The preacher who would be "kingmaker"

As the preacherman Rev. Boise Kimber said, referring to the white firefighters, "They just have too many vowels in their names." Blatant and shameless, this obnoxious man felt perfectly confident in attempting to thwart the promotions of white firemen in New Haven, Connecticut, simply because of their race. Supposedly this was the type of bias that those 1960s civil rights crusaders strove to end. In the name of justice for blacks, all such discrimination was to be ended. Of course, it's been clear for years that genuinely equal treatment was never what these crusaders had in mind.

Following are excerpts from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's concurring opinion in the Ricci v. DeStefano case. In a 5-4 Decision, the Court ruled in favor of the firemen. Alito has done us all a service by offering a candid, brutal account of the goings-on behind the scenes, by an interfering black preacher and the Mayor of New Haven.
• • •
I write separately only because the dissent [by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg], while claiming that “the Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story,” provides an incomplete description of the events that led to New Haven’s decision to reject the results of its exam. ...

When an employer in a disparate-treatment case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 claims that an employment decision, such as the refusal to promote, was based on a legitimate reason, two questions—one objective and one subjective—must be decided. The first, objective question is whether the reason given by the employer is one that is legitimate under Title VII. If the reason provided by the employer is not legitimate on its face, the employer is liable.

The second, subjective question concerns the employer’s intent. If an employer offers a facially legitimate reason for its decision but it turns out that this explanation was just a pretext for discrimination, the employer is again liable. ...

As initially described by the dissent, the process by which the City reached the decision not to accept the test results was open, honest, serious, and deliberative. But even the District Court admitted that “a jury could rationally infer that city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, the Mayor would incur the wrath of [Rev. Boise] Kimber and other influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.”

This admission finds ample support in the record. Reverend Boise Kimber, to whom the District Court referred, is a politically powerful New Haven pastor and a self-professed "kingmaker." On one occasion, “in front of TV cameras, he threatened a race riot during the murder trial of the black man arrested for killing white Yalie Christian Prince. He continues to call whites racist if they question his actions.” ...

Reverend Kimber’s personal ties with seven-term New Haven Mayor John DeStefano stretch back more than a decade. In 1996, for example, Mayor DeStefano testified for Rev. Kimber as a character witness when Rev. Kimber—then the manager of a funeral home—was prosecuted and convicted for stealing prepaid funeral expenses from an elderly woman and then lying about the matter under oath. “Reverend Kimber has played a leadership role in all of Mayor DeStefano’s political campaigns, [and] is considered a valuable political supporter and vote-getter.”

According to the Mayor’s former campaign manager (who is currently his executive assistant), Rev. Kimber is an invaluable political asset because “[h]e’s very good at organizing people and putting together field operations, as a result of his ties to labor, his prominence in the religious community and his long-standing commitment to roots.”

In 2002, the Mayor picked Rev. Kimber to serve as the Chairman of the New Haven Board of Fire Commissioners (BFC), “despite the fact that he had no experience in the profession, fire administration, [or] municipal management.” In that capacity, Rev. Kimber told firefighters that certain new recruits would not be hired because "they just have too many vowels in their name[s]." [Hartford Courant, June 13, 2002] After protests about this comment, Rev. Kimber stepped down as chairman of the BFC, but he remained on the BFC and retained “a direct line to the mayor.”

Almost immediately after the test results were revealed in “early January” 2004, Rev. Kimber called the City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Karen Dubois-Walton ... Dubois-Walton and Rev. Kimber met privately in her office because he wanted “to express his opinion” about the test results and “to have some influence” over the City’s response. ...

[The city's two Fire Chiefs], Chief William Grant (who is white) and Assistant Fire Chief Ronald Dumas (who is African-American) ... believed that the test results should be certified. Petitioners allege, and the record suggests, that the Mayor and his staff colluded “sans the Chief[s]” because “the defendants did not want Grant’s or Dumas’ views to be publicly known; accordingly both men were prevented by the Mayor and his staff from making any statements regarding the matter.” ...

The next day, on January 13, 2004, Chad Legel, who had designed the tests, flew from Chicago to New Haven ... “Legel outlined the merits of the examination and why city officials should be confident in the validity of the results.” But according to Legel, Dubois-Walton was “argumentative” and apparently had already made up her mind that the tests were “discriminatory.” Again according to Legel, “[a] theme” of the meeting was “the political and racial overtones of what was going on in the City.” Legel came away from the January 13, 2004 meeting with the impression that defendants were already leaning toward discarding the examination results.

On January 22, 2004, the Civil Service Board (CSB or Board) convened its first public meeting. Almost immediately, Rev. Kimber began to exert political pressure on the CSB. He began a loud, minutes-long outburst that required the CSB Chairman to shout him down and hold him out of order three times.

Reverend Kimber protested the public meeting, arguing that he and the other fire commissioners should first be allowed to meet with the CSB in private.

Four days after the CSB’s first meeting, Mayor DeStefano’s executive aide sent an e-mail to Dubois-Walton, [Tina] Burgett [director of Human Resources], and [Thomas] Ude [the city's Corporate Counsel]. The message clearly indicated that the Mayor had made up his mind to oppose certification of the test results (but nevertheless wanted to conceal that fact from the public). ...

On February 5, 2004, the CSB convened its second public meeting. Reverend Kimber again testified and threatened the CSB with political recriminations if they voted to certify the test results. ...

One of Rev. Kimber’s “friends and allies,” Lieutenant Gary Tinney, also exacerbated racial tensions before the CSB. After some firefighters applauded in support of certifying the test results, “Lt. Tinney exclaimed, ‘Listen to the Klansmen behind us.’” Tinney also has strong ties to the Mayor’s office. ...

As part of its effort to deflect attention from the specifics of the test, the City relied heavily on the testimony of Dr. Christopher Hornick, who is one of Chad Legel’s competitors in the test-development business. Hornick never “stud[ied] the test [that Legel developed] at length or in detail,” but Hornick did review and rely upon literature sent to him by Burgett to criticize Legel’s test. ... Hornick also relied on newspaper accounts—again, sent to him by Burgett—pertaining to the controversy surrounding the certification decision.

Although Hornick again admitted that he had no knowledge about the actual test that Legel had developed and that the City had administered, the City repeatedly relied upon Hornick as a testing “guru” and, in the CSB Chairman’s words, “the City ke[pt] quoting him as a person that we should rely upon more than anybody else the City repeatedly relied upon Hornick as a testing “guru” and, in the CSB Chairman’s words, “the City ke[pt] quoting him as a person that we should rely upon more than anybody else ...

Dubois-Walton later admitted that the City rewarded Hornick for his testimony by hiring him to develop and administer an alternative test. See also id., at 562a-563a: (Hornick’s plea for future business from the City on the basis of his criticisms of Legel’s tests).

At some point prior to the CSB’s public meeting on March 18, 2004, the Mayor decided to use his executive authority to disregard the test results—even if the CSB ultimately voted to certify them. Accordingly, on the evening of March 17th, Dubois-Walton sent an e-mail to the Mayor, the Mayor’s executive assistant, Burgett, and attorney Ude, attaching two alternative press releases.

The first would be issued if the CSB voted not to certify the test results; the second would be issued (and would explain the Mayor’s invocation of his executive authority) if the CSB voted to certify the test results. Half an hour after Dubois-Walton circulated the alternative drafts, Burgett replied: “[W]ell, that seems to say it all. Let’s hope draft #2 hits the shredder tomorrow nite.”

Soon after the CSB voted against certification, Mayor DeStefano appeared at a dinner event and “took credit for the scu[tt]ling of the examination results.” ...

In the event that the CSB was not persuaded, the Mayor, wielding ultimate decision making authority, was prepared to overrule the CSB immediately. Taking this view of the evidence, a reasonable jury could easily find that the City’s real reason for scrapping the test results was not a concern about violating the disparate-impact provision of Title VII but a simple desire to please a politically important racial constituency. ...

I assume the dissent would agree—there are some things that a public official cannot do, and one of those is engaging in intentional racial discrimination when making employment decisions. The second point concerns the dissent’s main argument—that efforts by the Mayor and his staff to scuttle the test results are irrelevant because the ultimate decision was made by the CSB. ...

The dissent makes much of the fact that members of the CSB swore under oath that their votes were based on the good-faith belief that certification of the results would have violated federal law. But the good faith of the CSB members would not preclude a finding that the presentations engineered by the Mayor and his staff influenced or caused the CSB decision.

The least employee-friendly standard asks only whether “the actual decision maker” acted with discriminatory intent, and it is telling that, even under this standard, summary judgment for respondents would not be proper. This is so because a reasonable jury could certainly find that in New Haven, the Mayor—not the CSB—wielded the final decision making power.

After all, the Mayor claimed that authority and was poised to use it in the event that the CSB decided to accept the test results. If the Mayor had the authority to overrule a CSB decision accepting the test results, the Mayor also presumably had the authority to overrule the CSB’s decision rejecting the test results. In light of the Mayor’s conduct, it would be quite wrong to throw out petitioners’ case on the ground that the CSB was the ultimate decision maker. ...

Petitioners were denied promotions for which they qualified because of the race and ethnicity of the firefighters who achieved the highest scores on the City’s exam.
• • •
Read Justice Alito's complete concurring opinion with all citations here.

See also:

On Race, the Slog Goes On

High court calls it like it is

Politico Arena: reactions to Ricci decision
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The Fourth of July and True American Patriots

What would we do without those wonderful, flag waving "conservative patriots," who teach the rest of us just what "patriotism" means? Recently, we were subjected to eight long years of preachments from this crowd, who are still at it, via their dissembling talk show hosts and noxious websites. And now, their "tea parties."

Did you know that the mark of a True American, that is, a Real Patriot, is evidenced by his/her devotion to the "pro-life" message? That's the message that informs us that life is important for a 19-week-old fetus, but not especially important for a 19-year-old boy, whose dispensable body can be blown to pieces in unnecessary military conflicts concocted by deceiving politicians, and ardently supported by True American Patriots.

So, you thought that patriotism had a direct connection to the Founders' Constitution and its protections? Not according to these True American Patriots. They have a different version of what happened back there in the 18th century. Due process? Well, that depends ... Free speech? Well, that depends, too ... Whether you deserve rights as a citizen depends a lot on just what notions you carry in your head. Do you harbor the "correct" notions?

According to these zealots, we Americans are the Exceptional People, with a license from God to commit whatever acts of calumny we deem necessary to keep us "safe." The True American Patriots, those loyalists of the War Party, are now worried that we might not have enough foreign battles to keep our military occupied in the coming years. What could be more un-American than not being engaged in war on somebody else's shores at any given time? After all, isn't this what the Fourth of July is all about?

True American Patriots will become unhinged, if they cannot find enough military altercations in which to kill off more 19-year-old youths. As Pat Buchanan once put it, after the 2007 skirmish with Russia over Georgia's invasion of Ossetia, "Had George W. Bush prevailed, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians."

You see, any excuse for a battle will do. Whatever it takes to get involved in just about any conflict in the world, you can be sure the War Party will be champing at the bit to do so. Jeffrey Tucker wisely observes, "The war party and American conservatism are interchangeable and inseparable. They are synonyms." Well, isn't this what the Fourth of July is about?

Along with the recasting of "patriotism," these True American Patriots have redefined Christianity to make it unrecognizable to earlier Christians. In the True American Patriot's version, it is your attitude towards the Fetus that unlocks the door to salvation, or not. Sending your 19-year-old son to die in Iraq for nothing is acceptable, but ignoring the "rights" of an unknown fetus in an unknown belly of an unknown woman will insure your eternal damnation. Dead son, you lose nothing. Dead Fetus, you lose everything. This is the New Christianity.

True American Patriots see themselves as the only credible caretakers of Democracy, and those who reject such hubris are denounced as socialists and communists and fascists. Of course, ordinary people among the misguided and unenlightened might consider the love of war the ultimate fascistic mentality. Milton Mayer who, along with many others, urged against U.S. involvement in WWII, viewed war itself as a form of fascism. He wrote, "Democracy is an order in which the state exists for men. Fascism is an order in which men exist for the state. In no condition to which men submit do they exist for the state so completely as in war." There is no period in which these True American Patriots love the state more than when it is at war. Yet, isn't that what the Fourth of July is about?

These dogmatists teach that it is "liberal" to be opposed to war and, therefore, un-American to question government policy when the state sends you off to die. In fact, it's unpatriotic to refuse the state's command to torture other human beings. God's commands over man's commands? Not likely with today's claque of Christians. What conscience?

Laurence Vance asks where is the outrage from the evangelical community over torture, over the invasion of Iraq, over the thousands of dead Iraqis, over the thousands of American soldiers "who died for a lie." Where is the outrage over the destruction of that which conservatives once touted as "core American values" due to an evil, misguided foreign policy? What outrage? Our True American Patriots, in the midst of the culture of death that they have helped to spawn, are too busy boasting over how much they treasure "life" – while celebrating the Fourth of July.
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Hate crime laws are unnecessary and dangerous

The fair-minded liberal Alexander Cockburn adds his voice to warnings about the forthcoming "hate crime" laws, in The Hate Crime Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard. Cockburn is among the few journalists who reveal that it was never clear if Matthew Shepard was assaulted because he was a homosexual. In spite of this, an entire "gay" industry has grown up around, and profited off this case, including Shepard's mother.

Excerpts:
•
We’ve got the Hate Crimes Bill, aka the Matthew Shepard Act, aka the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, before Congress and far advanced on its repellent journey towards the statute book. ...

The Matthew Shepard Act is a ham-handed attempt to right injustice by establishing different legal treatment for some classes of crime victims. The proposed statute classifies as "hate crimes" attacks based on a victim’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. America is well on its way to making it illegal to say anything nasty about gays, Jews, blacks and women. "Hate speech," far short of any direct incitement to violence, is on the edge of being criminalized, with the First Amendment gone the way of the dodo. ...

The gay lobby has gone into overdrive for just such a hate crime law ever since Matthew Shepard got beaten to death in 1998 by two roofers on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. It’s actually somewhat unclear whether the roofers, one of whom was high on meth at the time, murdered Shepard because they specifically hated gays. Anyway, the murder has put them behind bars for the rest of their lives using tough existing laws. But, starting with Shepard’s mother, Judy, the $100,000-plus head of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, gay and "human rights" groups have been fundraising on Shepard’s "gay martyrdom" ever since. ...

Federal and state hate crime laws are unnecessary and dangerous. As always, the challenge is to apply existing laws in a manner that constitutes justice, no matter who the victim may be. ... Five gay groups have publicly criticized a bill currently before the New York State Legislature―the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act―that provides sentencing enhancements for hate crimes. Let others join them. It’s disgusting to see liberals rushing into the sentence-toughening business.

Read entire article here.

See also:

Understanding 'Hate Crime' Laws: There's more to them than meets the eye

Abolish all 'hate crime' laws
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Get used to torture

Imprisoned for life, without a trial? For centuries, this was the norm in many countries around the world, and is still in some places. However, the New World's America was blessed with a Constitution designed to prevent any such travesty from taking root on these shores. Yet every now and then a despot comes along, an Abraham Lincoln or a George W. Bush, who decides that, not only does his bountiful wisdom place him above all law, it also grants him the right to contrive his own laws.

Today, the major enablers of those who would deny due process to American citizens are the people who call themselves "conservative patriots." Jacob Hornberger offers some stark truths about such people in The Right to Torture Americans.

Excerpts:
•
Conservatives are protesting a federal judge’s ruling that torture victim Jose Padilla’s civil lawsuit against former Justice Department attorney John Yoo be permitted to continue. The conservatives feel that Yoo, who authored some of the infamous torture memos for the Bush White House, should be immune from lawsuits from Americans who were tortured as a natural consequence of such memos.

Let’s sum up what conservatives (and neo-conservatives) are saying about the America in which we now live. They’re saying that the federal government now wields the power to torture Americans and that Americans had better get used to this new way of life. Any American who is tortured should forget about ever suing any federal official who either does the torturing or who authorizes or facilitates it.

At the same time, conservatives say that federal torturers should be immune from criminal liability for torturing Americans, no matter how many criminal laws against torture they violate. ...

What Jose Padilla’s lawsuit is exposing is the harsh truth about the country in which we now live. Padilla is an American citizen. He was tried and convicted in a federal district court of a federal criminal offense, to wit: terrorism, and he is now serving time in a federal penitentiary for that crime.

But prior to the time that Padilla was convicted, federal officials incarcerated him in a military dungeon run by the Pentagon, where he was held for years and intentionally denied a speedy trial and due process of law. U.S. officials made it clear that if they wanted, they could keep Padilla incarcerated for the rest of his life without a trial. ...

Padilla’s civil lawsuit is not just about him. It’s about what federal officials, including those in the Pentagon and the CIA, can now do to all Americans.

Read complete article here.

See these related articles by Jacob Hornberger:

Padilla’s Lawsuit against Yoo to Proceed

The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans

See also Glenn Greenwald's NPR's ombudsman: Why we bar the word "torture"

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The reality of rape in England

If you've been following the demise of once-civilized, stiff-upper-lip England, where policemen did not even carry guns, then you know what has happened to it during these years of open borders immigration and the overturning of its legal system to favor the new arrivals. Over the past two decades, crime has gone through the roof as English locals have tried to acclimate to the new cultural trends being brought to their shores.

As staunch supporters of anything-goes immigration, the British mainstream media have become masters at covering up the criminality of foreigners. Here is an unusually candid article by Sorious Samura, a British African who, on June 22, produced a documentary for television on the subject of rape. Below are excerpts from his article, Gang rape: Is it a race issue?
•
In 1999 I witnessed a gang rape in Sierra Leone. I was forced to watch a group of rebel soldiers taking it in turns to rape a young girl in front of an audience of jeering men. It was the height of the civil conflict and rape had become a devastating weapon of war. When I moved to Britain I believed I had escaped such horrific sexual violence. As my Dispatches investigation tomorrow night shows, I was mistaken. Gang rape is happening here – and what I have found most disturbing as an African is that a disproportionate number of these attacks are being carried out by black or mixed-race young men. ...

In December, nine schoolboys, some as young as 13 at the time of the attack, were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. She was dragged between tower blocks in Hackney where she was threatened with a knife, hit and raped during an ordeal that lasted an hour and a half – some of which was filmed on mobile phones. In January, three men were convicted of gang raping a 16-year-old with learning disabilities for two hours before dousing her with caustic soda in an effort to get rid of the evidence. ...

In other instances, as some of the victims in our film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone's house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait. Or they might be hanging out with friends in a park and suddenly realise they have become surrounded by a group of boys intent on sex. ...

I found there was concern among black communities about this violence. The Rev Joyce Daley, from the Black Parents Forum in Hackney, told me that gang rape is not a rare or one-off phenomenon. It is happening on a regular basis. She said: "It could actually explode on our very streets." Steve Griffith, a youth worker in King's Cross, said: "I see too much abuse of young women on the streets." ...

Sheldon Thomas, a youth worker in Brixton, said: "We've got a generation that looks at sex as if it's nothing, and treats disrespecting women as if it's nothing. These guys are like 13, 14 and 15, and their actual attitudes towards young girls – towards sex – is mind-blowing. It's actually leaving you asking: where are their morals, where are their values?"

Read complete article here.
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Palin, still the darling of the mainstream media

My, my, Miz Palin is really playing the aggrieved victim to the hilt, isn't she? She and her acolytes have obviously decided that this is the way to go, in order to shut down her opposition. Is it working for you? Now she's fighting "malicious desecration." I thought that "desecration" referred to sacred things, not to hyped up photos of one's offspring. "Babies and children are off limits," she opines. Coming from Palin, that's got to be some kind of sick joke. What would she know about children being off limits? After publicly desecrating her own children, now they're sacred?

Palin is as laughable as ever, and here is another great Paul Mulshine column on the "conservative" Diva. An excerpt from Why the liberal media love Sarah Palin:
•
It has long been my contention that the most regrettable development in American politics has been the takeover of the Republican Party by those denizens of the heartland who tended to infest the Democratic Party until quite recently. And I find further confirmation of this in the events involving Sarah Palin and that joke told by David Letterman.

The joke involved may have been tasteless. But taste is not Palin's strength. She first came to prominence parading her pregnant daughter and the daughter's soon-to-be-ex-fiance around the national Republican convention.

Recently the lad has been making the rounds of talk shows informing the country that Palin let him share a room with the poor girl when she was a mere 17 years old. Perhaps I'm revealing my age, but when I was a young lad in the tutelage of the nuns, that sort of lapse would have been considered more scandalous than a mere joke on late-night television. Yet the more Palin's supporters hear of this kind of thing, the greater their ardor for her potential presidential candidacy in 2012.

Most of these people seem to perceive Palin as some sort of a conservative political leader. Nonsense. She has never given any indication that she has an identifiable political philosophy, conservative or liberal. She is not so much a political figure as a sort of national fertility symbol, the Venus of Willendorf reborn as the Venus of Wasilla. ...

Read complete article here:
•
For more on our favorite Mother-Leader, see our previous lists of posts here and here and here.
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The Naval Academy and "diversity"

When was the last time we got this kind of honesty and candidness from a white man who is attached to a job he wishes to keep? Here are excerpts from an article by Bruce Fleming, an English professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, describing the path that political correctness based in multiculturalism has taken at the Academy. (Did you know there is remedial tutoring even at the great military academies once reserved for the best and the brightest?) Fleming writes:

•
The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced in Annapolis recently that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy. The Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, echoed him. Everyone understands that "diversity" here means nonwhite skins. ...

A "diverse" class does not mean the Naval Academy recruits violinists, or older students (they can't be 23 on Induction Day), or gay people (who are thrown out) or foreign students (other than the dozen or so sent by client governments). It means applicants checked a box on their application that says they are Hispanic, African American, Native American, and now, since my time on the Admissions Board of the Academy, where I've taught for 22 years, Asians.

Midshipmen are admitted by two tracks. White applicants out of high school who are not also athletic recruits typically need grades of A and B and minimum SAT scores of 600 on each part for the Board to vote them "qualified." Athletics and leadership also count. ...

SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of "not qualified" for white applicants. Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our "number one priority." For them, another set of rules apply. Their cases are briefed separately to the board, and SAT scores to the mid-500s with quite a few Cs in classes (and no visible athletics or leadership) typically produce a vote of "qualified" for them, with direct admission to Annapolis. They're in, and are given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.

Minority applicants with scores and grades down to the 300s with Cs and Ds (and no particular leadership or athletics) also come, though after a remedial year at our taxpayer-supported remedial school, the Naval Academy Preparatory School. By using NAPS as a feeder, we've virtually eliminated all competition for "diverse" candidates. ...

All this is probably unconstitutional. That's what the Supreme Court said about the University of Michigan's two-track admissions in 2003.

Once at Annapolis, "diverse" midshipmen are over-represented in our pre-college classes, in lower-track courses, in mandatory tutoring programs and less challenging majors. Many struggle to master basic concepts. (I teach some of these courses.)

Read complete article here.
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As relevant today as yesterday – 01

From time to time, I shall link to articles originally written for the former hard copy newsletter, or for Issues & Views-The Website (now an archive), to highlight features whose themes are still relevant. This is the first of such posts.

The ongoing reparations fraud [2004]
What makes the current reparations movement a fraud, whether at Brown University or in the country at large, is the attempt to depict slavery as something uniquely done to blacks by whites. Reparations advocates are doing this for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: That's where the money is.

See also:
Reparations and Irresponsible Demagogues

• • •
No escape [2004]
Until recent years, it was left to prison authorities and each state to determine how best to handle its prison population. Policies were set by wardens and/or state personnel, including decisions about racial and ethnic housing assignments. In general, separation of the races, especially blacks and whites, met with consensus among prison administrators and the inmates as well. But as the social policy of integration in this country took the form of a quasi-religion, becoming a virtue unto itself, some prison officials were forced to abandon common sense policies designed to keep the peace. Prisons came under the inspection of social engineers, who were determined that prison life reflect the standards being imposed on mainstream society.

See more on this prison case (especially Supreme Court Justice Thomas's dissent) in:
The overzealous integrationist court

• • •
When they came for the Baptists . . . [2003]
Anyone who claims that law enforcement saves its most punitive weapons only for the coloreds, and especially for blacks, should pay attention to the case of Matt Hale. ... If you still have any lingering doubts about the dying state of the Constitution, the treatment of Hale should remove those doubts. Even people who despise the teachings of Hale and his World Church of the Creator express astonishment at what is being done to an American citizen, whose primary offense is the thought crime of "hate."

See more on the Hale case in:
Free Speech For Some, But Not For All

• • •
Besieged with Political Correctness from the left and right [2005]
Conservatives have borne the brunt of speech codes and related policies, and have comprised the vast majority of speakers who have been shouted down when they enter the campus public forum. Too many on the left have not spoken out against such forms of censorship, probably because the other side’s ox was being gored. ... The last thing American campuses need is censorship from the right piling onto the preexisting censorship from the left.

• • •
Bringing down families [2002]
These sentences are imposed regardless of a person's role in the crime or other mitigating factors. In this bizarre legal world, prosecutors, not judges decide which charges to bring and determine the final sentence. Many judges are on record for their opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing, especially in cases of the young and/or naive who are seduced by clever drug dealers to act as couriers. The consequences of these immoral sentencing laws are horrendous--mothers of young children incarcerated for periods that span their children's youth; siblings separated from one another, never to be reunited in a family setting; families torn apart, often for good. All because a parent committed an act that is made foolish only because the laws are foolish. They are victims of zealous "drug warriors," who have succeeded in ratcheting up into felony crimes actions that once were misdemeanors.

See more on unjust sentencing laws in:
When judges don't judge
When did we get this mean?
When did we get this mean? - Part 2
Trying to be tougher than the next guy

• • •

There but for the grace of God.... [2002]
And so it was that I came to be born in Detroit and that thirty-five years later, a black man born in white America, I was in Africa, birthplace of my ancestors, standing at the edge of a river not as an African but as an American journalist--a mere spectator--watching the bloated bodies of black Africans cascading over a waterfall. And that's when I thought about how, if things had been different, I might have been one of them--or might have met some similarly anonymous fate in one of the countless ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. and so I thank God my ancestor survived that voyage. . . . .

• • •
Will rights be restored? [2002]
The war against terrorism is different. Because the struggle is against a shadowy network of adversaries rather than a nation state, it is virtually impossible even to speculate when it might end. ... Indeed, it is not clear how victory itself would be defined. ... The concept of victory becomes more elusive if the goal is the eradication of all terrorism from the planet, as administration officials have sometimes hinted. That is a guaranteed blueprint for perpetual war.

• • •
Trying to fill those recruitment quotas [2005]
Damien Cave tells of other recruiters who have been breaking enlistment rules for months, even hiding police records and medical histories of prospective recruits. One recruiter claimed that his commanding officers have encouraged such deceptions, to meet the Army's recruitment quotas. The recruiter told Cave, "The problem is that no one wants to join. We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."

• • •
Mind-altering greed [2002]
All you have to do is attach money to it (like $400 per child), and then sit back and watch the diagnoses of the supposed "illness" increase by the tens of thousands. ... With more than half of those 7,000,000 children also prescribed Ritalin, the stock-market value of its manufacturer, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, has also soared. Now that company and others are working to introduce a host of new drugs into the classroom, including Prozac and Luvox, which has just been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for pediatric use. The industry is looking to even greater growth as the pill brigade is targeting pre-school toddlers. The use of psychotropic drugs, like anti-depressants and stimulants, in two to four year olds more than doubled between 1991 and 1995.

• • •
Exposing search and seizure abuse [2001]
If the Founders did, indeed, think of the press as the watchdog of government, it must have been journalists like Karen Dillon whom they hoped would do the watching. Last year, Dillon wrote a series of articles that revealed the nature of "asset forfeiture," the practice whereby law enforcement officers can seize the property of citizens, whether or not any crime has been committed. ... Dillon's articles show how the country's "drug warriors" enrich themselves through this search and seizure ploy, and how important to them is the continuance of the "drug war."

See also:
Raids and more raids
Asset forfeiture, or legal looting
Justice attained through luck, not rights

• • •
Closing the floodgates [2004]
Over the years, England's leaders, as well as those in other Western countries, including the United States, disdained advocates of immigration restriction and eschewed common sense. ... In the U.S., where hospitals are going bankrupt and closing under the burden of a never-ending stream of migrants, the end does not seem near. In California's San Fernando Valley, the region's oldest hospital announced that it will fold by the end of the year, which will bring to six the number of announced shutdowns of such facilities in a little over a year.

See also:
The battle for immigration reform heats up
Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites

• • •
Five more years for your thoughts [2004]
The brazen, unconstitutional nature of these "Gotcha!" laws, contrived by politically powerful interest groups to penalize American whites, have been cited by legal scholars, lawyers, and lots of just plain, ordinary citizens, who are not deaf, dumb and blind. ... How does one tell if a fight really centered around race, or religion, or gender bias? A court should not have to speculate on such a subject, since, in this case, its only role should be establishing punishment for the actual crime of assault -- the physical, tangible crime, not the "thought crime."

See also Blog post:
Abolish all 'hate crime' laws
Read more!

Abolish all "hate crime" laws

How can we still be arguing over "hate crime" laws? Is there not a Constitution on which this country runs that claims equal treatment under the law for one and all? Unfortunately, over the years, under the influence of special interest groups, one municipality and state after another has enacted some form of law that gives greater legal protection only to certain victims, based on their race, gender, sexual proclivities, etc.

Over most of this time, with a few exceptions, one heard hardly a peep in protest against the injustice of these biased laws from the "conservative" evangelical community. I guess the activists among them were too occupied with their futile endeavors to rid the nation of Roe v. Wade, which kept them too busy to think of other matters. Now, however, when it appears that a federal hate crime statute is likely to pass in Congress – one that adds homosexuals to the special status categories of aggrieved groups, the right wing evangelicals are mobilized as never before.

Long before this homosexual dimension presented itself, it was clear to anyone who cared about traditional American principles that so-called hate crime legislation is designed to punish thoughts. In reality, these are thought crime laws, and constitutionalists, among others, who cherish individual rights, have condemned such decrees for at least the past decade. [See here and here.]

What is now worrying the good "Christians" about this latest proposed federal bill is the prospect of the law being used here in the U.S. as it is in places like Canada and several European countries (especially those under the aegis of the EU). In those countries, the interpretation of "hate" has resulted in arrests and prosecutions of citizens, usually of a religious bent, who speak out against the normalization of homosexual behavior. To publicly criticize aspects of a "protected" group, such as blacks or Jews or Muslims or homosexuals, is considered promoting or inciting "hate" and is, therefore, a crime.

In the U.S., the typical "conservative" does not worry himself about the general un-American nature of such specially targeted laws; he is simply opposed to the addition of homosexuals to the list of aggrieved, possibly putting their behavior and practices beyond the bounds of public criticism.

