Media watch: Sorry, WaPo — Lincoln Was No Socialist

Gillian Brockell’s Washington Post piece claiming that Abraham Lincoln had strong socialist sympathies and was friendly with Karl Marx “distorts history, and relies on questionable evidence and flimsy anecdotes,” thunders Elad Vaida at The Federalist. Brockell mentions Lincoln’s friendship with the New York Tribune’s Horace Greeley (who opposed free markets) and Charles Dana, a friend of Karl Marx. Vaida counters: “Being friends with socialists” doesn’t make you a socialist. Lincoln cherished democracy, which Marx saw as “a tool” to oppress the working class. And “you can almost see Marx cringe” at this Lincoln quote: “It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.”

Conservative: Lessons of the Cyprus ‘Rape’ Case

The Jerusalem Post’s Ruthie Blum takes a hard look at the case of the dozen Israel teens arrested for rape in Cyprus. “The accused were convicted in the court of public opinion” before all the facts came out, she notes. Then the accuser admitted that she’d consented to sex with three of the boys — but was “furious” to learn they’d “videotaped her in the act and shared it on social media.” So not being rapists “did not exempt them from societal scorn,” especially as they celebrated their release “by calling the victim-turned-perpetrator a ‘British whore,’ while dancing and prancing around . . . and chanting about divine retribution.” In a world where “victimhood is preferable to the taking of personal responsibility,” it seems that “the one thing that none of the young people involved did was accept his or her own part” of the blame.

From the right: Real Justice for DC

While all the 2020 Democrats say that statehood for the District of Columbia is a matter of fairness, Commentary’s John Steele Gordon notes that the real point is “to add two permanently Democratic seats to the Senate.” Yet DC “bears not the slightest resemblance to a state. It is a city. Tiny Rhode Island is nearly 20 times as large.” A far fairer answer: Let DC residents vote for Congress and president “as though they were citizens of the state that ceded the District to the Government of the United States” — Maryland.

Urban beat: Stop Fighting and Get Rid of the Rats

While President Trump spars with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) over “filthy conditions and rat infestation” in Baltimore, the folks actually living in the squalor are lost, sighs Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner. African-Americans in cities like Gary, Ind., and Baltimore are busy dealing with “deep and profound issues,” such as “generational poverty, gun violence, gang wars, and the collapse of the family.” She hopes for “politicians to return to one of our founding virtues: honesty.” That is, to “use these problems to draw us together and rally us as a people around the need to reinstate the values that made our society great and support those institutions with the public and private resources necessary to see them flourish in challenged communities.”

Culture beat: Moving May Be Over-rated

Americans aren’t really moving much these days, Charles F. McElwee notes at City Journal, but the trend isn’t new. Federal Reserve and Notre Dame economists reported in 2011: “Internal migration has fallen noticeably since the 1980s, reversing increases from earlier in the century.” According a recent New York Fed study, McElewee notes, “the biggest factor” behind this “migration aversion” turns out to be “a yearning for rootedness, regardless of economic status.” To stay close to family, the average American is willing to forego “30 percent of his or her income.” Economists fear less migration will mean less economic mobility, but McElwee isn’t sure Americans’ reluctance to move is a fault: “A packed U-Haul, a vacated property, and new, unknown locale can engender loneliness and disorientation, not emotional or economic relief.” Perhaps what we need is “a renewed appreciation for hometown attachments.” After all, “many heartland communities . . . are dealing with decline, but remain stable.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board