A while back I wrote about the ambitious of San Francisco’s mayor to become governor of California: The young mayor captured national attention in early 2004 when - defying state law - he opened the cities City Hall to gay marriages. Hundreds of gay couples lined the streets to tie up in images broadcast around the nation that only entrenched support for George Bush against his Massachusetts rival John Kerry whose very own liberal state started the whole gay marriage issue to begin with.
What Newsom did was entirely illegal, and even the left-wing California Supreme Court - which approved gay marriage in early 2008 only to have voters constitutionally outlaw the practice in the November 4 referendum - declared all City Hall approved marriages to be void. Newsom’s great sin was not his support for gay marriage, but believed that his remit over the matter is superior to that of the state government. State governments not mayors oversee marriage contracts. If Newsom supports gay marriage, that is fine; but to let political ideology overstep legal considerations is a grotesque lack of understanding of the rule of law in a free society. If anything, Newsom’s actions only ended up to retard the cause of gay marriages. The images of gays getting married scared small-town America into passing one referendum after another banning gay marriage later that election year.
How Newsom handled gay marriage is importance for it speaks to his radicalism and failure to understand that just because one is elected as the lesser to evil, that does not mean one has the power to do whatever he pleases. But there is more to Newsom to worry about. First starters: did I say he is the mayor of San Francisco. It says a lot about a person if they were able to get elected in San Francisco. The previously great American city has now become synonymous for far-left activism. Under Newsom’s tenure the city council placed a ballot initiative that expressed disapproval toward U.S. military recruiters trying to sign the next generation of patriots. The initiative does not ban the military from recruiting, of course, but expresses the public will. One councilman said he got the idea after watching leftist Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″ where Marine recruiter are seen as being overzealous in trying to enlist, and enlist the poor over the rich at that. Moore’s film is bogus and only an ignoramus would enact policies after watching any film produced by a lardass who never tires of attacking his own country. But this is San Francisco. In any decent American city the measure would have resolutely been voted down, in San Francisco it passed by a staggering 60% of the vote.
Then the military’s junior recruit high school program [ROTC] was shut down. ROTC is a program that allows high school students - ONLY after parental permission - to join what is in essence a junior cadet program. I saw it at work at my high school. It is a great program that teaches students about personal responsibility and honor, and motivates them to maintain good grades due to the fact that they get booted out if their grades slip. Further, most of the people who join ROTC do so in order to get military aid in paying for college. It is a win-win. The students enjoy it and get college funding if they just to continue studies, and the military is able to start to mold the next generation of American soldiers from an earlier age; which may have some benefit. But the leftists in San Francisco simply view the American military as evil. And I am serious: I once had a college professor of the 1960s hippies era who once showed us a lapel pin given to him by a friend who worked at the Pentagon; the lapel commemorated those killed at the Pentagon on September 11th, but because it was military made the professor could not bring himself to wear it due to - and these are his words - his political fights, figurative, with the military establishment during his youth. To his credit, a few days later he showed up in class with it on. He has moved on, but San Francisco hippies have not and seek to rid their city of the military. Forget about the military benefits for a moment, the city council banned ROTC without ever considering the effect on enrolled students. That is how dogmatic they are.
Newsom is not to blame for the initiation of the ballot measure or the ROTC banning, but he is to be held responsible for their passages. Newsom never one took a public stand against either measure and thus one can reasonable assume he simply cares very little about protecting the honor of the military or supports such un-American acts.
Finally, Newsom likes to praise his city’s “progressive” policies. Hardly. San Francisco is the most inequitable society in American. It is a city with a privileged upper class and then a good deal of poop people - San Francisco has also one of the highest homelessness rates in the nation - due to the housing market being so expansive that the middle class is squeezed because they can’t afford decent housing and, of course, will not live in the slum. So San Francisco has lost its middle class to well-managed nearby suburbs. The liberals like to praise the middle class, San Francisco has no one to speak of.
The last thing a until recently nearly-bankrupt state of California can afford is the socialist, radical ways of Newsom.
Good news, the people of California recently heard the Newsom (ha ha ha!) that they will be spared even the thought of Newsom winning:
San Francisco’s Democratic mayor, Gavin Newsom, withdrew on Friday from next year’s race for California governor.
Thank goodness. California deserves better.