Now, along comes the upfront homosexual activist and writer Andrew Sullivan expressing agreement with opponents of hate crime laws. In "Intent vs. Motivation," Sullivan makes the rational case that there is plenty of legislation on the books to punish all infractions of the law, and that these special laws now being proposed are not to protect citizens from crime. Instead, they are the brainchild of special interest groups that desire "boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings."

In this regard, Sullivan cites the Human Rights Campaign, the most prestigious of the organized crusaders for homosexual civil liberties. He could just as well have cited the NAACP and the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, both of which hype racism and anti-Semitism in order to justify their endless fundraising drives. (The ADL's Abraham Foxman brags about the role he has played in crafting many of these "hate crime" statutes that now exist in various cities and states.) Claiming the need for special status is, as Sullivan says, "very, very powerful as a money-making tool."

In a related article, "Hate Crime Laws" (The Atlantic, 5/1/09), Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "The thing that made me leery of Hate Crime Law was the infamous Fat Nick case," and goes on to describe how a teenager was sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison (instead of seven), because he used the expletive "Nigger" in an assault he believed to be justified. Syndicated columnist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff was outraged by this sentence and wrote, "Those eight years were not because of Minucci's act, but for what he said." In other words, a thought crime. [See details of the Minucci case here.]

See also the separate cases of two young men hardly out of their teens sentenced to 10 years each for activities in which no one was physically harmed.

Related Links

Nat Hentoff at Cato Institute
Laws that punish one time for the crime and another time for the hate violate the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment and protections against Double Jeopardy.

Paul Craig Roberts on hate crime laws
How will a court know whether a violent act was committed because of hatred or because of sexual lust or the need for money? The issue will be resolved by whether the attacked person is a member of a protected class.

Eugene Volokh on The Perils of Hate Crime Laws
People sometimes act in illegal -- often mildly illegal -- ways when engaged in protest. It's right to punish them for such actions. They shouldn't be punished more because they were motivated by disapproval of a religion, a religious practice, a sexual orientation, and the like, or were motivated by a desire to offend people based on these criteria.
Read more!

Outfoxing forced inclusion

Thanks to one breach after another of the Constitution, and thanks to an "empathizing" Supreme Court, the government has made it harder and harder to mingle with one's own, especially if you're white and WASPy. How dare any white folks want to hang out with their own, is sort of the hidden question asked last February by Attorney General Eric Holder in that "we-must-talk-more-about-race" speech of his.

In raising the issue of the limited social interaction "on Saturdays and Sundays," that now exists between blacks and whites, Holder, the black man, was actually challenging all whites to open their homes to blacks who yearn for their company. Sure, thanks to affirmative action, we've managed to legally maneuver ourselves into your lives in the workplace, on a daily 9 to 5 basis, he seemed to be saying, but that is not enough. The only reason Holder wants that "dialogue on race," preferably on "Saturdays and Sundays," is to coerce social intimacy.

Holder admits that most Americans don't wish to be bothered chattering about "racial matters," and he regrets that we are "free to retreat to our race protected cocoons." If this is so, why can't this behavior be accepted as a dominant preference, and why shouldn't citizens live in whatever "cocoons" they choose?

Americans are still socializing, claims Holder, in the same manner as they did "some fifty years ago." And, he adds, "This is truly sad." Just why is this sad? Only because Holder's kind laments the fact that the country, in spite of a raft of unconstitutional laws designed to cater to "minorities," still falls short of a blatant form of government-mandated "inclusion." Apparently, if Obama's man has his way during his tenure at the Justice Department, he plans to fix this "problem."

In "The Subtle Art of Exclusion" (Takimag, 5/7/09), Robert Weissberg describes the steps many business establishments must take in order to attract and maintain the type of clientele they prefer to serve. "Freedom of association is preserved," he writes, "but only on the sly." He declares, "No matter how forcefully government tries to homogenize society ... people will resist."
•
Excerpts:

Freedom of association, like private property, is a core American legal principle whose importance to liberty seemed so self-evident, so fundamental that the Founding Fathers apparently took it for granted. At best, the First Amendment alludes to it when it prohibits Congress from infringing on the right of free assembly. And, happily, for about 175 years, its bedrock status remained unchallenged. The 1964 Civil Rights Act that banned racial discrimination in public accommodations—hotels, movie theatres and restaurants—changed everything. This was soon followed by an avalanche of similar anti-discrimination laws and court decisions, and virtually no aspect of our existence—even choosing one’s neighbors—now escaped government meddling. ...

Worse, "freedom of association" had been publicly transformed into an alleged ruse to injure African Americans, women, homosexuals, the elderly, the childless and families with children, the odd appearing, the disabled, those of different faith and on and on. Government-mandated "inclusion" is now America’s passion, far out-shining freedom to choose one’s compatriots.

Read entire article here.

Read more!

Bogus "independent analysts"

It's ridiculous to think that we will ever live to see any significant move towards objectivity or fair reporting on the part of the mainstream media, as long as this media is the property of private companies. After all, why would not these companies benefit from particular goals and agendas, like any other institutions? The country's Founders demonstrated a high regard for the press of their day, perhaps expecting it to play an impossible role. Maybe the spirit of John Peter Zenger still filled their colonial air, as it still informs the thinking of a handful of today's reporters.

Columnist Glenn Greenwald writes about journalist David Barstow's report on retired military Generals, who were co-opted by the Pentagon to go on airwaves, during the Bush travesty, posing as "analysts," to make a bogus case for the U.S. attack on Iraq [Salon.com, 4/21/09]. Many of these so-called analysts had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended. Barstow's story, although never denied by any of the principals cited, was suppressed by every major network and cable news show.

Greenwald writes:

By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow's story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs.

The Pentagon's secret collaboration with these "independent analysts" shaped multiple news stories from each of these outlets on a variety of critical topics. Most amazingly, many of them continue to employ, as so-called "independent analysts," the very retired generals at the heart of Barstow's story, yet still refuse to inform their viewers about any part of this story.

Greenwald describes NBC's news anchor Brian Williams' attempts to "contain P.R. damage," as NBC executives sought to downplay their conflicting connections to their "independent analyst" former General Barry McCaffrey. The media bought the war story, as sold by Bush operatives, and then found the people who would help to nurture it further.

Read complete Greenwald column here.
Read more!

The long-dead Brooklyn Dodgers still haunt New York

What an opening week in baseball this turned out to be, here in New York. Two new stadiums for the city's teams, the Yankees and the Mets, and more media hype than anyone thought possible. Along with a lot of angry fans!

Hardly had the final "Out" been called at the end of the first game in the Mets new home, misnamed "Citi Field," on April 13, than Mets fans began to inundate with phone calls the main radio sports station, WFAN, and the local ESPN radio station. They could hardly contain the anger, outrage, and even disbelief at what they considered the disrespectful treatment of the Mets team by its owners. This was dissing, big time!

The explosive outbursts continued for almost 24/7, with bewildered hosts first trying to field the bitter comments, then empathizing with the callers, all week long. The complaints were not just about preposterously inflated ticket prices for seats that offered obstructed views of the field, or outrageously over-priced food at upscale in-park restaurants and concessions. Those gripes were not even half of what aroused the explosive anger of Mets fans.

No, their ire was aroused by the fact that their beloved team had been used to act as a foil for a long-dead Brooklyn Dodgers team, that hardly any fan under 70 years old had ever rooted for. Today's teenage fan, or the 25-year-old or even the 30-year-old fan, carries not the vaguest memory of cheering a team in a place called Ebbets Field. Most of them, however, have learned of this revered episode in New York history from older relatives and through history lessons in school, that tie the career of Dodgers' player Jackie Robinson to the civil rights movement. This knowledge is considered a fact of life and is not disputed.

As described by disgruntled fans, to walk through the entrance of Citi Field is to walk into a mock-up construction of Ebbets Field, and then into an almost religious homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers – the team that was put to rest in the late 1950s. This main entryway leads into a 160-foot diameter space called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, which houses giant photographs and memorabilia dedicated to the late Dodger ballplayer. There are words by and about Robinson etched into the surrounding walls, along with continuously playing loops of film footage of Robinson. There is an 8-foot sculpture of Robinson's number "42," a number that has been retired by every major league baseball team.

"Where are photos and films and visual images of the Mets players we grew up cheering?" fans angrily inquired of anyone who would listen. Since Robinson never even played for the Mets, never wore a Mets uniform, how is it possible that management would elevate this player above all others, here in the entrance of the new stadium built expressly for the New York Metropolitans? Where in the world, fans protested repeatedly, was the homage to the heritage of the Mets – you know, the team that is expected to play ball in this place for possibly the next half-century? Where is recognition of their first half-century of accomplishments, which began in 1962, and where, at least, are the plaudits to their spectacular World Series wins in 1969 and 1986? Is that all just chicken feed?

No fans had any problem with a section of the park being dedicated to Robinson, the man who "broke the color barrier" in baseball, as an addendum, but not as the central feature of the stadium. Having never played on the Mets team, his achievements belonged to the Brooklyn Dodgers.

On the whole, most radio hosts caught on to the sincerity of the grievances of Mets fans, and allowed them to vent their rage. None of the WFAN hosts had yet visited Citi Field, so they were taken aback when one caller after another verified previous callers' depictions. One benighted host, whose name I don't remember, seriously accused fans of taking a "blasphemous" position against the icon in the Rotunda. [Dictionary definition of blaspheme: to speak irreverently of a god or sacred things.] Hmm.

And, of course, there are always those "good" whites, who are so eager to detect anything that can be interpreted as smacking of "racism." Steve Somers, late night host of WFAN, who also had not yet seen the new stadium, could not resist using the suggestion of racism against callers who expressed perfectly legitimate gripes. Tony Paige, however, WFAN's black host, said he was disappointed not to see celebrations to other great Dodgers, as well as Mets. It's okay for the rotunda to be named for Robinson, he maintained, but why not make it a general homage to all the great ballplayers of both teams?

WFAN's main sports announcer, Mike Francesa, ultimately just tried to shut up fans. Without resorting to name-calling, he first expressed genuine surprise over the vehemence of the complaints, and then became protective of Mets management, insisting that the owners were certain to "make some adjustments," once they were clued into fans' responses.

He was right about that. By April 16, the third day of the storm, fans were calling in to tell of giant posters of Mets ballplayers that were being affixed by stadium staff to the exterior of Citi Field. Are they now putting up posters of Casey Stengel, the Mets' first manager, or pitcher Tom Seaver, or Willie Mays? With my own eyes, I can attest to the fact that appropriate graphics already decorated the new Yankee Stadium, from day one. No one had to nudge those owners into public recognition of Yankee history.

Over and over, radio hosts and callers felt obligated to repeat something like, Not to take away from Robinson's greatness, or Not that I don't respect what a pioneer he was, or Not that I don't understand how much he did for our society, yaddah, yaddah. Only after carefully reciting such platitudes did they feel safe to voice their opinions about Mets' owner Fred Wilpon's gross negligence, perhaps even contempt, of the Mets own heritage.

Much is made of Wilpon's passionate love of all things Dodgers. His fondest memories supposedly consist of his trips with his father to Ebbets Field. One would think, however, that he would be able to separate his childhood attachments from the reality of the business of baseball. Unless, of course, his fixation is more of a psychosis. It might be fair to question whether Wilpon has an obsessive attachment to a long-dead team, or harbors a fixation for a revered ball player, or is it a preoccupation with a particular civil rights episode?

Wilpon actually displaced the "Hall of Fame" that commemorated Mets players in their old Shea Stadium, and substituted, instead, the Robinson-Dodger shrine in Citi Field. Word has it that the exhibits (busts, banners, statues) from Shea's glory days are "currently in storage." One Mets blogger observes, "It's like Mets history was carted away on a flatbed with the last piles of rubble from Shea Stadium." With the blessings of Fred Wilpon, apparently.

As another blogger puts it, due to the overpowering fame of the New York Yankees, "the Mets have always had a problem with being treated as if they were secondary. ... Citi Field is a reminder that for many old Dodger fans, the Mets are a consolation prize."

One might ask why the Robinson Rotunda is not a fixture in the stadium of the true heirs of the Brooklyn Dodgers, namely, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It's not as if Robinson has been forgotten and relegated to the dustbin of history. On the contrary. He could arguably be called the most celebrated baseball figure ever, superseding even Babe Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle. There are schools named for him, streets and highways named for him, youth parks and college stadiums named for him.

And it's not as if young people do not get a full dose of the civil rights story and, therefore, need to be educated in the Robinson legacy. When being taught, it is not unusual for civil rights propaganda to move from Martin Luther King, Jr. straight to Jackie Robinson. Robinson's life is a thoroughly covered chapter in school history texts and classrooms.

In major league baseball, every year, an entire day, April 15, is set aside to honor Robinson. As stated above, his number 42 can no longer be worn by any player on any team, except on this day, when all players, coaches and managers are expected to wear it. Some people consider this a rather excessive encomium to one man. Why not have an annual day set aside to honor a different player every year? Why not a Ted Williams Day, where his number 9 is worn, or Joe DiMaggio's number 5 is honored?

One is left with the suspicion that it is not Robinson's skills as an outstanding athlete that are being commemorated, but there is a greater desire, in some quarters, to keep alive the memory of the social conditions that prevailed in the country at the time. As if Americans are not badgered with the civil rights theme at every turn – Justice, Equality, Humanity. We must now attend baseball games for yet more lecturing about our nation's past wickedness and the triumph over Evil. If this is, indeed, the heart of Fred Wilpon's attachment to the Brooklyn Dodgers, would it not be more fitting for this Jackie Robinson Rotunda to be set up in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial soon to be constructed on the Mall in Washington, DC?

When the bleak days of persecution were finally over for Robinson, he was feted and celebrated as a sports figure, businessman, and much-sought-after public speaker. His career with the Dodgers began in 1947, and, in 1950, Hollywood was already producing a film of his life, in which Robinson played himself. He lived many good years basking in the public's adulation and appreciation of his talents, and he, apparently, never viewed himself as a "victim."

After recovering from the shock of the epithets hurled at him by indignant Mets fans, Fred Wilpon claimed that, although the new Citi Field "does not have room" to set up commemorations to the Mets, he will, nevertheless, put up some "banners and placques." Days later, he claimed there will be a Hall of Fame, after all. "We think it will be out in the food court, where so many people will get to see it," he added.

And still days later, the Mets V.P. of Business Operations, David Howard, began the public relations task of clean up. He could not deny that, until the loud fan base spoke up, there was little consideration of Mets history by management. But all that's going to change, he insisted. In an interview, after first sermonizing on the civil rights achievements of Jackie Robinson and "all he did for America," Howard expanded on Wilpon's promise to show greater recognition for the Mets team. "We'll roll out additional elements," he declared, referencing mementos and such.

I suspect that, after all this furore, Mets management will be falling all over itself to do more than just "roll out" some memorabilia. We can probably expect placques and friezes and statues galore of Mets luminaries. No doubt, extra-special attention will now be given to former Met Dwight Gooden, who initially was chastised by Mets management for responding to a fan's request to sign his name to a wall in the stadium's "Ebbets Field Club." (What else would it be named?) After being subjected to yet more outcries from the fan base, for insulting Gooden, management reversed itself and decided, not only to preserve the Gooden signature wall, but to request other Mets, such as Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza, to add their signatures as well.

Sometimes, it takes a lot of hollering to wake up the clueless.

See also:
Welcome to CitiField... home of the Mets and shrine to the Dodgers

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An Addendum

And then there's the New York Yankees, and the scandal of their newly built (and totally unnecessary) stadium, conceived in greed, and built on avarice. This is a shopping mall pretending to be a sports stadium, built primarily to cater to corporate megamillionaires. Management's irresponsible financial miscalculations just might be their undoing. They might live to be sorry that they trashed the house that Ruth built, which I still view every day on my ride on the elevated #4 subway train. Two giant stadiums, side by side – one, a place that ordinary fans could afford, and the other, an extravaganza of luxury suites, exclusive clubs, and $2,500 seats.

As Matt Taibbi puts it, as the consequences of the economic recession take hold, there will be nothing more entertaining than watching this Yankee management "choke on their own greed." Greed, aided and abetted, that is, by the unwitting taxpayers of New York.
•
Read more!

Political profiling and the attempt to squelch dissent

There is probably no species I disdain more than "watchdog" groups whose members set about scrutinizing the behavior, conduct and attitudes of their fellow citizens, determined to expunge views deemed "undesirable." These self-righteous caretakers make a mockery of American freedom. See here, here, and here.

All too often, when their efforts to inform the populace of some potential calamity fail to arouse the desired concern, these interlopers are known to further embellish their hoaxes, and even engage in outright lies. They are given to contriving whatever it takes to denigrate perfectly legitimate challenges to public policies, in order to make those they view as political opponents look like "threats" to the social order.

The most recent case of such chicanery comes in the form of the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), an entity initially concocted by Missouri's Department of Public Safety. In February, MIAC issued a report entitled, "The Modern Militia Movement," whose purpose was to warn the public of scary organizations filled with shady individuals who hold unconventional attitudes and pursue anti-American activities.

If you thought you had heard the last of militia-bashing, think again. It seems that "militia" has metamorphosed into a frame of mind, rather than an actual membership group. You might be a militia type simply due to some of the notions you carry in your head. It appears that the militia groups of the 1990s, that were intimidated out of existence by Bill Clinton's jack-booted mobs, will forever be conjured up and given new life, whenever powerful cliques desire to squelch the political views of their opponents.

You might ask, can't a citizen question the role played by the Federal Reserve or the usefulness of U.S. membership in the United Nations or take a stand against illegal immigration? It seems not. For these are among a specific list of categories used by this Missouri government agency to profile potentially dangerous "militia" types. Also under suspicion for anti-American thinking are those who oppose gun control, those who challenge the government's right to violate the Posse Comitatus clause in the Constitution, and those who express opposition to the North American Union and to abortion. And don't have a beef with the income tax!

Unfortunately, since 9/11, many newly created agencies have been given carte blanche by the Department of Homeland Security, ostensibly to alert police and other law enforcement officers to prospective social misfits. Almost every state has something called a "fusion center," whereby an agency is set up primarily to ferret out "domestic terrorists." And which state would not welcome yet another make-work opportunity, to justify a substantial flow of federal funds? These fusion centers found ways to further feed at the public trough long before bail-outs and stimulus packages became popular. Worst of all, they operate under the false guise of "assisting" the police in recognizing so-called enemies of society.

When first perusing the MIAC report, I was struck by the simpleminded disparagement of challenges to government policy for which there are First Amendment constitutional protections. In the opinion of the creators of the report, even to be opposed to a call for a Constitutional Convention makes one suspect. Say, what? But I was really taken aback when I came across this statement:

Militia members most commonly associate with third party political groups . . . are usually supporters of former Presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr."

Now, my first choice for President in the last election was the Honorable Ron Paul. But on November 4, 2008, it was not possible to vote for him here in New York. As it turned out, my second choice also was not on the state ballot. That was Rev. Chuck Baldwin. And so, I opted to vote for someone who was much further down my list of choices, former Congressman Bob Barr. When I saw these three names, of all people, in that MIAC report, I laughed.

But, of course, this is no laughing matter. Imagine what these watchdogs are implying. They are sending signals to law enforcement personnel to keep an eye on people wearing buttons with particular politicians' names on them, on cars that bear bumper stickers with names like Ron Paul, and on protesters carrying signs supporting or discrediting specific causes.

The tone and spirit of the MIAC report had a familiar ring to it. It sounded similar to screeds regularly disseminated by those scapegoating watchdogs, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League (ADL). So, when I read this statement by Chuck Baldwin, I knew he had it right:

I am absolutely convinced we will find that this report actually originates with Morris Dees and his ultra-liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. And if my hunch (a very educated hunch, I might add) is correct, it means that the Department of Homeland Security and various State police agencies around the country are allowing a left-wing special interest group to use them to harass, intimidate, and profile people with conservative political opinions.

Campaigns to "reeducate" police departments around the country have been underway for some time by these self-appointed watchdog groups, initiated by the ADL. They began with the passage of "hate crime" laws in various states and municipalities. As we see, they have now expanded to include still further whims and fancies of the doctrinaire left. Political "independents" are clearly targeted. Notice how only conservative-libertarian independents are profiled in that MIAC report. Why not the left-leaning independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont? There's no greater hell-raiser when it comes to challenging government policies than my favorite leftist, the estimable Bernie (who identifies himself as a "Socialist"). Obviously, the MIAC crew considers Sanders on the correct side of the political spectrum; hence, no need for political profiling.

As the MIAC report made its way into the media, first via the muckraker Alex Jones, and eventually into the hands of radio and TV talk show hosts, an avalanche of criticism poured down on the Missouri state government. William Gheen, director of Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), expressed shock "to see credible law enforcement agencies disseminating the same kind of over-the-top political propaganda" distributed by such groups as the SPLC and ADL.

Gheen stressed the fact that, however these groups might market themselves, they are nothing more than political organizations with stated political goals and agendas. The founders and directors of these watchdog groups are not unbiased, objective bystanders. On the contrary, through character assassination and smear tactics, they work to instill fear in the general public, in order to weaken the will to dissent.

A major charge made by the watchdog groups against "militia" adherents is their tendency to promote "conspiracy theories" about government persecution. So, it is ironic that the very existence of this MIAC report, developed by a government agency to instruct law enforcement personnel, confirms fears of government abuse. That is, the government, using the force of law, appears intent on curtailing individual liberty, free speech, and even the right to vote for a preferred political candidate and belong to an independent political party.

The huge public outcry against the MIAC report finally resulted in Missouri's Governor Jay Nixon rescinding its further distribution. Also, John Britt, the director of the Department of Public Safety, was placed on "administrative leave." In addition, several Missouri state legislators promised to introduce an amendment that would bar the Department of Public Safety from ever using state or federal funds for political profiling. Official apologies were sent to Rep. Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr.

But the damage has already been done. As Chuck Baldwin, observes,

The fear and intimidation associated with those referenced in this report has already taken place. Are people opposed to abortion, illegal immigration, the Income Tax, the U.N., etc., now afraid to express their opinions publicly (especially in Missouri)?

Will similar political profiling reports be better hidden from public view? Have we seen the end of this type of pernicious scapegoating, or will greater secrecy be employed in the future, to keep such briefings under wraps?

The mainstream media, of course, will learn nothing from this incident. Newscasters, journalists and pundits will continue to accept as Gospel the press releases and "intelligence" reports that flow almost daily from these notorious surveillance groups. After all, they make such good news fillers. Fawning, deferential members of the media, for years, have ignored all criticism of these spy organizations, as newspapers and other media outlets propagate their slanders and rumors, thus granting them the credibility they do not deserve.

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Related

The New York Times, the Watchdogs, and the crusade to destroy the immigration reform movement

Waiting for the glorified fireman (Chuck Baldwin)
Read more!

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Republicans give everyone a good laugh

It was not so long ago when, throughout Bill Clinton's tenure, that phony Republican party of "conservative" principle loudly proclaimed its commitment to fiscal caution, small government, and playing by the rules of the Constitution -- each of which was dumped down the sewer, in order to support the warmongering, big government advocacy of the feeble-minded George W. Bush.

Well, here's another Paul Mulshine gem on those Republican hypocrites. From his column, "Republicans continue to be the great pretenders," some excerpts:

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In the past few months, the national Republican Party has experienced a miraculous conversion to the principle of fiscal conservatism. Let's hope it's a deathbed conversion. I, for one, am ready to see the Republican Party disappear from the political scene. I would like to see it replaced by a party that believes in the U.S. Constitution, limited government, defense of our borders and balanced budgets -- in other words, everything the national Republicans claimed to espouse back when Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton was in the White House.

Now that a Democrat is again in the White House, the Republicans again claim to endorse those sacred values. But there is the small matter of how they behaved in the eight years George W. Bush was in power. And they behaved like . . . let me think of an appropriate invective . . . Oh, yeah, they behaved like Democrats. And now that we have a real Democratic president, they have no grounds to criticize him.

Consider President Obama's response to a reporter's question the other day about Republican criticism of the huge deficits in his proposed budget. Good question. But Obama dodged it with ease. "I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory, because, as I recall, I'm inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, from them," said Obama. Slick Barry will be repeating that argument for years to come. And the Republicans will be powerless to refute it. Their credibility on economic matters is shot and they won't be getting it back anytime soon thanks to the legacy of big-spender Bush. ...

This is what happens when Republicans govern like Democrats: They get replaced by Democrats. And just as is happening now, when McGreevey took office the New Jersey Republicans suddenly rediscovered their conservative roots. And everyone got a good laugh, just as everyone is doing now.

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Read Mulshine's complete column, followed by an earlier one on immigration entitled, "GOP is migrating toward oblivion," in which Mulshine warned that "the liberal George Bush and his not-so-smart svengali Karl Rove" were assuring "the demise of the GOP through unlimited immigration of future Democrats."
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The poison of foreign aid

What happens when an enlightened African challenges Westerners' long-time habit of giving foreign aid to African countries? In his homeland of Uganda, Andrew Mwenda is fast learning what happens when a government, steeped in corruption and incompetence and almost totally dependent on the largesse of Western donors, sets out to punish those who would interfere with the sources of its revenue stream.

In the Winter 2009 edition of The Insider, Mwenda expresses his belief that foreign aid distorts the incentives of both donors and recipients. He says:

When governments have to depend on their own citizens for revenue, they develop a vested interest in the prosperity of their citizens. When governments depend on foreign donors for revenue, they develop a vested interest in manipulating international donors for money.

And further,

The only way the people of Africa can hold their governments to account, can participate in the policymaking and the policy implementation processes in their own countries is for them to be the source of the revenues that sustain governments in power. But because our governments depend on donors for money to build roads, schools, and hospitals, they do not look at us as citizens.

Instead of being looked upon as citizens, Mwenda says that the Ugandan government, as well as other African governments, "look at us as clients who they can bribe with welfare handouts from international donors. But if our governments depended on us for that revenue, they’d look at us as citizens whom they are supposed to account to because they depend on us for the public expenditure of revenues."

In 2007, Mwenda began publication of a news magazine, The Independent, a vehicle to express the views of like-minded observers of the African scene. Calling for a "scaling down" of foreign aid to African governments, Mwenda believes that "When the governments run out of revenue and they do not innovate new ways of generating revenue domestically, they will fall."

And, he maintains, "The moment governments in Africa realize that the public expenditure needs cannot be sustained from abroad, they will immediately develop a vested interest in harnessing the domestic economy—the gross potential of the economy. But, in fact, the beginning point of reform in Africa is to scale down aid."

Mwenda has been held for interrogation by the Ugandan police on many occasions, and has been charged with more than 20 "crimes," including sedition and libel, for writing about the nepotism and corruption that is common to the government of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni. This is only part of the response of the government to the many heretical views expressed in Mwenda's magazine, which enjoyed a 30% circulation growth in its second year of publication. Mwenda reports,

We are facing serious challenges. Our challenges are not coming right now from the market, because we have been extremely successful in the market. The government, realizing we are successful in the market, has now brought political pressure to bear on us—has stopped printers from printing our newsmagazine. It has been lobbying advertisers to stop them from advertising with us.

Remember that in spite of privatization and liberalization, the government of Uganda remains the largest consumer and largest formal sector employer. For most businesses, their profit margin lies in the ability to get government contracts and government handouts. And the government says: 'OK, we will not give you a contract if you advertise with The Independent.' They are using political influence to distort the market.

And still another tactic used by government, claims Mwenda:

The second cost the government has imposed on us is by keeping us at police stations and in court; by doing this, they reduce the amount of time we can devote to strategies for our newsmagazine, editing it, generating stories. So this year is going to be a challenging year because a new threat has come and that is not just interference, but a direct attempt to undermine our existence as a business.

In spite of these attempts at repression, Mwenda remains optimistic. Rightly or naively, he believes that the Ugandan government is subject to world opinion. In 2008, he was granted a freedom award by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and says,

Remember that first of all the government of Uganda depends on Western aid for its own political survival here. And the Western governments would be embarrassed to be seen to be giving money to a government that is busy harassing independent newspapers. So in a way, when international actors like the Committee to Protect Journalists highlight our woes, there is incipient pressure on the government of Uganda to exercise restraint. So they’re very helpful in putting breaks on what the government of Uganda can do. Without them, the government of Uganda would have killed me. Last year they planned to kill me, but they feared the response of the international community. Then they planned to kidnap my fiancé. They would have shut us down here as a newspaper, but they are afraid of the international reaction to such a reaction.

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Visit Mwenda's blog here, and read his recent article: You want freedom? It is expensive
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From the heights of power to a basket case

Many people are still trying to sort out the reasons for what happened to the American auto industry and how it managed to fall from its formerly commanding heights into the current sinkhole. Last January, at Hillsdale College, Joseph White did an exemplary job of succinctly pinning down the basic reasons for the demise of the great auto companies, by tracing the case of General Motors' downfall.

White has covered the auto industry for the Wall Street Journal since 1987, writes a weekly column about the business, and is co-author of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry. Here are excerpts from his talk at Hillsdale:
•
With Alfred P. Sloan in charge, General Motors settled down to become the very model of the modern corporation. It navigated through the Great Depression, and negotiated the transition from producing tanks and other military materiel during World War II to peacetime production of cars and trucks. It was global before global was cool, as its current chairman used to say.

By the mid-1950s the company was the symbol of American industrial power—the largest industrial corporation in the world. It owned more than half the U.S. market. It set the trends in styling and technology, and even when it did not it was such a fast and effective follower that it could fairly easily hold its competitors in their places. And it held the distinction as the world's largest automaker until just a year or so ago.

How does a juggernaut like this become the basket case that we see before us today? I will oversimplify matters and touch on five factors that contributed to the current crisis—a crisis that has been more than 30 years in the making.

1. Detroit underestimated the competition—in more ways than one.

2. General Motors mismanaged its relationship with the United Auto Workers, and the UAW in its turn did nothing to encourage GM (or Ford or Chrysler) to defuse the demographic time bomb that has now blown up their collective future.

3. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler handled failure better than success. When they made money, they tended to squander it on ill-conceived diversification schemes. It was when they were in trouble that they often did their most innovative work—the first minivans at Chrysler, the first Ford Taurus, and more recently the Chevy Volt were ideas born out of crisis.

4. General Motors (and Ford and Chrysler) relied too heavily on a few, gas-hungry truck and SUV lines for all their profits—plus the money they needed to cover losses on many of their car lines. They did this for a good reason: When gas was cheap, big gas-guzzling trucks were exactly what their customers wanted—until they were not.

5. General Motors refused to accept that to survive it could not remain what it was in the 1950s and 1960s—with multiple brands and a dominant market share. Instead, it used short-term strategies such as zero percent financing to avoid reckoning with the consequences of globalization and its own mistakes.

