THAT MAN NAMED DAN

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, I promised a commentary on an incredible speech from a man named Dan. His name is Daniel Greenfield. He was born in Israel and now writes editorials and gives speeches for the education and entertainment of American conservatives. Like most if not all ideological opinion makers at various points on the traditional political spectrum, his speeches and commentaries are deliberately melodramatic, designed to stir the blood of emotionally wrought up people. Nevertheless, I believe that not to respond to the nonsense I’m about to reveal would be downright unpatriotic! So, here it goes.

On Friday, January 26th, 2018, Mr. Greenfield told a South Carolina audience several things he supposedly thought they’d like to hear.

First he told them that guns don’t start revolutions, that people do. (Sound familiar?) Guns, he asserted (most likely to loud cheers), end revolutions.

Next, Dan defined what a revolution was this way: If two parties or sections of a country disagree on how a country should be led and one party or section of that country prevails and the other agrees to unite behind the chosen leader, you’ve got a nation. On the other hand, if the two sides can’t and won’t agree to unite behind a leader, you no longer have a country.  You have a “count down to a revolution.” Mr. Greenfield goes on to enlighten his audience to the reason for this pending revolution which guns will ultimately end. The reason for this count down to revolution is, of course, the sole fault of liberals.

Beginning in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s and 1980s, liberals established four immoral and disruptive ideas which they fed into the body politic.

The first was moral relativism which depends on feelings rather than rules as we evaluate our country’s traditions, laws, and mores.

The second is political correctness, which constitutes the new liberal rule book for governing our social behavior towards both institutions as well as individuals.

The third is historical revisionism about which Mr. Greenfield was less specific probably because he would have had to do some pretty fancy cherrypicking to legitimatize his point. After all, one of the most constant threads that runs through history is a generational interpretation of the past. Does anyone pretend that the scholars of the 19th Century evaluated the past as late 20th Century scholars do? After all, are their experiences the same?

Mr. Greenfield’s fourth complaint is the most far reaching and has some substance. He writes that liberals have established the “world of subjective reality.” In this world of reality there exists a “dreamscape” where saying is doing, all ideas are equal, and trying is achieving. Let’s take Daniel Greenfield’s four observations one at a time.

Of course, morality is “relative” since relativity is dependent on circumstances. When man A shoots man B, a life is destroyed but the destruction of that life depends upon both law and circumstance. If man A is a policeman and man B is in the act of destroying someone else, man B’s destruction has legitimacy. If man A is a husband and B is his wife or his estranged sweetheart, there’s damned little legitimacy to the destruction of B.

As for “political correctness,” conservatives are clearly in denial of their own code of political correctness. How far would a conservative presidential candidate get if he questioned the divinity of Christ as Thomas Jefferson did? Suppose conservative candidate Connie is discovered to have paid for her own daughter’s abortion? Not too long ago conservatives were rightly disturbed by President Clinton’s behavior, but now it’s perfectly all right and even justifiable to have elected a man who has two ex-wives and countless mistresses, because he insists that he has the stuff to “make America great again” - wow!

As for historical revisionism, Mr. Greenfield says that never before Hillary Clinton has a losing presidential candidate failed to recognize the election of their opponent. Sorry, Dan, but neither John Adams in 1801 nor John Quincy Adams in 1829 would attend the inaugurations and thus acknowledge the elections of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson respectively. As Casey Stengel would say, “You can look it up!” Additionally, Republicans in 1876 tinkered with the Electoral College so that Rutherford B. Hayes rather than Samuel Tilden became our 19th President. That doesn’t even take into consideration the bitterness of Woodrow Wilson toward Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 or that of Richard Nixon toward George McGovern in 1972. (Remember, both Wilson and Nixon were not even presidential losers!) Finally, not only did Hillary give a gracious concession speech, she also attended President Trump’s inauguration and he thanked her for coming. So, conservatives are beyond historical revisionism? Really? Really and truly?

As for Daniel Greenfield’s fourth point, the existence of the world of subjective reality, wherein lies the “dreamscape” where saying is doing, all ideas are equal, and trying constitutes achieving: therein lies some solid substance, but it is largely anecdotal and circumstantial substance. Here’s what I mean:

During the summer of 1986, my oldest son participated in an Alameda, California summer recreational softball game. His side lost 17 to 3 and, as the game was breaking up, one of the supervisors, a teacher friend of mine, kept asserting aloud that it was a good game and that neither side won or lost it. I later took him aside and told him how misleading his pronouncement was. After all, Ken was a huge San Francisco Giants fan and he and his son (ironically, also named Daniel), knew the difference between winning and losing. Winning and losing can be as misleading as right versus wrong. It depends on how goodness and badness, right and wrong, are applied and evaluated that really matters. Furthermore, all America, or at least plenty of America, loves the competition of sports and its sports heroes. “Dreamscapes,” as silly as they can be, are used by political, economic and social prognosticators from all points on the political compass.

As for that countdown to revolution, the most that can be said for that is that it is poorly thought out. After all, even these angry conservatives are the fortunate victims of pretty substantial creature comforts. Remember those antiestablishment student radicals of the early 1970s who were determined to destroy Nixon just as they had Johnson? They really and truly meant to do just that until school let out and summer vacation stilled their revolutionary ardor. As the “Establishment” subsequently observed, the Minutemen of 1776 just wouldn’t understand vacation time during a revolution!

As for Daniel Greenfield’s assertion that guns don’t start wars but rather end them, there is irony in both place and symbolism. Our man Dan was addressing a South Carolina crowd, many of whom still take pride in the April 12th, 1861 shelling of Fort Sumter led by General Pierre G. T. Beauregard. Of course, Dan’s right: General Beauregard didn’t use a gun, he used a cannon! As for General Grant four years later in Virginia, he must have ended the conflict with a gun. He must have…after all, it really and truly matters - doesn’t it!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY