February 2, 2025
Decades of Lies from the Left
By E. Jeffrey Ludwig
A short video from 2021 of Avi Horowitz interviewing students at Yale University was recently re-posted by Prager Univ. The students in the video found the idea of getting rid of our U.S. Constitution to be plausible and interesting, and moreover, many of them embraced that as a legitimate and desirable goal. One of the interviewees stated emphatically that our Constitution is a racist document. Although it is not clear that this brief video represents a majority or even a sizable minority of the students at Yale, it is amazing to this writer that we should hear even a few voices at one of our leading educational institutions so hostile to the fundamental laws that govern our democratic republic.
As a simple-minded person, I grew up with the idea that following the laws of the United States in matters large and small was a blessed opportunity. Following our laws is not something I ever did grudgingly because of a deeper feeling or thought process that by doing so, I was sabotaging my own life and the lives of others. No. I grew up wanting to be a law-abiding but reflective citizen because I believed in the fundamental values of law and government that are historically pre-eminent in our country.
At one point, during the anti–Vietnam War protests, I was studying as a graduate student at Harvard, and a cadre of students had chained the doors and barricaded themselves into one of the administrative buildings as a protest against the war. I agreed that there were legitimate areas to debate about war policy, but an unalloyed opposition to the war to the extent of actually breaking the law in order to communicate the intensity of that opposition was over the top, uncalled for.
As I stood in the middle of Harvard Yard within a large crowd of onlookers, wondering what would happen next, I was standing next to another slightly more advanced student who was studying for his Ph.D. in economics. He was considerably farther left than I, but we had both graduated from the same high school in Philadelphia and the same undergraduate university. He was totally sympathetic to the demonstrators who had locked themselves into the building, who were members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a far-left group popular at that time.
I asked him, “How can you be so supportive of SDS, which is so intensely critical of the USA and is communist? You have the same background as I. We both were able to take advantage of the opportunities of U.S. society, attending the same high school and college, and now we are enrolled in one of the top universities in the country. Why do you hate the USA so much? Why do you hate capitalism so much? We are examples of the opportunities and success of the USA and of capitalism in discovering and supporting talent — even advancing people from non-elite backgrounds like us.”
He looked at me and listened to my mini-rant in contemptuous silence. His eyes alone conveyed the words: “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.” Ultimately, he would join another Harvard leftie, Samuel Bowles, at the University of Massachusetts, where he spent most of his career.
The ideological leftist infection grows at many of our institutions of so-called higher education, brought on by a blind spot created by a simple lack of gratitude for the opportunities afforded us as citizens of the USA. Upward mobility is a reality in this country. An article published in the Wall Street Journal only two years ago makes it abundantly clear: “studies show the vast majority of adults have higher income than their parents did.” Further, and with the inclusion of compelling charts, the article states, “This upward mobility across all income classifications was possible because of the growth of the American economy. Over the 35 years of the study, real median family income rose by 89%.”
However, during the 60-plus years since that building takeover and that landmark confrontation with my brilliant co-student, incredible progress has been made by the leftist intellectuals in their influence on the masses and on many of our campuses. The latest knife in the back by the left to our laws and Constitution has been the open borders policy, which has led to millions of unvetted persons entering our country during the Joe Biden presidency to do murder and mayhem.
Our leadership willingly broke the laws of our country and had our border patrols sitting on their hands for four years. Incredibly, in 2006, Joe Biden stated, “Folks...I voted for 700 miles of fence,” “[but] unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and — and you will not like this, and — punish American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals...unless you do those two things, all the rest is window dressing.”
Biden continued: “And let me tell you something folks: people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamines to cocaine to heroin [now let’s add fentanyl], and it’s all coming up through corrupt Mexico.”
He said this only 15 years prior to assuming the presidency and implementing the worst border enforcement policies since the USA was founded. Add together the cost to the American people to feed, house, clothe, provide medical assistance to, provide cell phones to, and transport these millions of illegal border-crossers, and this “open door” policy has put the health and safety of our country at risk. Was Biden’s change of mind caused by his cognitive decline, or was there some nefarious behind-the-scenes manipulation that remains a mystery?
As President Trump moves forward to correct the horrible border policies of the Biden administration as well as the lies that accompanied those policies, we should not allow ourselves to “feel sorry” for those who came here under the instigation of leftist non-governmental organizations whose main goal is to destabilize the USA in order to bring about more authoritarian left-wing governance. Democrat policies, whether about immigration, marriage, gender identity, urban law and order, birth, and economics, are all oriented toward destabilization of the social order. The destabilization requires more authoritarian interventions and thus enlarged government power over the day-to-day interactions and decisions of its citizens. That is the leftist agenda in a nutshell. The leftist motto might well be: do what Big Brother says, and all will end well. But it’s a lie, folks — a big, fat lie!
