You say you want a revolution?
OK, you don’t, but the extremists on the left certainly do.
A “green revolution?” A “health care revolution?” How about just a good, old-fashioned blood-in-the-streets kind of “revolution?” Economic, political, social, they can’t decide on what, but they sure want one.
The term “revolution” has returned to common usage among the ’60s leftovers and wannabes that now lead what has become the “populist” movement. There’s Michael Moore urging his followers to “start the revolution” for government-controlled health care. Nutrition zealot Marion Nestle celebrates “the food revolution,” complete with references to Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
And kooky anti-war agitator Cindy Sheehan is OK with war, as long as we keep it within our borders and attack the “George and Dick crime cabal.” “Over 225 years have passed since our last Revolution (if you don't count the War Between the States) and we are long overdue for one,” she wrote on the left-wing Web site Truthout one day before July 4th this year. (That same piece of rebellious tripe also appeared on
One poster at the popular left-wing blog Daily Kos designed an “Orange Revolution” flag to complain about “the piracy in money, values and hope that
Rather than reveal how dangerously nutty the left has become with its revolutionary mindset, network news shows adopt the language of the loon. Take ABC’s John Berman who makes light of the term and uses it to describe quirky environmental activists. “To some, their revolution might be revolting. They figure out ways to reuse or save water from your sink, shower, even your toilet. Laura and Cleo are founding members of the Greywater Guerillas,” he explains on the August 21 “Nightline.”
In June, Berman uses the word to describe “an unlikely city that might be winning the war on fat.” A school trying to teach kindergartners better eating habits unleashes “nothing short of a revolution. A revolution that can best be summed up in one word, broccoli.”
ABC anchor Charles Gibson uses the term to depict an eco-overthrow of the traditional order in a “Going Green” segment about
And CBS’s “Early Show” host Harry Smith inquires “about the big green revolution,” at the International Builders' Show February 8.
It all sounds so peaceful, so ordinary.
Hardly.
Media use of the term obscures the real meaning “revolution” has for liberals. Propagandist
And though you might not know New York University Prof. Marion Nestle, she sits down with you at every meal. Her radical food agenda impacts the way companies make and sell what you eat. Nestle even spoke at the Yearly Kos meeting of uber-lefties and their Internet supporters.
When asked to name influential books impacting the way we eat, she describes “Three Books That Made a (Food) Revolution.” Her answer cites the work of pseudo-ethicist Peter Singer and the anti-industry book “Fast Food Nation.” A close read of her post reveals she “borrowed the title of this piece from Bertram Wolfe’s Three Who Made a Revolution, a political biography of the founders of the 1917 Russian Revolution -- Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.”
Still wonder where she stands?
Then there’s the queen of the revolutionary rhetoric, Cindy Sheehan. Just months after saying “I am finished working in, or outside of this system,” Sheehan comes back with a vengeance to attack the “feces infested executive branch.”
Sadly, similar extremism isn’t tough to find. Dan DeWalt, “author of the Newfane,
That’s what many on the left mean when they say “revolution.” They mean the real thing. But we live in a world where the media have dumbed down the true meaning of the word. Journalists report on “video revolutions,” “computing revolutions” – even “exercise revolutions.” (That last one featured Jane Fonda, so at least it makes sense.)
But no matter how reporters disguise it, too many lefties really want a revolution to destroy pretty much everything
That would be a revolting development.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow and director of the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute.
