For the past two decades, many educated Americans have stopped acting in “defense of civilization” but instead in “defense of barbarism,” former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss told The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday.
Weiss warned the conservative legal audience that when it comes to pushing back against the Left and its work against America, “Accept that you are the last line of defense and fight, fight, fight.”
“Time to defend our values—the values that have made this country the freest, most tolerant society in the history of the world—without hesitation or apology,” she said.
Weiss was the speaker at the society’s 22nd annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture. She is the founder of the news and commentary site The Free Press and someone The Washington Post called “a liberal uncomfortable with the excesses of left-wing culture.”
Of her resignation from The New York Times in 2020, she told the audience that for the paper, “Truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”
Of the leftist worldview, she said, “At first, things like postmodernism and postcolonialism and post-nationalism seemed like wordplay and intellectual games—little puzzles to see how you could ‘deconstruct’ just about anything. What I came to see over time was that it wasn’t going to remain an academic sideshow. And that it sought nothing less than the deconstruction of our civilization from within. It seeks to upend the very ideas of right and wrong. It replaces basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric.”
On Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 Israelis, including babies, women, and elderly people, it didn’t take long before “the social justice crowd—the crowd who has tried to convince us that words are violence—insisted that actual violence was actually a necessity. That the rape was resistance. That it was liberation.”
“That baby? He is a colonizer first and a baby second. That woman raped to death? Shame it had to come to that, but she is a white oppressor,” said Weiss.
Weiss said it wasn’t a coincidence that the people pushing for “defunding the police” are also the ones “publicly harassing Jews.”
It is alarming how many young people “threw their support not behind the innocent victims of Hamas terrorism, but behind Hamas,” said Weiss.
College campuses like George Washington University had students project onto buildings, “Glory to our Martyrs,” referring to Hamas. At Cooper Union in New York City, Jewish students had to hide in a library from a mob. Professor Joseph Massad from Columbia University called the slaughter “awesome,” and Cornell professor Russell Rickford said it was “energizing” and “exhilarating,” according to Weiss.
Public and private universities have also been discriminating when it comes to enforcing free speech, she said: “For certain students, kid gloves. For others, the maw of whatever hate their classmates and professors can think of. The universities play favorites based on the speech they prefer, and the racial group hierarchies they’ve established.”
There is a new authority that doesn’t recognize “gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society,” but instead to “the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues,” Weiss said.
“We have let far too much go unchallenged. Too many lies have spread in the face of inaction as a result of fear or politesse [politeness]. No more. Do not bite your tongue. Do not tremble. Do not go along with little lies. Speak up. Break the wall of lies. Let nothing go unchallenged,” she said.
“There is no place like this country,” Weiss said. “And there is no second America to run to if this one fails. So, let’s get up. Get up and fight for our future. This is the fight of—and for—our lives.”
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Lucy Gilbert.
For the life of me I just don’t understand why the majority of Democrats can’t figure out how badly life in America will become if today’s Democratic Party Leadership is allowed to destroy Capitalism and usher in Socialist Communism! But then again, I’ve spent my working lifetime in advertising and marketing sales and management and it never ceases to amaze me how stupid so many people are!
Good article and right on target. Too much brainwashing…this is very dangerous for the future of America…traitors are within our gates and no one is protecting we the people..
Unless we have a miracle with paper ballots taking effect & counting at local precincts, & ID, we WILL have a 2024 ‘selection’ again. Nobody is going to stop it because it’s the uniparty and Ronna McRomney leads the whole shabang. Sorry, but life is about to suck really really bad in perpetuity, unless we get that miracle. imo, I see nobody stopping it no matter how many gazillion votes Trump receives, it’s who counts the votes that matters. Party like it’s 1999!
“the values that have made this country the freest, most tolerant society in the history of the world.”
The freedom to violate the law with impunity has finished the country.
The leftists, who follow the Obama doctrine of fundamentally changing America, must be jumping for joy that the decades of institutional indoctrination of our youth has finally reared its ugly head with open support of terrorists and unabashed antisemitism. These people and their attitudes disgust me. Time for the silent majority to take back control.
There has never been a successful socialist/communist country on earth. May God forgive those who are trying to bring this to the United States of America.
