Herman Cain's supporters, including your humble correspondent, are being asked who they'll support - if, when, or now that - Mr. Cain's presidential run is finished. "Who's your Plan 'B'?", they say.
We need to face the fact that, in this election, THERE IS NO PLAN 'B'.
It is time to draw a line in the sand.
There is no "Not-Romney" candidate.
There is no "Anybody But Obama" candidate.
There is only Herman Cain.
Consider the attacks on the Cain candidacy to be the trial run. If the leftist government/media enterprise are successful in running him out of the race, they'll only be emboldened.
If the leftist government/media enterprise are able to dispirit and disillusion Herman Cain's base, whose passion for their candidate is only matched by the zealots supporting Tex Quixote, how easily will they be able to drive the lemming media and middling moderates, and scatter the moral relativists and partisan hacks backing the remaining Republican candidates?
No, there is no Plan 'B', just a line in the sand...
Four more years of Barack Obama if the Republican nominee is anybody other than Herman Cain.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Slavery & Brainwashing in the 21st century
My choice for president of the United States, Mr. Herman Cain, has made waves recently (imagine that!) He has referred to the US tax code as 21st century slavery and has also said that many blacks in America have been brainwashed into rejecting conservatism and conservative candidates. In my opinion he is correct on both counts. What follows are my thoughts on the topic, which expands on Mr. Cain's idea just a bit to include America's entire dependency underclass.
Slavery was wrong, an ethical and moral blight on the South. My family were slaveholders in East Tennessee. My family was split as a result of the civil war, with war fatalites on both sides buried in separate cemeteries, and a split that exists to this very day.
It is a visceral issue, so much so that I don't believe it can ever be discussed or even understood via the sterile and arcane esoterica of philosophy.
The currency of slavery today is in its use as an excuse for political and social malfeasance on the part of progressives, manifested in demands for reparations, accusations of oppressive behavior and the guilt imputed to 21st-century white Americans by the hacks and baiters in the race-grievance industry.
Mr. Cain is right to bring it up. The race-grievance industry needs to explain how tripling down on the failed policies of the Great Society and its resultant permanent underclass, mass minority unemployment and government dependency can possibly improve life for the 3rd and 4th generation of that underclass. And yet they continue to support and enable their progressive oppressors in the democrat party.
What happened 150 years ago may color or even taint race relations, but that intergenerational oppression that continues at the hands of politicans, pundits and bureaucrats can no more be laid at the feet of 21st century Republicans and conservatives, than at the feet of Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists in 1858.
Conventional wisdom holds that America voted for Barack Obama to assuage its majority white guilt and ushered in post-racial age. Yet Mr. Cain's supporters are branded racists because we oppose Mr. Obama at every turn, despite our active support and intention to vote for Herman Cain, who also happens to black. Let me be perfectly clear - if Barack Obama felt about America the way Mr. Cain does. If Barack Obama carried the same world-view, policy outlook and personality, demonstrated the same character, conviction, courage and had the same qualifications as Herman Cain I would surely be torn. But Mr. Obama doesn't, so I'm not....
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the choice has never been so clear.
Slavery was wrong, an ethical and moral blight on the South. My family were slaveholders in East Tennessee. My family was split as a result of the civil war, with war fatalites on both sides buried in separate cemeteries, and a split that exists to this very day.
It is a visceral issue, so much so that I don't believe it can ever be discussed or even understood via the sterile and arcane esoterica of philosophy.
The currency of slavery today is in its use as an excuse for political and social malfeasance on the part of progressives, manifested in demands for reparations, accusations of oppressive behavior and the guilt imputed to 21st-century white Americans by the hacks and baiters in the race-grievance industry.
Mr. Cain is right to bring it up. The race-grievance industry needs to explain how tripling down on the failed policies of the Great Society and its resultant permanent underclass, mass minority unemployment and government dependency can possibly improve life for the 3rd and 4th generation of that underclass. And yet they continue to support and enable their progressive oppressors in the democrat party.
What happened 150 years ago may color or even taint race relations, but that intergenerational oppression that continues at the hands of politicans, pundits and bureaucrats can no more be laid at the feet of 21st century Republicans and conservatives, than at the feet of Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists in 1858.
