Thursday Quick Takes

Thursday Quick Takes

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The Left Hates Men

Last Thursday on CNN This Morning, journalist Margaret Talev, referring to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s comeback attempt as NYC mayor, posed to fellow panelists the burning question, “Can you be masculine and embrace your masculinity and also be a decent person at the same time?”

No one on the all-female panel batted an eye at this misandrist smear, of course, because it is an article of Progressive faith that Western culture is a patriarchal hellhole and that heterosexual masculinity is inherently “toxic.” These are the same Progressives who refuse to define the word “woman” and who decry women who embrace traditional femininity as victims of sexist brainwashing.

CNN host Audie Cornish began the segment with a clip of her podcast interview with Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement. Burke called the prospect of Cuomo’s nomination a “mistake” because Cuomo, you will recall, resigned as governor of New York in August 2021 after Democrat Attorney General Letitia James found he had sexually harassed 11 women. Burke argued that discounting the kind of “violence against women” of which she believes Cuomo was guilty is what makes progress for women and society impossible.

Nia-Malika Henderson of Bloomberg claimed that Democrats see “moderate white men” as the path forward. “Kind of manly white men as well. And I think if you look at Andrew Cuomo, that is the part that he’s playing,” she said.

Then Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic, author of a book called The End of Men, noted that “a right-wing radio commentator who was very popular said to me, ‘The problem with Democrats is they don’t have any manly enough candidates. That the Democrats are not manly enough, and that’s why they can’t win elections.’ What do you guys [sic] think about that?”

That’s partially true – there are a lot of problems with Democrats, a lot of reasons they lost recent elections, but no “manly enough” political candidates is definitely one of them. In the runup to the November election, Democrats tried desperately to sell the narrative that they were the party of “21st century masculinity,” defined by men who were comfortable stepping aside and letting women lead – men like Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Imhoff and her VP pick Tim Walz. Hilariously, the unmanly duo Imhoff and Walz were promoted hard as Democrat sex symbols. No one bought it.

Journalist Talev replied to Rosin, “There is a comeback movement for masculinity. The question is, can you be masculine and embrace your masculinity and also be a decent person at the same time?”

The Left is sincerely baffled by this question because gender ideologues like these panelists associate masculinity with the “rape culture” and oppressive “patriarchy” of Western culture (it would never occur to them to condemn a true rape culture like that under sharia law, because the West is the only culture it is acceptable to criticize). They genuinely can’t fathom that a man who embodies traditional manliness could be a “decent” person, despite the countless examples one could point to, because in their minds the only acceptable masculinity is a version that is submits to feminism.

Rosie Hates America

In a 9-minute TikTok video posted Tuesday, former daytime talk show host and purported comedienne Rosie O’Donnell announced that she cannot live in a “political state” under the leadership of her arch-enemy Donald Trump, so on January 15th she self-deported to Ireland.

“It’s been pretty wonderful, I have to say. The people are so loving and so kind, so welcoming. And I’m very grateful,” O’Donnell said of her new home country. “I was never someone who thought I would move to another country, that’s what I decided would be the best for myself and my 12-year-old child. And here we are.”

“I’m happy,” she continued, though

I miss many things about life there at home and I’m trying to find a home here in this beautiful country and when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back.

It’s been heartbreaking to see what’s happening politically and hard for me personally as well. The personal is political, as we all know.

No, the personal is not the political in a normal society, but that is the incalculable Marxist damage that the Left has wreaked on America – politicizing everything, from sports to bathrooms to personal pronouns. Making the personal political is a subversive strategy to shred the fabric of civil society.

And what rights does Rosie believe some people have here that others don’t? She didn’t specify, but being Progressive means never having to explain your disconnect from truth.

Mahmoud Khalil Hates Western Civilization

My Freedom Center colleague, Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield, noted on Tuesday that the mission of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, which is at the center of the controversy over Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia U pro-terror campus organizer from Syria, is “the total eradication of Western civilization.”

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” CUAD said in a now-deleted Instagram post from August:

We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one – we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people.

CUAD is not a “mostly peaceful” protest group – they are advocating for and actively engaged in the violent overthrow of Western states. They are a terrorist organization.

On CNN Monday, conservative gadfly Scott Jennings – the only voice of sanity in the entire network – defended President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying they were “well within their legal rights to deport this radical [Khalil]. We are either going to stand up or become Europe. I’m 100% behind the President.”

The other panelists on CNN saw nothing “radical” about being an activist for an organization that is calling for “the total eradication of Western civilization.” Of course they didn’t, because that same goal describes the Progressive mission as defined by its founder and still-primary strategist Karl Marx. The clash between Jennings and the other CNN contributors is symbolic of the larger clash between the defenders of the West and the enemies within, whether they agitate through CUAD on college campuses, or through the mainstream media at CNN.

Make no mistake: this is the fight we are engaged in – for the very existence of the West.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior

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