Can A Radical Be A Patriot?

• 8 years ago

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

Can a radical be a patriot? Yes. The standard definition of patriot is an individual with a love for the “patria,” the Roman word for country, the nation, the homeland. That does not mean loyalty to a particular administration or political party. A patriot can oppose them both.

It is not hypocritical for a patriot to advocate a radical change in his country’s system of government, nothing illogical about someone making the case that he loves his country so deeply that he wants to change its political system into one that will make life better for his countrymen. I would go so far as to argue that the change might even be some form of Marxism, if the Marxist in question were genuinely convinced that a Marxist government would be best for his fellow-Americans.

What crosses the line is engaging in treason: putting the interests of another country or ideological movement above the interests of your countrymen, being willing to work with a foreign power or revolutionary group to impose its will upon your own people.

There are individuals like that. We should not let charges of “McCarthyism” or “right-wing paranoia” or a fear of “being judgmental” deter us from pointing them out. City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, gave us some examples on October 9 in an article by Seth Barron. Not every radical is part of the loyal opposition that engages in the healthy give-and-take in a democratic society. There is such a thing as the disloyal opposition.

Example one: New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. When Pope Francis was in New York City, writes Barron, she used the opportunity to “give the pontiff a gift: a portrait of Francis painted by Oscar López Rivera,” who “in addition to being the speaker’s friend and hero,” is “serving a 55-year sentence in federal prison for seditious conspiracy against the United States because of his leadership of the FALN, the violent separatist organization that aimed to turn Puerto Rico into an independent Communist country like Cuba.”

The FALN is best known for the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan that killed four people and injured dozens more. Mark-Viverito, Barron continues, “managed to make the trip three times” to visit López Rivera, imprisoned at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Patriotism for the United States plays no part in Mark-Viverito’s motives. Her loyalty lies elsewhere.

Barron points out that Mark-Viverito “is not the only elected progressive in New York City who holds a torch for radical leftist heroes.” October 5 “was the 100th birthday of Ethel Rosenberg,” who “along with her husband Julius Rosenberg, was executed in 1953” for “conspiracy to commit treason” and “being a Soviet spy.”

There was a time when a case could be made that the Rosenbergs were innocent. That time has passed. There is now clear-cut evidence, especially the so-called Venona Papers, first declassified in 1995, that documents the Rosenbergs’ involvement with Soviet intelligence-gathering in the United States. None of that mattered, writes Barron, to “New York City Council member Daniel Dromm and Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer.”

They “took to the steps of City Hall to award the Rosenbergs’ two grown sons proclamations in their mother’s honor.” Dromm repeated the now discredited left-wing claim that the Rosenbergs were victims of “Jew-baiting, witch-hunting, and anti-Red hysteria.”

Maybe there were examples of such “hysteria” in the United States in the early 1950s. Every society includes members who react irrationally in political matters. But it does not explain why the Rosenbergs were convicted. In addition to the Venona tapes, there has been an admission of guilt by co-conspirator Morton Sobell, who was sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison for his role in the espionage ring with Rosenberg. Sobell admitted his guilt in 2008, at age 91, in an interview with The New York Times. Patriotism has nothing to do with Council member Dromm’s willingness to distort the historical record regarding the Rosenbergs.

One last example, also involving Melissa Mark-Viverito, this time from a story in Newsday on October 9, written by Matthew Hayes. Hayes describes a New York City Council “news conference on discipline in public schools,” convened by Mark-Viverito, at which the “featured speaker wore a hooded sweatshirt supporting fugitive cop killer Assata Shakur.” The sweatshirt read “Assata Taught Me.”

If that name does not ring a bell with you, Assata Shakur was formerly known as Joanne Chesimard. She is the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member who was convicted for murdering a New Jersey State Trooper during a shootout. Shakur escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984, where she was granted asylum by the Castro government. She has been living there ever since. The FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist.

What did Melissa Mark-Viverito have to say about the sweatshirt? Her spokesman told reporters, “No one from the City Council, including the speaker, was aware of what the sweatshirt meant and we strongly reject the hateful message it sends.”

Is that plausible? Put me down as a doubter. I can’t imagine Mark-Viverito not inquiring about the meaning of the inscription blazoned across the front of the sweatshirt of the guest speaker at a conference she was sponsoring — if she did not already know. Chesimard is a cause célèbre in the circles where Mark-Viverito moves.

In any event, wouldn’t it have been interesting if someone in the media had thought to ask her to draw the line between Joanne Chesimard’s crimes and those of the Oscar López Rivera and the FALN? It would have made for some interesting splitting of hairs.

Seth Barron closes his article with the observation that in “these days of progressive ascendancy in New York, the Left is in charge, and thus responsible for the humdrum management of trash pickup and school curricula. But that stuff is boring when you’ve been raised on the mythos of class struggle and the glory of violent martyrdom.”

True enough. But it should be added it was a “mythos” that led the counterculture radicals to side against their own country. No patriotism is at work in that decision.