Most Americans are not aware and will not notice until it is beyond repair, and then they will throw out my favorite excuse…”if only I had known”
Democratic Party policies are plain dumb. An open border, allowing drugs, slavery and terrorists to infiltrate in plain sight. Spending ever more money that we borrow, resulting in inflation and likely a recession. Prohibiting voter ID: What could possibly go wrong? Raising corporate taxes to make us non-competitive with other nations: Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? Expressing a need to partner with a Communist, dictatorial and predatory nation on trade: China. Don’t you love having drugs you depend upon made in China? Making fossil fuel production difficult for domestic producers and then buying oil from other nations. We do that in the name of combating climate change, although no one can explain how using somebody else’s oil rather than our own reduces carbon emission. These are policies of destruction. And we keep electing these idiots.
The average Democrat is the first cousin to Soviet communists, the party above all. The number of Democratic gun owners who follow the party line on gun control is amazing. They are probably party members, so they don’t have to think. I think the average local Democrats are the stupidest people around. They’ll follow the lead no matter how asinine or stupid. I live in PA. The people of this state turned the U.S. Senate into a stroke recovery ward AND elected a dead guy to the state House with EIGHTY-FIVE % of the votes in “his” district. His name was Anthony De Luca if you want to double-check. I never understood how Fetterman was voted in as lieutenant governor. They accuse some of us of drinking the Coolaid, but I probably got interested in Politics before Trump. I asked some of them how they liked the taste of swamp water, especially since that is where gators pee. I’m losing faith in people.
What is far worse than socialism is islamism Young ones are brainless Should be locked up for their own protection
For starters we need a ‘leader’ in the Whitehouse, not a dementia ridden moron that doesn’t even know where he is most of the time, let alone what is going on around him.
We, the people on the right for the last 50 years, have been trying to tell everybody that will listen.
America is the last place on earth that there was true freedom, (Questionable now) no other country has free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of Religion and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and other rights to protect each and everyone’s individual freedoms, but our government has been infiltrated by people who hate those protections, because it prevents them from making America a Dictatorship.
We have allowed our Sovereignty as a nation to allow far too many Illegals to enter our country and most all of them we know nothing about.
We have given up our Sovereignty to the United Nations (get out of the UN).
Too many people are looking for a free lunch, at yours and my expense.
We have lost our way in believing in God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Obama’s campaign Moto was Hope and Change, well his Hope has only left me with loose change.
God Bless America, may we find our way back from the wilderness!
The entire federal government prefer grifting over maintaining our republic. Special interests in DC must be stopped.
The Patriots of America want our country back
When you move away from a blue state that you lived in your whole life and move to a Red Run State you see after you’ve been there a little while that you were brainwashed into thinking that that was a normal life. We lived in Pennsylvania which isn’t as bad as some of the other blue States but when we move to Tennessee we saw the difference that we didn’t even realize. Would never go back.
& we are Israel 2 as well
A lot of what’s going on is a direct result of this countries leaders over the last several decades of an ignored immigration policy that has allowed foreigners into the US and pledged allegiance to nothing, let alone our flag. We have two problems now. Foreigners that are using the US, and brain washed twenty something year olds. If we don’t put a stop to this, they’re going to overwhelm this country.
The left gas lost its mind when a breakaway group of protesters who storm the Capitol on January 6th are called “insurgents” while a group of murderous, raping sadists on October 7th are called “liberators”. Two bad we don’t have a “two state solution” here: the left takes one half, the right the other. Let’s see which prospers… just make sure to build a wall!
While I refuse to give up, I’m afraid the nation has already been lost and we have passed the point of no return. A 33 Trillion debt that cannot ever be repaid, a vast welfare state, lawlessness, morality being mocked, untold millions of illegal residents, rampant drug use, and not only is there no will on the part of our elected “leaders” to fix any of it, they actually promote it all as they seek more dominating power over the people. The rot began many decades ago but accelerated greatly since 2008 with a stated “fundamental transformation of America” that continues. Our founders are rolling in their graves.
I have been saying that since 2020. We are going to get the America that the pro terrorists demonstrators want. The silent majority stays silent. Why? Because they think they will change it in 2024 by voting. Only they forget a fraudulent election is already in place. The dems will win no matter if it is Ole Joe, Newsom, Michael O, or Kameltoe. Soros is busy buying representatives, senators, judges etc etc. All irregularities during the voting next year will be dismissed as so much BS by the courts. It has been decided..
STALIN SAID IT ONLY MATTERS WHO COUNTS THE VOTES.LOOK AT THE REMOVING OF STATUES/OPEN BORDER/DEFUND POLICE/JUDGES WHO WONT HOLD ACCOUNTABLE/CLIMATE/THE GLORIFICATION OF HAMMAS ACTION/ WE NEED TO WAKE UP PEOPLE
These DIMMs are NOT “educated,” they are INDOCRINATED!
