Andrew Sullivan Is Incensed
Well, that happens once every hour or so. But this time he's angry at Anita Dunn, the mean White House Communications Director who hates Glenn Beck and loves Chairman Mao.
Earlier this year, Dunn spoke to a class of graduating high school students and asked them to go fight a war in Calcutta as per the recommendations of her "two favorite political philosophers" Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa. While it is not known what became of these newly militant American schoolchildren armed with maps, Fox News' resident Crazed Crybot discovered this footage in his continuing quest to expose the violent red heart of the Obama White House.
Would you be a little alarmed if somebody in the White House had cited Adolf Hitler in a speech to high school students as the person they turn to the most? What is the difference? Mao was worse. Plus, he took away the freedom of hundreds of millions of Chinese, and now he's being revered? How did we get here?
Now Andrew Sullivan thinks all this talk of a Red House is just silly. But he does have an answer for Beck:
Dunn would never have used Hitler as a source for perseverance and setting the right objectives. Why Because Hitler's evil is self-evident. So why is Mao's rancid evil not self-evident for a person like Dunn? Because she retains a double standard for far left totalitarianism over far right totalitarianism. It's that insulting and morally disgusting double standard that gets my goat. Mao was responsible for the deaths of up to 70 million people - and Dunn sees him as a useful strategist.
Oh, that's right. Lefties only ever truly despise righties. That explains the overwhelming love for Stalin... no?
Asked to comment, Dunn says she got the quote from noted Communist Lee Atwater, which leaves us back at square one: why doesn't the world feel about Chairman Mao the way it does about Hitler and Stalin? He definitely felt he deserved to share space with Stalin at least - even had a little tiff with Khruschev when he thought his heir apparent status was being infringed upon.
Perhaps it's because he never bombed our grandparents nor made our parents hide under schooldesks. Or maybe it's because the strongest proponent of the Cult of Mao is still the very country where he once had those millions of people tortured and killed.