In hindsight, it's apparent that the gas shocks of the 1970s hit Detroit at a time when they were particularly vulnerable. They were a decadent empire—Rome in the reign of Nero. The pinnacles of the Detroit art were crudely engineered muscle cars. The mainstream products were large, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive sedans and station wagons. The Detroit marketing and engineering machinery didn't comprehend the appeal of cars like the Volkswagen Beetle or the Datsun 240Z.

But it took the spike in gas prices—and the economic disruptions it caused—to really open the door for the Japanese automakers.

Remember, Toyota and Honda were relative pipsqueaks in those days. They did not have much more going for them in the American market prior to the first Arab oil embargo than Chinese automakers have today, or Korean automakers did 15 years ago. The oil shocks, however, convinced a huge and influential cohort of American consumers to give fuel-efficient Japanese cars a try. Equally important, the oil shocks persuaded some of the most aggressive of America's car dealers to try them.

The Detroit automakers believed the Japanese could be stopped by import quotas. They initially dismissed reports about the high quality of Japanese cars. They later assumed the Japanese could never replicate their low-cost manufacturing systems in America. Plus they believed initially that the low production cost of Japanese cars was the result of automation and unfair trading practices. (Undoubtedly, the cheap yen was a big help.) In any case, they figured that the Japanese would be stuck in a niche of small, economy cars and that the damage could be contained as customers grew out of their small car phase of life.

They were wrong on all counts.
• • •
Read the rest of Joseph White's insightful remarks here, to learn what doomed the American auto industry, and what the industry might expect from its new partnership with the U.S. Government.
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Compounding the mistakes of the past

If you want to learn some of the facts behind the early strategies conceived for Israel's control of the Middle East, as well as details on last year's rocket attacks, there is no better place to start than the January 26, 2009 edition of the American Conservative magazine. Here are two excellent articles that take on subjects forbidden to public discussion by that Lobby that does not exist.

In "Captive Nation: How Gaza became a Palestinian prison," Israeli author Avi Shlaim describes the thousands of refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land with no infrastructure or natural resources as a "uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development."

In "Another War, Another Defeat," John Mearsheimer, co-author of the much-acclaimed and much-defamed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, debunks the notion that Israel was ever serious about making peace with the Palestinians in 2005. He says, "Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel’s wishes."

Mearsheimer reveals that, after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Ariel Sharon's adviser, Dov Weisglass, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. Israel was checkmated in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together in unity and pushed for a long-term ceasefire, promising to end all missile attacks, if the Israelis ceased arresting and assassinating Palestinians, and ended the economic blockade of their territory. Faced with such a deal, what was the great rogue state to do?

Not only did Israel's leaders reject this offer, they realized that, in order to keep the Palestinians in disarray (the ongoing goal), they had to keep Hamas and Fatah divided, and they set about fomenting a civil war between the two groups. Mearsheimer details how this was done.

Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, describes how, from the very beginning, "Local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination and establish the economic underpinnings essential for independence." Although Israeli settlers were withdrawn from Gaza, he reports, "Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and terrorize the hapless inhabitants." [Read Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.]

He asks how any people can tolerate being so demonized, while trying to survive the years-long blockade of their trade – their exports, incoming supplies and medicines. Shlaim concludes, "Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones."

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[See Philip Weiss commentary, "Was there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill civilians?"]

Excerpt:
"Shoot and cry" used to just be an Israeli cliche about the guilt soldiers felt after committing unspeakable acts while serving the Israeli occupation. Now it appears to have become official military doctrine.

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More news from the Palin brood

Coming as no news at all, we learn that the celebrated unmarried parents of the country's most celebrated illegitimate baby are not going to tie the knot, after all. Like, we didn't suspect this? A rambunctious young man, popular, and dating several girls, happens to impregnate one of them -- and she's not even his favorite, as the pipeline reported. In this age of permissiveness, what's a young man to do?

So, what happens now, Ms. Palin, when your next daughter becomes pregnant? Observing the free-style living of Bristol, who appears to be enjoying life as a part-time mother, part-time employee, and part-time student, why shouldn't Willow eventually reach for the pregnancy brass ring? And then, why not Piper? Look at all the rewards awaiting these girls, perhaps even a celebratory stint at the next Republican convention. Why not expect such adulation? After all, those wonderful "family values" conservatives, throughout the last election, not only gave their blessings, but assured us that such behavior is okay as long as the principals involved, or their parents, display a fervent attachment to the "correct" political party.

And so continues the riveting family melodrama that helped to bring about the election of Barack Obama. Following is some of the pertinent background already cited on this blog:

Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin

Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream

Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling

The good liberal Palin makes a mockery of conservatives

An awful mistake

Thanks to Sarah, we can do just about anything we want

Parading the unwed daughter

Laughing at conservatives

We didn't know this?

Teenage pregnancy should never be glorified

Book - Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!), by Carol Platt Liebau

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There goes E-Verify

Last October, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported on the "E-Verify" program:

Put into place in 1996, E-Verify is a voluntary program run by the Department of Homeland Security that uses an automated internet-based system to check every new employee’s information against more than 500 million records in Social Security and DHS databases. It’s fast, easy and free for businesses to use and it means that businesses don’t have to be document experts. Over 70,000 employers are using it and 1,000 are joining every week. Nationwide, 1 in 10 new hires are screened using it and it is 99.5 accurate.

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In "Immigration apparently not high on Obama's priority list," (2/28/09), Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain tells us the state of E-Verify today:

There are an estimated 6 to 7 million illegal immigrants working in low-wage, low-skill positions that could be filled with U.S-born workers with high school educations or less. A detailed breakdown of U.S. Census unemployment data released by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals startling levels of unemployment for U.S.-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school education. Blacks had a 24.7 percent unemployment rate and Hispanics were at 16.2 percent. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for legal and illegal immigrants without a high school education was 10.6 percent. ... Instead of expanding and protecting American jobs, the president allowed Senate Democrats to strip two E-Verify provisions from the stimulus bill. ...

The program is scheduled to expire unless Senate Democrats reauthorize the program by March 6. Not only should the program be reauthorized, it should be made mandatory for all employers. We can aggressively tackle unemployment by taking simple steps to ensure that American workers are protected from illegal competition from those unauthorized to work in this country.

Our rising health-care costs and educational burdens are all impacted by the presence of large numbers of undocumented and unauthorized residents who make it more difficult for hard-working Americans to enjoy some of the benefits of living in a nation that used to be one of the greatest in the world. Read more!

The New York Times, the Watchdogs, and the crusade to destroy the immigration reform movement

Who started the lie that the Founders of this nation expended their energies, in order to create a haven for the rescue of the world's displaced populations? Did it come about chiefly from cynical 19th century industrialists eager only for cheap labor, who sought to soften their true motives by wrapping them in sentimental bombast?

Was the lie then perpetuated through the fantasies of some early lucky refugees who found their way to these shores, and who desired to make the path to the Golden Door easier for their family and kin left behind?

Or was the lie deliberately concocted by those who despised the country's powerful and entrenched establishment, with the expectation that making mass immigration a national religious mandate might eventually unglue said establishment?

When restrictive immigration laws were changed in the 1960s, who expected to benefit most from the mass influx that inevitably would begin to stream from around the world?

I ask these questions in light of the New York Times' recent editorials [here and here and here,] denigrating those Americans who campaign, through organizations and modest media outlets, to regain control over our borders, in order to preserve the traditional cultural integrity of the United States. The Times and its comrades share the presumptuous notion that the US is the rightful destination of every conceivable population on earth. They send the word far and wide that, if you're hurting in the land of your birth, then you have a right to alleviate that hurt by transporting yourself to the USA, no matter what stress is put upon the resources of American citizens.

Thanks to our education system and a century of media propaganda, it has become a fixed notion that this country, unlike every other on earth, was put together for the benefit of the world's faceless masses. He who desires entrance must merely claim to share certain ideals, that is, the "propositions" contained in the founding documents, with a couple of modern axioms thrown in for good measure. Because of America's "special" status, there need be no regard for prevailing social and economic conditions, since the welfare of the existing population is not as important as that of the prospective immigrant. After all, America was founded on nothing more than a bundle of universalist ideas based around themes of freedom; it has no borders and no heritage.

In an earlier post on this blog, "Farewell to Thomas Jefferson," I ask what the likelihood is that any group would form a nation for a people other than their own kind. Why would these men not desire to retain the cultural integrity of their lineage? Other than today's self-consciously de-racinating whites, what people do not possess this very preference? Would the Hutu be likely to expend their energies to develop a society to benefit alien tribes and foreigners? Would the Tamil? Those who claim that the world has now moved beyond ethnocentric loyalty, or ought to, might do well to take a look at the real world.

In that post, I also suggest that the Founders would not be in concert with the platitudes contained in that mawkish poem that was belatedly affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. Which Founder envisioned this country's future in the hands of "huddled masses" from every nook and cranny of the earth? Certainly not John Jay, who thanked Providence for giving "this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." That doesn't sound like a proposition to win over the huddled masses to me. Today, is it unreasonable to assume that, for the sake of preserving the Anglo-European institutions on which this country was nurtured, an Anglo-Euro majority should prevail?

The Times' editorialists do not seem to blush as they pronounce the outright lie that the United States was "composed of people without any common national heritage." How can they attach the reputation of their once preeminent publication to such a colossal falsehood? Now, if you're out to eliminate the Anglo-European cultural make-up of the US, and are thrilled by the increasingly multiracial polyglot nature of this society, say so. But don't fabricate history, in order to prove that this country was formed in a vacuum by people who shared no heritage.

One would have thought that coping with the real disabilities of the descendants of the country's slaves, as well as accommodating the Hispanics-Latinos, who had always been a presence, would be enough to occupy the administrators of an already multiracial nation. To open the floodgates in the 1960s, ensuring an even greater heterogeneous influx, would seem an act of folly.
• • •
In its editorials, the Times cavalierly dismisses the impact of these recent decades of mass immigration on employment. With a wave of the hand, the editorialists imply that immigration reformers are not motivated by concern about jobs since, apparently, to the Times, this is just another "wedge" issue, that is, insignificant.

Blacks have known for some time that their leaders – politicians, academics, and varieties of "civil rights" bureaucrats – have turned their backs on the struggle against illegal immigration. The primary interest of these dignitaries is the protection of their careers and/or political turf. In Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites, I outlined the pattern of black leadership organizations (take your pick) and black politicians (take your pick), who eagerly make alliances with the elites of other groups, no matter how detrimental such unions prove to blacks in the long run.

Black politicians like Sheila Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters and John Conyers seek only to expand their constituent base. As racial demographics change in their districts, they frantically scramble to court and win the confidence of the burgeoning foreigners. The fact that these foreigners, a great many of them illegal, end up displacing Americans, frequently poor blacks, in a shrinking job market is of no concern, either to these representatives of the people, or to the editorialists at the New York Times.

As more and more Americans find themselves laid off or fired from stagnating companies, they discover that even the most modest work has become a scarce commodity. If Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, at a special hearing, is not moved when a black worker informs her of American minorities who have been displaced by illegals as roofers, drywallers and truck drivers, why should the New York Times care?
• • •
The Times has joined the bandwagon of those who smear as "racists" and "white supremacists" decent Americans who are seeking genuine solutions to the immigration crisis. Peter Brimelow targets it exactly. He notes that, since the Democrats are made up of a coalition of minorities, they "must at all costs prevent America's majority from uniting. Hence, the New York Times' hysteria." (By the way, the "white supremacist" tag has now replaced the much over-abused label of "racist" as the epithet of choice. Watch for it everywhere.)

To the camp followers of the Times, it is imperative to prevent average white citizens, who are still the majority, from ever uniting in the name of any cause. Preventing an effective immigration reform movement is paramount to those who seek to keep this country's borders wide open. This is certainly one of the reasons why the editors of the Times are spending their energies these days castigating three of the most successful immigration reform organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. I have followed the outstanding work of each of these groups since their formation [see here and here], and have always been impressed by the respectful manner in which they handle what has become a volatile subject.

The Times further discredits itself by favorably acknowledging the biased reports and materials disseminated by the spurious Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is among a handful of self-appointed "watchdogs," a cluster of groups whose creators have mastered the ability to acquire funding by instilling fear and indignation in the general public. Besmirching individuals and groups that work to end illegal immigration as "racists" and "xenophobes," the SPLC has diligently set about the task of destroying all proponents of restrictive immigration laws.

Traveling under the umbrella of "civil rights" or "human rights," these "watchdog" groups are represented through a fawning, deferential media as altruistic protectors of society's downtrodden. Depicting themselves as noble champions of "Anti-racism," they spend a great deal of time crusading for the expansion of "hate crime" legislation, that is, laws specifically designed to give government greater control over Americans' thoughts and behavior. They have acquired enough political power to behave as quasi-government agencies, and some misguided citizens actually believe that these self-appointed entities, and their executive directors, possess official power.

Two of the major "watchdogs," the SPLC and the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are darlings of the media, because they can be counted on to provide an endless stream of news fillers. Reporters are happy to take the easy way out when supposedly covering a story on race. Just get the press release from the SPLC or ADL on some particular event or individual, copy what it says and, instantly, you have a news item to send to your editor. How often have you seen a news story end with a quote by an SPLC or ADL spokesman denouncing some individual as a "racist" or "white supremacist?" And we know it's so, because the ADL or SPLC says it's so!

Character assassination is the SPLC's speciality. Its "link and smear" tactics are notorious, along with its ever-expanding hit list. Through insinuations, it will link an individual or group to some other group or event that is deemed evil by SPLC standards. It then relentlessly pursues the public destruction of the unfortunate target, all the while sending out poisonous press releases, that are lapped up and quoted by an eager, uninquiring media.

If these watchdogs could make the "white supremacist" tag stick to immigration reform organizations, and could frame their leaders with some illegal charge, they would then set about stripping these immigration groups of all their financial resources. Both the ADL and SPLC have done exactly this to other organizations whose racial politics were perceived as "incorrect."

For an in-depth examination of groups like the SPLC, there is nothing better than Laird Wilcox's The Watchdogs: A close look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups. [See also here and here.] Wilcox has spent over two decades watching the watchdogs and compiling detailed information on their strategies and smear tactics.
• • •
If you have been paying attention, you know that the New York Times, like all newspapers, is withering away. You also know that, in a desperate move, its owners recently requested and received a $250 million investment from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim. Some observers are suggesting that the recent attacks by the Times' directors on the most high-profile opponents of open borders come as partial payment to their Mexican benefactor.

If those New York Times editorials are any barometer, the battle to resolve this country's immigration dilemma is going to be an even longer, more acrimonious one.

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Here is an interesting turn of events: Mexicans in Mexico worried about foreigners (like Americans) despoiling their culture. "Many Mexicans complain about the rapid growth of the American population in their neighborhoods, the threat they see to Mexican culture and language, and the possible drain on Mexico's inexpensive health care." So writes Alfredo Corchado in Some Mexicans fear threat to way of life with rapid growth of American residents
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Waiting for the glorified fireman

The traditionalist conservative Rev. Chuck Baldwin does it again. He puts these self-declared "patriotic" Christians, who enabled and propped up George W. Bush for eight years, to shame. "Does anticipation of Christ's Second Coming," he asks, "excuse personal neglect, indifference, and downright laziness?" He argues that, if Christians of 18th century America had behaved as do their counterparts today, this country would still be a colony of the British Crown, and writes:

In the meantime, millions of Christians across America are trying to play God. They talk as if they know when Christ will come. It's actually worse than that. They have the attitude that they have no personal responsibility to defend freedom and resist despotism. They seem to look at God as some kind of glorified fireman, who is obligated to rush in at the last minute to rescue them from a burning fire – a fire that they helped ignite, or at least, refused to put out themselves when they had the opportunity to do so. It's the old, "God would not let that happen in America" syndrome. ... Are Christians in the United States really that arrogant as to believe that God loves them more than He loves believers in other countries?

Read the entire column, Christians Use Prophecy To Excuse Laziness

Read also Baldwin column, Where Are Dobson and PCC Now?

See also Baldwin cited in posts on this blog:

Loving the Emperor more than Christ

The state's patriotic sheep

Laughing at conservatives

Whose "Constitutional crisis?"
Read more!

Immigration: How much more obnoxious can this get?

The AP headline: Bailed Out Banks Sought Foreign Workers For High-Paying Jobs

American workers can never expect to get a break from the globalizing traitors, who have shipped millions of jobs out of the USA. After dispatching said jobs away from the hands of Americans, these corporate schemers then bring thousands more aliens into this country for the jobs left over. Many of the banks that recently received federal bail-out money (from the taxes of dispossessed American workers) are among those that regularly import foreign labor. So, what happens when the economy goes belly-up, and even the aliens must be laid off?

Excerpts:

Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified. "The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.

"You're using taxpayer dollars and there's an expectation that there are benefits to the U.S.," said Ron Hira, a national expert on foreign employment and assistant public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What you're really doing is leaking away those jobs and benefits that should accrue to the taxpayers."

Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India. "It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."

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See also:
Foreign workers take jobs from Americans
Hundreds Of Indian Techies To Lose Jobs In Microsoft’s 5000 Job Cuts
H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship to Economic Need
A Green Card Giveaway for Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted

See early Issues & Views articles:
Abandon hope in Silicon Valley
Ongoing amnesty for illegals
Closing the floodgates
Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites

Read more!

Will free trade or protectionism prevail?

At the World Economic Forum that opened this week in Davos, Switzerland, Professor Nouriel Roubini, eminent New York University economist and author of the book, “Bailouts or Bail-ins?," and Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, were interviewed by the Reuters news staff. Among the subjects were free trade and protectionism. Here are brief excerpts:

Q - Is there likely to be a trend toward greater protectionism and nationalist economic policies around the world in 2009? What will be the implications for the global economy?

Roubini - Protectionist pressure will become more severe if the global economic slump is more protracted and deep. ... Protectionist tariff actions have already started to emerge in places such as Russia and India and they may spread further. Trade-distorting subsidies are more likely than tariffs (see the rescue of Big Auto in the US). ... The new U.S. administration is dominated by pro-globalization figures (such as Tim Geithner and Larry Summers), but Obama's choice for Labor Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative, and the ongoing pressures by trade unions, counter-balance these free-trade leaning forces.

Bremmer - There will be a heavy nationalist influence on economic policies globally this year because the overwhelming priority among political players will be to stimulate economies, growth and job creation. These are "national" projects. Governments will appeal to national pride to maintain domestic support. ... We will see austerity programs all over the world this year. Austerity breeds populism, but populism can easily breed protectionism in any country with significant exposure to international markets. If one country finds political advantage in throwing up a wall to protect a vulnerable industry or economic sector, other governments will have a political incentive and justification to do the same. The West has preached the virtues of free trade and free markets for years. Now, many in the developing world can cite massive state spending by Americans and Europeans to justify kick-starting their own economies, including by protectionist measures.

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In another Reuters article, "Davos Policymakers sound alarm over protectionism" (1/29/09), Jonathan Lynn cites the observations of several Davos participants on the subject of free trade:

India's trade minister, Kamal Nath, warned at the World Economic Forum that the global economic crisis could fuel protectionism to safeguard national industries and jobs. He told Reuters that India saw growing signs of protectionism and would respond with its own measures if its exporters were threatened. "We do fear this because one must recognise that at the heart of globalisation lies global competitiveness, and if governments are going to protect their non-competitive production facilities it's not going to be fair trade," he said. "If there are protectionist measures India will be compelled to also take commensurate measures against those countries which will be good for no one." ...

India has raised tariffs on steel to protect local producers, a measure trade experts say was aimed at China, which India does not regard as a market economy. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned in a keynote speech at the opening of the Davos meeting on Wednesday that protectionism would only deepen and prolong the crisis.

Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said it was to be expected that the crisis would generate protectionist pressures. "We all know by experience that erecting obstacles to trade would make things worse. And the first thing you have to do when you have to cope with a crisis like this is don't shoot in your own foot," he told reporters. "It's pretty clear that there is a risk and that we have to be very vigilant." ... The WTO has started to monitor trade measures taken by its 153 members for signs of protectionism. A first report this week will be updated in time for a meeting in London in April of the G20 group of rich and emerging nations, Lamy said. "At this stage there's nothing dramatic. There are spots here and there which have appeared. Not real significant macroeconomic importance, but there is an area which deserves a lot of vigilance which is subsidies," he said. ...

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a "Buy America" provision requiring public works projects funded by an $825 billion stimulus package to use only U.S.-made iron and steel. European steelmakers have challenged the move. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the provision, believes it will be of only limited impact. "An expansion of the current 'Buy American' rules would be a dumb idea, it would be a bad idea because the natural reaction would be for our trade partners to react in kind," Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the Chamber, which represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses, told Reuters. "The more difficult it gets the more we have to keep saying 'no isolationism, no protectionism.' We need to keep markets open, we need to keep our ability to sell stuff working and to do that we have to keep our own markets open," Donohue said.

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See also: Protect first, free trade be damned
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An old, familiar story

Here is a no-longer-shocking, but still appalling story of a now common tale -- that of a powerful, single-minded lobby and how it impacts American politics. Told by Philip Weiss, on his remarkable blog Mondoweiss, it is entitled "How the Israel lobby flexed its muscle to destroy New Jersey freeholder candidacy of a Lebanese-American who had expressed sympathy for Palestinians" (1/29/09).

Weiss writes: This morning Adam Horowitz wrote a post about Congressman Bill Pascrell's journey to supporting relief for the people of Gaza in the House. The post prompted a journalist friend to send along the following story about a supporter of Pascrell who had political ambition in New Jersey. As the journalist says, "It's a textbook example of the intimidating impact that 'the lobby' has on politicians -- an explanation of why we get 390-5 votes in the House on pro-Israel resolutions. I wrote this essay about it a while back, but obviously there's no place to publish it."

Weiss asked if he could publish it on his site and proceeded to do so. Here is the link:
Mondoweiss
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Let's all be outraged

Here is a prime example of the overbearing white person, who lives to demonstrate his protective concern for the feelings of "African Americans," even when members of said group would happily live without his protection. In "PC Whiners Aside, Downey Jr. Deserves His Oscar Nod" (Huffington Post, 1/23/09), black author John Ridley reacts to Los Angeles Times' Scott Feinberg, the white person who takes offense for blacks, even when blacks take no offense.

In his January 16 column, Feinberg expresses "shock" over a role played by Robert Downey, Jr., for which he has been nominated for the Academy Award. Feinberg is dismayed, not only because he sees Downey's role as disrespectful to blacks, but because the role has won "widespread approval" from people who, apparently, should know better. In the film, Tropic Thunder, Downey's character, an actor, undergoes an operation that alters his skin pigmentation so he can play a black soldier in a film. In effect, he performs in black face.

"Where is the outrage?" demands the presumptuous Feinberg, ignoring the context of the film's story line. Enjoying his self-appointed position as watchdog for the underdog, he then offers a history lesson about those bad, old Hollywood producers in years past, who thrived on negative portrayals of blacks. "Many in the film industry are so focused on the present," he complains, "that they forget, or worse still, never properly learned, about the past." So, Feinberg, the enlightened white man, is here to straighten out such insensitive white folks. "You can sugarcoat it all you want," he blusters,"but blackface is blackface."

In his brief, terse response to Feinberg's bombast, Ridley nominates him for "Best Performance by a White Guy Who Takes it Upon Himself to be Offended For Black People." Ridley compares Downey's acting achievement in the film to the artful New Yorker cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama. It's designed to go for the gut, while making its point. "Trustees of the Liberal Plantation aside," writes Ridley, "Downey Jr.'s performance is sharp, smart satire."

Feinberg seems to imply that what he calls the "wounds of the past" should neither be forgiven nor forgotten. Yes, let's keep the wounds open and bloodied, in order to give types like Feinberg grist for their everlasting race-hyping mill. Commenters on Feinberg's article (on the Times' site) reflect Ridley's impatience with the columnist's intolerant, narrow-minded view of the Downey film:

"This is just more knee-jerk, over-the-top, over-sensitivity to a non-issue. There hasn't been huge outrage from the black community because the community understands the context."

"As an African American woman, I fail to see how celebrating Downey, Jr.'s performance would be the same as celebrating 'blackface.' ... I hope the Academy does recognize Mr. Downey's performance as it was worthy of an Oscar."

"Let's go ahead and ignore the fact that no black people seem to have been offended by the movie. Instead, let's all sit down and have this white guy from LA tell us what is offensive to black people."
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Bush myths and lies

"We owe him gratitude, since there were no attacks after 9/11 on American soil."
"We’ve gone seven years without another terrorist attack."
"He kept us safe."

And this is all these Bush fanatics have -- the one thing that no one can prove or disprove, sort of like God's existence. Was a second attack planned against the US by the original perpetrators, or, considering the many years of planning that went into the first one, was there never an interest in repeating the atrocity? Were those who had the resources to make another strike ever of a mind to do so? Well aware of the grievous damage done, why should the perpetrators feel the need to take any further risks, especially since the element of surprise would no longer be in their favor? How do we know we were protected from anything?

For eight years we were victims of incompetents, who willfully spat on the Constitution, while exasperating the American people to such a degree, that they decided anything would be better than a continuance of the neocon monstrosities who hijacked the government in 2000. Anything -- even electing an African to run the country.
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Protect first, Free Trade be damned

Is Free Trade something like Communism, that is, a religion or ideology that's supposed to work when all the right conditions prevail? Remember when Communist apologists used to explain that the Soviet model did not work because true Communism, the real McCoy, was never applied? Is the reason why the US finds itself in a deficit hole today due to the fact that real Free Trade has never been tried? Is Pat Buchanan right in his claim that Free Trade is a practice in which only fools would entrap their country? Here is Buchanan on the subject.

From column, "George Bush, Protectionist":

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai – though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are feeling the same sales slump.

Bush may believe he has sinned against free-market principles, but he is following the path of his great free-market predecessor. Ronald Reagan, too, was not prepared to see Japan take down the U.S. auto industry, or steel industry, or computer chip industry, or Harley-Davidson. Believing Japan was dumping to destroy U.S. companies, Reagan put patriotism before ideology and imposed quotas on Japanese imports. He, too, was castigated by the same commentariat that is berating Bush.

Averting Chapter 11 for GM, which could lead to liquidation of the greatest manufacturing company in U.S. history – cutting America out of the premier consumer market of the 21st century – makes sense not only from the standpoint of politics, but economics, as well. For other nations, as the Washington Post reports, are far ahead of Bush in sheltering their industries and protecting their markets:

Moving to shield battered domestic manufacturers from foreign imports, Indonesia is slapping restrictions on at least 500 products this month, demanding special licenses and new fees on imports. Russia is hiking tariffs on imported cars, poultry and pork. France is launching a state fund to protect French companies from foreign takeovers. Officials in Argentina and Brazil are seeking to raise tariffs on products, from imported wine and textiles to leather goods and peaches, according to the World Trade Organization.

India has levied a 20% duty on soybeans to cut imports and protect her farmers. The United States has just filed charges with the World Trade Organization against China for "unfair support of its export industry – including the award of cash grants, rebates and preferential loans to exporters."

Awfully late in the game, Bush seems to have awakened to an ancient reality. When the tough times come, nations protect their own interests first, free trade be damned.

By traditional free-trade theory, a nation should import what it does not produce from the nations that produce it most cheaply. But in 1946, Japan produced almost no steel, no TVs and no cars. Instead of buying them from America, Tokyo subsidized its own steel, TV and auto industries for decades, and protected their market. Now, as Sony did to Philco and Dumont, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are taking down Ford, GM and Chrysler. Were the Japanese foolish to subsidize their industries and protect their market? Were we wise to let our TV industry be taken down, and watch our auto and steel industries driven to death's door?

To 1970, Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas produced almost all of the world's jetliners. But rather than rely in perpetuity on Americans for passenger planes, Britain, France, Germany and Spain subsidized a socialist cartel, Airbus, that did not make a profit for 25 years and sold its planes for less than it cost to build them. That trampled all over free-trade theory, but it did kill Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas and almost killed Boeing. Were the Europeans foolish to create an aircraft industry and subsidize the destruction of Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas? Or were they wise to sacrifice today to capture the world's aircraft market of tomorrow?

Like Prohibition in Hoover's phrase, globalism is "an experiment, noble in purpose, that has failed." As we have learned, at a cost of $10 trillion in wealth wiped out on Wall Street, the nations of the future are not the consumer nations that pile up debt as they live on imports, but the producer nations that save and sacrifice and make the things the world wants.
•
Back in 2004, Buchanan wrote in his column, "Suicide by Free Trade":

Like companies that continue to make products no one wants to buy anymore, parties that persist in policies that are visibly failing – like LBJ in Vietnam – end up being abandoned.

If the GOP persists in this free-trade fanaticism, it is courting suicide. For the policy is not working in the eyes of the people. And if Republicans insist the returns from global free trade – a disintegrating dollar and a merchandise trade deficit of $550 billion a year and rising – are good for America, folks are going to conclude that Republicans are too out of it to govern. If the GOP does not offer ideas to halt the de-industrialization of America and the hemorrhaging of blue- and white-collar jobs, it is going to wind up on a landfill.

The problem with the columnists and think-tank scribblers who make up the intelligentsia of the GOP is not that they believe in free markets but that they worship them. They believe that if NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and MFN for China mean production goes overseas, the market is telling us where production ought to be. And the voice of the market is to be obeyed, because that is the voice of their god. When Reagan, a devout free trader, saw the U.S. auto industry sinking, he did not let ideology interfere with a rescue. He imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars and saved Detroit, though he was denounced for apostasy and heresy.

Free-trade Republicans are like militant Christian Scientists who prefer to let patients die rather than call in a doctor – which is fine, as long as you’re not the patient. Americans believe that the interests of U.S. workers and their families come ahead of what may be good or best for the Global Economy. For years they have seen industrial jobs disappear. Now white-collar jobs are being outsourced. They want to know what Bush and the Republicans are going to do about it.
•
In his book, Where the Right Went Wrong, Buchanan cites Alexander Hamilton's guidelines that he believed would insure an economically independent nation. Buchanan observes that Presidents "from Washington to Madison to Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt" followed Hamilton's prescriptions, which were:

• America must not be thirteen separate markets but a single free market. All state tariffs that impede domestic commerce are to be abolished. Free trade among the thirteen states is embedded in the Constitution.

• To ensure free trade among the states, a new national government has been created. How is it to be financed? With tariffs on imports from abroad, imposed at customs houses at the port of entry. All exports and all income of U.S. citizens are to be exempt from taxation. This prohibition was to be written into the Constitution.

• The tariff revenue extracted from foreign merchants will be used to build a new capitol, create an army and navy to defend us from imperial predators, and construct the roads, harbors, and canals that will bind us together as a people.

Buchanan concludes:

From Hamilton's mind and pen had come the greatest free market in history. But as Hamilton was, like Washington, an American nationalist, it was a national free-trade zone he had created. All Americans participated in that free market as their birthright, but British merchants, who had held life-and-death power over the colonies, would pay a price of admission – a tariff.