I am a RINO because I believe this is the greatest country in the world & that USA is more important to me than my personal agenda. We must vote & save the best country on Earth or we have failed THE GREATEST GENERATION that went thru the Great Depression and WWII so that we have the freedoms that we enjoy today.
Ask yourself, why do we want to give up what our parents & grandparents fought & worked so hard for. Look at history & then decide how you want to live in the future.
Once upon a time in a land far gone…families were intact, folks attended church and believed in a Holy God, schools actually taught real history. Our Founders like Patrick Henry, a strong Christian man, George Washington, tho’ a deist was also a praying man, many if not most of our Founders believed in God as Creator and ultimately Savior. There was an order. Kids were expected to dress decently, listen to the teacher, do their homework. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts hadn’t been compromised by the burgeoning homosexual gangs. Kids were taught manners and respect. Then enter “Child Welfare Services”…and one state that is a dark legacy in “child welfare” is New Mexico. I live 45 minutes from the northern border and see stuff on their news that was once unheard of. We once had a criminal justice system that was actually feared by criminals and thugs. Our police and sheriff’s deputies are targets, they have to “make nice” in situations that once required arrest and conviction. And how many other states interfere with parents trying to raise good kids in a nation now turning into a land filled with people flooding in from over 81 nations, unknown, deadly drugs, children kidnapped never to be seen again, diseases eradicated for years in this nation. Politicians are more concerned with their “One World Order” dictatorship spoken of so lovingly by Bush Sr. in his presidential acceptance speech. Unless there is a miracle our once God Fearing, strong, beacon of freedom, Constitutional Republic is all but dust in the rearview mirror.
Yes we have to fight to save America….I’m afraid the fighting is going to involve
using more than words. The fact is we are going to be the patriots in the second
American Revolution.
This isn’t the America I grew up in the 50’s, 60’s etc. We grew up with values and morality and knew right from wrong. We had respect for everyone and we obeyed the laws. Today’s America is 100% opposite of the America where I grew up. I honestly don’t know why the illegals want to come to this country as it’s getting as bad as the countries they live in now???
The globalists want everything under control by 2030 and time is running out.
We created a gimme society and this is the result:college students who are basically inarticulate if they can’t put F*** nto every other sentence, who don’t know history but react (and vote) based on emotions which are easily manipulated by social media and the powers that be at their schools, whose quest is for the material and image rather than truth and values, who seem not to know right from wrong, who despise tradition and don’t understand our Constitution. These are “the grass is always greener” people who really don’t want to work hard and have no real aspirations. They expect others to do for them but give no reason we should do so. Result: idiots screaming for Hamas savagery rather than admiring the sweat, hard work and moral values of Israel.
We continue to shovel away and hide the aftermath of all of Biden’s blunders. Another year of this and we will be buried under his poop!
I have always asked the complainers who say America is becoming a terrible place to live, what if America disappeared one morning, what other country would you be happy to go to that was as free and safe as America? No one could give me a straight answer. These people who hate America really have no back up plan and allot of BS.
The State Police and National Guard should have been called in to remove all the Hamas defenders and Jew-hating students on all the campuses, and then they should have been expelled. No excuse whatsoever for their behavior, and therefore no mercy.
When selected people were killed as witches, many people hid in their homes. It was difficult to impossible to know if the blood thirsty were coming for them or their neighbors. It is that bad now.
America must become united again in order to stay great. A divided country cannot stand & Americans better wake up & think about this. Call me RINO or DINO , but elect me because I am for all Americans just might be the answer in 2024.
Trump said it best a couple weeks ago “WE WILL CALL THIS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”. Now, that is a real profound statement from a Republican.
I am beyond sick of Jewish Whine,
I walk a lot and travel a bit and that includes recently. I am sorry Mr. Weiss but I haven’t seen crowds of people surrounding poor innocent believers in Judaism. Not a single such incident have I encountered.
I am afraid Mr. Weiss that with the recent behavior of your “ancestral country”, it has lost it’s sole reason for being further along financially than its geographic neighbors. that reason being pity. Israel you see has by its recent actions, has essentially become the “Fourth Reich”, with many of its endless defense ministers loudly proclaiming their desire to eliminate “the Palestine animals”. Sounds eerily like the statements a famous self proclaimed Austrian painter with a funny mustache when he ruled over Germany and much of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Your “ancestral country” has become a monster and one can hope that in a just world the Israeli power brokers in charge will someday be forced to undergo trial hopefully in Nuremberg.