Rep. Cori Bush is arguing for the installation of ZiL lanes in the United States, ZiL lanes being the private road lanes that Soviet government elites used to skip the Moscow traffic jams.
Bush is arguing that we must defund the police. At the same time, Bush is also arguing that taxpayers must be forced to pay for her private security. The Orwellian principle is the same as that of the ZiL lanes: All are equal, but some are more equal than others.
There’s a sustaining ZiL trend on the modern Left.
The columnist Robert Reich has argued, forcefully and correctly, for more and cheaper multifamily housing. Except, of course, if that housing is to be built in his neighborhood. A prominent socialist politician in my native U.K., Dianne Abbott, was a fierce opponent of private schooling. That is, until it came time for her son to attend a private school. So also do we see this hypocrisy from climate tsar John Kerry. He calls for radical action to reduce carbon emissions but is quite happy to zoom around America and the world in his private jet.
But there’s no excuse for this largesse. Moscow’s ZiL lanes offered obvious proof of how the equality of socialism was a myth. Don’t let this happen here. Those who rule us must be subject to the same laws and expectations the rest of us follow. If not, we’re no longer living in a representative democracy.
