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      Activists In NYC Demonstrate Against Atlanta's Planned "Cop City" Police Training Center

      Notes from the Frontlines of the Government’s War on the Left

      In a real sense, the latest version of American inquisition has simply come full circle, returning us to our historical roots.

      Michael Gould-Wartofsky
      Jul 02, 2023

      “There must be some kind of way out of here…”

      As night fell over the South River Forest, the music festival was in full swing. Young and old swayed to the sounds of Suede Cassidy. Families gathered around the grill. Little ones frolicked in an inflatable bouncy house bedecked with a banner that read: “Stop Cop City.”

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      Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

      Media Coverage Must Stop Equating Congress’s Far Left and Far Right

      Whenever lawmakers are debating a high-profile piece of legislation, the media returns to the easy description of pressures exerted by the far right and far left, as if these are similar forces.

      Peter Dreier
      Jun 03, 2023

      Here’s how, in its lead story Thursday, The New York Timesdescribed the House’s vote to resolve Republicans’ self-imposed debt-ceiling crisis:

      “With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks.”

      It’s not just the Times. This false equivalence between the two parties’ activist wings has been on display in press coverage throughout the debt-ceiling votes. Politico Playbook on Sunday described Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal’s mixed reaction to the debt-ceiling compromise as indicating that the bill may have “a chance to win votes from some on the far left.” A Washington Post sub-headline that same day noted that “far-left and far-right corners of the House have criticized the compromise.”

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      A bookstore entrance opposing censorship.

      Love of Freedom Defines the Political Left, Not the Right

      Since left and right are still the most salient political categories, it is of utmost importance to be clear about their meanings.

      Chris Wright
      May 24, 2023

      Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and confusions. One of the greatest of lies and confusions, which I hope to help dispel in this article, is the common delimitation of the very concepts “left” and “right:” It is claimed that to be on the right is to value freedom above all—this is what “small government” is supposed to mean, for example—while to be on the left is to value equality, if necessary an equality enforced tyrannically by an enormous, Soviet-style government.

      Nothing could be farther from the truth than this conventional wisdom. The opposite is closer to reality: To be on the right means, in effect, to advocate an enforced equality of nearly universal servitude and anti-democracy, while to be on the left means to value the greatest freedom for the greatest number. Since left and right are still the most salient political categories (notwithstanding the fantasies of some commentators that they’re obsolete concepts), it is of utmost importance to be clear about their meanings.

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