That tariff would finance a small but strong central government. And by raising the price of foreign goods, tariffs would stimulate our own people into building factories here in the United States. Strategic goal: Cut the ties of dependency to Europe and create bonds of commerce among Americans. The US economy was designed to weld us into one nation and one people, dependent upon one another. What was best for America, and for our people as a whole, was the basis of Hamilton's great idea.

Washington and Hamilton wanted to wean the republic off a reliance on foreign trade so Americans would never again be drawn into the wars of the old continent. They wanted to cut the umbilical cord to Europe and set out over the mountains for the West. They were statesmen, visionaries, and patriots.

See also: Will free trade or protectionism prevail?

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A shameful blot

On the cover of the November 17, 2008 edition of The American Conservative magazine is a list of the dismal accomplishments of our outgoing President, George W. Bush. It reads as follows:

Missions Accomplished
• Start a war (or two)
• Shred Constitution
• Crash economy
• Expand entitlements
• Ruin America's reputation
• Create Democratic majority
• Bribe churches
• Recruit for al-Qaeda
• Discredit conservatism
• Nationalize banks
• Cut taxes now, pay later
• Misunderestimate hurricane
• Export jobs, import workers
• Federalize education
• Spy on citizens

The cover story inside, "Bush's Broken Record," offers observations by several writers on the Bush tenure. A few excerpts:

He Fought the Wars and the Wars Won, by Gary Brecher

What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can’t take the swagger out of a fool. ...

Maybe there’s a lesson here: if the president doesn’t cut it in a crisis, we’re better off admitting that to ourselves and telling him so instead of pretending he’s a great leader. When you make a weakling into a hero, you give him a lot of power. ...

So we poured American blood and treasure into the Iraqi dust to prove the half-baked theories of a bunch of tenth-rate professors. The most expensive experiment in the history of the world, all to learn something any 10-year-old could have told them: people don’t take to foreign troops on their streets, and not everybody wants to be like us. You know those Ig-Nobel awards they hand out to the dumbest science projects of the year? The Iraq invasion is the all-time winner. Retire the trophy with the names of the winning team: Bush, Cheney, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Feith. ...

It’s no puzzle: we pretended a goon was a hero, let him play out his foolish fantasies about remaking the Middle East, and wasted our strength on a losing effort while the rest of the world drifted out of our power. Our leader was a laughingstock around globe, and he made America the butt of the world’s contempt. But Bush got his wish—he was a war president and then some. The rest of us were the casualties.
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A Long Train of Abuses, by Alexander Cockburn

No doubt the conservatives who cheered Bush on as he abrogated ancient rights and stretched the powers of his office to unseen limits would have shrieked if a Democrat had taken such liberties. But now Obama will be entitled to the lordly prerogatives Bush established.

Growing up in Ireland and the United Kingdom, I gazed with envy at the United States, with its constitutional protections and its Bill of Rights contrasting with the vast ad hoc tapestry of Britain’s repressive laws and “emergency” statutes piled up through the centuries. Successive regimes from the Plantagenet and Tudor periods forward went about the state’s business of enforcing the enclosures, hanging or transporting strikers, criminalizing disrespectful speech, and, of course, abolishing the right to carry even something so innocuous as a penknife. ...

Bush has forged resolutely along the path blazed by Clinton in asserting uninhibited executive power to wage war, seize, confine, and torture at will, breaching constitutional laws and international treaties and covenants concerning the treatment of combatants. The Patriot Act took up items on the Justice Department’s wish list left over from Clinton’s dreadful Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trashed habeas corpus protections.

The most spectacular abuses of civil liberties under Bush, such as the prison camp at Guantanamo, are acute symptoms of a chronic disease. The larger story of the past eight years has been the great continuity between this administration and those that have come before. ...

In the past eight years, Bush has ravaged the Fourth Amendment with steadfast diligence, starting with his insistence that he could issue arrest warrants if there was reason to believe a noncitizen was implicated in terrorist activity. Seized under this pretext and held within America’s borders or in some secret prison overseas, the captive had no recourse to a court of law. Simultaneously, the “probable cause” standard, theoretically disciplining the state’s innate propensity to search and to seize, has been systematically abused, as have the FBI’s powers under the “material witness” statute to arrest and hold their suspects. Goodbye habeas corpus.
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Discounting Family Values, by Allan Carlson

The Bush team sacrificed the prospect of greater pro-family initiatives—like so much else—to the war in Iraq. Most disturbingly, the Defense Department relentlessly manipulated, and at times simply ignored, laws that limited exposure of women to combat. Desperate to fill its ranks, the Army ignored the lessons of all human history and put women—including young mothers—at risk, a shameful blot on the American record. Hundreds have been killed and many more severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have spent months, if not years, separated from their families.

The administration’s deliberate twisting of gender roles was on gruesome display in the case of Jessica Lynch, in which Pentagon propagandists blatantly lied about her capture in the early days of the Iraq War, turning a frightened victim of Iraqi sexual abuse into a female version of Sergeant York. Private Lynndie England’s infamous exploits in the Abu Ghraib prison were another sign of the Pentagon’s direct complicity in the feminist-inspired degradation of American women.

In pursuit of its military agenda, the Bush administration achieved another landmark of gender-role engineering. Its deployment of women into combat made sure, given prior court decisions, that if the nation must someday return to a draft, the daughters of American families will join their brothers in involuntary military service.
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Conservatives Follow the Leader, by Llewellyn Rockwell

To be sure, cultural problems abound, given the warfare state and the welfare state. But the answer is hardly to put the feds in total charge. Just as religion must be free from state interference, so must the culture, which is informed by religion. But once conservatives helped make these issues part of the political agenda, the state happily developed an aggressive strategy for shaping the culture in its image, through a wide variety of legislation and spending.

So when it came time for Bush to rally conservative support, he pushed very bad ideas like putting religious charities on the government dole. You might think that this would be opposed by anyone who valued religious independence, charitable autonomy, free enterprise, and limiting government. But no: conservatives stood foursquare with Bush, and even had their hands out for contracts. ...

Every Republican president can count on the conservatives eventually supporting whatever policies he dishes out for one simple and profound reason: they hate the Left more than they hate the state. So in the end, they will back anything that keeps the Left out of power. By anything, I mean anything—military dictatorship, fascist central planning, state management of the whole of the culture. One wonders what horror they think they are preventing by opposing the Left.

The answer is that they do not think. Most people calling themselves conservatives pay no attention to the history of ideas. George W. Bush certainly took no such interest. His understanding of American history, economics, and world affairs is thin and superficial. His goal as president was not to accomplish anything as such but merely to be president and do presidential things and hope to land on the right side of history.
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Beating up on the Dixie Chicks

An interesting thread about the Dixie Chicks and their travails, which still do not seem to be over, appeared on the Country Music Television site.

So many people still do not understand that the First Amendment was conceived to act as the primary vehicle that makes it safe for Americans to speak out against our government and those who claim to represent us. For many citizens, freedom of speech stops short of criticism of their pet politician.
• • •
(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:

Politics and Natalie Maine’s big mouth aside….. the Dixie Chicks play great music, and I look forward to hearing their new music. Having been in the Marine Corps for 25 years, I tend to forgive people who shoot off their mouth’s because I fight for their freedom to make asses of themselves. People in the public eye make stupid statements all of the time with little consequences; however, Ms. Maines forgot one important thing…. Country Music fans are very patriotic people!!!! We love our Country and we love our Country Music and we don’t like anyone treading on either one.
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(Dec. 5)
Rosebud says:

Jim C, the first thing I want to do is thank you for serving our country. I do really appeciate the men and women who fight for our great nation. I do not agree that their (Dixie Chicks) comments make them unpatriotic. It’s been so long since they made those statements. The fact of the matter is their feelings of going to war were the same as a lot of people. That does not mean those people do not support the troops only they may question the motives of our Commander and Chief.
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(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:

Rosebud…. what you say is valid; however, remember that America has a “Mob Mentality.” What Natalie Maines said about President Bush wasn’t that bad compared to other remarks that have been made about him. In her case, the timing was just wrong and the Dixie Chicks paid for it in the only way the “Angry Mob” could get back at them …. and that was by pulling their cd’s off the shelves and taking them off of playlists at Country Music Stations. Was it right? No way …… but as I stated in a previous entry, Country Music Fans love their country and they love their country music and Natalie Maines, for a moment, forgot about that. But here’s the thing …. the Chicks have made some great music since then and have had a very successful tour schedule, so their going to be okay.
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(Dec. 6)
Stella says:

How does anyone buy the notion that lambasting a politician, whether the President or not, is the same as lambasting your country or its principles? Where does such an idea come from? Every President has faced an opposition that has torn him to shreds.

Politicians are there to be criticized and denounced by the citizens. Who else deserves it more? And how in the world does that make an American less “patriotic?” Why should anyone buy the notion that mindless robots, who meekly follow the mob, are people who “love their country?” Maybe they just love not having to think for themselves.

Why can’t the Dixie Chicks’ music be appreciated, while they are accepted on their own terms? Do you think that if Elvis had gone against the political grain of the times, that he would have been shunned and his music ignored by radio jocks?
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(Dec. 6)
Jim C says:

. . . The fact of the matter is that a majority of Country Music fans, and many American’s do see the President as a symbol of American Patriotism. If you have ever traveled abroad, then you know that much of the world equates America’s President as America itself and judges us accordingly. I have been to many countries where the only English word they all collectively know is the name of the current President.
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(Dec. 6)
Leanne says:

So, will country music fans be this respectful to our incoming president? Will they get up in arms if someone like Trace or Toby says something disrespectful about soon-to-be President Obama -- here in the U.S. or even on foreign soil? I’m thinking Mr. Keith will be able to say whatever he wants about Obama at his concerts and the majority of country music fans will simply cheer him on.

So, it’s somewhat disingenuous to suggest that the uproar over Maine’s remarks was a result of someone saying something negative against the President. I’m more inclined to believe that the anger was because she dared to say something about a Republican president, because I’m sure Obama will not be shown such patriotic respect by the fans who currently claim to be so respectful of the office of the president. ...

I just don’t believe that they would have been so angry if Natalie had spoken out against Clinton in the ’90s, and I don’t believe they will be angry if country artists say something disrespectful about Obama in the next 4 years, no matter what soil it’s said on. So, I wish people would just admit that they were mad because Natalie said something they didn’t agree with and stop trying to justify it for what might seem like a nobler reason.
• • •
Yes, as Leanne suggests, let's all wait to see if those patriotic country music fans insist on respecting the "Office of the President," when the flak is flying hot and heavy over Obama's head. Is the Office of the President respected only when a Republican holds it?

As each citizen should desire the right to criticize political figures, of any party, we should refrain from punishing one another when the verbal rocks are being thrown at our pet politician. Read more!

You handed government a sword

Some excerpts from the wise words of Robert Hawes, who identifies as a Christian libertarian, in his post, "Enabling Tyranny: An Open Letter to Conservative Republicans," on his blog, The Jeffersonian:

• • •

In the meantime, while the GOP is busily rubbing at that boot-print on its rear end and wondering what to do next, let me ask you conservative Republicans out there a question:

Do you realize that what scares you the most about Obama and his democratic allies is largely your own fault?

I’m not talking about a failure to get the vote out for McCain (God help us), or the general ins and outs of campaign strategy. Rather, I’m talking about the powers that you have allowed Washington DC to consolidate, particularly during the last seven-and-a-half years.

You couldn’t see the wolf in Republican clothing. You trusted George W. Bush and his congressional allies because they had that all-important R behind their names. So you looked the other way while they tore the Constitution to shreds and stomped on it. You excused the abuses of power, the torture, the signing statements, the “unitary executive” rhetoric, the wars waged against populations that had done us no harm, the raids against war protestors and other suspicious characters, the destruction of the dollar, the increased federal control in everything from education to healthcare; and just because the “good guys” were doing it, you thought everything would work out fine.

You handed government a sword because you trusted the hand that would wield it, and because it had that good ‘ole “Made in the U.S.A.” label on it. And now that a new hand is reaching for it, you fear that you may soon find the edge of that sword pressed to your own throat.
• • •

Read this entire, impressive post at The Jeffersonian. Read more!

The everlasting quest: To transform whites

Change you can believe in? For Black Panther veteran Larry Pinkney, the only change that would benefit society is a total overturn of the capitalist system. Pinkney, as a hard-core leftist, desires more than just reform; he wants revolution, which he deems a long-term goal. He is upfront about where he's coming from as he emphasizes class inequities, not race, as society's critical problem. The majority of this blog's readers tend to be miles to the right of Pinkney's policy positions, but this does not mean that all his observations about Barack Obama are worthless.

Pinkney holds no doubts about the role played by the "corporate media" in helping to bring about Obama's political ascension. On this subject, he and the political right are in agreement. There are times when he comes off sounding very much like my favorite presidential candidate, Patrick Buchanan, especially when he urges American citizens to recognize that "The very subterfuge of the corporate/military elite, and its hand maiden, the corporate media, is in fact what brought Barack Obama to power as the face of U.S. Empire."

The "slippery tongued" Obama is a product of a mainstream media that branded and marketed him, "with the people of the United States as their targets," Pinkney writes in "More of the Same Only Worse." This country's military adventurism will continue, declares Pinkney, as it now can be rationalized by a new potent weapon, that is, "the dangerously double-talking 'Emperor' in black face - Barack Obama."

Pinkney predicts that the "corporate-military elite" will use their media-created "Messiah" ultimately to destroy all liberation struggles throughout the world. In the meantime, "Wall Street barons prolong their glut of the every day people’s finances, resources, hopes, and dreams."

While rightwing partisans are going ballistic over the new President-elect, whom they label as "socialist" and "communist," and certainly an enemy of capitalism, to many leftwingers he is nothing more than a carefully crafted tool of the same warmongering powers that crafted George W. Bush.

And what will happen to dissidents and protesters? Non-blacks, who stand in opposition to Obama's policies, predicts Pinkney, "will be branded as racists and traitors." While blacks who oppose the Obama regime "will be ignored and/or branded as fringe radicals and traitors."

Pinkney holds a far more grandiose belief in "the people" than I do. He claims that, over time, the anger of the masses will "peak and explode," as "the proverbial scales of blindness" drop from their eyes, and they see that they've been had, once again. I think it's far more likely that, once the current economic beast is tamed, and "the people" realize they will not have to give up any of their toys, after all, and may even look forward to hoarding still more, they will be the compliant little mice they have grown used to emulating.

Once assured of bread, they will return to their circuses, as they continue to entertain themselves to death. Although we can expect some rumblings from a few hardy souls (like those who occupied that factory building or others who have taken to the streets), the only angry stirrings we are likely to witness among the masses will come when they are denied access to the latest plasma television sets or Apple's newest iPod.

Attention must be paid

While Larry Pinkney's predictions are huge, global and a-racial, mine tend to be modest, and focus more on the ramifications of social interactions.

I believe that blacks will take this Obama victory as a mandate, not to straighten out the mess in their own backyards, but to continue the job of "fixing" white folks. This means stepping up the crusade designed to keep whites in the habit of working to exterminate the "guilt" and "shame" that supposedly taints their hearts and souls. And it will not matter how you label these blacks. You may call them "liberal" or "radical" or even "conservative," but their quest will be the same. If there is one thing that unites blacks across all politics, religious attachments, and classes, it is the desire to control the attitudes and behavior of whites.

Our exalted black movers and shakers – heads of academia, civil rights mountebanks, government functionaries and elected officials – are sure to support even more vigorous integration policies. These will be necessary in order to reach those white holdouts, who are not actively working to de-racinate themselves for the coming "post-racial" world. That is, the world as devised by the coloreds, along with their white professional "anti-racists."

From the most trivial pop culture junk, to the gravest issues, whites are expected to pay attention when blacks are the principals involved. Take the concern of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, for example. His very first column for the world's most prestigious newspaper is one I have never forgotten, if for nothing more than its unmitigated shallowness.

The column was a sermon scolding whites for neglecting to pick up on a piece of jargon that was popular for about ten minutes in 1993. Entitled, "In America, There It Is!," Herbert (a leading black "intellectual" pundit) expressed dismay over the fact that he kept encountering whites who had never heard the bit of black doggerel that went, "Whoomp, there it is!," and explains further, "Or, if you prefer, "Whoot, there it is!" (He offers the alternative spelling of this important contribution to the American vocabulary, because slang tends to get transformed from place to place; in this case, from black ghetto to black ghetto.)

About this piece of slang, Herbert exults:

It's the joyous cry of the streets and the clubs in the big cities, the cry of the young who refuse to succumb to their troubles and grief. "Whoot, there it is!"

Enraptured with this notion, he continues:

Little kids can't stop saying it. A 10-year-old boy in Detroit opened his birthday package and pulled out a new Nintendo game. "Whoomp!" he shouted. "There it is!" A little girl in Atlanta was striving for an A on an English test. When her graded paper came back, she jumped up in the classroom. "Whoot," she said, "there it is!" It's a phrase that makes you feel good. It gets the endorphins going. It's much better than a cigarette or a cocktail. Whoomp, there it is!

And then Herbert gets to the point of this brilliant first essay for the eminent New York Times. He claims to be "amazed" that very few people outside of the "black urban environment" (we know who they are) possess an awareness of this endorphin-rousing expression, "although the phrases have launched two hit songs." (Obviously, everyone is expected to share his interest in simple-minded popular music.) He then educates his readers:

The number two song in the country is by the rap duo Tag Team. It's called "Whoomp! (There It Is)." Also on the charts is "Whoot, There It Is," an altogether different – and blatantly risque – song by the rap group 95 South.

We also learn that a Manhattan bowling alley plays the song whenever someone scores a strike, and that a special version was recorded for the Chicago Bulls. Yet, in spite of all this outstanding acclaim, so many Americans (you know who) are oblivious to this verbal expression, which Herbert, several times, calls a "phenomenon." He writes:

In other words, the whoomp-whoot phenomenon is very big. But as it comes primarily from black kids, much of the country remains absolutely unaware of it. The media have stayed away from it big time. These are America's youngsters, but it's as if America can't hear them.

Oh, wicked, indifferent America! And, he continues:

On Capitol Hill, where Congressmen are shadowboxing with the big issues of our time, you'll get a dumbfounded stare if you happen to mention, "Whoot, there it is!" Several blocks away, in the D.C. neighborhoods, the phrase is everywhere, but hardly anyone on the Hill has heard it.

Calling such ignorance "a shame," Herbert offers the names of a couple of Congressmen who could benefit "from a little loosening up." Of course, they just happen to be Republicans: Senator Robert Dole, who has a "gloomy view of the world," along with the "exasperated" Senator Orrin Hatch.

And then the philosopher Herbert caps off his words of wisdom with observations about what disregard of this creative argot by "America's youngsters" says about black-white relations. How can one miss viewing "Whoomp!" as metaphor?

The whoomp-whoot phenomenon is a terrific example of how most blacks and whites in the U.S. continue to lead separate existences, looking past each other, not seeing one another, not hearing one another, except on those days when, inevitably, we collide and it's time to fight.

So, even ridiculous black slang must be respectfully acknowledged by the mainstream population, if Americans are to avoid leading "separate existences," a choice that is troublesome to Herbert and which he implies no one should have the freedom to make. The implication is that whites are culpable for their negligence of not learning about all aspects of "black culture," even that which an intelligent mind would dismiss as worthless rubbish.

Forbidden to whites

As Herbert so clearly demonstrates, whites are expected always to be thinking about and worrying over blacks. Are blacks happy or discontented? Can more be done to satisfy them? Just what is it that whites are expected to do to finally make blacks feel "equal" and certain that they are not neglected? Well, several black conservatives are happy to offer the key to this dilemma. They share the same principal quest as their liberal counterparts, that is, the longing to bring equality between blacks and whites at every level of economic and social interaction – most especially in the social realm of physical intimacy.

Now, you might think that people who call themselves "conservative," i.e., traditionalists, would wish to maintain the traditions of their own group, and that marriage within that group would be at the top of the list. How else to pass on one's traditions? Not so, with conservative blacks. They are as eager to break tradition as their liberal counterparts, if it assures marriage to a white person.

The public ascension of the mixed-race Barack Obama has brought great joy to these so-called black conservatives, as it has to the liberals who share his political convictions. For both political camps, Obama's personal ethnic history is a model for white Americans to ponder and consider emulating, as they mend their evil, "separatist" ways.

In a February 2008 commentary ("Changing Attitudes, Changing Lives") for Project 21, the black conservative B.B. Robinson laments the fact that black-white intermarriage is not as high as intermarriage between other groups. Although surveys show that in 1958, Americans' acceptance of black-white marriage was, in Robinson's words, "a dismal 4%," today that acceptance figure is up to 77%.

But this is just not good enough, according to Robinson, since it is "not as much as one would expect or want today." Robinson is hopeful that with the public's acceptance of Barack Obama as commander-in-chief will come a greater willingness on the part of whites to look to blacks "to fill the most cherished positions" in their lives. It seems that the Obama electoral victory shows that America has "graduated," and hence, "it is time to address the issue of interracial relationships."

Robinson discusses this most personal of all subjects as though it is incumbent upon society to sit white people down and reason with them. Perhaps a government agency could be formed to institute quotas on the numbers of whites who are permitted to marry one another, while offering incentives to those whites who intermarry with blacks. Will a white person have to explain him/herself for preferring a white mate? What if a person is genuinely not attracted to kinky hair and dark skin? Isn't the attraction component an important feature of mating? In such a case, should that government agency offer more multicultural workshops and "sensitivity" training sessions, to help counsel whites to overcome such clearly racist sentiments?

If you've wondered about how to recognize the indicators of "racial progress," there are black conservatives eager to explain this to you. In another Project 21 commentary, we learn more about the true goal of race relations. In a breathless article entitled, "The True Indicator of Race Relations," authors Joe Hicks and David Lehrer tell of an exhilarating event that took place on New Year's Day in 2007, when two football teams (Boise State University and Oklahoma University) squared off at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. At the game's end, one Ian Johnson, a black sophomore running back, fell to his knees, as witnessed by the entire stadium, and very publicly proposed marriage to one Chrissy Popadics, a white cheerleader. She accepted, and the authors exult that this was "a fitting end to a bowl game."

Hicks and Lehrer can hardly contain their enthusiasm, as they describe how the crowd in the stadium "noisily endorsed the union as a welcome part of the victory celebration." This episode, they joyously declare, is "a good barometer of the nation's race relations."

The Fiesta Bowl event is a very adequate indicator for those blacks, of which there are millions, who view as "progress" the ability to intrude themselves deeper into the social and family circles of whites. If this is the black conservative's view of "racial progress," you might wonder what's his beef with liberals. Coerced integration, that leads to assimilation, that leads to the Johnson-Popadics union, appears to be viewed by both conservatives and liberals as a "social good." And, apparently, a social goal for which to strive.

It comes as no surprise to savvy blacks and enlightened whites that the reason why so many blacks continue to insist that "integration" has not been fully realized, is a desire for closer proximity to whites, in order to better position themselves to form social attachments. The call to put an "end to racism" is really a call to limit the ability of whites to make personal choices on the basis of race or ethnicity. If possible, whites should be denied the right to be "racist," even in this most intimate corner of their lives.

The conservative Shelby Steele, of mixed-parentage himself, in his many books, articles and Op-ed pieces, offers his take on the black-white linkage. In his writings, we discover that the definition of "white supremacy" has expanded to include a host of sins, the major one being a strong acknowledgement of racial identity (an "atavistic connection," in Steele's words). He writes about race as though it were a remote characteristic, a residue of the past, an "atavism" that should not be embraced "too strongly." At least, not by whites.

Blacks spend inordinate amounts of time hyping their racial identity, but, according to Steele, "Only the strictures against a white racial identity keep us at all civilized around race." And, he writes, "Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world." This precept has so penetrated the minds of whites, that vast numbers of them work at keeping one another on a short leash, to prevent actions that might possibly be interpreted as acknowledgment of their white heritage.

Steele extends to minority ethnics his admonition to abstain from too strong an attachment to racial identity, but we know the true target of his caution – that group whom he cites as having pursued power in the past "in the name of their race."

What are we to make of the fact that Steele admits that a piece of cloth on a flag pole (i.e., the Confederate flag) poses a "racially aggressive" insult to his being, that he feels "profoundly rejected" by a symbol? And why exactly should anyone indulge his feelings enough to care? Are you a white supremacist if you consciously choose not to care about his feelings or his possible flag neurosis?

What of that white father, who desires white sons-in-law for his daughters, and white grandchildren? Should he care about Steele's disapproval of his choice to demonstrate his attachment to an "atavistic identity?" Such attachments "are inherently anti-democratic," says Steele, because they "exclude all outside the atavism." Well, yes, that's the general idea.

In this universe of "equality," where does personal preference and choice come in? Since when did handling your "hurt" feelings over rejection cease to be your own personal obligation? Or does the campaign to protect certain individuals from psychic pain trump all common sense? One would expect conservatives to be among the first to protect the right of association, which is essentially the right of the individual to discriminate.

The media drives the culture

Some years ago, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson described a dispute between the well-known black minister Frederick K.C. Price, founder of the Crenshaw Christian Center, a mega-church in Los Angeles, and a white pastor, with whom Price had a long friendship. It seems that the white pastor's son, also a preacher, touched on the subject of interracial marriage in one of his sermons. He suggested that he did not believe in such unions.

Word of this heretical attitude got back to Rev. Price, who demanded the father reprimand his "racist" son. The father refused to do so, and indicated that he shared his son's views on the subject. Price became enraged and sent a tape of the white pastor's comments on to various prominent black ministers, expecting them to share his outrage and to dissociate themselves from the white pastors.

Instead, the black ministers responded that the white pastors had a right to their views on the subject and, frankly, those views did not disturb them. Price now became even more enraged and, in his church, denounced the black ministers as "house niggers," citing as "evil" the position taken by the white and black pastors. Peterson asks, "When did it become evil to want your children to marry a man or woman who has the same skin color as their parents?"

Second only in influence to the education system, the entertainment media, for decades, has been force feeding the nation a steady diet of black cultural symbols and black imagery. In an adept move to coerce white producers and studios to continue increasing the visibility of black faces on the TV screen and in films, the black lobby persists in its lies about Hollywood's "racism." (See "Keeping the pressure on Hollywood.") This is a longstanding and clever game that black elites play: Even when there is an overabundance of the perquisites they demand, the best way to keep whites jumping through hoops and nervous about possibly being smeared with the "racist" tag, is to keep shrieking that enough still has not been done.

In an article about depictions of interracial coupling on television, Robert Entman, a professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, praises such depictions as "progressive." Says Entman, "It makes these couples more normal, and if they're more normal on TV, they might seem more normal out on the street." Now, here's a man who makes the goal crystal clear.

However, Entman is dismayed that these shows still aren't doing a good enough job of getting at the heart of mixed relationships, and he calls this a "missed opportunity to acquaint whites with the persistence of racism." Apparently, after all these years, whites still need more tutoring. What will it take for them to get the point? According to Entman, a white man, there's much work to be done, to convert the white mind.

Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, an executive producer at ABC, reflects perfectly the mentality of the black elite. She declares, "To show a black man and a white woman in an embrace, or in bed, tells how huge strides have been made." When a person like Anderson is pressed to explain just what social benefits, or "strides," these kinds of depictions bring to blacks, in particular, and to the society at large, they are at a loss to offer anything beyond feeble clichés and platitudes. Their convoluted blatherings usually drift from insisting on a "moral" need to "challenge viewers' assumptions," to the standard banality, which claims that the removal of any taboo is a social good.

Wherever two or more groups live in close proximity, there is going to be a certain degree of intergroup coupling. Usually, such intermixing is tolerable, as far as the racial and cultural integrity of each group is concerned. But what we now have is an activist media, spurred on by social engineers within academia and the civil rights movement. These collaborators seem to be determined, not only to undermine mainstream social mores, but often appear hell-bent on a biological goal – that is, purposely transforming white caucasian DNA. Are they taking their cues from the likes of the late Susan Sontag and her pernicious defilement of whites as a "cancer" on the human race? Have they taken on a mission to reduce that cancer?

As racial admixture browns their skin, darkens their eyes, and shrinks their IQs, the fast declining white race, that soon will make up only 50% of this country's population, is on the way to joining the ranks of extinct populations. These projections appear to be acceptable to some whites, who are proud of having "grown" beyond ethnocentric concerns to a "post-tribal morality," as put by Jason, a young white man, who writes to comment on my posts.

Jason accepts my contention that blacks take advantage of whites by using "racial victimhood" to gain power. However, he expresses pride that such acquiescence on the part of whites is a demonstration of "noble intentions" and proof that "white men have a real concern for those outside their own race." This sentiment is important to Jason and, apparently, to many other whites.

When asked to explain whites' lack of consciousness of their own race – a clearly self-destructive behavior in the midst of other "tribal" populations that are strengthening their ethnic bonds – Jason takes the moral high ground by declaring that, no matter the consequences, it is always morally preferable to live on a plane that is "beyond race."

To no avail do I remind Jason that whites may be in a "post-racial" stage, but no one else is. To no avail do I suggest that what he mistakes for a superior morality may be nothing more than a form of moral degeneracy.

Is the culture driving the media, or are members of the media earnestly striving to overturn and remake the culture? In a recent discussion on National Public Radio about the film Milk, a guest inadvertently answered the question of whether the culture or the media is in the driver's seat. The film is the story of the assassination, in 1978, of Los Angeles' openly homosexual city supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's Mayor. Needless to say, this is a partisan account of gay life and homosexual aspirations, as the producers offer heavy doses of politically correct propaganda.

The NPR guest arrogantly claimed that such dramatizations are important, because they play a part in "making people used to what they ought to become used to." This observation clarifies the nature of the social burdens that the denizens of Hollywood have taken upon themselves, as they lead their self-righteous crusades to reconstruct the American mind, whether it be around the issue of race or sexual proclivity. We're going to make you so used to our way of thinking, until it becomes a part of you. And we're going to attack you with all our invented politically correct buzz words – racist, sexist, homophobe, white supremacist, separatist – until you comply.

If you think that blacks have been a high maintenance group in the past, with a constant need for attention to their demands and their adversities, self-inflicted and otherwise, the coming years promise to offer more of the same, and then some. If you think that black issues have been front and center and in-your-face for too long, the Obama era, as envisioned by the above-mentioned B.B. Robinson, promises to make even greater demands for individual whites to "prove" their lack of bigotry. The ballot is not enough. There will be no peace until whites demonstrate, in all aspects of their lives, especially the personal, that they have reached that lofty state, which Robinson describes as one of "universal acceptance."

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See also:
Brainwashing whites
It's about power


Read more!

Whose "Constitutional crisis?"

