Another Progressive Double Standard

What is it about political leftists that makes them unable to keep their hands off Chicago parks—and also unable to live by the standards they demand of others?

Over the opposition of local preservationists, former President Barack Obama has been bulldozing a historic green space to build a monument to himself—even while starring in a Netflix series celebrating treasured parks.

Now, if you can believe it, the city of Chicago has chosen a park dedicated to the city’s first female mayor as the site for a new statue of a progressive activist who didn’t support the right of women to vote.

Gregory Royal Pratt reports for the Chicago Tribune:

Now Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is moving forward with a plan to install a Mother Jones statue at Water Tower Place, inside Jane Byrne Park, which is named in honor of Chicago’s first female mayor.

But that plan is facing criticism from the late mayor’s daughter, Kathy Byrne, who argues that the plaza is too small for a statue and that it’s inappropriate to honor a woman who opposed giving other women the right to vote at a park named after the city’s first woman mayor...

“Not only is the decision deeply insulting, it’s really dumb that in an era where we are removing statues because of past oppression we are erecting a statue celebrating someone who strongly opposed voting rights for half the population,” Kathy Byrne said.

Speaking of insulting and dumb, Mother Jones also “expressed racist sentiments toward Asian immigrants,” according to a 2001 Tribune piece by Benjamin Alpers.

In this week’s Tribune piece, Mr. Pratt writes:

... Jones made her views on women’s suffrage known in a New York Times interview where she said, “I am not a suffragist. In no sense of the word am I in sympathy with women’s suffrage. In a long life of study of these questions, I have learned that women are out of place in political work.”

Rosemary Feurer, a Northern Illinois University professor who has been working with a broad coalition for years to get the statue, acknowledged the anti-suffrage comments but said Mother Jones’ record was more nuanced.

“She came to believe that economic power, especially power at the point of production, was the main way to get better conditions and more equality for women,” Feurer said.

Given her antiquated perspectives on race and gender issues, perhaps it’s no surprise that Mother Jones also hated capitalism, for which the left is willing to overlook all her faults and even erect offensive statues in her honor.

To review, the crowd that talks all day about preserving democracy wants to honor someone who didn’t support voting rights for at least half the country. Since at least 2020 cancel culture has targeted liberators like Lincoln but it seems that opponents of liberty are still afforded forgiveness. If the progressive left didn’t have double standards, would they have any at all?

As for the late Jane Byrne, some readers may wonder what she did to deserve such treatment. The Democratic pol was no conservative, but perhaps progressives still haven’t forgiven her for committing the cardinal sin of acknowledging government failure. Today’s Democrats prefer to spend their time creating new programs, while denying responsibility for making them work. Back in the day, Byrne won over voters by holding a fellow Democrat to account—and embracing the old-fashioned notion that city government should actually provide services, not just signals.

When Byrne announced in 1977 that she would launch a Democratic primary challenge to Mayor Michael Bilandic, few political pros gave her a chance. In a 2014 Byrne obituary in the New York Times, WiIliam Yardley explained what happened next:

Then came the winter of 1978-79. Snow owned the city, and many streets went unplowed. Furnaces failed, murders rose and people committed violence in defense of parking places they had shoveled clear. Cabin fever was epidemic.

Chicagoans wanted to blame someone, and Ms. Byrne pointed to Mr. Bilandic. “The abominable snowman,” she called him.

She went on to defeat in him, narrowly, in the primary held in February, in the teeth of that bleak winter. In heavily Democratic Chicago, the candidate who wins the primary is almost certain to win the mayoralty, and Ms. Byrne cruised to victory in the general election in April, with the reluctant support of the party apparatus.

She became one of the first women to lead a major United States city...Ms. Byrne was praised for helping to revitalize the business district known as the Loop, and for helping to turn Navy Pier into a waterfront mall. She encouraged arts and cultural festivals and farmer’s markets, all of which are now common.

People can debate Byrne’s legacy, but certainly she doesn’t deserve to have her namesake park house a monument to someone who didn’t think she even had a right to engage in politics.

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That Other Movie Blockbuster
In the Los Angeles Times Lorraine Ali writes:

“Sound of Freedom” is the surprise box-office hit of the summer — and the latest cause du jour in the far right’s culture war against the mainstream media. The thriller, from director and screenwriter Alejandro Monteverde, follows the journey of a rogue Homeland Security agent, Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel), who risks it all to save kidnapped children from a Colombian sex-trafficking ring.

Independently produced for a reported $14.5 million, it’s topped $160 million at the box office since its July 4 release, fueled by word-of-mouth endorsements, pay-it-forward ticket purchases and the efforts of conservative influencers and pundits who’ve positioned the film as an answer to “godless” Hollywood’s domination of American entertainment...

Mr. Monteverde tells Ms. Ali why he thinks the movie has become a political lightning rod:

I think it’s the culture we’re living in. We cannot not label things. We have to. If you don’t say where you stand, then it’s a problem. If you refuse to give your political view, they’re like, “No, you have to.” But why? And that’s a question. Imagine a hamburger stand. You could have a Buddhist baking the bread, a Muslim making the burger and a Catholic serving it. You’re not going to say that’s a religious burger. So why do we do that with cinema? Let the movie speak for itself.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Wes Van Fleet.)

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