And You Thought We Were Rid Of Him

Crypto-communist and former Green Czar Van Jones certainly hasn't gone into hiding since sneaking out the back door of the Obama administration's White House. He's been busy having war councils with the SEIU, practicing his Maoist rhetoric, cozying up to Frances Fox Piven (of "top down, bottom up, inside-out" politics fame), and posting revolutionary diatribes on the Huffington Post. He was in particularly good form recently at the HuffPo.

Speaking from his pulpit at the Center for American Progress, a left wing "think" tank, Jones has told his fellow leftists that it's time to drop the non-violent approach to righting all real and imagined wrongs and use mob force instead. But first, he had to tell a sad anecdote about the poor and oppressed who are suffering under the iron fist of capitalism. Bring on evicted granny. You see, poor Granny--one Catherine Lennon--fell behind in her mortgage payments and Simon Legree is tossing her out onto the ice floes.

But granny wouldn't go easily. She armed herself (with a broom or something) and refused to submit to the eviction that she had been given notice of months earlier. The evil sheriff, stroking his waxed mustache, evicted her anyway. The tale itself is simply a sad repetition of the unfortunate state of the economy and the inability of many people to pay their rent or mortgage. Granny claimed that she "missed some payments" but tried to make some of the mortgage payments. But because her name was not on the deed or the mortgage instrument, the greedy and unscrupulous lender refused to accept her checks.

Gee, I remember that my mom suddenly and unexpectedly found herself a widow, but after the initial time of grief, managed to get the deed to our house into her name and made the mortgage payments on time. She and I both had to go to work (my father's business was failing, he didn't tell us, and it probably led to his premature death), but that's what you do to survive and meet your obligations.

Granny made enough threats to kill anyone who tried to evict her that the sheriff was accompanied by a SWAT team. Fortunately, nobody was harmed or killed in the ensuing confusion. But wait, there's more. Jones says her dire straits should have been enough to allow her to stay, rent and mortgage-free, perhaps forever. After all, her husband had died, and she found it difficult to make ends meet. What he glosses over is that her husband died three years earlier. It took my bereaved mother about a week to fix the deed and mortgage issues. In Granny's case, even a probate court could have resolved those issues in less than three whole years, and in most cases, probate isn't even necessary.

So at this point, Jones brings out the proletarian harps. "Lennon's story is both a light of hope and a warning. We hope to see a video of the celebration as Ms. Lennon and her family [additional wage-earners who could contribute to the mortgage payments?] are allowed back into their home. But tonight Lennon and her family are in a homeless shelter. And today across the United States, more than 8,000 people will lose their homes to foreclosure. They are grandmothers, husbands, sisters and aunts. They are the fabric of the community: the teachers, the janitors--the same workers who are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere." With all due respect, Mr. Jones, if they're not paying their rent or mortgages, they're also deadbeats.

He then goes on to tell his followers that all the non-payers should follow the example of anti-eviction gangsters Take Back The Land. Those charmers re-took possession of premises from which the non-payers had been evicted, and they were wielding considerably more than Granny's broom. They called it a "homesteaders program." I call it armed unlawful possession. Along with Piven and incomprehensible college professor Cornel West, Jones is advocating forcible resistance to lawful action as part and parcel of their agenda of destroying capitalism. They want those facing eviction to refuse to leave, and those who have already been evicted to break into foreclosed homes and "homestead" them without any payment to the rightful owners.

They are even taking preemptive action. Several organizations put together by community-organizing groups pioneered by Barack Obama and/or ACORN offshoots are signing up those who aren't even yet in foreclosure, encouraging the residents to quit paying and prepare to remain on the premises by any means necessary. If you don't have enough "victims," create more. This is really not about unfortunate people who are facing a tragic circumstance. And it certainly isn't about fairness. It's about fomenting a major upheaval in the mortgage and housing market so as to create another deep wound in the capitalist system. Each time a scofflaw can find a plausible justification for ignoring his legal duty, it becomes easier for him to find a more tenuous reason to do so the next time.

The breakdown of law and order and the social compact represented by the Constitution and duly-elected officials to dispense "social justice" is a prerequisite to revolution. Taking advantage of a crisis is a left/liberal tactic for bringing about "social change." Forcing the government into becoming the landlord who charges no rent is the forerunner of Maoist/Stalinist-type communism. Jones understands this very well. I pray that the forces of the rule of law rather than the rule of men understand this ploy equally well.