Here's another home run from the conservative traditionalist Rev. Chuck Baldwin. In his column, "Selective Constitutionalism," he discusses the question of Barack Obama's citizenship, and conservatives' agitation over whether he was born in the United States. Baldwin, in his usual, logical fashion, then asks some questions of so-called conservatives. Some excerpts:

• • •
Historically, "natural born Citizen" has always been understood to mean someone born in the United States of America. If Barack Obama was not born in the United States, he is absolutely unqualified to be President. Hawaii's secretary of state says Obama was indeed born in that state. However, to date, Obama's actual birth certificate has not been publicly released, which only serves to add fuel to the accusations that he was not born in Hawaii.

Many conservatives seem to be obsessed with this controversy, calling it a "constitutional crisis." The fact is, however, we have been in a "constitutional crisis" for years! The problem is, most conservatives only get worked up over a potential abridgement of constitutional government when it serves their partisan political purposes. In other words, when a Democrat appears guilty of constitutional conflict, conservatives "go ballistic," but when Republicans are equally culpable of constitutional conflict, they yawn with utter indifference.

For example, the one man who has the notoriety and political clout to actually bring about some meaningful investigation and resolution to the Obama citizenship brouhaha is none other than Senator John McCain. After all, he was Obama's principal opponent in the race for the White House. Plus, as the standard-bearer for the only other major political party, he has the attention of the national media, as well as the national legislative and judicial branches of government. So, why is John McCain not at all interested in the Obama citizenship issue?

Perhaps one reason that John McCain is so uninterested in where Barack Obama was born is because he, John McCain, was not born in the United States. He was born in the country of Panama. So, let me ask readers a question: Does anyone believe if John McCain had been elected President instead of Barack Obama that any notable conservative would have been distressed about a "constitutional crisis"? Get real!
• • •
Read Rev. Baldwin's complete column, "Selective Constitutionalism."
Read more!

Can the Republican party be rescued?

Is it possible to imagine the restoration of the Republican party of Robert Taft? Could it happen again? Might the pre-1980s party be restored, as it is removed from the domination of the crazies, i.e., the much-touted "base?"

People like Christine Whitman and John Danforth think the day is drawing near when those millions of Americans who identify themselves as conventional mainstreamers, with no interest in linking their social-theology concerns to their political party membership, will dare to step forward and reclaim Taft's party. There just might come a time when rational Republicans can advance to dominant positions within the party, whether or not they are "Born Again."

For Whitman's perspective, see "Free the GOP" (Washington Post, 11/14/08).

Also see new blog, Secular Right, founded by the City-Journal's Heather Mac Donald and others. Read more!

The fate of the next Republican presidential candidate

In "GOP Can Play By 'McCain Rules' and Lose, Or 'Sailer Rules' and Win" (Vdare, 11/9/08), Steve Sailer claims to know the secret to the future success of the Republican party. One of those secrets lies in the ability of the party to attract plausible, appealing candidates.

Sailer first goes into a long discussion about exit polls and immigration. He maintains that there is no need for Republicans to be concerned about losing segments of the Hispanic vote in the future, since the "widely assumed" notion that Hispanics are increasing in numbers is not true. Really? Along with this very questionable and unsubstantiated statement, Sailer asserts that Hispanic voters "don't care as much about illegal immigrants as their self-proclaimed leaders" contend.

It is true that during this election, Hispanic/Latino notables were not out in full force for the Democrats' candidate, a yet unknown quantity to many. Yet, I think over the next couple of years, the Democrats will be certain to solidify their connections with the major Hispanic groups, and they will become part of a dependable political base. Those "self-proclaimed leaders," just like among blacks, are the ones who get the masses to follow the bandwagon. And once they have sent out the signals, and even secured some political perks targeted especially to benefit immigrant groups, there will be an irresistible drive towards the Democratic party.

Sailer suggests that, in this electoral cycle, the GOP should have taken a strong stand against illegal immigrants. Considering the new realities that will undoubtedly prevail in the future, it would be unwise to take such advice in the next election go-round. Let's face it, there simply are not enough Americans who will consistently back policies to lock down the borders or urge the enforcement of stiff immigration laws. The stouthearted ones who do are growing more marginal every day. They could not even count upon official support from the Republican party while that party was in charge of things. Immigration reformers are unlikely to have even negligible support from the Democrats.

Sailer's main emphasis is on the recruitment of the best political talent to run for office. In creating a hypothetical young businessman, who chooses to enter politics in the Republican fold, instead of as a Democrat, Sailer suggests that such a candidate must not hesitate to wage an assault on political correctness, and should refuse to play by the "McCain Rules." Instead, the candidate must forego the leftwing rules of "diversity sensitivity," which hampered McCain, and must "play to win."

Easy to say, isn't it? Just who among the Republican stalwarts would back up such a courageous candidate? Who among the Republicans have not imbibed just about every racial assumption and feminist tenet concocted by their supposed adversaries on the left? Most Republicans would not know how to begin to disentangle their minds from politically correct thinking, even while calling themselves "conservative." In fact, most do not seem aware that they have been transformed into politically correct robots. Just look at the Sarah Palin debacle for confirmation of this. (See here and here.)

About Sailer's hypothetical businessman, whom he describes as a "32-year-old white guy," who decides to join his political fortunes to the Republican party: Won't this person need to be vetted by those pro-life evangelicals, the very ones who rejected businessman Mitt Romney for his "incorrect" religion and wavering positions on abortion? Will this hypothetical, enterprising businessman be ready to commit, not only to this camp's unyielding position on abortion, but also be prepared to pledge his allegiance to the "correct" view of Jesus?

Or, is Sailer assuming a future Republican party that has been rescued from the clutches of the Religious Right by a Whitman/Collins/Snowe type of axis? If such a prospective candidate, as described by Sailer, should appear before said rescue has taken place, it's likely that, long before the mainstream media has a chance to put him through the woodchipper, the faithful Republican "base" will have killed him off with their own versions of political correctness and religious intolerance. Read more!

Thanks to Sarah, we can do just about anything we want

The liberal Katha Pollitt, writing in The Nation magazine (11/24/08), conveys what so many bewildered conservatives concluded during the Sarah Palin fiasco, that is, the Republicans' public acceptance of Palin's untidy family scene proves that "the feminism of everyday life is taking hold across the spectrum." Writing from her liberal perspective, Pollitt rejoices over this fact, and observes:

Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists – Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly – insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home.

According to Pollitt, Palin was not only "God's gift" to Barack Obama, Katie Couric and Tina Fey, "she was also a gift to feminism." And Pollitt is right. Surely, until now, there has been no better demonstration of what feminism has wrought than the Palin reality show, buttressed by the masses of devotees she acquired in her brief, but tumultuous tenure as vice presidential candidate.

Palin's lifestyle was thoroughly acceptable to liberals and conservatives, suggests Pollitt, so much so that,

No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived.

There is no doubt, Pollitt emphasizes, that feminism, in moving across the social and political spectrum, has changed attitudes, and behavior once looked upon by many Americans as dysfunctional, even sinful, is becoming normalized. She apparently agrees with conservative writer Heather MacDonald, who has pointed out that, once certain principles have been compromised, "there will be no turning back." Pollitt proclaims:

All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion.

Pollitt offers a hearty thanks to Palin for helping to further the feminist-liberal cause, with the send-off, "So thanks, Sarah. And now, please – back to your iceberg."

However, it does not seem that Sarah is taking Pollitt's advice. In fact, she simply refuses to go away, and appears to be positioning herself for an even bolder role, by establishing herself as the de facto leader of a very damaged Republican party.

Good luck with your new leader, Republicans.

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See also: Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin


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Laughing at conservatives

No conservative did more railing against the Bush neocon administration than did Rev. Chuck Baldwin, right from its beginnings. Over and over, he expressed his indignation at those who called themselves "conservative" and "Christian," while supporting one of the ugliest and most un-Christian clans to ever get hold of this country's government.

In his November 7, 2008 commentary, Baldwin writes, "Bush and his fellow neocons like to categorize and promote themselves as being 'pro-life,' but they have no hesitation or reservation about killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in reckless and unconstitutional foreign wars. .... As a result of this insanely inconsistent and pixilated punditry, millions of Americans now laugh at the very notion of 'pro-life' conservatism. Bush and McCain have made a mockery of the very term."

How true. Who can ever again take the "pro-life" camp seriously?

And on finances, Baldwin says, "The American people look at these so-called 'conservatives' and laugh. No wonder such a sizeable majority of voters yawned when John McCain tried to scare them by accusing Barack Obama of being a 'big taxer.' How can one possibly scare people with a charge like that after the GOP has made a total mockery of fiscal conservatism? That's like trying to scare someone coming out from a swim in the Gulf of Mexico with a squirt gun."

All that business about "redistributing the wealth" was truly ridiculous. As if taxpayers' money wasn't regularly distributed among the Bush gang.

"Across the country," continues Baldwin, "rather than stand on principle, hundreds of thousands of pastors, Christians, and pro-life conservatives capitulated and groveled before John McCain's neocon agenda. In doing so, they forfeited any claim to truth, and they abandoned any and all fidelity to constitutional government."

What we have learned throughout these last eight years is that, among these Republicans, who call themselves "conservative," there is not even a pretense to recognition of the Constitution. It's now a given that this is an antiquated document with no relevance to our lives today. Liberals and conservatives call upon the Constitution only when they think they can cause some form of destruction to their political adversaries.

Read all of Chuck Baldwin's commentary, Conservatives Lost More Than An Election

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Also see: The Religious Right: "Heralds of truth" as political lackeys Read more!

We didn't know this?

TV contributing to teen pregnancy! - Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy! - Racy TV shows switch teenagers on to sex! - Study Links TV Sex to Real Teen Pregnancies! - the headlines blare. Are they for real? We haven't known this all along? What does it take to connect the dots? Look at what's been brewing over the last three decades -- a cynical, out-of-control entertainment media allied with an irresponsible education system, each of which hypes sex to children from the earliest ages, and screeching "pro-lifers" who romanticize the thrill and "heroism" of giving birth -- and we see what teenage girls are up against.

Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin

Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream

Parading the unwed daughter

Teenage pregnancy should never be glorified

Book - Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!), by Carol Platt Liebau
Read more!

The tyrannical criminal justice system

I recently learned of the "robocalls" being conducted by Rudolph Giuliani, on behalf of the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. In these unsolicited phone calls, Giuliani informs the called party that the Democrats are eager to put an end to the laws that establish Mandatory Minimum sentencing, and strongly implies that if such an effort succeeds, convicted criminals will be turned loose and serve no jail time at all. This is a gross, cynical tactic to play upon the ignorance of the general public.

If Republicans really were conservative and, therefore, true constitutionalists, they would have taken the lead, long ago, in wiping these atrocious laws off the books, instead of helping to multiply them around the country. These laws represent a perversion of the American court system. Congressman Ron Paul denounces Mandatory Minimum sentencing laws for "cluttering our courts and prisons with non-violent individuals," while undermining our liberties.

Over the years, I have written several articles on the subject of Mandatory Minimum sentencing, commending the tireless efforts of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), while citing reports by the major principals, legal and otherwise, involved in researching and documenting the field. Following are links to articles archived on Issues & Views-The Website, along with brief excerpts.
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When judges don't judge [2003]

Excerpt:

First came the system of mandatory minimum sentencing, imposed on states around the country. Under the restrictions of MM sentencing, judges must impose fixed sentences on defendants and are forbidden to exercise their own discretion. This means that we now live in an unconstitutional legal world where prosecutors determine not only which charges to bring against the accused, but also determine the final sentence, if said accused is found guilty.
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Good intentions, bad consequences [2003]

Excerpt:

Members of Congress and state legislators believed that harsher sentences would catch drug kingpins and deter others from entering the drug trade. Instead, thousands of low-level defendants and addicts now serve sentences designed for kingpins because judges no longer have the authority to make the punishment fit the crime. Mandatory sentencing laws prevent judges from considering the severity of the offense, and the offender’s role, or his or her potential for rehabilitation when determining the sentence.
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Mandatory Minimum Sentences or Does This Make Any Sense? [2000]

Excerpt:

Such mandatory sentences must be imposed, regardless of a person's role in the crime, or other mitigating factors. Prosecutors, not judges, have the discretion to decide what charges to bring, whether to accept or deny a plea bargain, and ultimately, to determine what the final sentence will be.
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Bringing down families [2002]

Excerpt:

The consequences of these immoral sentencing laws are horrendous – mothers of young children incarcerated for periods that span their children's youth; siblings separated from one another, never to be reunited in a family setting; families torn apart, often for good. All because a parent committed an act that is made foolish only because the laws are foolish. They are victims of zealous "drug warriors," who have succeeded in ratcheting up into felony crimes activities that once were misdemeanors.
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When did we get this mean? [2003]

Excerpt:

From the snares of determined prosecutors, "no one is safe," claims Paul Craig Roberts, author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice."> The cliché about the rich buying their way out of prosecution hasn't been holding up lately. In fact, it is easy and less messy to frame a white collar victim (such as Martha Stewart, Michael Milken or Leona Helmsley), since all a prosecutor has to do is "interpret an arcane regulation differently or with a new slant." The trend to criminalizing civil infractions makes prominent figures easy prey. Law becomes uncertain when ambitious prosecutors can create criminal offenses merely by interpretation.
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Cruel and irrational [2004]

Excerpt:

The appalling fact of mandatory minimum sentencing continues. This month, a Utah federal judge, like so many judges before him, was forced to impose a 55-year prison sentence on a first-time drug offender. As reported in the Deseret Morning News (11/7/04), Judge Paul Cassell appeared to be as upset about the sentence he imposed on Weldon Angelos as others in the courtroom.
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Trying to be tougher than the next guy [2004]

Excerpt:

On January 4, CBS's "60 Minutes" took on the horror that is called Mandatory Minimum sentencing, a subject frequented often on this website. Host Ed Bradley described these harsh sentencing laws and interviewed principals in law enforcement who object to them.

Bradley: In the wake of the cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, Congress passed harsh sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentencing laws requiring federal judges in most cases to impose long jail terms on anyone convicted of drug trafficking – no matter how small their crime. But now, objections to the drug laws are coming from an unexpected source – federal judges themselves. Normally reluctant to speak out on political matters, federal judges by the dozens have protested harsh drug laws, contending the laws force them to send some people to prison who don't belong there and others for many more years than they deserve.
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Related Articles:

The Overcriminalized Society: Jailing the innocent [2004]

By Paul Craig Roberts

Excerpt:

Americans are uninformed about the tyrannical nature of their criminal justice system. Until they become personally ensnared in the system, Americans believe that police and prosecutors would never convict an innocent person. Once they experience the system, Americans are terrified by the system's indifference to whether a defendant has committed a crime. ...

In a recent Cato Policy Report, Erik Luna says that "the sheer number of idiosyncratic laws and the scope of discretionary enforcement" are making criminals out of many Americans who had no intent to break a law or any knowledge that they had. A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world.
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The vanishing jury trial [2002]

Excerpt:

Craig Horowitz describes the vanishing jury trial in "The Defense Rests – Permanently," (New York magazine, 3/4/02), and claims that our criminal justice system no longer works to serve the truth. He concedes that no rational person would want a return to the permissiveness and lack of accountability of two decades ago, but that the current "overwhelming power of the criminal-justice system has raised a compelling question: Has the presumption of innocence and the constitutional guarantee of a trial by a jury of one's peers been compromised by measures designed to speed the accused through a system with fewer opportunities to escape?"
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A wholesale transfer of power [2003]

Excerpt:

American law, based as it was in Anglo-Saxon law, once required that before an individual is deemed a criminal he must have acted with an intent to do wrong. To commit a crime, the law required that an individual must both cause (or attempt to cause) a wrongful injury and do so with some form of malicious intent. Paul Rosenzweig, writing for the Heritage Foundation, joins his voice to others who declare that American law today has been contorted to criminalize acts of negligence and even actions that are accidental. In "The Over-Criminalization of Social and Economic Conduct," Rosenzweig describes how criminal law has strayed from its historical roots, even in terms of subject matter.

Paul Craig Roberts says of these "regulatory" crimes: "Prosecutors have been granted wide discretion by social welfare regulation, which criminalizes behavior that bears no relationship to moral wrongs (such as murder), which traditionally defined criminal acts. Today, Americans draw prison sentences for unknowingly violating vague regulations, the meanings of which are interpreted by the regulatory police who enforce the regulations." Read more!

The state's patriotic sheep

We're all familiar with those Bible verses that are so dear to a certain type of Christian, who claims special "patriot" status, that is, Mark's exhortation to "Render unto Caesar," etc., and, of course, Paul's call to be subject to the governing authorities. These are the people who wear Paul's words proudly on their sleeves, to excuse their compliant submission to the state. But, in a system of government like the U.S., who exactly are the people whom Paul refers to as the "governing authorities." Here are some reflections by Rev. Chuck Baldwin on Paul's words in Romans:

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It seems that every time someone such as myself attempts to encourage our Christian brothers and sisters to resist an unconstitutional or otherwise reprehensible government policy, we hear the retort, "What about Romans, Chapter 13? We Christians must submit to government. Any government. Read your Bible, and leave me alone." Or words to that effect. ...

Do our Christian friends who use these verses to teach that we should not oppose President Bush or any other political leader really believe that civil magistrates have unlimited authority to do anything they want without opposition? I doubt whether they truly believe that.

For example, what if our President decided to resurrect the old monarchal custom of Jus Primae Noctis (Law of First Night)? That was the old medieval custom when the king claimed the right to sleep with a subject's bride on the first night of their marriage. Would our sincere Christian brethren sheepishly say, "Romans, Chapter 13 says we must submit to the government?" I think not. And would any of us respect any man who would submit to such a law?

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Read entire article here for Rev. Baldwin's interpretation of Romans 13. Read more!

The death-or-glory boys

In reviewing Ron Suskind's book, The Way of the World, British journalist Simon Jenkins describes the outcome of a trial in England of eight possible terrorists, when the gung-ho Americans, led by Dick Cheney, intruded. In "This is what happens when a crime is redefined as war" (Guardian, 9/10/08), we learn about the sabotage of Operation Overt. Here are excerpts:

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It has been an open secret in police circles that Operation Overt, the most complex in counter-terror history, was sabotaged by the American vice president, Dick Cheney, desperate for a headline boost to the Republicans' 2006 mid-term elections. British intelligence was following trails and acquiring evidence against 20 suspects. They needed American surveillance help in Pakistan and shared their information, foolishly it now appears, with Washington. ...

Cheney then privately dispatched the CIA's operations director, Jose Rodriguez, to Islamabad to secure the arrest of one of the British suspects, Rashid Rauf, believed to be a possible link with al-Qaida. The British had been watching him and preparing his extradition. They did not want him rendered useless through CIA or Pakistani torture. Within days, news of Rauf's capture reached the British plotters. In a panic, the police had desperately to round up as many suspects as they could find overnight. According to Suskind, "top officials in British intelligence cursed, threw ashtrays and screamed bloody murder."

Months of work, which might have unpicked an entire al-Qaida network back to the Pakistani training camps, was ruined by "forced, foolish hastiness" -- and all for the mid-term elections. Bush was soon boasting of having "foiled a plot to blow up passenger planes headed for the United States."

Two years later, a British jury, having to decide on the basis of evidence whether it faced another 9/11 or just a bunch of crazies, gave the benefit of the doubt to the latter. It was clearly fed up with scare stories and the politics of fear and felt the police had not made a case. Today, many of the plotters are at large, and Rauf himself has mysteriously escaped custody.

This is what happens when criminal conspiracy is redefined as an act of war. It goes political. As a conspiracy to cause mayhem, the suspected airline plotters merited and were getting thorough detective work in what was clearly a superb operation. Because it was also a "war," the death-or-glory boys took over and wrecked it.

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Read complete article here. Read more!

Ignoring advice when it could have made a difference

Describing someone as having a "pre-9/11 mentality" is meant as a denigration. It suggests that such a person supposedly still harbors the same naïve attitude toward the threat from terrorism as they did before 9/11, with an implication that they are either benighted or, perhaps, even un-American. But was everyone naïve prior to 9/11?

Writer Paul Mulshine admits to possessing the pre-9/11 mentality, since his understanding of the terrorism threat is unchanged today from prior to the 9/11 devastations. Back in 1996, Mulshine warned about the gutting of the CIA then underway by the Clinton Administration. In "Why I'm proud of my pre-9/11 mentality" (9/11/08), Mulshine argues that even after the USS Cole was attacked, along with several US embassies in Africa, Clinton did not turn his attention to reforming or beefing up intelligence-gathering operations. And, he writes, "George W. Bush took over and paid even less attention to the al Qaeda threat than his predecessor did."

Along with others, Mulshine is in company with Pat Buchanan, who, for years, warned in his columns and books, that sooner or later a day of reckoning was on the horizon for a country as unnecessarily involved abroad as the United States.

Mulshine tells of a report issued in 2000, by the National Commission on Terrorism, warning of defects in intelligence-gathering, which was ignored first by Clinton, and then by Bush. He writes,

The term "pre-9/11 mentality" is used as an insult, of course. But if you think about it for even a second, you have to ask yourself why any intelligent person would have had a different attitude toward terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001, than he had on Sept. 10, 2001. The threat was exactly the same. So was the means of countering it.

But instead of following the eminently sensible recommendations in that report, the Bush administration went from ignoring the threat of terrorism to endorsing the idea of ending all terrorism on the planet. This is impossible. Terrorism is a tactic, one better described by the term "asymmetrical warfare." The idea of asymmetrical warfare is that a lightly armed force can employ rudimentary resources – box cutters being the most extreme example – to create havoc against a conventional military power.

If such a war were symmetrical, with one conventional army against another, the United States could win easily. But since it is asymmetrical, we were forced to employ vastly more resources than the enemy, which is exactly what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who deride the "pre-9/11 mentality" deride the very position that they ignored back when it might have made a difference, the idea of fighting terrorism through police and intelligence actions.

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Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream

If ever there were any doubt that there are pro-lifers who endorse promiscuous sexual behavior and illegitimate childbirth, R.R. Reno certainly removes it. Writing for First Things, a magazine edited by Father Richard John Neuhaus, whose mission claims to "advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society," Reno celebrates the news about those high school girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who, apparently, have purposely set out to become "Single Moms," with no husbands in sight.

Reno one-ups Sarah Palin as a negative role model for the young (see Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin), as he praises these confused and wayward youngsters for recognizing the satisfaction of experiencing, through childbirth, a "primordial blessing."

Skipping over the Bible's injunctions on fornication as such, and re-tooling Christian doctrine to suit his own proclivities, Reno informs us of the biblical claim that the "single greatest disaster" for any woman is barrenness. "Be fruitful and multiply," he further proclaims. Hence, these Gloucester girls are to be commended for not being "captive" to their own "selfishness," in contrast to today's typical woman who is overly involved in taking control of her future.

He derides what he calls a "Miss Prudence" class for these girls, where they might be informed of the consequences of their actions and the challenges they will face as mothers on their own. Candidly informing them of future difficulties is just so much dramatizing, according to Reno.

He says he finds "something reassuring" about the idea of a band of teenagers making a "pregnancy pact," to produce children on their own. It's "so much brighter, so much more hopeful, than the alternative, which is the 'sterility pact' of those so committed to controlling their futures."

Wouldn't you like to have this guy as speaker at the next assembly meeting of your high school's 15-year-olds?

Reno is contemptuous of those "upper middle class parents," whom he disdains for their "upper middle class attitudes," and who he says "live in fear that their daughters will find themselves pregnant at age sixteen and 'throw their lives away.'" It's not just the upper middle class, Mr. Reno, but responsible parents lower down the economic ladder, as well, would like to see a better future than early motherhood for their 16-year-olds. Especially since they know better than anyone the mentality of their 16-year-olds.

On conservative, pro-lifer Lawrence Auster's site, Carol Iannone responds to Reno's reckless discourse by reminding us that "trying to exert some control over the future by finishing school and getting a job and establishing a home and getting married before having babies is exactly what society has been rightly exhorting teenagers to do." Up to now, the Church also taught that this was the better path to take.

In the world of the deranged pro-lifer, one must never bring up either the social costs to the young person herself or the long-term impact on society of widespread single motherhood. Such concerns are cavalierly waved away by Reno, who calls this kind of thinking just so much "blah, blah, blah."

Lawrence Auster observes:

R.R. Reno's article expresses in pure form the mentality that led "Christian conservatives" to gush over Bristol Palin's out of wedlock pregnancy. If there is to be a movement worthy of the name conservatism, it will have to be created or recreated, because the conservative movement is dead. The so-called conservative movement should change its name to the anti-abortion movement, or "the cult of natalism for the sake of natalism," or "Christians for illegitimacy."

In Does pro-life now mean pro-libertinism?, Selwin Duke tracks how government inevitably steps into the breach when there are large numbers of dependent women and children. The average pregnant single mother, writes Duke, is likely to be left alone. "Individually, this is often tragic, but collectively, when the number of single mothers becomes great enough, it is always so – for a civilization."

Duke maintains, "The less the individuals fulfill their roles – in other words, the greater the number of single mothers laboring singly – the greater the government's role will become." And, "When there is a large population of dysfunctional youths in society, there will be impetus for a trove of other programs as well. You can start with pre-kindergarten, after-school, nutritional, youth-intervention, drug and anti-violence programs, but the sky is the limit. Virtually anything a good family would do, Hillary's village will do."

No writer has done a better job of dissecting exactly the phenomenon described by Duke than George Gilder. In his book, Visible Man, through the lives of roaming underclass black men, Gilder showed how the welfare state made it possible for unwed mothers to support themselves and thereby substitute government for the fathers of their children. [See The Civilizing Power of Marriage and Family]

It is due to the more than benign treatment extended by government, granting additional monetary stipends with each additional illegitimate baby, that we now have what was an underclass problem moved into mainstream society. There is a line, even if indirect and crooked, from the open-ended, free-for-all welfare policies begun in the 1960s, to those Gloucester high school girls.

Recently, a woman called Laura Schlessinger's radio show, and told of a relative who had already given birth to two illegitimate children, both of whom were being taken care of by a reluctant grandmother, and there was one more on the way. Dr. Laura asked when in the world would someone tell this woman to get her tubes tied. (Even though a pro-lifer, Schlessinger tends to be a sensible one.) The response was something like, "But she's only 24 years old."

Schlessinger almost had a fit. Three children down, and the concern is that, if her tubes are tied, this irresponsible wench, who is not even mothering her offspring, might not be able to have more in the future! That is, children to turn over to someone else's care, and, perhaps, ultimately dumped in the state's foster care system. This woman's story would surely warm the heart of a pro-life zealot like R.R. Reno. There obviously is no "sterility pact" involved here, nor a woman overly caught up in taking control of her future.

Since so many pro-lifers condone promiscuity among the young, I wonder why they pretend to be fans of abstinence. Surely, practicing abstinence, which in this case means not engaging in pre-marital sex, would mess up the game plan of unlimited baby-making, wouldn't it? Or, perhaps, these cynical creatures are counting on the game plan to be fulfilled by their very call for abstinence.

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See related:

We didn't know this?
Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin





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The good liberal Palin makes a mockery of conservatives

Did John McCain choose Sarah Palin as his running mate, to spite the party that would not let him appoint his alter ego Joseph Lieberman, as suggested by some? Or was he just determined to get even with a party that allowed for the outrageous vilification of him during the 2000 election campaign? Is it all about smoldering resentments? How could any serious person have bypassed Mitt Romney for this?

It's a pity that the grotesque role the party has given Palin as Attack Dog will probably do the Obama camp more good than they could do for themselves. The wild claims about his affiliations, all of which have been done to death by the media, show utter desperation. Hey, Miz Palin, our ears were filled with all this Wright/Ayers/Acorn stuff for over a year. Ever hear of burn-out?

Palin is making a wonderful mockery of the conservative cause and its supposed adherents. She is as liberal as the day is long, as we clearly see in her disregard of principles that used to be considered major among conservatives -- such as, her acceptance of the notion that mothers of minor children should take on full-time, all-consuming professional jobs; her refusal to express regret for the behavior of her wayward teenage daughter and for her own questionable parenting skills; her enthusiastic promotion of the public school system and the teachers unions, while disparaging vouchers; and her tolerant views on homosexual partnerships. Where's the conservative? On all these points, the lady shows herself to be a good and true liberal. Is she laughing up her sleeve?

Want to guess what the likes of Palin's faithful pro-life worshippers (her only base) would have done, if Chelsea Clinton had come up pregnant at age 17? Can you hear the filthy verbiage that would have spewed forth from them concerning Hillary's failure to pay attention to her mothering duties, instead of busying herself with that health care stuff? Who looks to be the better mother today?

If Palin came out in support of public fornication in the town square, these pro-lifers would begin spouting talking points in favor of the plan, as long as the fornication resulted in pregnancies, which resulted in babies. [See Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin]

Columnist Paul Mulshine calls Palin a "liberal populist." Well, maybe.

Here are four terrific articles by Mulshine on Palin:

Darn right conservatives have a beef with Palin

Palin sells out conservatives by opposing vouchers

Am I the only one who noticed the other Palin heresy?

Darn right Palin's a loony left-winger Read more!

An awful mistake

The strong and harsh words of John LeBoutillier really sting, and they ought to. Not only should the Republicans not be in trouble with a weak Vice Presidential candidate, they should not be suffering the candidacy of John McCain himself. But this is what happens when a political party has been overtaken by people who do not share what used to be the party's declared principles, and, instead, bring their own obsessions to it.

LeBoutillier laments the loss of Mitt Romney as the VP candidate, while he should be regretting the loss of Romney in the Presidential spot.

Imagine your party falling under the control of driven "Evangelicals" and "pro-lifers," who have managed to acquire enough power to decide the outcome of the party's nominations – not on rational grounds, but on whether prospective candidates share the "correct" brand of religion, i.e., have the right take on Jesus.

In order to prevent the ascent to the White House of a "pagan" Mormon believer, these resolute party usurpers did all the conniving they could to nominate a totally non-religious type. At least, under McCain, there is no chance that people will be exposed to forming positive opinions about a Mormon family or the religion itself. Who knows? Such positive influences might have led to conversions – to the "wrong" religion!

What the heck would the Founders have made of all this? Here, they were worried about the government intruding on freedom of worship, and possibly establishing a state religion. It never occurred to them that a state religion could be imposed by other means.

Here are excerpts of LeBoutillier's insights, from "McCain's Chances Slipping Away" (Newsmax, 10/2/08):
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In a spate of new polls taken since Friday’s debate, including polls in the crucial states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, in some states, Obama has surged across that crucial 50 percent threshold while McCain is bleeding daily. ...

Panic has taken over the McCain campaign. They do not know what to do to reverse this downward trend. And there may be nothing McCain can do to reverse this trend. Any hope may lie in either an Obama mistake, or an outside event; neither of which is under the control now of McCain or his staff. ...

