PAGE A16, KEIZERTIMES, MAY 7, 2021
The GOP's woke awakening
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Every mom is a superhero
By LYNDON ZAITZ
When asked what superpower they
would like to possess most people
answer with things like the ability to fly,
to be invisible or some other amazing
trait.
The superpowers to covet are the
natural traits of a mother. Sure, moth-
ers can't fly or morph into other beings,
but they have what we love, admire and
want to emulate. How powerful they are
with their nuturing, their nursing, their
creativity, their empathy and of course
their ferocity when it comes to their
children. Those are realistic super pow-
ers to possess.
Until her last breath, every mother
is a teacher and defender from the day
their child is born. What a child knows
about the world generally comes from
what they learn from their mother. Every
child should feel safe with a mother who
watches over and secures them. Is there
anything more ferious in the nature
world than a mother whose child is
threatened?
Some mothers are friends with their
children, which is a wonderful rela-
tionhip to have with grown offspring.
During the years when a kid is living
under the roof of their parents, isn't it
more important that they have disci-
pline, boundaries and values?
My mother is a friend, but she is
always my mom first. And she definitely
was the mother when I and my siblings
were growing up. She had expectations
from her children and when we really
stepped over the line, the wood spoon
or dad's belt was available for corrective
measures.
We are all products of our back-
ground and experience. At home, how
we are raised, what we are taught and
how our wants and wishes are answered
creates the foundation of a person who
grows into a productive, loving adult. I
am a product of a two-parent household.
Dad worked, mom was in charge of the
domestic homefront, which was what
most households looked like at that
time.
My mother was like millions of oth-
ers. She prepared three meals a day for
her family. She sewed, knitted and cro-
on my
mind
cheted. She baked for school events and
was a heck of a den mother for our local
Boy Scout troop. And she was curious,
in my mind one of the best traits a per-
son can have. When the family went for
weekend drives (all seven of us fit com-
fortably in a Volkswagen Bettle), it was
mom who said, "I wonder where that
road goes?" And we'd find out.
With a mother possessing a strong
curiousty streak and a journalist father,
it is no wonder all the Zaitz children
exhibit the same need to know and
learn.
We Zaitz children have become who
we are today because of the superpow-
ers of our mother. She nutured our
interests, which were as varied then as
today. With a Lucille Ball-esque wit and
Midwest common sense, she taught us
how to make things that fueled our over-
active imaginations. We empathize with
other people, whatever their challenges.
We know that we are not the center of
the universe, even though mom thinks
we are all special.
Every mother is a superhero. They
stand astride their world, defending
their brood against evil and embracing
the good.
(Lyndon Zaitz is publisher of the
Keizertimes.)
By JOSH HAMMER
One of the unfortunate vestiges of
liberalism’s lingering influence upon
American conservatism, and by exten-
sion the Republican Party that is con-
servatism’s default political vehicle, is
the pervasive knee-jerk tendency to view
government action as per se bad and pri-
vate-sector action as per se good. This
ideology, which might be called “market
fundamentalism” or “private-sector fun-
damentalism,” takes on differing forms:
in its more benign variation, a principled
commitment to unwavering laissez faire,
but in its more malignant variation, a
less principled commitment to corporate
boosterism and outright cronyism.
The realignment now unfolding
before our eyes in American politics
could finally retire the right’s long-stand-
ing and lamentable fixation with these
bromides. On the former front, the
realignment right’s leading institutions
and proponents seek to recover the Two
Cheers for Capitalism of Irving Kristol,
allowing for a greater state role in chan-
neling market efficiency toward the tra-
ditional conservative political ends of
justice, human flourishing and the com-
mon good. That theoretical recalibration
is welcome and proper.
The real recent action, however, has
been on the latter, more tangible front.
In the aftermath of corporate America’s
defenestration of the state of Georgia
—best encapsulated by Major League
Baseball’s obtuse decision to yank its
All-Star Game out of the Peach State—
over its passage of a milquetoast elec-
tion reform law, the already-festering
tension between the GOP and its corpo-
ratist Chamber of Commerce wing has
reached a fever pitch.
Early last week, Sen. Marco Rubio,
R-Fla., who has previously made realign-
ment inroads with his advocacy of “com-
mon good capitalism” and vocal support
for unionization in Amazon’s Bessemer,
Alabama, plant, took to the New York
Post to decry how “corporate America
eagerly dumps woke, toxic nonsense
into our culture.” Even more notably, Sen.
Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a political disciple
of Reaganite conservatism, took to The
Wall Street Journal to pronounce that
“starting today,” he will “no longer accept
money from any corporate PAC.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., meanwhile, is
only ramping up his assaults on Big Tech
oligopolists, most recently expressed by
his unveiling of the aptly named “Trust-
Busting for the Twenty-First Century
Act.” And on the House side, Rep. Ken
Buck, R-Colo., is leading a campaign to
foreswear all political donations from
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and
Twitter.
Those who came of political age asso-
ciating the GOP’s low-tax, low-regulation
policy plank with Big Business might
be taken aback by the sweeping nature
of this pushback, but in truth, the GOP
resistance to corporatism has been a
long time coming. The tea party era of
other
VOICES
2009-2012 took on a decisively popu-
list, anti-corporatist hue, with its oppo-
sition to bailing out Wall Street and its
resistance to other policies reeking of
Beltway-style corporate cronyism, such
as the Export-Import Bank that effec-
tively amounts to a Boeing slush fund.
But the recent accelerant has been the
emergence of woke capital as a destruc-
tive force tearing a grievously divided
country ever-more asunder. As the cul-
tural left nears completion of its Antonio
Gramsci-esque “long march through the
institutions,” Big Business has joined the
ranks of the academy, Hollywood and
the mainstream media as a sprawling
national edifice beholden to the illiberal
woke ideology. Whereas just nine years
ago, Wall Street donated to native son
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign at
a higher clip than it did to then-incum-
bent President Barack Obama, today
corporate wokesters threaten boycotts of
entire states due to Republican-backed
legislation on wedge issues such as abor-
tion and transgenderism—all while pros-
trating themselves before the (literally)
genocidal commissars of the Chinese
Communist Party.
Republicans are right to stand up and
solemnly declare that enough is enough,
already. There is no compelling reason
to suffer through the humiliating bro-
mance with woke capitalists, “battered
woman syndrome”-style, while corporate
America makes itself clearer than ever
before that it hates Republican voters’
guts. Whether it is on human sexual-
ity, the right to life for unborn children,
gun rights, immigration sanity or a host
of other issues, woke capital treats the
Republican Party as more of an enemy
than it would ever dream of treating
sadistic detention facility managers in
Xinjiang, China.
Republicans should stop trying to
prevent the unpreventable and permit
its amicable divorce from corporate
America to continue apace. Indeed,
that divorce is a “blessing,” as the Post’s
op-ed editor, Sohrab Ahmari, argued in
January. The GOP’s future comes in the
form of a multiracial working-class polit-
ical coalition -- not in the C-suite.
(Creators Syndicate)
K EIZER times
PUBLISHER
& EDITOR
Lyndon Zaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
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