January 2, 2023

Virtue signaling is a current pastime of Democrats and the left. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it,

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Virtue signaling is the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favor for certain political ideas or cultural happenings.

Climate warriors signal their virtue about global warming. For example, those screeching loudest over rising sea levels, including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and John Kerry, own waterfront homes that will be underwater should their predictions materialize, but which they seem to know won’t happen.

Others like King Charles and Al Gore jet across the globe to attend climate conferences, oblivious to their own carbon footprints.

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Immigration is another topic of virtue signaling. Many Democrat chief executives declare their city or state jurisdictions as sanctuaries, theoretically rolling out the red carpet to illegal immigrants. At least until the immigrants show up on their doorstep, at which time the Democrats quickly change their tunes, closing their doors to migrants or quickly sending them to someone else’s back yard.

Governor Ron DeSantis gave Martha’s Vineyard a chance to live up its self-proclaimed sanctuary status by sending 48 migrants their way, only to have residents and officials immediately turn into MAGA racists by shipping the migrants far from their self-proclaimed virtuous sanctuary island.

Closer to my home in Denver, similar hypocrisy was on display when the city got exactly what it asked for, and like the dog chasing and catching the car, discovered that they didn’t know what to do once they got what they wanted.

Denver recently received in influx of migrants, much to the consternation of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. As reported by the Denver Post, “The migrants and asylum seekers were coming either on their own or at the encouragement of nonprofit organizations at the border that have provided recommendations for places they can go without advanced notice.”

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As an aside, these migrants not too long ago were called “illegal aliens”. Bill Clinton was not a racist or xenophobe when common sense was still in fashion in America, and he used that term as an accurate descriptor. Now they are described as “undocumented migrants”, and they are arriving in Denver by the hundreds. It’s so bad in Denver that Mayor Hancock issued an emergency declaration since these recent arrivals have placed, “Immense strain on city recourses to the level where they’re on the verge of reaching a breaking point at this time.”

Of course, they are a strain, just as a bunch of permanent houseguests would be to most homeowners. But that pesky reality was irrelevant to the virtue signaling mayor and other local elected officials when they only had to talk the talk but not walk the walk.