Gov. Palin reveals that she is an uneducated, unread, and untravelled woman who is not, and never will be, ready to be vice president. And her latest line — that "Joe Sixpack" is who we want in the vice presidency — is idiotic. We do not want Joe Sixpack making governmental decisions. We want someone who understands Joe Sixpack's views, but someone who knows more than Joe and has broader experience and knowledge.

The whole Palin line from her supporters that "she is just like me" is an awful mistake. We want someone in the Oval Office who indeed listens to "me" but who knows more and has better judgement. ...

Too bad McCain didn’t pick Mitt Romney as he is/was the one candidate this year who could have seemed credible on this financial mess. But, in the end, it is John McCain who is hemorrhaging in the polls, especially among over-50 voters who see their retirement money shrinking by the day as this Wall Street mess spreads. Read more!

Pro-lifers and their talking points

Needless to say, in response to my post on Sarah Palin, Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin, I have been receiving the usual, typical talking points from pro-lifers about "cold-blooded murder." As if anyone over 12 years old hasn't heard their shtick endlessly. It's amazing how each person takes the stance that he/she is actually informing you of something you don't know and have never heard before. It's more than boring by now.

Don't we accept "cold-blooded murder" on other fronts? Don't these wonderful people, who are writing to me and identify themselves as "Christian," accept the murder of human beings for all sorts of reasons? (If they have their way, in fact, we will be seeing the death penalty applied to many more crimes than murder.)

These supposed lovers of life are among the most blood-thirsty, when it comes to following, like lemmings, the orders from above, to send their sons to die. It perturbs them not to send young men, in the bloom of their youth, to be blown apart in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, and, perhaps, Russia -- for absolutely nothing! They willingly send their sons to their deaths, or to be mutilated beyond recognition, because they're sold government propaganda. Contrary to their insistence, there is nothing "life-affirming" about these people.

(See the views of two traditionalist, pro-life ministers in The Religious Right: "Heralds of truth" as political lackeys -- here.)

"If we fight them over there, we won't have to fight them over here," goes the refrain. How could anyone buy such preposterous reasoning? "There has not been an attack since 9/11." Who says another attack was ever planned, after all the years of planning that went into the 9/11 catastrophe?

Thugs pulled off an operation that took down buildings in New York. They should have been hunted down as thugs, the way the government hunted down Dillinger. There was no need to intrude our military into a sovereign nation, unless, of course, there were other reasons for doing so that have nothing to do with U.S. security. And we know there were other reasons. They have been delineated ad nauseam, by now, and began with Pat Buchanan's brilliant, and now classic Whose War?

If our security and intelligence had simply been doing their jobs, and had just paid attention to warnings given them by ordinary citizens, like the head of that flying instruction school, who informed the FBI of suspicious characters taking his courses, 9/11 would have been avoided. See Jim Bovard on this.

Back to our caring pro-lifers, who supposedly love "life" so much, and talk about the "innocent" fetus. Well, these young soldiers are innocent, too, as far as I'm concerned. Is the "innocent" tag applied, because I'm supposed to think of a 19-year-old boy, who never got to live out his life, as having been a "sinner?" Is that the idea? Is that why he's not considered "innocent" enough? Am I expected to buy their theological stuff?

Also, one of their favorite talking points is the fact that many doctors will not perform the procedure. Well, yes, because they do not want to be shot through their kitchen windows, or have a family member accidentally shot in their place. That's enough to put restrictions on any activity, as these pro-lifers well know.

So, pro-lifers, unless you have something unique and genuinely different to say, don't bother me with your staid, memorized talking points. When you cease sending your sons to die, I'll believe that you are truly pro-life. Read more!

Cheering on that other Nation

Okay, this post serves two purposes. To see if I can upload photographs to the blog, and to have a place to plop some of the zillions of photos of the Boston Red Sox that I've downloaded over time.

I need some irrelevancy right about now, an escape from the horror of politics, and baseball used to be my solace. When my youth was rudely disrupted by the New York baseball Giants being wrenched away from the city, I eventually tried to transfer my loyalty, first to the Yankees, then to the Mets, and then again to the Yankees. But my heart was never in it.

Fast-forward to the 1970s, when a bunch of us, who had gone camping in Vermont, ended our trip by attending a three-game Boston-Yankees series at Fenway Park. The excitement was like nothing we had ever experienced, especially when the Red Sox won the third game, which put them in first place. Leaving that final game was exhilarating, as the chant, "We're Number One!," was shouted far and wide, not only by people in the streets, but also by those hanging out of windows. Those games turned out to be the highlight of what had been a disappointing rainy week of camping, and we didn't even mind that the Yankees lost.

For many years thereafter, I intermittently paid attention to post-season activity, like Pennants and World Series, but not too deeply. Then about four or five years ago, I absentmindedly began to follow the Red Sox, becoming familiar with the roster, catching the rare game that was shown on broadcast television, when they played the Yankees. And I found myself being drawn into Red Sox Nation. I knew I was lost when it became clear that I could not go to bed at night without learning the outcome of that day's game -- and when I found myself worrying over injuries, and caught up in wondering, "Just what the heck does Manny want?!"

So, as they take on California's formidable Angels, here's wishing the Red Sox the same kind of luck they had last year. And now I will see if I can upload those photos.


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Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling

"If Palin were a man, we'd all be guffawing," writes syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker to her comrades in the conservative camp. And, she continues, "because she's a woman, we are reluctant to say what is painfully true."

Parker, obviously a person who cheers for people according to their gender (or race, too, perhaps?) claims that, "Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly." Are we to assume that Parker would not be "wishing for the best," if the VP candidate were Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney?

To cheer for some sports or entertainment figure on the basis of sentimental reasoning is one thing. If you're just dying to see a woman win a Nascar race, or a Chinese-American win a major league Most Valuable Player award, that's nice. It makes no sense to me, but it's harmless. How can anyone, however, at a time like this, when such important leadership positions are at stake, concern herself with an irrelevancy like proving that a woman can hold her own among men? (Do you hear Irving Berlin in the background, Anything you can do, I can do better?)

It took only 40 years of liberal brainwashing for this race/gender hype to sink in so deeply that it now seems to control the thinking of most Americans. Today, one camp is cheering on a colored foreigner, whose clever handlers managed to intrude him into American politics, calculatingly configuring his "street creds," while he mastered what Camille Paglia calls "inner-city African-American tones and locutions," hardly acquired while growing up in Hawaii.

And the other camp, composed mainly of pro-life devotees (see Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin), who are holding the Republican party hostage, are intent on countering liberal dominance with their very special version of a "feminist." Sarah Palin should lead us because she's a female who happens to be a Working Mom, and the colored guy should lead, because he's colored.

Meanwhile, the rational Ron Paul gets thrust aside for being too serious, too up-front, too knowledgeable, and way too intelligent. Could the Founders ever have foreseen such foolishness?

Parker calls Palin "a refreshing feminist of a different order," who personifies "the modern successful working mother." However, as it turns out, according to Parker herself, this wonderful personification of working Moms leaves more than a little something to be desired in other realms. In Palin Problem: She's out of her league, National Review (9/26/08), Parker admits that Palin "filibusters, repeats words, fills space with deadwood," and, referring to Palin's various public pronouncements, "there's not much content there." Finally, Parker requests that Palin do the unthinkable – bow out of the race. Put family first. Do it for the country.

The persevering Republican, Wendell Jackson, who hosts the blog, Black Men for McCain, reports that Sarah Palin has undone the work of all those women who made those proverbial cracks in that ever-present ceiling. In addition, she has managed to "fill in every single one of those cracks and reinforce them with steel." Strong words coming from a man who has blown the trumpet faithfully for the Republican cause (whatever that is these days). Like Parker, Jackson believes that Palin "should be sent packing immediately," and asserts, "I am no longer embarrassed to be a Republican, I am actually ashamed."

There's no shame coming from Frank Miele, the managing editor of Montana's Daily Interlake newspaper, who, in The Palin Test: A liberal litmus for the media, writes strongly in support of Palin, while condemning the mainstream media for being responsible for her poor image. Accusing ABC's Charles Gibson of playing "cut and paste" with his interview of Palin, Miele offers sections of the transcript that were deleted on screen.

Yet, in spite of Miele's valiant effort to put Palin's best foot forward, even her restored deleted remarks do not invite confidence in her command of the issues. Leaving out the oft reported comments about her foreign policy expertise deriving from Alaska's physical proximity to Russia, what do we make of her calling Russia's response to Georgia's invasion of Ossetia "unprovoked?" Gibson asks her a second time, "You believe unprovoked?" Palin responds, "I do believe unprovoked."

She then babbles on about the need to "keep our eyes on Russia." The rest of this exchange is hardly enlightening, as she recites her party's typical talking points, repeating over and over that "Russia is our next door neighbor," and that both countries should maintain good relations. Okay.

In her interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Palin talked about Russia's Putin "rearing his head" over the borders of the U.S., presumably, sending airplanes. Miele surmises from this that Palin, as commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard, has been given briefings (from the Department of State?) to watch out for a possible attack by Russia. Well, why not a war on four fronts? Surely, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are not enough. Let's find a reason to have a go at Russia, a country whose leaders are clearly indicating that they are concerned only with the security of their own diverse geographic territories. "Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?" asks Pat Buchanan in his scathing column, Blowback from Bear Baiting, that derides the Bush Administration's indignation over Russia's move into Georgia, while citing the United States' interventions in one foreign country after another.

This brief exchange between Palin and Couric about Putin does indicate some foreign policy awareness, even if it's no more than suppositions about what could be. In the interview, Palin chirps, "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state."

This is the depth of Palin's "foreign policy" observations, which Miele is outraged that the media either excised or did not treat seriously.

Would Huckabee or Romney have been stymied by any of these reporters' questions, even if they were designed for entrapment? Not a chance. Huckabee's good humor would have disarmed his questioner, as he handled anything thrown at him in his own special manner. Romney's deft experience with the media would show in his decisive responses, and he would give as good as he got. Imagine Romney in a stare-down with Couric or Gibson. No one would have cause to whine about the "unfair" treatment by mainstream media. And, best of all, we would not be subjected to the disgraceful conservative version of the feminists' cry of "sexism." Read more!

Is this the ultimate whine?

I would like to believe that the Wall Street Journal made up this quote, but I guess I'll have to go along with the fact that Robert Gordon really does exist. In the Journal article, by Gary Fields, "Black Voters Fret Over Obama" (9/12/08), Gordon, a black man, described as a "48-year-old engineering surveyor from Dallas," offers one of the most incredible whines that a black has yet to publicly utter.

The article quotes sources (black talk show hosts, NAACP officials) who suggest that blacks will be disappointed, even despondent, if Barack Obama fails to win the presidential election – since "there is so much about this campaign that people are taking very personally." Here is Gordon's lament:

If he loses, it will shake the very ground that we stand on mentally as far as what we need to be to succeed. From day one, we've been told to be a certain way, to be neat, intellectual, speak clearly. He is the symbol of what we were told to be by our parents and by society as a whole. If this doesn't work, what does that do to our psyche? What do I tell my sons?

In other words, "Big Daddy White Man promised that if I were good, he would give me the appropriate rewards." Rewards that, apparently, include the Presidency of the United States. Good grief!

After I stopped laughing at this quote, I began to reflect: What about those of us who have to face the reality of a country that will not be led by Ron Paul? What about the horror we will experience when we wake up on November 5, to discover that Ron Paul is not President, Chuck Baldwin is not Vice President, and Pat Buchanan is not Secretary of State?

What condition do you think we will be in as we accept the rude truth that we will have to continue to watch our country's ongoing descent to Hell in a handbasket? What do you think that will do to our psyches? Especially after we've made it a point to be neat, intellectual, and to speak clearly!

And, Lord help us, what do we tell "the children?" Read more!

Racial disconnects and double standards

Film Review: A Conversation About Race

"It's like a subtle undercurrent," the black woman claims, in response to a question put to her by Craig Bodeker about whether she experiences racism in Denver. It turns out that the "undercurrent" is so subtle that none of the blacks or whites interviewed could pin down specific instances of meaningful, substantive bias that affected their daily lives or those of other non-whites. If your life is not impacted in some negative way, that is, if you are not prevented from going about your business, whether work or social, just what are we talking about, when we use the word "racism?" This term surely doesn't seem to mean today what it probably meant to a 1930s black sharecropper.

Bodeker, who is white, decided he wanted to follow up on presidential candidate Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech, delivered this past March, in which Obama claimed that it was time for the country to engage in a conversation about race. Hence, the title of this thoughtful documentary film, A Conversation About Race, in which Bodeker interviews what looks like a diverse group of people – 20-somethings, individuals who look to be in their 30s, 40s and 50s, blacks, whites, and Hispanics.

Belief in "racism" today, in most cases, is exactly that – a belief. Bodeker opens the film citing his suspicions about the term itself and the people who use it frequently. He says, "I can't think of another issue that is more artificial, manufactured and manipulated than this whole construct called "racism."

Several of the interviewees claim, "I see racism every day," and then hem and haw when asked to be specific, or else talk in generalities. Or they offer some of the most tenuous examples and digress into platitudes. A 50-ish white woman, who appears to be overly careful and self-conscious in her response to the request for her definition of racism, declares, "Racism is when we chop ourselves into categories." She then wanders off into philosophical convolutions about how there is no separation. "I am you. I'm the chair. I'm the wall. I'm the rock, I'm the tree, I'm everything." Okay, but what is racism?

A black man (in his 40s, perhaps?) is sure he knows what racism is, and offers what he considers a couple of examples. One day, when he went to a local library to use a computer, "I noticed that one of the guys who worked in the library is staring at me. He's pretending that he's going to get coffee, but he's staring at me, while I'm using the computer. So, then when I leave, he and one of the other librarians said, 'Well, goodbye now [he does a waving gesture].' They gave me the impression that they were saying good riddance now."

Did anyone interfere with his use of the computer or the library facilities? Apparently not. But he got those "impressions," and that's good enough to earn for the library staff the reproach of "racist."

This same black man, after informing the interviewer more than once that he "prefers to date white women," tells of his experience on this front. "I get stares from white guys. I was at a night club not long ago and I'm out dancing, and a white guy walks by and says, 'You're a good dancer.' I don't need to hear that. Then he gets on the dance floor by himself and he starts dancing like he's some kind of great dancer, apparently trying to show me up."

One wonders, is this a case of imagining that white men are jealous of him for his prowess with white women, which is, perhaps, the very emotion that he wishes to incite? Is being told by a drunk on a dance floor that you're a good dancer a clear sign of racism? And how exactly does that affect one's life?

The whites interviewed are so typical in their vehemence about the existence of racism. Like a great many whites, they enjoy beating up on themselves, as they tell stories of how they "conquered" their former conditioning. A 20-ish blonde woman, apparently very sincere, tells about a black who was being loud on the train she takes every day, and how she instinctively felt critical about this behavior.

She condemned the thoughts that came into her head during the rowdiness. "Oh, black people, they're so loud. Or black people this, or black people that. And it's wrong. I realized it right away. The culture I grew up in was white culture, and the racist culture that we live in is just bound to get you in one way or another." One assumes that the "white culture" that upsets her so now was one where she was taught to behave with civility in public. However, to expect that of others is, I guess, intolerant. So now we have another white person who has seen the light and overcome her intolerance and, hence, her "racism."

A white man, who could be in his late 20s or 30s, claims to see racism constantly against non-whites: "I see how my friends have to struggle just getting through the day and struggling with the people in their lives." What? His remark reminds me of one made by New York City's former Mayor Ed Koch on a radio talk show. Now, if anyone knows better, Ed Koch does. But on this occasion, he got carried away in a discussion on racism, and described a terrible society that "all blacks" face every day. From the minute a black leaves his home in the morning to go to work, according to Koch, he encounters ugly, persistent racism, which goes on throughout the day. Just where is this going on, I wanted to ask him. In New York? In Chicago, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Houston? Where are blacks being tormented openly, and on a daily basis, in this country?

I wanted to challenge Koch, to pick any black man, go off to work with him, and spend the day on his job, and wherever he goes in the evening. And then come back and report on the terrible, racist encounters that the black man suffered. There are whites who, for reasons that might only be explained by psychiatrists, persist in living with the fixation of the "persecuted black" who is still in a relentless struggle with bad white folks. The whites who hold such beliefs are, of course, the "good white folks." What psychic need is fed by this over-the-top, melodramatic view of life in America?

Getting back to the interviews, there is, of course, the black with the complaint about shopping in stores, although he/she might not have encountered the situations they portray. A 20-ish black woman, in her interview, relates: "Say you have a white person walk in; they won't greet the white person. But when a black person comes in, they'll get on you and ask you if there's something I can help you with, can I interest you in something. They'll pay closer attention to the black person."

And here we have the damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. Blacks have been so conditioned to crave the acceptance of whites that mere indifference on the part of a white person to the presence of a black is a stamp of "racism." Whites must be conscious at all times of the neediness of blacks, and behave appropriately, if they are to escape the damning charge of "racist." Giving no attention in a store or restaurant gets whites in trouble, and offering "too much" attention also gets them in trouble. Don't ignore me, but don't pay too much attention to me either. If you do, you're a racist.

A light-skinned black man, 50-ish, whom I would have taken for a white, tells the interviewer about a "vivid recollection" he still has about a "racist" encounter. He was standing on a ski lift line, as a teenager, where members of the family in front of him were laughing and talking together. "I made what I thought was a curious comment, and the father turned around and looked at me, and as soon as he realized that I wasn't just like him, his face froze. The whole family, everybody stopped laughing, because it was immediately not funny."

So, not responding to a stranger's remarks is racist. To whom has this not happened – black-on-black, as well as white-on-white? You miscalculate entering a private conversation and get the cold shoulder. Considering that this man has carried this memory around with him for decades, and this is the story about "racism" he chose to tell, one wonders if this is the worst incident of its kind. Over all these years, has he not suffered anything worse than silence from strangers?

I found these interviews fascinating, and I could go on with commentary about more of them. However, it is far more effective to see the interviewees and to watch the body language, along with their responses. The DVD of this film is well worth buying, since it is unique for its frankness on a subject that most people try to avoid. Although I hope I'm wrong, I think it would be unlikely to see this documentary presented on PBS, which is where it belongs. It might be too politically incorrect for the likes of Public Television's multicultural zealots.

Craig Bodeker's low-key narrative is superlative, as he ties the various themes together, and explores what he calls "multiple disconnects, inconsistencies, and double standards." He gets his respondents to discuss whether they believe particular groups excel in certain fields; why Asians tend to outdo everyone else academically; whether whites have a right to be advocates for their own racial group; and attitudes towards immigration.

A black man, in one of the interviews, condemns Bodeker's supposed forefathers, who "came over here and did their dirty deed," i.e., deceived the Indians and took their land. In his concluding summary, Bodeker calmly speculates on why it is acceptable to assign collective racial guilt to all whites, for the actions of a minute fraction, who operated hundreds of years ago, and yet it is not acceptable to assign collective racial guilt to blacks, for example, for the crimes they themselves have committed in this decade alone.

He informs the viewer that, like millions of white Americans, his ancestors came to this country after the Civil War. "No forefather of mine ever killed an Indian or owned another human being." Yet he, along with millions of other whites, still gets blamed for crimes his forefathers never committed.
•
For further information on A Conversation About Race, and to learn how you may purchase the DVD, visit Craig Bodeker's website. Read more!

Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin

I have said for years that pro-lifers (who deem themselves "conservative") are just as responsible for the explosion in illegitimate childbirth among girls and young women as are the liberals, whose social policies opened the door to decades of permissive advocacy. I reached this conclusion after years of listening to ardent, emotional propaganda from the pro-life camp, directed to impressionable females, who could easily interpret their messages as condoning the acts of getting banged, impregnated and abandoned. Outright heroization of illegitimate childbirth is as reckless as the incessant hyping of sex to the young.

And, once I learned that many of these pro-lifers engage in the deluded practice of throwing baby showers (yes, baby showers) for these misguided and unfortunate young women, I was convinced more than ever that pro-lifers are part of the problem, and their cause is not the place to look for solutions. Does it take much acumen to figure out that you get more of what you encourage and reward?

The views recently expressed by Wendell Jackson on his blog, Black Men for McCain, over the selection of Sarah Palin for Republican Vice President, reflect perfectly the consternation of so many parents who thought they could, at least, trust the political party, which for years set itself opposite the "permissive" Democrats to be sensible in its choice of its major candidates. Jackson writes, "This is a strange time to be a Republican. Is teen pregnancy now just a sign of An American Family? What the hell is going on here?"

Indeed, what is going on here? Black and Hispanic parents, raising children in the midst of social chaos, striving to inculcate values better than those of their hopelessly disordered neighborhoods, will now contend with yet one more notoriously public pregnant child celebrity. One more occasion to explain why their daughters should fight off the temptation to replicate yet another celebrity's imprudence.

Here are parents of every race, class and background valiantly trying to offset an intrusive media's corrosive impact in the lives of their children, as they cope with a public school system that reinforces the media's socially destructive messages. As though in partnership with these negative forces, along come the pro-lifers, who validate youthful sexually promiscuous behavior, by celebrating its inevitable outcome and consequences. They have not only helped to normalize illegitimate childbirth, but have raised it to the status of saintliness. Instead of a Scarlet Letter, Hester gets a heads up and encouragement to repeat her folly.

And now we're confronted with a major politician expressing no regrets for the mistake made by her underage daughter, but actually celebrating it as a "beautiful" event. Why should not Palin's two younger daughters crave the attention and spotlight now being lavished on the older one, and look forward to repeating her example – along with the many girls around the country who are awed by the spectacle of an unwed pregnant teenager being feted at a prominent political convention?

Jason Whitlock, the outspoken sports columnist, who ruffles many feathers with his critiques of aspects of black culture, tirelessly writes about the plague of illegitimacy and the glorification of men who abandon their children to the mercies of single mothers. Because of what have become ingrained cultural norms, Whitlock says that blacks "behave as if 'No' is not part of our vocabulary." Well, "No" gets even harder to articulate in a society where there are rewards to girls for saying "Yes," and still greater rewards if that "Yes" results in a baby.

Just as the prominence of Barack Obama is encouraging more and more media portrayals of interracial intimacy, the Palin phenomenon is sure to guarantee an ongoing proliferation of stories about happy, heroic unwed mothers. The multiplier effect will be running at high gear.

A hit with pro-lifers, the "Single Mom" is also the media's glorified heroine, and there are already countless depictions of her on television and in films. According to these stories, the single woman or teenage girl who winds up pregnant, no matter what her social straits, opts to give birth, and never considers availing herself of the alternative choice. After all, an abortion would end the story line, and lose the opportunity to hype the special wonders of single motherhood. These are the fantasies off which adolescents feed.

This fabricated Single Mom usually gets that great job, finds an affordable place to live, has enough money to pay for the keepers of her child, and even wins the attention of a handsome, responsible man. This wonderful guy, of course, considers it hunky-dory that she chose to create offspring from a previous liaison, an illicit one at that. These are among the pretty, sentimental stories and messages offered to young girls, like the real life high school girls in Denver, where that city's school system is struggling with demands for longer maternity leave and for more on-site child care centers.

According to the Denver Post, one of the districts already has a high school for pregnant teens and "new moms" with a maternity leave policy, so that girls can be allowed to "bond with their newborns," before returning to school. School administrators are trying to cope with the extended absences from course work, while insuring that these girls' education can continue. Some students are lobbying for longer maternity leave. The Post quotes a 5-month pregnant 18-year-old, "After you have the baby, your body needs time to heal." Does she know this from experience, because this is not her first illegitimate birth?

The Post reports that Denver has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the state. Of every 1,000 girls age 15 to 17, about 54 of them are expected to become pregnant. There is a special high school for pregnant teenagers, and it has a waiting list.

If the Republicans had known about these conditions in the Denver public schools earlier, perhaps they are the ones who should have held their convention in that city, and the implacable pro-lifers among them could have enjoyed touring some of the day care facilities established for the children of children, while listening to the maudlin stories of these stoic, young Moms.

Here in New York City, in 2006, over 8,000 girls gave birth to illegitimate children. The figure is increasing among Hispanic girls, especially, as the birthrate grew to 59 per 1,000 girls. Among blacks, it is 40 per 1,000. These are stats only for public school students, not the population at large.

"Role models are very important," says radio guru Dr. Laura Schlessinger, referencing the public emergence of Sarah Palin. "Children and young adults look to those who are visible and successful as a road map of what is acceptable behavior and emulate those actions over the morals and values their parents and churches have taught and tried to reinforce." I had wondered how the pro-life Schlessinger, a stalwart champion of responsible parenting and a scold to those who would be enablers of illegitimacy, would come down on the Palin nomination. Would she engage in the current verbal contortions now in progress among so many of the formerly dedicated "family values" folk? Of course, by the time this is published, Schlessinger might well have joined her Republican comrades in the grand rationalizations that now fill the airwaves.

Phyllis Schlafly, the erstwhile, long-time teacher of family standards has just about deserted her former positions, and is now reciting some of the most insipid banalities, in order to justify her abandonment of principle. She has been quoted calling Palin a "breath of fresh air," and gushes over the fact that Palin "has revitalized the grass roots of the Republican party across the board." That, apparently, is what counts.
• • •
One of the best Internet discussions on the probable future impact on the conservative cause due to the selection of Sarah Palin was held at Lawrence Auster's View From the Right. I am not in agreement with Auster on foreign policy, especially as regards the Middle East. But what's there not to like about a man who stands foursquare for the preservation of what's left of Western culture? Where do you find a white man these days who professes the desire to see his own race prevail in their own lands, instead of taking delight as Western countries are overrun with immigrant invasions? On this subject, we're in agreement. And we're on the same page in regard to those who purposely, or inadvertently, promote or condone illegitimate pregnancy.

The pro-life Auster asks the question of the day: "Was it right to have this unmarried, pregnant 17-year-old girl at the Republican convention holding hands with her boyfriend on national and global television, thus normalizing an out-of-wedlock sexual relationship and pregnancy at the highest level of our national life?"

Republicans, says Auster, have put conservatives in a position where no negative judgment can be expressed about out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Not only have they done this, they offer up congratulations to the expectant Mom. "Since when," he asks, "is it good news that a 17-year-old high school student will be caring for her new born," while still in school?

And why are the circumstances presented to the public by Palin considered acceptable? Auster contends, "Because Bristol's baby is not being aborted. The non-abortion turns the unmarried pregnancy and the upcoming teen-age marriage into a blessed event! ... This is the way these Christian conservatives are responding – because of the moral reductionism that effectively eliminates all moral evils except for the evil of abortion. ... McCain has put the conservative base in a position where it has to bend itself out of shape to maintain its support for the Republican ticket."

Adela G. writes to Auster:

This woman, mother of an infant with special needs and an unwed pregnant teen, chose to step into the national spotlight. Surely in between all that huntin' and fishin' and givin' birth, she paused to reflect that the national attention focused on her family might result in criticism directed toward the choices she and they have made. Or maybe not. Maybe she thought being relentlessly perky would carry the day. She could be right. I wouldn't trust her judgment about anything else, though. And I certainly don't trust the judgment of any of her admirers.

Carol Iannone wrote:

Starting with the Giuliani candidacy, Republicans have made a spectacle of themselves defending one inappropriate thing after another, and it's really demoralizing. It makes it seem as if all they care about is naked power. Maybe they should just say that and stop disappointing people who were foolish enough to think they really stood for principles.

Well, some of us, long ago, ceased associating principle with the Republican party.

Iannone speculates further: "How would conservatives be talking if Palin were a Democrat? I don't believe they would
be winking away the teen pregnancy issue and even presenting it as a good. ... I don't think they would be defending her relatively slim record with bared teeth. I think they would be saying the opposite of all this. I believe they would be spinning as negatives what they are now calling positives."

You can be sure that's exactly what they would be doing.

Laura W. offers an amusing take on the presence of Levi Johnston, the teenage father-to-be, at the Republican convention: "Can you imagine what was going on in his mind last night? I can't read into the thoughts of an 18-year-old hockey player. But, let me try to guess, indulging if I may his special gift for words. Might he have been thinking this: 'Adults! They're such f-----g fools!'"
• • •
At one time, conservatives appeared to understand the basis for the escalation of social pathologies – from sex being hyped even to the youngest children, to open-ended welfare policies that increase payments to single women and girls who produce multiple illegitimate babies, to the eradication of important taboos that guarded against the proliferation of dysfunctional behavior. What were once aberrances have become norms, thanks primarily to social policies contrived by liberal ideologues.

And it is the poor who have been hit the hardest. Myron Magnet's brilliant book that describes the impact of the counterculture on the poor is still one of the best analyses of what happened to those who could ill afford to have society's old, bourgeois moral standards pulled out from under them. In The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass, he writes:

Poverty turned pathological because the new culture that the Haves invented – their remade system of beliefs, norms, and institutions – permitted, even celebrated, behavior that when poor people practice it, will imprison them inextricably in poverty. It's hard to persuade ghetto 15-year-olds not to get pregnant, for instance, when the entire culture, from rock music to upscale perfume commercials to highbrow books, is intoxicated with the joy of what before AIDS was called "recreational" sex.

And it will be harder to persuade those 15-year-olds not to get pregnant when they observe the celebratory treatment given to the wayward daughter of the holder of the second highest office in the land. Oh, wait. She would be considered "wayward," only if she made the choice to abort.

On his Fount of Truth website, Doug Newman speculates that if Bristol Palin were a black girl in the ghetto, "Republican media jabberers" would write her off, as they have countless times in the past, as "a product of 75 years of liberalism." In this case, however, we are commanded to "just sit down and shut up," and voice no queries about anyone's "personal life."
• • •
Another stunning feature of the Palin affair is the mounting evidence that so-called conservative women are nothing more than closet feminists – of the worst kind. Except for clinging to their tenacious "pro-life" advocacy, these women appear to have internalized the most leftwing feminist precepts that make their beliefs indistinguishable from those of the president of NOW or the editors of Ms. magazine. If there is any question that feminist dogma rules their constellation, consider these remarks from the mouths of the so-called defenders of the conservative way of life.

In the City Journal, Heather MacDonald describes how Republicans are now heavy into playing the identity-politics game. Of course, the game isn't really a new one for them, says MacDonald, "But now they've gone all the way and introduced irrelevant chromosome considerations into the presidential race." Gone forever is the right to criticize Democrats for playing the race and gender cards. MacDonald derides Sarah Palin's "hackneyed feminist bromides," such as her effusive praise of Hillary Clinton for leaving "18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America."

Since when do conservatives promote the idea that a mother of five children, three of them under 14, should concern herself with breaking ceilings? How can there be any analogy between Palin and Hillary, the mother of an adult child, with nothing but time on her hands? Hasn't the Religious Right always stressed the importance of full-time motherhood, especially for a woman in Palin's circumstances? It is clear, says MacDonald, that the "diversity epidemic" has spread in the Republican political machinery.

