Feehery: DC will become the inverse of West Berlin

They used to say that Ginger Rogers could do anything Fred Astaire could do, except backwards and in heels. 

In the same vein, Washington, D.C., is doing everything West Berlin used to do, except backwards and with a heavy dose socialism-radicalism. 

West Berlin was a redoubt of capitalist freedom in a sea of Communist drudgery. 

A relic of a broken-down peace agreement forged in the aftermath of the Second World War, West Berlin stayed free as Eastern bloc oppression mandated by the Soviet Union destroyed lives, shattered dreams and sucked the life out of the once thriving German economy. 

Washington, D.C., is becoming the exact opposite of West Berlin. 

With the election of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, the D.C. region will have two Republican governors surrounding the nation’s capital for the first time in decades.

The District has been moving quickly to the left for the last ten years or so, as young white progressives move in and more pragmatic African-Americans move out. The radicalism started first with banning plastic straws and then putting a nickel tax on plastic bags. That shifted into an animosity towards the police in the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots, the wide acceptance of tent cities, and the approval of pop-up pot stores that allow residents to smoke a doobie whenever the mood strikes.

Despite having a huge budget surplus, the D.C. city council last year moved to raise taxes on just about everybody who has a job in the name of taxing the rich. It mandated that school kids have to wear masks, despite flimsy evidence that such mask mandates work, and has extended that requirement to gyms and retail stores. 

Mayor Muriel Bowser then required retailers in the city to check the vaccine papers of all who enter their stores. Those vaccine papers must be cross-referenced with a photo ID. Bowser has long called Republican efforts to require photo identification for voting racist, so this new vaccine/photo ID shopping/eating mandate is stunning hypocrisy. The fact that her new directive went into effect over Martin Luther King weekend, when about half of the Black residents in the city are not vaccinated, is just icing on the cake. 

Bowser might be Black, but she has taken all of these measures to please the white progressive radicals who now make up the lion’s share of the Democratic primary.

The end result will be a capital city that is more expensive, more dangerous, more woke, less business friendly, more autocratic, less dynamic and less free. 

As D.C. descends into a Democratic dystopia, Virginia will become a bastion of freedom and free enterprise. While the D.C. schools will only get worse, the parents’ movement in the Old Dominion will make Virginia’s public school system great again. While crime festers in the nation’s capital, law and order will be reinvigorated by Virginia’s new attorney general. While the city council screws around with expensive mandates and higher taxes, the new governor will adopt business-friendly policies, will cut taxes and spur real economic growth. 

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has already received the message about a new Virginia regime and he has moved to cut taxes to make Maryland more competitive with its neighbor and rival.

But Washington, D.C. won’t get the message. It can’t get the message. It is living in an ideological bubble, driven by white radicals who believe that capitalism is bad, that law and order is racist and that totalitarian vaccine passports are not only appropriate but necessary for the betterment of society and for the purging of the great unwashed and unvaxxed.

Washington, D.C., will soon become the inverse of West Berlin.  Instead of a shining example of western freedom in a sea of Communist authoritarianism, it will soon become a Democratic dystopia wedged in between two states run by Republican governors who value freedom, free enterprise, law and order and schools that work.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).