrants forced into labor or tortured, much less being systematically murdered. It is doubly shameful that she is trying to excuse or justify her statement, rather than apologizing.”
– Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, CJV Senior Rabbinic Fellow
1. The Difference Between Teaching Law and Being a Life-Tenured Marxist College Professor of the Social Sciences
Among my roles as law professor, I teach a course in California Civil Procedure. Although that course entails teaching lots of fascinating chess-like theory and strategy, it also includes conveying mundane rules. One must serve a complaint within 60 days of filing. One must answer, object, or otherwise respond to that action within 30 days of being served. An opening brief should not exceed 15 pages and must be received by the opposing party at least 16 court days before the hearing. Stuff like that. Lots of stuff like that.
I have to teach the right law. I cannot just throw in my own law, like “Hey, serve whenever you like. Don’t sweat deadlines. And if you feel you need 19 pages to tell Your Truth, then take the darned extra four pages. Big deal! And, geesh , serve that opening brief eight days before the hearing because, what the heck !”
I cannot get away with that, and I never would contemplate doing so. I have to teach the right law, the correct law.
Now let us shift to a tenured college professor in political science. He / She / It / Ze basically can say whatever the moment feels like. Tenured college professors cannot get fired, no matter how incompetent, deathly boring, and intellectually stale, as long as they (i) do not say the “N word,” and (ii) do not sexually violate a student. So a tenured college professor can tell a class that the Soviet Union was a model of freedom, that Stalin is completely misunderstood because he really was as kind as Mother Theresa, that AmeriKKKa is the center of fascism and Nazism, that up is down, in is out, and Trump is a Nazi.
2. Morons? Idiots? Or Ignoramuses Victimized by the Deconstruction of American Hgher Education?
We all have seen the televised street interviews: Jay Leno “Jaywalking” at Universal Studios, Jesse Watters, all the others. The first reaction we have when we see those is to say: “Oh my L-rd! Where do they find such idiots?” But we are missing a point when we react that way.
Many of those people, particularly those under 30, are not as stupid as they seem. That is, their abstract intelligence is not lacking. Give them squares and circles, and many of them will be able to figure out which shapes fit into which cut-out segments on the board that accompanies the pieces. There is something deeper going on than “Stupid.” The problem is that they are being taught ignorance.
If you take a smart mind and teach it nonsense, it will spout forth nonsense for many years until the sheer experience of life itself ultimately teaches otherwise. There is a reason that all polls find that voters become more conservative as they mature. If you go through four years of Columbia University without ever learning American history, after not having it learned it through the prior twelve years, you will not know it. If — even worse — you do not learn from objective books but instead from the jaundiced lectures of life-tenured Marxist professors of “soft sciences” like political science, sociology, philosophy, and “Identity Studies” — tenured professors who call themselves “Socialists” but actually are “Marxists” or “Communists” — then you come out learning what they teach you to memorize and to spout back to them on final exams and in term papers.
Less than she is a person , Ocasio-Cortez is a Specimen . (AOC, if you are reading this, a “Specimen” is not someone who flies to the moon.) The Left Media and their Democrat patrons make a grave error when they present O-Cortez as a person of thought. She is not an original thinker. Rather, she is a metaphorical Laboratory Rat who demonstrates repeatedly what happens when someone born with a mind that seems capable of operating properly emerges from the present-day American university system. Thus, she is not an “idiot” or “moron” in the objective sense — not unless she truly has come up with all her “ideas” on her own, a highly doubtful proposition. Having observed O-Cortez’s public communications for a year, I am more convinced than ever that she simply is the product of a broken education system that deconstructs facts and reality, teaching instead that there are no facts at all. Rather, I have “My Truth,” and you have “Your Truth.”
Remember: She attended Boston University on a John F. Lopez Fellowship. She interned in Ted Kennedy’s office and was smart enough never to ride in a car alone with him. She graduated cum laude from Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2011, majoring in international relations and economics. Because she got good grades, she clearly reflects the “education” she received. If you are served the most wonderful steak imaginable, and then they pour a gallon of grabage on it and grind that garbage into it, you better like garbage because that is what your steak will taste like. Her grades mean that she absorbed the pablum she was spoonfed.
Thus, in one apparent self-parody, her revealing PBS interview with Margaret Hoover, O-Cortez condemned Israel — one of the Five Basic Food Groups of American College Education (along with condemning Trump as a Nazi, berating America as the World’s Perscutor, prasing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as “Misunderstood,” and recognizing that “Gender Is Fluid”). Ms. Hoover probed gently beyond the college slogans, asking O-Cortez to explain her “thoughts.” Dead silence. Crickets. Deer in the headlights. And then The Hyphen found the words that a college professor had pre-programmed in her years earlier: Y’know, uh, the Settlements, whatever. Watch her here for the minute and a half that she demonstrated the point.
She did it again recently when she told a packed room of clapping seals at an MSNBC Forum that the American Constitution’s 22nd Amendment had been passed by right-wingers trying to prevent Franklin Roosevelt from seeking reelection: “They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure that Roosevelt did not get reelected.” Go ahead — treat yourself here to these 22 seconds. Now for reality: FDR already had won four terms, and O-Cortez was taught that a right-wing conspiracy stopped him from more. She was not stating an opinion but what she saw as a fact . An opinion entails thought ; a fact is teachable and can be spoonfed. For example: 1492 is when Columbus sailed. 1776 is when America declared independence. And 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982 are adjoining rooms in the Palestine Hilton.