These Palin defenders are now invoking standards invented by the left, which true conservatives reject. By hurling the politically correct charge of "sexist" at opponents, they imply that they are in full agreement with the feminist notion of what Carol Iannone calls "the absolute sameness of the sexes." Is this a conservative concept? How could the word "sexist" be part of a conservative's vocabulary?

Without blinking, these transformed conservative, Oprah-fied women are vehemently protesting any questions raised about Palin's judgment – just like good feminists. "You wouldn't ask that question, if she were a man!" they shriek. Well, of course not. Real conservatives would have no such questions about Todd Palin accepting the VP nomination, because of their belief in the distinctive roles played by both sexes when children are involved, especially five of them. Remember? This belief held as recently as, oh, say, three weeks ago – until Sarah Palin came on the scene.

MacDonald writes, "There are, alas, many women who are pathetic enough to put gender above politics, for whom a candidate’s stand on substantive issues matters less than her reproductive plumbing. But just because such voters are out there doesn’t mean that the GOP can cater to them without permanently compromising its principles. ... It's a sad day when Republicans decide to match the Democratic predilection for chromosomal consciousness, since there will be no turning back."

The blogger at DC Hero believes that the leftwing women supporters of Hillary Clinton will come around to Palin. And here's why: "We’re talking about women here. Women are illogical and vindictive. They’re not going to look at her voting record, her NRA membership, or anything like that. Women will vote for her because she’s a woman and they’re mad at Barack for edging out a victory. End of story."

And here's another reason why large numbers of women, who once appeared to be wed to an alternative set of politics, will come around. When defending against the intimations of Palin's possibly irresponsible parenting in regard to her pregnant daughter, a woman delegate at the Republican convention explained that "life happens."

Think of all those single, as well as married mothers out there whose families have undergone a similar plight. Such women are pleased to see the adulation heaped upon this "imperfect mother," with whom they identify. They won't have her judged, as they don't wish to be judged, because, well, life happens. The Palin reality show offers a validation for their imperfect lives that a candidate like Mitt Romney could never deliver.

And don't underestimate the impact on these women of the sight of Palin's manly looking partner. How many of them dream of such a faithful, handsome, hands-on husband and father? Lucky Sarah has it all!

Super Republican Rush Limbaugh likes to claim that conservatism is based on rational thinking, it appeals to the logical mind, whereas liberalism is nothing but emotionalism, it's all about "feelings." How can anyone ever again make such a claim, after listening to the emotionally charged, and even hysterical defenses of Sarah Palin? This is emotionalism writ large.
• • •
Pro-lifers apparently use the "conservative" label only as a convenience, which also explains their affiliation with the Republican party. It's a marriage of convenience. Hardly any more conservative in their outlook on most issues than their liberal counterparts, pro-lifers have overtaken the party, in order to have a base from which they can effectively promulgate their intransigent stance against abortion. And this is the only item on their cultural agenda. In this symbiotic dance, the Republican party, in turn, goes along with the game, in the expectation that this vast bloc of voters will insure their continued hold on power.

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See Red-State Feminism: Beware of underestimating Palinsanity, by Kay Hymowitz, also on the City-Journal site.

To read the views of two pro-life traditionalist ministers, see also - The Religious Right: "Heralds of truth" as political lackeys -- here

Related I&V Posts:

Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling

Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream

We didn't know this?

Read more!

Birthright citizenship is not constitutional

If the American Indians, who were certainly born in this country, were not considered automatic citizens by the Constitution's framers, how can it be that the offspring of foreigners who arrive here become automatic citizens?

[Excerpt from speech delivered by Edward Erler, Hillsdale College, February 12, 2008]

Birthright citizenship – the policy whereby the children of illegal aliens born within the geographical limits of the United States are entitled to American citizenship – is a great magnet for illegal immigration. Many believe that this policy is an explicit command of the Constitution, consistent with the British common law system. But this is simply not true.

The framers of the Constitution were, of course, well-versed in the British common law, having learned its essential principles from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As such, they knew that the very concept of citizenship was unknown in British common law. Blackstone speaks only of "birthright subjectship" or "birthright allegiance," never using the terms citizen or citizenship.

The idea of birthright subjectship is derived from feudal law. It is the relation of master and servant; all who are born within the protection of the king owe perpetual allegiance as a "debt of gratitude." According to Blackstone, this debt is "intrinsic" and "cannot be forefeited, cancelled, or altered." Birthright subjectship under the common law is thus the doctrine of perpetual allegiance.

America’s Founders rejected this doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, after all, solemnly proclaims that "the good People of these Colonies. . . are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved." According to Blackstone, the common law regards such an act as "high treason." So the common law – the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance – could not possibly serve as the ground of American (i.e., republican) citizenship. Indeed, the idea is too preposterous to entertain.

James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a member of the Constitutional Convention as well as a Supreme Court Justice, captured the essence of the matter when he remarked: "Under the Constitution of the United States there are citizens, but no subjects." The transformation of subjects into citizens was the work of the Declaration and the Constitution. Both are premised on the idea that citizenship is based on the consent of the governed – not the accident of birth.

Who is a Citizen?

Citizenship, of course, does not exist by nature; it is created by law, and the identification of citizens has always been considered an essential aspect of sovereignty. After all, the founders of a new nation are not born citizens of the new nation they create. Indeed, this is true of all citizens of a new nation – they are not born into it, but rather become citizens by law.

Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Here is the familiar language: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. We have somehow come today to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction. But this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous and without force. If this had been the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, presumably they would simply have said that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are thereby citizens.

Indeed, during debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio, the author of the citizenship clause, attempted to assure skeptical colleagues that the new language was not intended to make Indians citizens of the U.S. Indians, Howard conceded, were born within the nation’s geographical limits; but he steadfastly maintained that they were not subject to its jurisdiction because they owed allegiance to their tribes. Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, rose to support his colleague, arguing that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" meant "not owing allegiance to anybody else and being subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States." Jurisdiction understood as allegiance, Senator Howard interjected, excludes not only Indians but "persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers."

Thus "subject to the jurisdiction" does not simply mean, as is commonly thought today, subject to American laws or American courts. It means owing exclusive political allegiance to the U.S.

Consider as well that in 1868, the year the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Expatriation Act. This act permitted American citizens to renounce their allegiance and alienate their citizenship. This piece of legislation was supported by Senator Howard and other leading architects of the Fourteenth Amendment, and characterized the right of expatriation as "a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Like the idea of citizenship, this right of expatriation is wholly incompatible with the common law understanding of perpetual allegiance and subjectship. One member of the House expressed the general sense of the Congress when he proclaimed: "The old feudal doctrine stated by Blackstone and adopted as part of the common law of England . . . is not only at war with the theory of our institutions, but is equally at war with every principle of justice and of sound public policy." The common law established what was characterized as an "indefensible doctrine of indefeasible allegiance," a feudal doctrine wholly at odds with republican government.

In sum, this legacy of feudalism – which we today call birthright citizenship – was decisively rejected as the ground of American citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment and the Expatriation Act of 1868. It is absurd, then, to believe that the Fourteenth Amendment confers the boon of American citizenship on the children of illegal aliens. Nor does the denial of birthright citizenship visit the sins of the parents on the children, as is often claimed, since the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. are not being denied anything to which they have a right. Their allegiance should follow that of their parents during their minority. Furthermore, it is difficult to fathom how those who defy American law can derive benefits for their children by their defiance – or that any sovereign nation would allow such a thing.

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[Edward Erler is Professor of Political Science at California State University, San Bernardino, and is co-author of The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration.] Read more!

Betrayal and deceit

Here is an item, originally published on Issues & Views-The Website, back on August 27, 2001, which shows the degree to which white children are purposely manipulated by the champions of multiculturalism. (See also "Brainwashing whites")

This school episode, no doubt, sent the "correct" signals to these youngsters, as they learned the importance of substituting their truthful observations about life at their school for carefully monitored ones – as they learned to self-censor and lie.
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What happens when youngsters trust their elders and truthfully share their thoughts? In some cases, they are betrayed. Consider what happened when the students of Montachusett Regional Vocational high school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, believed their teachers. After being assured by these teachers that, if they volunteered to engage in a survey about race relations in their school, their responses would be held "confidential," the students participated. The survey was supposed to be anonymous.

Well, the kids were in for a surprise. Upon completion of the questionnaire, not only did five of them wind up suspended for three days, but they were also interrogated by school staff about their views and beliefs.

Although the Associated Press article about the incident does not give full details of the students' responses on the survey, among the "offending" comments was their belief that minority students were receiving preferential treatment by teachers and that minorities were responsible for fights that had occurred at the school.

Now, a popular device that is used by the multicultural crusaders, in order to shut down dissent, is to affiliate such dissent with possible future violence. One is supposed to believe that every person who has ever held a negative thought about another group eventually does physical violence to members of that group. This is the fear tactic now being used in courts to terminate free speech rights, especially of white nationalists.

In the case of these Fitchburg students, the administration justified the suspensions on the grounds that their written survey responses indicated "behavior causing a dangerous condition." And, further, that the students' observations about the school's favored treatment of minorities were "racist." In other words, to express opinions that are officially forbidden automatically makes a person "dangerous" and a possible threat to others.

It is clear that the school administration had no desire whatsoever for an honest survey, in order to learn what the students were actually thinking. They wanted only another opportunity to intrude their politically correct, multicultural preachments, and to punish any dissenters.

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the students to have the suspensions expunged from their records. An officer of the ACLU, that has taken on the case, declared that the school district's actions against the students were designed to punish them for their beliefs. Read more!

FIRE goes back to college

Well, it's back to college time. A time for some students and faculty to be thankful for the existence of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). Issues & Views has covered the work of FIRE since its formation, back in 1999, by civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate and Charles Kors, a Professor of History. See here, here, and here.

Determined to live up to its mission to defend constitutional rights on the college campus, FIRE has lent its support in legal actions to students and faculty members against recalcitrant university officials, who suppress free speech and due process. It also has been called upon to assist students who face administrative punishment for nothing more than wearing Halloween costumes or face masks deemed by some to be "hurtful," when viewed by members of specifically "protected" groups. You know which groups they are.

Although FIRE champions the rights of all members of academia, no matter their political perspective, you may remember its early days, when the organization went to bat for those conservatives, who were invited to speak at colleges, but were often barred from doing so, by the obstreperous behavior of campus goons, who did not share their political views. Sometimes, events simply had to be canceled due to threats of physical assault. Such behavior often was not condemned by school administrators, whose politics usually coincided with those of the trouble makers.

Over the years, the grievances began to pile up, as college administrators allowed politically biased students or staff members to set arbitrary rules for others to follow, or engaged in such high-handed practices themselves. In 2002, at Arizona State University, for example, there was actually a course listed in the school's catalog that forbade anyone, except "Native American students," from taking it. Here was course restriction based on race at a tax-funded state institution. One letter from FIRE brought a prompt removal of the enrollment restriction.

Then came "speech codes," "free speech zones," "sensitivity training," the banning of parody and satire in student publications, and even open incitement to members of "historically oppressed groups" to discern real or imagined instances of "offenses" directed towards them. "What an astonishing expectation to give to students," wrote Silverglate, "the belief that they have the right to four years of never being offended."

Kors observed that, through intimidating policies that might result in punishment, "Students learn to censor themselves so as not to say or do anything that may possibly bring them trouble. They are taught not to discuss or debate, but rather to call upon coercive authority to silence those with whom they disagree by means of sweeping disciplinary action and thought reform."

Thought reform, indeed. In 2003, FIRE challenged the speech code of Shippensburg University (Penn.) in federal court. The code, among other crazy stipulations, required that "every member of the community" mirror the official views of the university administration "in their attitudes and behaviors." Along with other repressive policies, students were ordered to take down any displays of posters or flyers that might be "hostile to Osama bin Laden." Such displays were deemed to be "offensive to other students." Upon FIRE's intervention, the U.S. District Court ordered Shippensburg's president to cease enforcing provisions of his university's ridiculous speech code.

Since feminists make up a large part of the female staff on most college campuses, it's not surprising that policies biased against men have become the rule in some college settings. In 2003, Harvard University defended a policy that gave women students the right to bring charges of assault or rape against male students, without the need of any form of corroborating evidence. Any student charged with this crime was not only denied the right to defend himself, he could not face his accuser directly, while hearing her testimony. There was no pretense of due process, and his fate was decided in closed sessions that he was not allowed to attend.

FIRE joined with a consortium of other civil libertarians to oppose what Kors described as "Star Chambers" proceedings at Harvard. He wrote, "There is virtually no place in the United States where Kangaroo courts and Star Chambers are the rule rather than the exception, except on college and university campuses."

Seven years earlier, in 1996, New York Times' reporter Nina Bernstein had written an investigative piece, in which she told of tendentious cases on campuses that "vanished into a separate judicial world so secret that many Americans are unaware that it operates behind closed doors at most of the nation's 3,600 colleges and universities."

When pressure was put upon Harvard to institute fairer procedures, the feminist brigade called out the troops, to protest any alterations to the existing policies that declared a woman's word alone sufficient to sustain a rape charge. In response to an appeal made by the feminist camp, which claimed that new rules would be a violation of Title IX, the Office of Civil Rights ruled that it found no evidence to support such a claim, and closed the case.

Charles Kors described the OCR's ruling as "an important first step" in opening the door for "greater due process at colleges across the country."

Now, in August 2008, an important victory for free speech on campus was rendered by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third District (Phila.), in the case of DeJohn v. Temple University. In 2006, Temple student Christian DeJohn filed a complaint in federal district court charging that the university's sexual harassment policy violated his First Amendment right to free expression. DeJohn, who was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, claimed that speech codes inhibited him from discussing his views on campus, especially in regard to the role of women in the military. He said he would be punished under the specifications of Temple's speech codes.

When the university tried the clever dodge of revamping parts of its speech policy, thereby hoping to get the district court to drop the complaint, the court denied this motion, declaring that there was nothing to prevent Temple from reinstituting the policy at a later date. The district court ultimately found Temple's sexual harassment policy to be unconstitutional, and issued an injunction against its enforcement.

Unbelievably, Temple appealed the ruling in 2007. This gave the U.S. Appeals Court the opportunity to rule in favor of DeJohn, and to uphold the district court's ruling. The Appeals Court found that Temple's policy prohibited constitutionally protected speech and was "unacceptably overbroad."

So, where does this presently leave free speech on campus? A Washington Times editorial ponders how long restrictive speech codes can survive after the DeJohn ruling. "Colleges and universities generally know the game is up," writes the editorialist. Striking an optimistic note, the writer predicts, "The moment when the Orwellian practice of restricting speech at what are supposed to be this country's free centers of learning may not be far off."

That moment might be further away than we'd like to believe, if reports by FIRE on current policies and practices at dozens of colleges are any indication. Check out FIRE's Red Alerts, to learn about ongoing disregard for fundamental rights at colleges described by FIRE as "unrepentant offenders." Perhaps this month's court ruling will force certain modifications of blatantly biased policies, but the fight is not over yet. Read more!

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The end of identity politics? Not likely.

In these times I am rarely surprised by most notions put forth by political pundits. But I must admit to being taken aback by the suppositions of Terry Michael in "Obama as the End of Identity Politics as We've Known Them" (Reason magazine, 6/10/08). Michael appears to believe that under an Obama presidency, we soon will be on "the beginnings of a journey away from the Great Society mind-set of the Democratic Party" and on a course that will put "the Jesse Jacksons, the Al Sharptons, and the white identity politics liberals out of business."

Michael envisions the end of what he calls the peddling of black victimology, which will mean no more demands for "diversity training, minority contracts, or other tribal reparations." For Michael, the myth that minorities cannot assimilate "dies when a majority white nation selects a leader of color." How logical he is; how well-reasoned is his thesis. Yet it is clear that he has no clue as to who benefits, among blacks, from that "diversity training" and those "minority contracts." It is the most powerful and influential who are recipients of victimology largesse.

Anyone who thinks that Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson are going to be put out of business does not comprehend the manner in which these two men, and others like them, are protected by prosperous, influential middle class black elites – the major beneficiaries of most entitlement programs. Sharpton and his fake rowdiness is viewed by this middle class as their ace-in-the-hole. He is the go-to man, in charge of appearing to control the steam, so to speak.

It is the prosperous black bourgeoisie, who grew prosperous by fostering the "victim" mentality among blacks, who are most responsible for the current state of the underclass – for a multitude of reasons. Don't be fooled by the sporadic concern sometimes shown by members of the upper classes, like Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, and others. Their scolding proclamations to the lower class are due mainly to the embarrassment caused by scurrilous black behavior, which they feel reflects upon them.

Every time Reverend Al does his in-your-face, tough guy routine, sending out signals that the steam pipes could burst at any moment, a capitulation takes place, and well-behaved, non-threatening black elites reap the rewards and bounty. This symbiotic relationship will not come to an end with the entry of a black man into the White House.

As for those "other tribal reparations" that Michael speaks of, I'd like to see Chief Obama dare to be dismissive of the items on that long laundry list of grievances that blacks keep compiling. In order to avoid another public verbal joust, as he recently engaged in with those Florida hecklers, Obama will have to be cautious that none of his words be interpreted as a rejection of the slavery Reparations crusade. This crusade, too, has a high representation of middle class blacks within it, especially in academia, and these folks are not going away.
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Those who fantasize that under President Barack Obama there will be less of a push for "diversity" and affirmative action policies favorable to selected groups and a diminished call for whites to mend their evil racist ways, are setting themselves up for future disappointment. Along these lines, writer Jim Pinkerton offers an insightful observation. Putting aside his strange notion that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat, might be scheming to undermine Barack Obama's presidential bid, Pinkerton is onto something when he claims that Rendell's recent creation of a "Chief Diversity Officer" to rule over an "Office of Diversity Management" is an "early warning indicator" of things to come.

Governor Rendell, eager to go to the front of the line in an Administration in which blacks will figure prominently, does his self-promoting with a can't lose "comprehensive" diversity program. He vows that his new office will "use the full force of state government" to "outlaw discrimination." Or, to put it another way – to burden citizens with yet more race-based mandates. Rendell's political instincts tell him that the business of race will continue as usual, and he's learned how to make the right promises. Will President Obama dare promise any less?

[See the results of Gil Spencer's attempts to get clarification on just what Rendell's new Office of Diversity Management is expected to achieve that years of Affirmative Action policies have not.]
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Matthew Biggs, writing for Reuters, is another optimist who wonders if the fact of an Obama presidency will put an earlier generation of "civil rights leaders" out of business. On the surface, he claims, "this might be expected, as political inclusion has been a key goal of the civil rights movement for half a century."

Are not blacks already included in the political process? Is Biggs implying that only with the election of a black President comes proof of this inclusion? Does this mean that American Jews have been excluded all these years from the political process, along with Chinese-Americans, and members of sundry other groups, who have never witnessed one of their ethnic compatriots take command of the Oval Office?

It is surprising that after all these years, Mr. Biggs has not discovered that there is no sincerity in the stated goals of the civil rights establishment. Haven't any of these starry-eyed optimists read Thomas Sowell's serious works – I mean his books, not the syndicated column? If so, they would have learned that it's the CRUSADE for political inclusion, it's the CAMPAIGN for racial justice, and it's the PURSUIT of social acceptance, not the achievement of these ends, that drive those who profit off the lucrative race industry. In fact, any evidence of blacks being treated fairly must adamantly be denied. The goal, if there is one, is simply to keep whites confused and worried, as they meekly submit to the demands put forth by these cunning povereticians.
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And here is a fantasy on the Danhop blog. This dreamer thinks that an Obama presidency "could effectively bring an end to affirmative action" and even possibly bring about the end of the NAACP. After all, he reasons, once blacks have reached the pinnacle, "There isn't much more to advance beyond the President of the United States."

His views are probably representative of so many misguided whites, who see the ascendance of Obama as one more appeasement to get blacks to cease their persistent calls for still more "rights." Have any of the other appeasements over the last four decades lessened the crusades for "justice" or diminished the demands for that "level playing field," which only God can guarantee?
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If you want to see the face of the future, look no further than the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). Over the last couple of decades, there has been no fiercer interest group that has pushed for hiring and promotion based on race than this organization. Not even the NAACP has dared to push the envelope on some race demands to the degree of NABJ. There is no way that the resolutions that make up NABJ's platform can be mistaken for anything but demands for outright quotas.

From its inception in the 1970s, the leaders of this group have made no bones about their determination to see lots of black faces in every newsroom and on every newspaper beat. Now allied with UNITY, a coalition of other "journalists of color," including Asians and Hispanics, NABJ is a serious pressure group within the mainstream media of newspapers and television newscasting.

Even while admitting to the crisis now faced by the newspaper industry, where staff is being fired left and right, and hundreds of print journalists have lost their jobs, the NABJ continues to scorn newspaper executives for "doing little to increase their percentage of minorities." As if this single quest is all that the besieged overseers of this crippled industry should have on their minds.

In a recent press release, NABJ reminded industry chiefs that they "should not treat diversity like a passing fad." That line is sure to become a motto to be passed on regularly to President Obama, who spoke at the organization's UNITY conference in July. The wise Obama assured his audience, for whom racial preferences is the core focus, that he is a supporter of Affirmative Action "when properly structured." He knows that he'd better get with the program, and these blacks are certain to send him daily reminders about their pet topic, while keeping tabs on his progress in their behalf. (I wonder who gets to decide what constitutes "properly structured.")

That NABJ press release offered still more warnings to the heads of newspapers: "NABJ will hold you accountable if you do not consider diversity in your hiring and, particularly, firing practices." In other words, think carefully before you fire a black. Also, NABJ will inform "every new generation of news management that minority hiring, promotion and retention are not disposable concepts." As things appear now in this industry, it's uncertain that there will even be a new generation of news management. Do these journalists of color not yet see the handwriting on the wall?

"Diversity," the NABJ news release chimes, "is a necessity for telling balanced news stories." We are assured that reporting is bound to be more objective and balanced when seen through "the lens of minority journalists." Might their fawning behavior towards Obama at that UNITY conference be an example of such balance?
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Along with the bourgeois black professionals, President Obama also will have to assure "progressives" and militants, similar to Glen Ford and Larry Pinkney and the likes of those Florida hecklers, that he will not ignore the ongoing push for their (mostly self-inflicted) grievances – that he has not forgotten "The Struggle." Grassroots blacks have grown used to their community leaders going to bat for them, that is, taking their part in disputes with The Man – explaining away their bizarre conduct. Whether it's the neighborhood preacher, the local councilman, or the city's Mayor, display of such loyalty to the group is a given. No less loyalty will be expected from their Brother, the President.
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If you think Americans walk on egg shells now in regard to race matters, it could be that the worst is yet to come. We already are getting a taste of how any form of criticism directed at Obama is taken personally by his advocates and supporters. Perhaps Peter Kirsanow's "You may be a racist, if . . .," should not be taken lightly.

White Americans, over at least three decades, have had it drilled into their souls that "racism" is the world's worst sin. It's a far greater sin than those minor sins, you know, like the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and the killings at Waco. The simple fact of harboring negative thoughts in one's head about a particular group – not acting on those thoughts, mind you, but just thinking them or expressing them to others – constitutes a crime fit for punishment. Western countries are now in a spasm of legislating "racism" as the worst of all crimes. Under an Obama presidency, we can probably count on people like Senator Ted Kennedy to finally succeed in the passage of a federal "hate crime" law, which has failed to pass in the last couple of sessions of Congress. Once passed, the fun and games will really get underway, as we begin to replicate the new Canada, where government investigations into political opinion have now become routine. It's a back door to finishing off what's left of the First Amendment.

Americans are learning to adapt, as they master the art of dancing around those egg shells. As a blog commenter puts it, "I have had to learn to speak with more sugar coating now that I'm only one of three white people in my workplace." Get out those barrels of sugar. Here comes Obama. Read more!

Joe Klein expands the "political space" to speak out

As a liberal for many years, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein has grown used to getting into hot water. Back in the 1980s, he bucked the trend of his compatriots, when he challenged the worth of Affirmative Action policies and other social programs. His dissident views created a little firestorm of criticism among the liberal media and other intelligentsia.

It was at this time that I met Joe, outside some political event, whose title and focus are long forgotten. I was distributing the hard copy version of my Issues & Views newsletter, and he was there to cover the event. I think he was then employed by Newsweek magazine. We struck up a conversation, with me pre-judging him as just another liberal media type, until he informed me of the flak he was then undergoing, due to what was deemed his "conservative" stances on the above-mentioned issues. This was not a knee-jerk liberal.

In 2006, I did a brief piece on Klein's book for the I&V website. In Politics Lost: How American democracy was trivialized by people who think you're stupid, Klein described, through his first-hand observations of several presidential campaigns, how diverse "consultants," public relations specialists, pollsters, and various kinds of "handlers," have overtaken the political process and the people who run for public office. In the book, he observed that "to be moderate is to be homeless in 21st century American politics," and that "it isn't easy to be a classic liberal or conservative these days, either."

Today, Klein again finds himself in hot water. This time, it is his views on the foreign front, rather than the domestic one, that has ruffled the feathers of his adversaries. Last month, on his Time blog, Swampland, Klein took exception to the role played, during the past several years, by Washington DC's powerful neoconservatives. He wrote about "a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary," who, "plumped for war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran . . ." He denounced those who are successfully "using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel," along with "the two oil executives, Bush and Cheney," who are "securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies." Klein chided those who make a fuss over the so-called surge in Iraq, which he referred to as "whipped cream on a pile of fertilizer – a regional policy unprecedented in its stupidity and squalor."

In a follow-up interview with The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg, Klein elaborated further on his convictions, explaining that he is not "anti-Semitic" (as you knew Abe Foxman and the horde of squealing hawks would charge), but is "anti-neoconservative." He continued, "I think these people are following very perversely extremist policies." Klein implied that the threat of Iran is hyped for cynical reasons, referring to the elderly Jews who retire to Florida, including his own parents. Picking a fight with Iran is strictly for political purposes, Klein declared, "to scare the shit out of my parents. It's a Broward County strategy, it's a Florida strategy."

When Goldberg observed that Klein was "using the word 'Jewish' in ways that we haven't seen Jewish reporters and Jewish columnists use," Klein replied, "It's about time. I think everyone else is too afraid to do it." Claiming to be a "strong supporter" of Israel, Klein insists, nevertheless, "There were people out there in the Jewish community who saw this as a way to create a benign domino theory and eliminate all Israel's enemies." This is a "dangerous anachronistic neocolonial" notion, he contends.

Klein revealed some of the vituperative responses emanating from his angry opponents. One columnist wrote on her National Review blog, "I can't imagine why Time hasn't shut this guy down and fired him." Klein says, "That's what they want. They want to stifle opinions that are different than theirs."

That might not be so easy any longer. Once unspeakable thoughts can now be spoken. Some believe this is essentially due to the bravery of scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer who, in 2006, published their groundbreaking essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and, in 2007, published the expanded version as a book. Many others risked their livelihoods and reputations when attempting to speak out on this subject.

As Daniel Luban writes, Walt and Mearsheimer helped to create the "political space" in which the once taboo subject of the United States' involvement with Israel can be openly discussed and debated. It's in the closet no more.

We know that it is not only Jewish neocons who are responsible for the current Middle East debacle, but, as writer Daniel Levy puts it, "Too many Jewish communal leaders and institutions made the mistake of not standing up and speaking out more against the right-wing excesses of a small minority of their co-religionists." They cheapened the term "anti-Semitism," he says, as they built a "wall of untouchability" around them.

M.J. Rosenberg, a former member of the AIPAC staff, now with the Israel Policy Forum, congratulates Joe Klein on the firmness with which he has expressed himself, and is pleased that Klein has not issued the expected mea culpa, so familiar, whenever a public figure dares to wade in such politically incorrect waters. As for all who helped to bring on the Iraq invasion, Rosenberg writes, "They should shut up and volunteer at Walter Reed. For the rest of their lives." Read more!

Who cares about the public?

In "Rendering public opinion irrelevant" (Salon.com, 9/20/08), Glenn Greenwald asks, "How are views that are held by large majorities of Americans on key policy issues rendered forbidden in our political discourse?"

Excerpt:

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight – simply prohibited – even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes – the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion – released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found:

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A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.
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The worldwide consensus is crystal clear – citizens want their Governments to be neutral and even-handed in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not tilted towards either side. And that consensus is shared not just by a majority of American citizens, but by the overwhelming majority. Few political views, particularly on controversial issues, attract more than 70% support among American citizens. But the proposition that the U.S. Government should be even-handed – rather than tilting towards Israel – attracts that much support. That's not an "anti-Israeli" view – to the contrary, it's a position that America can and should resolve that violent, four-decades-long dispute by being even-handed rather than one-sided.

Read complete article here. Read more!

Stifling parody and satire

In "Parody flunks out" (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 7/30/08), Harvey Silverglate claims, "Political humor is no longer welcome in Academia as administrators choke the life out of parody."

Excerpt:

When I first saw the cover - yes, that cover - of the New Yorker, I expected the swift and nauseatingly self-righteous condemnation it received from the TV personalities and politically correct pundits. That's par for the course in the knee-jerk, brain-dead, humor-free Oughts. But what caught me off guard, even in this Age of Cynicism, was that Barack Obama joined their ranks: his official campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, labeled the lampoon "tasteless and offensive."

Artist Barry Blitt's brilliant illustration - which sought to satirize the naysayers who portray Obama as a flag-burning, unpatriotic Muslim and his wife as a black-power radical - cut to the core of today's political paradox. The cover received so much attention, it has even led to meta-parodies, the most amusing of which was offered by the New Yorker's sister publication Vanity Fair, which depicted a wobbly, walker-wielding John McCain and his wife in the same setting and artistic style. Still, the Illinois Senator's heated, visceral attack of the parody led me to ask: how can Obama, such a brilliant student of American law, politics, and culture, not get the joke - or at least not recognize that the joke was on his enemies?

But then I realized I had failed to account for what can be called the Harvard Factor. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee had, after all, been elected to the staff of the Harvard Law Review in the late 1980s and assumed the presidency of that august publication in 1990. By that time, the strictures of political correctness had seeped into all levels of American higher education and had utterly destroyed the sense of humor of so many college and university students.

At the very least, this atmosphere stifled them from admitting (to anyone but their friends) that they even got a joke involving matters of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, or any other hot-button issue at the center of the nation's culture wars. And, as was predictable, the intellectual rot that began to infect the academy in the mid-1980s spread to the "real world" within a single generation. All of this displaced outrage, by Obama and many of his supporters, suddenly made sense.

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Escape to the church

Following is a brief excerpt from Black Men: They Could be Heroes - Part 2, originally published in the Fall 1993 hard copy edition of Issues & Views, now on the I&V website. It discusses the negative role played by the black church – the other side of the story.

