The Left is certain they know what’s best. Not just for themselves, but much more importantly — for us. After all, regular people (never mind conservatives) can’t be trusted to make the right life choices, to restrain their baser impulses, to tell the truth, to delay gratification, to raise their children, to mow their lawns properly, to sort their environmentally-friendly garbage. Not to worry! The nanny-state will do it for you.
As a result, every graduating class of college seniors becomes less and less able to learn from failure, to face criticism, to defend an alternative idea (to even hear an alternative point of view without wilting or crying), to pick themselves up and go on in the face of adversity, to live as independent, responsible adults. And the noose tightens on the throats of liberty-loving Americans — and indeed, America herself.
Lest we need reminding that we cannot be trusted, the latest episode in the Mike Pence publishing saga says it all. You’ve no doubt already heard about the “controversy” over Simon & Schuster’s book deal with former Vice President Mike Pence. S&S CEO Jonathan Karp has defended the deal, and refused (so far) to agree to loud and angry demands that the deal (and Pence) be canceled. Karp and S&S Publisher Dana Canedy defended themselves against the wokesters, arguing that “The former vice president who got 74 million votes is representative of a broad range of people.”
Excellent point. Karp then rushed to add “Look how he upheld his constitutional responsibilities on Jan. 6,” by refusing to overturn the results of the election. (Not sure where in the Constitution a vice president has the power to overturn an election, but you get the gist. Pence helped save us from four more years of Trump, so, you know, he can’t be all bad.)
So now Pence gets treated like any other celebrity author, right? You might want to pump the brakes on that. Canedy told the Wall St Journal that in her 2½-hour in-person discussion with Pence she told him he would have to agree to rigorous editing. (I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about missing commas and dangling participles.) Just like Hillary Clinton, or Hunter Biden, or Susan Rice, or John Kerry (all S&S authors). I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember anyone publicly warning those authors they would have to submit to “rigorous editing.”
And just in case Pence needed some “direction” on the proper positioning for his book, Canedy offered this editorial guidance (again, from the Wall St. Journal article):
“I made the point that I believe regardless of your politics, everybody has the right to own their narrative and legacy, and he didn’t own it at that point,” Ms. Canedy said. “The Trump administration did. And that he had the right to tell his story.”
So – distance yourself from Trump. And permit us to change anything in the book we don’t like (aka, “rigorous editing”). Gee, I can hardly wait to read it.
In other news, Kellyanne Conway was warned by her publisher – again Simon and Schuster – that they would not tolerate any “lying” in her upcoming book. Unclear if they intend to root out her lies with a “rigorous edit,” or just put her in time out.
As the great C.S. Lewis said, “To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
“Infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals” — I’d say that’s a pretty good description of the Left’s view of conservatives. On a good day. Unfortunately, when conservative authors allow publishers to treat them as children, they have abdicated their leadership roles and squandered an opportunity to challenge the poisonous progressive agenda. And as long as conservatives allow the Left to be the gate-keepers of the conservative message, we have little hope for clarity or truth.