EDITORIAL: A history lesson for the new Democratic superstar

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has rocketed to superstardom, but she can’t stop with the inane statements. Last week, she urged people not to procreate on the grounds that it would be wrong to bring children into such a tumultuous world, implying they’ll have a short existence because global warming will soon kill us all. This is what passes for deep thinking these days?

That fatuous reflection came just a week or so after the New York socialist masquerading as a Democrat compared the proposed Trump border wall to the Berlin Wall. While you could make several reasonable arguments as to why we need — or don’t need — a wall on our southern border, comparing it to the barrier that symbolized the Cold War and communist oppression borders on the idiotic.

But that didn’t stop Rep. Ocasio-Cortez from producing a social media video in which she criticized the president’s proposed wall with Mexico. “I think it’s a moral abomination,” she says. “I think it’s like the Berlin Wall.”

While some of her many media cheerleaders swooned, Ryan Saavedra at The Daily Wire offered a much-needed tutorial.

“The Berlin Wall was built to stop East Germans from escaping into West Germany,” he tweeted. “The goal of the border wall is to stop illegal immigration and trafficking.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey expanded on Mr. Saavedra’s take, pointing out that “the only way anyone could assert this with a straight face, let alone with the smug dismissal (Rep.) Ocasio-Cortez displays here, is to be entirely ignorant of the post-war history of Berlin, Germany and the deep desire to flee the communist system in both.”

As Mr. Morrissey notes, East German officials didn’t care if anybody wanted to enter East Berlin. The “moral abomination” known as the Berlin Wall was built to “trap people inside a communist system when they wanted to flee.” And it did a great job of trapping them. As he points out, only 5,000 successfully “crossed over into freedom” in the wall’s 28-year lifespan. At least another 191 people were shot and killed while trying to do so. As he also points out, this is a somewhat counterproductive comparison for a “cheerleader for socialism” such as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to be making. But the irony is clearly lost on her.

Perhaps we should cut Rep. Ocasio-Cortez some slack. She was barely 2 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, as the socialist paradises of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union disappeared into the history books. Clearly she neglected to study these historical developments during her time at Boston University. Let’s hope the current fiasco in Venezuela will provide her with an opportunity to learn from history as it unfolds.