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The writer of Ecclesiastes asks, "For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?" Our black men once had a ready answer to that question. If so many of them no longer know how to answer this question, it might very well be due to the legacy of the civil rights movement and to its ideas and stratagems that have been forcefully transmitted by the black church for the past 30 years. Few institutions in this country have a nobler image than the black church. Endlessly praised for its early role in providing blacks with a refuge in an antagonistic world, it is generally considered off limits to close inspection or criticism.

It was not off limits, however, in the early 1900s, to Booker T. Washington's piercing scrutiny. In fact, one of the reasons why Washington was resented by the elites of his day was the laserlike probe he turned on the various hypocrisies of certain blacks, and his no-nonsense assessment of them. When it came to the disproportionate numbers of black men who became "preachers" or took to politics for a living, he could be merciless in his criticism. He publicly lamented the loss to the race of its most vigorous and ambitious men, who chose these easier paths to esteem and financial comfort.

Washington claimed that as soon as some black men "halfway learn to read and write," they grabbed a Bible and ran to open a church, or they took to the political stump. Or they did both. He viewed this behavior as setting a precedent that could ultimately weaken the race. For, instead of playing economically productive roles, as did their counterparts in other ethnic groups, such men removed themselves from the critical task of economic development. As solo operators, and heads of their own little private church entities, they thus avoided the risks of economic competition with other men. Once they established a constituency of loyal followers, they could confidently look forward to some degree of prestige and a dependable income.

Washington decried this "escape to the church," which usually included some heroic notions about finding grand solutions to the race problem. He was alarmed by the fact that the minds of a great many blacks were so "filled with the traditions of the anti-slavery struggle," that it prevented them from "preparing for any definite task in the world." Instead, he complained, large numbers fixed on the idea of "preparing themselves to solve the race problem." Because of the tradition of riding the circuit to preach abolition, there was already a strong tendency among many black men to view themselves as heirs to the great abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, and to emulate these figures as a route to glory and prominence.

Over the years, Washington developed friendships with numbers of black ministers, several of whom he admired and respected. But that did not cloud his judgment about what was really at the bottom of why so many men chose this profession, this "safe haven" away from competition. One year, when he was on a train ride from Alabama to Washington, DC, his train was boarded by a couple of dozen black preachers who, apparently, were on the way to the capital for a church convention. They filled the car with laughter and high spirits, as they dined on home made lunches, smoked, played cards, drank bootleg liquor, and engaged in telling coarse, off-color jokes. In observing this behavior and listening to their conversation, it struck Washington that almost anybody "who took a mind to it" could be a preacher.

He was reminded of a joke about a poor farmer then making the rounds. It seems that the farmer, after spending years with his mule plowing hard, unyielding soil in the hot sun for long hours every day, decided he had had enough of such labor. One day he put down his plow and looked to the sky and proclaimed, "Oh, God, this sun is so hot, and this ground is so hard, I do believe this Negro is called to preach." Could it be our misfortune that, almost a century later, so many black men are still dropping the plow and hearing the "call" to preach?

Unlike black businessmen, black preachers are numerous and everywhere. In some cities, black-owned newspapers fill several pages, not only with listings of all the black churches in town (along with each pastor's photo), but also with announcements of ordinations (recently completed and forthcoming). In the 1950s, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier discussed the question of whether the Negro population was "over-churched." The subject is still as pertinent today. In terms of its most prominent and wealthiest members, American blacks could be called "a race of athletes, entertainers and preachers." A group with a minuscule number of entrepreneurs, it is understandable why its members are totally dependent on others for employment.

From early on, there were blacks expressing the concern that every time a black man built a church, instead of a business, he established his own personal "cathedral of commerce," to benefit himself and a few others. In recent years, it has been pointed out that if the same percentage of the country's Asian men were to take to the pulpit, the political stump, the basketball court, or the entertainment stage, the masses of Asians would find themselves on the bottom of the economic barrel. Ditto for Greeks, Poles, et. al.
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Corrupting the work ethic

Following is a brief excerpt from Black Men: They Could be Heroes - Part 1, originally published in the Summer 1993 hard copy edition of Issues & Views, now on the I&V website. It takes a look at attitudes among the black middle class, those elites who had already begun to increase in numbers long before slavery ended.

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Among blacks, the undiluted pretentiousness of this elite was legendary and had already become the stuff of humor and ridicule, long before it was incisively chronicled in the 1940s and 1950s by the black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. From earliest times, it is members of this elite, more concerned with image and immediate gratification than with the task of building, who have sent forth signals that have contributed to undermining the work ethic among the poor. Such signals are still sent forth today.

Zealous in their own desires to avoid the prospect of menial labor, they encourage the poor to disdain "dead end" jobs and to hold out for "meaningful work." On a practical level, the unemployed poor also play important roles as symbols. Held as hostages in the war against the "system," they can be publicly displayed as more victims of "racism," a situation best dealt with by devising more and more social programs. The message of the elite has taken firm root in the culture of the poor.

In an 1989 interview, George Waters, director of EDTEC, an organization in Camden, New Jersey, that teaches entrepreneurial skills to youth, described the greatest obstacle to youngsters' success as "attitude." Waters said, "We're up against bad, unproductive attitudes toward work, which have been instilled into these youngsters, not only by their peers on the streets, but also by parents who actually tell their kids that working for fast food wages is beneath them. . . . There are adults who actually pass such notions on to kids."

In another era, before the corrupt views of the elite achieved
dominance, the humblest blacks believed what economist Thomas Sowell teaches, that there is no such thing as a dead end job—that it is up to the individual to turn every work experience into a chance to either learn skills, or improve work habits, or position oneself for achieving still higher goals.

Clifton Taulbert demonstrates this spirit in his memoirs of his southern childhood and youth. He is author of two books that celebrate the character and moral fiber of the citizens of his segregated home town of Glen Allen, Mississippi, where he grew up in the 1950s. In the 1960s, like other young people in the region, he struck out for St. Louis, where social change was just beginning to stir, and where he landed a job as a dishwasher in a major restaurant. Back home, Taulbert had been part of a poor, but close family, for whom work was an imperative and the expected norm. He had grown up with people who instilled within him an ambition to succeed. In his second book, The Last Train North, he describes the dish washing job, and how his days were filled with "grease and soap suds."

What is important is his attitude toward that job. He saw it as a way to pay his share of expenses to the relatives in St. Louis with whom he lived. He spent his spare time diligently searching employment ads and going on interviews arranged by an agency. He says, "I washed those pots and pans with an intensity, because I was determined to wash my way out of that grease room." And, indeed, he did wash his way out, and went on to become a successful businessman. Today he would be discouraged from ever taking that first lowly "degrading" position.

Taulbert's life had been surrounded not by people who fed him defeatist notions, but by those from whom he drew inspiration. He writes, "My family down South had dreamed of better things for me and I could not let them down. The stack of pots filled that washroom, but memories of southern voices crowded into that little room with us, and enabled me to look beyond."

Disdain for Small Businesses

In interviews, members of today's black elite make clear that even little mom and pop ventures are to be avoided, since they are not "viable" businesses that can produce the high incomes to which they would like to become accustomed. Busy as members of this class are with trying to break through those glass ceilings in white corporations, in their quest for higher level positions, they cannot summon the concern to help those on the lowest rungs find the economic means to create these smaller enterprises.

A recent publication from a black Washington, DC, "think tank" offers a brief historical survey of American black business, and then condescendingly dismisses the many small businesses that were formed. The article laments that, "The blacks who were lured into the world of business in the 1920s were typically not the ones who were highly educated," and goes on to imply that since such businesses were not created by the more affluent and did not grow beyond a limited size, they were hardly worth noting. Get it? Those thousands of black-owned businesses that were created by the humblest people, and had sustained families and employed children, were not the "viable" kind that would be acceptable to the needs of the better classes. ...

Sociologist Nathan Hare writes, "Members of the black middle class essentially occupy a parasitic relationship to the black underclass." Consumed primarily with a quest for recognition and validation, they derive satisfaction only to the degree that the white world grants them "here a news anchor [job], there a distributorship." Television journalist Tony Brown, in his syndicated column, regularly berates members of this class for neglecting to take up their responsibility to lead with their money instead of with rhetoric and bluster. He views their indifference as the true waste in the black community. Brown
claims that the only role played by the middle class is as "managers of resources allocated by government and corporate programs." They are, in effect, overseers of the bounty. He charges them with acknowledging a connection to the race, in order to "pick up their affirmative action paychecks."
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One of the most formidable instruments of tyranny

In "Supreme Court restores habeas corpus, strikes down
key part of Military Commissions Act" (Salon.com, 6/12/08), Glenn Greenwald writes:
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The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was – and remains – one of the great stains on our national political character. It was passed by a substantial majority in the Senate (65-34) with the support of every single Senate Republican (except Chafee) and 12 Senate Democrats. No filibuster was even attempted. It passed by a similar margin in the House, where 34 Democrats joined 219 Republicans to enact it.

One of the most extraordinary quotes of the post-9/11 era came from GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, who said at the time that that the Military Commissions Act – because it explicitly barred federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions brought by Guantanamo detainees – "sets back basic rights by some 900 years" and was "patently unconstitutional on its face" – and Specter then proceeded to vote for it.

The greatest victim of the 9/11 attack has been our core, defining constitutional liberties. Of all the powers seized by this administration in the name of keeping us Safe, the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges and no real process is the most pernicious.
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Then, on June 12, 2008, in a major rebuke to the theory of imperial presidential power, the Supreme Court declared Section 7 of this noxious law unconstitutional. This is the section that abolished the right of habeas corpus to "enemy combatants" being arbitrarily detained as prisoners by the U.S. government. Alexander Hamilton called such imprisonment "one of the most formidable instruments of tyranny."

Following are excerpts from the Court's Syllabus and the Opinion of the Court

Syllabus – Section (iii)

Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say "what the law is."

Syllabus – Section 3(c)

Petitioners identify what they see as myriad deficiencies in the CSRTs [Combatant Status Review Tribunals], the most relevant being the constraints upon the detainee’s ability to rebut the factual basis for the Government’s assertion that he is an enemy combatant. At the CSRT stage the detainee has limited means to find or present evidence to challenge the Government’s case, does not have the assistance of counsel, and may not be aware of the most critical allegations that the Government relied upon to order his detention. His opportunity to confront witnesses is likely to be more theoretical than real, given that there are no limits on the admission of hearsay. The Court therefore agrees with petitioners that there is considerable risk of error in the tribunal’s findings of fact. And given that the consequence of error may be detention for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, the risk is too significant to ignore.

Excerpts from Opinion of the Court

Some of these individuals were apprehended on the battlefield in Afghanistan, others in places as far away from there as Bosnia and Gambia. All are foreign nationals, but none is a citizen of a nation now at war with the United States. Each denies he is a member of the al Qaeda terrorist network that carried out the September 11 attacks or of the Taliban regime that provided sanctuary for al Qaeda. . . .

The Government argues, in turn, that Guantanamo is more closely analogous to Scotland and Hanover, territories that were not part of England but nonetheless controlled by the English monarch (in his separate capacities as King of Scotland and Elector of Hanover). . . .

No Cuban court has jurisdiction to hear these petitioners’ claims, and no law other than the laws of the United States applies at the naval station. The modern-day relations between the United States and Guantanamo thus differ in important respects from the 18th-century relations between England and the kingdoms of Scotland and Hanover. This is reason enough for us to discount the relevance of the Government’s analogy. . . .

At the close of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded control over the entire island of Cuba to the United States and specifically "relinquishe[d] all claim[s] of sovereignty . . . and title." See Treaty of Paris, Dec. 10, 1898, U. S.-Spain, Art. I, 30 Stat. 1755, T. S. No. 343. From the date the treaty with Spain was signed until the Cuban Republic was established on May 20, 1902, the United States governed the territory "in trust" for the benefit of the Cuban people. Neely v. Henkel, 180 U. S. 109, 120 (1901); H. Thomas, Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom 436, 460 (1998). And although it recognized, by entering into the 1903 Lease Agreement, that Cuba retained "ultimate sovereignty" over Guantanamo, the United States continued to maintain the same plenary control it had enjoyed since 1898. . . .

There is no indication, furthermore, that adjudicating a habeas corpus petition would cause friction with the host government. No Cuban court has jurisdiction over American military personnel at Guantanamo or the enemy combatants detained there. While obligated to abide by the terms of the lease, the United States is, for all practical purposes, answerable to no other sovereign for its acts on the base. Were that not the case, or if the detention facility were located in an active theater of war, arguments that issuing the writ would be "impracticable or anomalous" would have more weight. See Reid, 354 U. S., at 74 (Harlan, J., concurring in result). Under the facts presented here, however, there are few practical barriers to the running of the writ. To the extent barriers arise, habeas corpus procedures likely can be modified to address them.

It is true that before today the Court has never held that noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution. But the cases before us lack any precise historical parallel. They involve individuals detained by executive order for the duration of a conflict that, if measured from September 11, 2001, to the present, is already among the longest wars in American history.

The detainees, moreover, are held in a territory that, while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government. Under these circumstances the lack of a precedent on point is no barrier to our holding. We hold that Art. I, §9, cl. 2, of the Constitution has full effect at Guantanamo Bay. . . .

Within the Constitution’s separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person. Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention. Their access to the writ is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek. . . .

We hold that petitioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law. The determination by the Court of Appeals that the Suspension Clause and its protections are inapplicable to petitioners was in error. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The cases are remanded to the Court of Appeals with instructions that it remand the cases to the District Court for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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Farewell to Thomas Jefferson

Can we get a shout out from the last few fans of Thomas Jefferson?

The evangelical rightwing establishment does not like him because he was pleased that the term "God" was excluded from the Constitution, because of his Free Thinking "peculiar" notions on religion in general along with his irreverence towards their Book, and because of his suggestion that frequent revolutions, i.e., the overturning of the sitting government, might be a necessity to maintain freedom.

The leftwing does not like him because, like his contemporaries, he owned slaves, held no sentimental notions about Africans and, like Abraham Lincoln who would come after him, saw the return of the ex-slaves to Africa as the only hope for social harmony and peace in this country, and, yes, because of his suggestion that frequent revolutions, i.e., the overturning of the sitting government, might be a necessity to maintain freedom.

Let's face it, who, in this day and age, would dare admit to liking such a man?

The left-leaning scholar and former United Nations diplomat, Conor Cruise O'Brien, makes no bones about his views on this Founding Father, claiming that Jefferson and his legacy are bound for the dung heap of history. Why? Because there soon will be no place in this country's evolving culture for a "fanatical cult of liberty." O'Brien rejoices at the prospect of the final demise of Jefferson's reputation. Here's what he wrote in his 1996 book, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800:
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I believe that in the next century, as blacks and Hispanics and Asians acquire increasing influence in American society, the Jeffersonian liberal tradition, which is already intellectually untenable, will become socially and politically untenable as well. I also believe that the American civil religion, official version (ACROV), will have to be reformed in a manner that will downgrade and eventually exclude Thomas Jefferson.
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O'Brien believes that high regard for Jefferson will one day exist only in the realm of the "mystical," and that such regard "really belongs among the radical, violent anti-Federal libertarian fanatics." To O'Brien, there can be no place for people who approve of Jefferson's unflinching directive to keep the spirit of armed rebellion alive in America. Refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Not likely.

According to O'Brien, it is this "misguided" notion of freedom, as espoused by the resolute Jefferson, that led to the Civil War (absolute freedom means the right to secede), to independent vigilantes (including the Ku Klux Klan), and to the 1990s militia movement. All who defy the "civil authority" pose as threats to O'Brien's concept of America, and they should be dealt with appropriately.

It's hard to envision in 2008, since the militias are now toothless tigers, but in the mid-1990s, members of these groups inspired the hope that maybe, just maybe, the governed might, after all, acquire power over increasingly oppressive government authorities. Over several years, Americans witnessed disdainful government functionaries behave as if the nation had been formed for them, instead of for the people they supposedly serve.

In 1995, syndicated columnist Walter Williams raised questions about the treatment of militia groups that were forming at the time and whose members were being harassed by a barrage of federal and state agencies. Remember, this was the period of the advent and escalation of BATF and other para-military swat teams arbitrarily raiding homes and stalking individuals. It was the time of the atrocious FBI murders of Randy Weaver's wife and son, and the unforgivable catastrophe at Waco. (The term "jack-booted thugs" became a household expression to describe a most malicious abuse of government power.)

In addition, creeping, crafty legislation, such as "wetlands" laws, meted out harsh criminal penalties for many landowners out West, who were restricted from making use of their own property. Freshly minted government laws literally turned citizens into mere caretakers of land they had paid for and fully owned, while preventing them from building a house or even clearing dry brush. Williams went on to explain that "Much of the cause for increased government distrust and hate in our country is a direct result of an increasingly intrusive and abusive government."

Jefferson never doubted the possibility of such a scenario and wrote about the prospect of a government that might eventually negate constitutional law. (Actually, he lived to see it with John Adams' Alien and Sedition laws.) O'Brien, who had to be aware of such abuses, in his book shows no interest in them and, apparently, cares nothing about the grievances of certain citizens, whom he probably looks upon as "privileged." He portrays all those who actively challenge the commanders in control of government as "paranoids" and/or "racists."

Nor does he question the limits of governmental authority or the credibility of the bureaucrats who exercise that authority. He writes, accusatively, "The Jefferson who admired Shays's rebels . . . is providing those now resisting the Federal Government with clear warrant for their cause, and for the use of armed force should the incursions of the Federal Government make that necessary." Jefferson, you see, is considered a bad role model, and those who follow his "extremist" notions for dealing with government that overreaches its constitutional boundaries, should be eliminated from society.

In the 1990s, the militias became the whipping boy for those who shivered at the thought of social anarchy, and few came to plead for fair treatment of these dissidents, who might very well have been the last Jeffersonian activists. Under the aegis of President Bill Clinton, these groups were effectively exterminated through bogus smears and aggressive legal actions. Once they were unjustly libeled as having an affiliation with Timothy McVeigh, of Oklahoma City notoriety, and aggressively pounced upon by the self-appointed "anti-racist" watchdog groups, there was no restoring their image or reputations.

O'Brien had no way of knowing, at the time, in 1996, that the country was soon to see the last of these believers in what he called Jefferson's "wild, absolute, untrammeled, universal" liberty. Warning of possible anti-government anarchy, O'Brien praised Clinton's underhanded treatment of the militias. He was still fearful, however, that a spark might be ignited in the future, because, as he worried, anyone can be inspired by Jefferson's creed: "Jeffersonian liberty is an absolute, not confined by specific ideological content, and revolutionaries of any stripe, whether right or left, have equal entitlement to his blessing, provided they are prepared to kill and die for whatever version of liberty they happen to believe in."

George W. Bush eagerly picked up where Clinton left off in equating anti-government dissent with treason and sedition. O'Brien had nothing to worry about. The militias were demoralized out of existence.

Among O'Brien's main theses is the conviction that Thomas Jefferson no longer fits into the "American civil religion in its official version (ACROV)," because the criterion of race is now an essential factor in American culture. He writes, "Once the criterion of race is introduced, it becomes logically impossible to fit Jefferson into ACROV." The "cult of Jefferson" is no longer acceptable within the ACROV, even though it might indefinitely linger for some time. The American civil religion must now be "unequivocably multiracial." In this reality, claims O'Brien, "Thomas Jefferson is becoming a most unsuitable and embarrassing figure." There is no longer any place in "post-racist" America for this Founding Father, who was unequivocal in his views on race.

Sounding like an advocate for, rather than a chronicler of an emerging multiracial polyglot society, O'Brien refused to see the case from Jefferson's standpoint. Why would Jefferson not desire to retain the cultural integrity of his lineage, which had made possible the intellectual undertaking to form the republican government to which he had just spent his energies giving birth?

Another Founding Father, John Jay, gladly thanked "Providence" for giving "this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs."

Sociologist Kenneth Clark describes still another Founder, James Madison, who was well known as a staunch opponent of slavery, writing that the Africans could not be emancipated without being removed to some "distant region beyond the territory intended for white inhabitation." Asks Clark, was Madison a "racist," or was he "insightful enough to foresee the racial problems the country faced after the Civil War until today . . .?" Did he simply wish a "better situation" for the black people?

It does not appear that the Founders would be in concert with the platitudes contained in that mawkish poem that was belatedly plunked down at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Neither of them seem to have envisioned this country's future in the hands of "huddled masses" from every nook and cranny of the earth.

Who would be likely to form a nation for a people other than their own kind? Would the Hutu be likely to expend their energies to develop a society to benefit alien tribes and foreigners? A year into George Washington's administration, the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed, which limited citizenship to "free white persons." O'Brien informs us that "The civil religion has been implicitly or explicitly a religion of white people for most of its history." What else could it have been?

Insisting that the United States is now "officially a post-racist society," O'Brien claimed to detect, in the mid-'90s, in other Western countries, that which he called "powerful racist undercurrents." Might these undercurrents be viewed objectively as nothing more than the normal protective tendencies of a group, determined to insure that their posterity survive in the same manner as they have lived? Perhaps such undercurrents that are shared by Westerners could also be detected among any self-respecting Tutsi or Dogon, who harbor similar preferences for their respective kin.

O'Brien connected any form of racial adherence here in the U.S. with Jeffersonian recalcitrance, and predicted that such adherence would not last much longer. In fact, according to him, all struggle to maintain such cohesion is doomed. He wrote as though he believed the inevitable destiny of white societies is to evolve into multiracial and multicultural ones – a situation that these societies are supposed to strive for, rather than avoid.

So, how does one proceed to diminish the stature of a giant like Jefferson? What do you do about the Declaration of Independence, whose authorship is attributed to Jefferson, and whose resounding phrase, "All men are created equal," along with other memorable refrains, is sacred text in the American civil religion?

O'Brien first removes the Declaration from Jefferson's authorship and describes it as a work of a "collective," turning Jefferson into a mere "draughtsman." He writes: "Jefferson's demotion from the sacred status of 'author' of the Declaration would effectively put an end to the official cult of Jefferson within the American civil religion." He predicts that Jefferson should be out of the American civil religion by the middle of the 21st century. No more cult of Jefferson; no more cult of the Founding Fathers.

O'Brien is especially exercised over the ongoing regard for Jefferson on the part of liberals. "The huge contradiction within [liberal-Jeffersonian] tradition, with regard to race, renders it unfit to survive in a multiracial society." The term "liberal Jeffersonian" is a contradiction in terms, he says, and any person who labels himself as such is simply "confused." He adds, "Doctrinally, Jefferson is far more suitable as a patron saint of white supremacists than of modern American liberals."

And, with that said, he cannot resist delivering yet another calumny and smear against the militia movement: "The twin themes of States Rights and No Free Blacks in America fit the positions of the far-right militia movements like a glove." Although he can show no pattern of malevolence directed from militia groups towards minorities, the intolerant liberal in O'Brien takes delight in railing against those who might not appear as readily "inclusive" as the monitors of political correctness would prefer. In truth, the anger of militia members was directed at the white establishment whom they viewed as destroyers of the political legacy left by the Founders. Evidence of this destruction could be found in increasingly repressive laws and other measures, as well as the establishment's acquiescence to the creation of social policies geared only to pacify particular interest groups – with no concern that such policies made a mockery of individual rights guaranteed in the Constitution.

Summarizing Jefferson as a "determined and implacable racist," O'Brien claims that "The civil religion of a multiracial society cannot indefinitely accept a racist as a prophet." As Jefferson is downgraded, along with the documents in which he played a major role, a new ethos must inevitably emerge.

Absorbed as he was in his multicultural mental fog, O'Brien failed to see still a bigger picture. What kind of "civil religion" could adequately and harmoniously replace the one inspired by the "cult of the Founders?" Is it enough just to eliminate Jefferson and his diabolical influence? Is this ACROV that O'Brien talks about (the new "official version" of the American civil religion that now includes race) capable of satisfying the desires and agendas of members of the new polyglot of nations now making their way to these shores from all the far-flung regions of the world? What uniting thread is likely to evolve that will win the trust and obedience of Chinese-Indian-Latino-Arab-African-Korean, ad infinitum?

In 1996, O'Brien mis-read the potential for backlash. Remember when the word "backlash" was bandied about as a threat that might come from disaffected whites? We now know that such a threat was never imminent, as whites settled into the good, comfortable life that was to bring them a seemingly endless array of gadgets, gizmos and all sorts of playthings.

With overwhelming prosperity has come an abundance of Bread and Circuses inconceivable to earlier generations. There is little chance that anyone would want to overturn all this fun and unlimited gaiety. But at the time O'Brien was writing, this was not so clear. He feared that the "cult of Jefferson" might inspire a schism, and become the center of a whites-only version of the American civil religion.

As it turned out, once the militia movement was done away with, and other dissenting fringe groups tarnished as anti-social "white supremacists," and publicly lambasted with other invectives, there was nothing more to fear. Rumors of possible discord stemming from the general public's concern over diminished freedoms were highly overstated. Such concern might momentarily have jarred the calm of a handful of whites, who looked up for a few minutes – and then went back to playing with their toys.

Some day, when the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, is torn down and replaced with one dedicated to a more "fitting" multiracial hero, O'Brien will be vindicated and, as he predicted, "the time of obfuscation" finally will have drawn to an end. It's still unclear, however, what the nature of the new "American civil religion" will be like, and just whose cult will prevail. Read more!

Loving the Emperor more than Christ

Lawrence Vance, on the Lew Rockwell site, often writes about the calamitous war policy of Washington's current rulers. Recently, he received a letter from a former R.O.T.C. member, a college student, thanking Vance for his writings. "After three years of going along with the crowd, my eyes were opened," the young man writes, and he then goes on to detail his Baptist background and his "hardcore Republican" household.

In reading of his experience with military chaplains, I found his story to be similar to ones I had heard before from other military personnel. These chaplains are the strangest "men of God." You would expect a religious chaplain to be like any other church pastor, that is, a counselor, a comfort, one concerned with the welfare of the individual seeking his advice. Not so, these uniformed martinets. These guys who wear the cross on their lapels are military recruiters first and foremost – and loyalists to the state before any commitment to a God. Many of them are known for their mean-spirited reactions towards anyone who expresses doubt about the current administration's Middle East mission.

The young writer to Vance tells of his change of heart – evolving from a blind yahoo supporter of the invasion of Iraq to an antiwar conscientious objector. He says that throughout the process of parting from the military, "I was disappointed to see that the most hateful, disrespectful, and arrogant people I encountered were the chaplains and pro-war pastors who interviewed me. Nothing convinced me more of the danger Christians face when they begin to accept Constantinian assumptions than the conduct of these 'men of God.'"

The behavior observed by this student would come as no surprise to traditionalist conservative pastor, Rev. Chuck Baldwin, who is a staunch opponent of the current regime in Washington and a fierce defender of the Constitution and its founding principles. He claims that the Christian church is in a state of "apostasy," meaning that its pastors and members have forsaken and abandoned Christ's teachings. He writes, "Today's pastors and Christians seem to display more loyalty and devotion to George W. Bush than they do to the Lord Jesus Christ. This stands in stark contrast to Christians throughout Church history."

Rev. Baldwin reminds us that the Roman Empire did not persecute Christians because they worshiped Christ. The Romans did not care which god you worshiped. The Empire persecuted Christians because they believed their god to be the One and Only God, above all other deities, including Caesar, the Emperor, who assumed the mantle of a deity. Rev. Baldwin suggests that today's Christians have placed a similar mantle on Bush, and that the "beginning of the end came when Christian conservatives began idolizing President George W. Bush." Their worship of this man is such that "they have come to accept just about any and all abuses against the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration principles, and even our very way of life." Not only have they become "robotic foot soldiers for universal and everlasting war," they "see no harm in the decimation of individual liberties, as long as it is a Republican who is stealing them."

Baldwin shows how even the long fought for pro-life positions have been cast aside, as Republican party operatives expediently give "donations" to key conservative organizations, as well as to principal church ministers. "Regardless of how the Republican Party has compromised, capitulated, and castrated genuine conservative principles, conservatives -- including Christian conservatives -- continue to refer to the GOP as 'God's Own Party,' and other such nonsense." On the whole, Baldwin charges, "Republicans are just as dangerous as Democrats. In fact, more constitutional freedoms have been lost under George W. Bush than any President (including Democrats) in modern memory."

And then there are those Christians who claim a non-involvement in politics. Rev. Baldwin has heard some say, "This President is God's man, and while we should pray for him, we should never oppose him." And there are those who offer that ultimate cop-out: "This is all part of prophecy; there is nothing we can do about it."

To these old mantras, Rev. Baldwin asks, "If George W. Bush's push to merge America into a North American Union is the 'fulfillment of prophecy' and should not be resisted, then why should we resist al-Qaida? Who are we to say what is or what is not the 'fulfillment of prophecy?'" He continues, "Most of my fellow believers who say we have no Christian duty to oppose President Bush as he strips us of our liberties, defies our Constitution, and makes a mockery of justice, will turn around and shout the loudest in support of a war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 and did not even pose a legitimate or imminent threat to our country." Where is the logic of "prophecy" here, he asks.

And, furthermore, contends Rev. Baldwin, if it is God's will that one should only pray for a President and never oppose him, why did these Christians raise such an outcry against President Bill Clinton? He suggests that his fellow Christians "will not be using the same mantra" of pray-but-don't-resist, if a Democrat is elected as the next President.

He appeals to Christians to "tear away the blinders" and play their proper role as citizens of this free country, and regrets that "Somewhere down the line, the Christian Right has lost track of the importance of constitutional government. They have forgotten (or never learned) the principles of liberty. Sadly, the Christian Right has allowed The Bill of Rights to become an antiquated and incidental document with no importance whatsoever to them. Beyond that, in many respects, the Christian Right has become as totalitarian in philosophy as many of the Pagan Left. One should understand that the extremes of both left and right end up at the same place: Tyranny." Read more!

Are these the end days of the extortionist era of civil rights?

No one describes better the interior workings of the leadership class among blacks than does Shelby Steele. I have my gripes with him in the crevices of certain issues, but for penetrating insights into what has motivated and driven the established black leadership and its faithful followers over these recent decades, there's none better than Professor Steele. Here he is on "Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama" (Wall Street Journal, 7/22/08) – an excerpt:

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[Jesse Jackson] could have argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead – and tragically – he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt. Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites "on the hook" the most sacred article of the post-'60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said
to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently – that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality – took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites. ...

It would be a good thing were blacks to be more open to the power of individual responsibility. And it would surely help us all if whites were less cowed by the political correctness on black issues that protects their racial innocence at the expense of the very principles that made America great.
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Full article here.
Read more!

Showing their true colors

I've been saying for years that black "conservatives" are not conservative at all, but are noth