Rather than see O-Cortez’s MSNBC Forum comments about FDR and the 22nd Amendment as “stupid,” she really was more the Laboratory Rat with Makeup and Lipstick proving what happens when a higher education aims at deconstructing facts, obfuscating reality, and granting unbridled authority to spout “Your Truth” no matter how absurd. As older Americans who went to school in prior decades know, FDR died April 12, 1945 while in office. The 22nd Amendment was proposed well after his death on March 21, 1947. It was ratified February 27, 1951.
Thus, we have a John F. Lopez Fellow, majoring in international relations and economics, replicating itself/herself/zerself by the dozens as a room of nodding, assentingclapping seals drink in her ragweed and nod their agreement, thanking her for teaching them history.
Thus, there is something going on with O-Cortez that transcends “stupid.” Rather, she is so very much like so many tens of thousands of young Americans who now receive an education that costs families $40,000-$60,000 per year and yet fails to teach:
1. How to think logically
2. The imperative of checking facts before pronouncing them to audiences
3. The skill of thinking critically and incisively, transcending the surrounding Groupthink and Mass Media Hysteria
4. The courage to disagree with Common Wisdom and to challenge Totalitarian Indoctrination
If college professors can spout any foolish, false narrative they wish, safe in the knowledge that their life tenure grants them a safe harbor to mislead, to lie, and to brainwash their defenseless minions who must get good grades in their courses, it is not surprising that O-Cortez emerged as she did. She can string sentences together coherently when she speaks. She can communicate in 140 characters. Her problem is not that she is “stupid” per se but, rather, that she is emblematic of too many peers among a generation that spouts nonsense as “My Truth,” peers who do not know what they are talking about, and — much worse — lack the humility to recognize that they do not know that they do not know what they are talking about.
3. On Concentration Camps and “Never Again”
Her latest trick in the Rat Laboratory came this week when The Hyphen commented on the humane and lawful facilities in which the United States temporarily detains people who brazenly defy America’s laws and break into the U.S. illegally, overwhelming all available resources. America provides the Illegals with food, shelter, and health care at taxpayer expense. The Illegals are held only a few days before being released. But The Hyphen compared those facilities to “concentration camps.” Earlier above I invited you to view The Hyphen for ninety seconds as she demonstrated her ignorance of Israel and then for twenty-three seconds as she spouted ignorantly on FDR and the 22ndAmendment. I am not going to invite you now to watch Claude Lanzmann’s ten-hour movie, Shoah , nor even to visit a Holocaust museum.
I have warned for thirty years that, when you build Holocaust museums, you end up teaching ignorant people just enough so that now they can place their lesser issues alongside the martyrs of Dachau and Auschwitz. Thus, Climate Extremists screech that advocates of American energy independence, oil and gas exploration, and hydraulic fracturing are bringing a Holocaust because the “whole world will end in twelve years.” Suddenly, amid such madness, temporary shelters for Illegals become denominated as “concentration camps.” I wonder what The Hyphen will say when she learns they have showers in them. Donald Trump gets called a Nazi. Police and other protective “First Responders” are called Storm Troopers. And in such an insanely deconstructed reality, I guess Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes Anne Frank.
Is O-Cortez an idiot? Maybe. An imbecile? Maybe. A moron? Maybe. Technically, those who have an IQ between 0 and 25 are idiots; IQs between 26 and 50 are considered imbeciles; and those who have an IQ between 51 and 70 are considered morons. So, maybe.
But more reasonably, when she starts invoking a term like “Never Again” to characterize “concentration camps” that are nothing of the sort, The Hyphen demonstrates what American university education now is producing: Young people who are utterly ignorant beyond tears, have no concept of historical reality, are unable to compare and contrast reasonably, and yet who are all-too-willing to pontificate “Their Truth” on any bullhorn or into any cable camera that will provide the makeup, the lipstick, the wardrobe, and the hair-arranging needed.
The added irony, of course, is that the O-Cortezes who populate the Left Media and their Democrat Patrons always protest against “Cultural Appropriation” any time a Caucasian makes the mistake of wearing a kimono or eating Mexican food or attending a culture-themed party. “You are stealing our culture, our symbols!” Well, honey, the term “Never Again” is not yours. This book may not have been on the John F. Lopez Fellows Reading List, but it will begin your education as to the term’s origins. From there, try this . Or this . Or this .
The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com .
My concern about "higher" education these days, exactly. Teach students to think for themselves? LOL - so unlikely. Makes me think of the old Chinese parable that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
the very second I hear the word nazi, or hitler I write that person off as an idiot. nothing they say after that matters even a little bit. in today's politics, in our country, anyone who calls someone a nazi or refers to them as hitler is a moron. it is that simple. everyone except the smallest minority of idiots rejects that type of stupidity. no one with any sense will vote for or support people like this. aoc may think she is a leader, but she and all like her are actually the destroyers of the democrat party. and I hope the left only continues down that path... but I do not even they think they can stop it if they wanted.. too much inertia, like a giant ball of stupid going off a cliff. nothing will stop it until that ball hits bottom.
I think the democrat party might eventually split.
maybe the regressives will take over the green party?
whatever happens. it will be fun to watch.
cheers
Yes, I believe the DNC is allowing itself to self-destruct as long as they don't put duct tape over the mouths of AOC, Tlieb and Omar and handcuff their hands behind their backs. I don't think Bernie Sanders is doing them much good either. Because the Party is doing nothing to right the wrongs that have been perpetuated by them the price is bound to be paid in 2020. It will be a disaster created from within.