Conventional wisdom holds that America voted for Barack Obama to assuage its majority white guilt and ushered in post-racial age. Yet Mr. Cain's supporters are branded racists because we oppose Mr. Obama at every turn, despite our active support and intention to vote for Herman Cain, who also happens to black. Let me be perfectly clear - if Barack Obama felt about America the way Mr. Cain does. If Barack Obama carried the same world-view, policy outlook and personality, demonstrated the same character, conviction, courage and had the same qualifications as Herman Cain I would surely be torn. But Mr. Obama doesn't, so I'm not....
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the choice has never been so clear.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
What's Wrong With The GOP?
Pajamas Media asks an interesting question. They didn't pose it quite the way I did in the title, but there's a subtle condescension, however unintended, that informs the asking and their discussion of the issue.They never got around to answering it themselves, but it struck me as a topic worth exploring.
The gist of the piece is that the GOP has an image problem that has so confounded the current GOP leadership that they've given up the idea of getting any black votes. While the current GOP leadership hasn't released a statement to that effect, Timothy Johnson, of the Frederick Douglas Foundation provides anecdotal evidence that some GOP candidates have given up on black voters. So that idea is out there. Colonel West says it's a problem with the quality of the GOP's outreach to blacks, that the democrat party has then sequestered to the democrat plantation. Others say it's simply a matter of messaging.
Seems to me that we have some people waiting, or perhaps hoping for, in order to absolve themselves of the responsibility of having to deal with the problem, on the 21st century Moses (or Harriet Tubman in the form of Colonel Allen West) to lead the black community off the democrat plantation and out of socio-economic bondage. While an ennobling sentiment, I believe it misses the mark, by a wide margin. You gonna leave everybody else there or can they be free too?
See, it bothers me that people want to make it an ethnocentric issue when that bondage has entrapped an entire underclass in a subsistence existence of government largess, a state of permanent lack - of challenge, ambition, intellectual curiosity, economic opportunity, and hope. Just look at how America reacted to mere campaign slogans consisting of the words hope and change in 2008. To focus on allegedly intractable issues relating to one minority group plays right into the hands of race-baiters and grievance industry hacks on the left, and the reinforces the soft bigotry of low expectations on the right.
I was in Walmart last night. I don't go to Walmart as a rule, but I'm traveling on business, away from home and I needed a few things since I extended my trip by a week. There are websites dedicated to "Walmart people", but my observations are not those. I saw all kinds of people and many ethnicities - families, solo adults accompanied by children, morbidly obese people using oxygen on scooters, including a couple shopping together, young couples holding hands. Heard all kinds of conversations about brands, flavors, current events, movie titles and two distinct languages I couldn't understand. I found myself making judgments about the people around me, generalizations in fact, not unlike this Pajamas Media piece and its conventional wisdom. I was thinking in terms of what I thought I knew about the people around me, when I'm really 600 miles from home and know as much as about these people in Walmart as the GOP does about the people it wants to represent. The reality is that ALL THESE are the people the GOP should represent.
The real challenge in this most political of all seasons is to not see people just as demographics. To not propound ideas and notions which confine voters to barrios and backwoods, city and country, but to see them as Americans, imbued with all the distinctiveness and individualism that term confers. Once the GOP recognizes this, recovers from its embrace of the soft bigotry of low expectations, and speaks to Americans of every race as joint heirs to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it won't need Moses or Harriet Tubman. And the democrat plantation will be a distant memory.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when there are so many yearning to be free....
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Herman Cain - Uncommon Man, Common Sense Solutions
Note to the readers - Eternally Vigilance officially endorses Herman Cain for the 2012 Republican nomination for president of the United States.
What follows is my response to an Australian friend who expressed a specific concern about whether Mr. Cain would actually be able strengthen the US dollar (USD), which has seriously sagged in relation to his home currency, the Australian dollar (AUD). I shared my view of the US economy and then offered Herman Cain as a solution.
The problem here is that we've got this big-government (I started to call him Keynesian, but John Maynard might turn over in his grave were he to be blamed for Obama's mess) wacko in the White House who has spent 7tril USD in two years against a little over 4.5til in receipts.
Also, under the guise of saving the economy and preserving various business and industrial sectors, our central bank (Federal Reserve) and Treasury have monetized the federal debt by buying hundreds of billions in bad loans and commercial paper, inflating the currency with trillions of dollars created out of thin air in order to cover these purchases and maintain liquidity for the credit markets. Add to that a massive trade imbalance and you get the flight to gold and other commodities and other currencies, while the USD collapses in value.
None of Mr. Cain's "Common Sense Solutions" are particularly radical. They've worked in other countries where they've been implemented or when they have have been implemented here in the US in the past. I believe that Mr. Cain's common sense soluions would definitely yield postive outcomes to stabilize the our economy and, as a result, strengthen the USD as well. Obviously it would help if there were a conservative sea change in the composition of the US House of Representatives and Senate.
Herman Cain is a man of courage, character and conviction, who enjoys credible and documented success in life and business. He's the most capable and qualified of all the candidates in the Republican field. Given that practical majorities of the 435 members in both houses would be willing to put the country first and work with him, I am confident in Mr. Cain's ability to lead the biggest turn-around in his 40-plus year career.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, though the election of Herman Cain to the presidency of the United States might afford us a minute or two to relax....
What follows is my response to an Australian friend who expressed a specific concern about whether Mr. Cain would actually be able strengthen the US dollar (USD), which has seriously sagged in relation to his home currency, the Australian dollar (AUD). I shared my view of the US economy and then offered Herman Cain as a solution.
The problem here is that we've got this big-government (I started to call him Keynesian, but John Maynard might turn over in his grave were he to be blamed for Obama's mess) wacko in the White House who has spent 7tril USD in two years against a little over 4.5til in receipts.
Also, under the guise of saving the economy and preserving various business and industrial sectors, our central bank (Federal Reserve) and Treasury have monetized the federal debt by buying hundreds of billions in bad loans and commercial paper, inflating the currency with trillions of dollars created out of thin air in order to cover these purchases and maintain liquidity for the credit markets. Add to that a massive trade imbalance and you get the flight to gold and other commodities and other currencies, while the USD collapses in value.
None of Mr. Cain's "Common Sense Solutions" are particularly radical. They've worked in other countries where they've been implemented or when they have have been implemented here in the US in the past. I believe that Mr. Cain's common sense soluions would definitely yield postive outcomes to stabilize the our economy and, as a result, strengthen the USD as well. Obviously it would help if there were a conservative sea change in the composition of the US House of Representatives and Senate.
Herman Cain is a man of courage, character and conviction, who enjoys credible and documented success in life and business. He's the most capable and qualified of all the candidates in the Republican field. Given that practical majorities of the 435 members in both houses would be willing to put the country first and work with him, I am confident in Mr. Cain's ability to lead the biggest turn-around in his 40-plus year career.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, though the election of Herman Cain to the presidency of the United States might afford us a minute or two to relax....
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
They're All Media Now
Our understanding of the media has changed. Many conservatives agree that the profession of journalism died during the 2008 presidential campaign. There's not a not a mainstream media now. There's not a left-wing media now. And there's no longer a conservative media, either. Many erstwhile conservatives spent last week and weekend beating the drum of tea party criticism. Media outlets once thought to be at least fair, if not outright sympathetic, to tea party conservative values were openly hostile during the debt ceiling battle in Congress. Tea party conservatives learned a hard, but valuable lesson last week.
They're all media now.
Many pundits and publications that used to be known as conservative media were actively assisting in the left wing's dirty work by drinking the compromise kool-aid, joining in the left's attacks on the tea party and spreading the president's fearmongering disinformation on the possibility and repercussions of default. I don't appreciate the way the tea party movement and conservatives who were opposed the debt ceiling increase were abused by a range of allegedly conservative pundits and publications.
The Wall Street Journal alone which, by its own self-description, purports to resist bullies, dictators, and the "ukases of kings" published at least a half-dozen columns and editorials in favor of compromise, hectoring the tea party for it's obstructionist ways, branding them hobbits and banishing them back to Middle Earth for having destroyed Speaker Boehner's chance at a "grand bargain" with the president
One such Journal editorial was seized on by Arizona's John McCain, who took it to the well of the Senate and entered it into the record, word for word. There were letters and commentaries from David Brooks, David Gergen, Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingraham, Fred Thompson, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc., demanding we sit down and shut up. Accusations of terrorism, hostage-taking, the same over-the-top rhetoric that you'd find on CNN or MSNBC. Now all these outlets are trying to convince the tea party to sit down and shut up because of the glorious victory won. Some victory. The Senate passed the bill at about lunchtime today. By early afternoon the White House had taken to their Twitter account promising fair and balanced debt reduction, i.e. TAXES.
Many tea partiers feel that a trust was broken. This writer certainly joins in that sentiment. Politics make strange bed-fellows. Conservative media, once the fourth estate's sanctuary for conservative thought, ideas and open debate, actively joined in an effort to silence voices of dissent on the right, to somehow cool the ardor of tea partiers and conservatives for real and substantive tax and entitlement reform, all in a bid to be the enablers of political compromise. But at what cost to the American people?
A bad bill, back-loaded with out-year spending cuts that will surely not be adhered to by the 113th Congress, certainly not by the 120th or 122nd Congress.
A bad bill that creates a super committee of 12 representatives from the House and Senate, with a broad mandate, to likely include tax increases, whose recommendations will require an up or down vote in the Congress. This committee will not be accountable or accessible to the voters, and failure to deliver on their mandate will result in a range of draconian cuts to both national security and the social obligations so precious to progressives.
A bad bill which grants a further $2.4tril in deficit spending authority to the most partisan and radically progressive president to ever hold the office. Just in time for the presidential campaign....
A bad bill which the media are furiously spinning as a victory for the tea party since it didn't raise taxes and forced the deepest spending cuts in history on a progressive president and his progressive caucuses in the House and Senate. At least until the afternoon the bill was signed.
Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are unbowed. The media are already calling for congressional support for their "balanced approach" to debt reduction.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when they're all media now.
They're all media now.
Many pundits and publications that used to be known as conservative media were actively assisting in the left wing's dirty work by drinking the compromise kool-aid, joining in the left's attacks on the tea party and spreading the president's fearmongering disinformation on the possibility and repercussions of default. I don't appreciate the way the tea party movement and conservatives who were opposed the debt ceiling increase were abused by a range of allegedly conservative pundits and publications.
The Wall Street Journal alone which, by its own self-description, purports to resist bullies, dictators, and the "ukases of kings" published at least a half-dozen columns and editorials in favor of compromise, hectoring the tea party for it's obstructionist ways, branding them hobbits and banishing them back to Middle Earth for having destroyed Speaker Boehner's chance at a "grand bargain" with the president
One such Journal editorial was seized on by Arizona's John McCain, who took it to the well of the Senate and entered it into the record, word for word. There were letters and commentaries from David Brooks, David Gergen, Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingraham, Fred Thompson, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc., demanding we sit down and shut up. Accusations of terrorism, hostage-taking, the same over-the-top rhetoric that you'd find on CNN or MSNBC. Now all these outlets are trying to convince the tea party to sit down and shut up because of the glorious victory won. Some victory. The Senate passed the bill at about lunchtime today. By early afternoon the White House had taken to their Twitter account promising fair and balanced debt reduction, i.e. TAXES.
Many tea partiers feel that a trust was broken. This writer certainly joins in that sentiment. Politics make strange bed-fellows. Conservative media, once the fourth estate's sanctuary for conservative thought, ideas and open debate, actively joined in an effort to silence voices of dissent on the right, to somehow cool the ardor of tea partiers and conservatives for real and substantive tax and entitlement reform, all in a bid to be the enablers of political compromise. But at what cost to the American people?
A bad bill, back-loaded with out-year spending cuts that will surely not be adhered to by the 113th Congress, certainly not by the 120th or 122nd Congress.
A bad bill that creates a super committee of 12 representatives from the House and Senate, with a broad mandate, to likely include tax increases, whose recommendations will require an up or down vote in the Congress. This committee will not be accountable or accessible to the voters, and failure to deliver on their mandate will result in a range of draconian cuts to both national security and the social obligations so precious to progressives.
A bad bill which grants a further $2.4tril in deficit spending authority to the most partisan and radically progressive president to ever hold the office. Just in time for the presidential campaign....
A bad bill which the media are furiously spinning as a victory for the tea party since it didn't raise taxes and forced the deepest spending cuts in history on a progressive president and his progressive caucuses in the House and Senate. At least until the afternoon the bill was signed.
Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are unbowed. The media are already calling for congressional support for their "balanced approach" to debt reduction.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when they're all media now.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Kyrie Ellison
Minnesota's Muslim democrat senator Keith Ellison thinks it's unfair to single out a community when discussing the radicalization of Americans who engage in acts of terror against other Americans. The New York Times calls Congressman Peter King's hearings on radicalization "an obsession" and accuses him of "stoking fears" of "supposed radicalization".
I have a few questions for Mr. Ellison and the NYT. Was the Times Square bomber a destitute tea-partying Quaker opposed to health care reform? Did a hymn-singing Southern Baptist men's Sunday School class commandeer four airliners to attack New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11th 2001? Or attend an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan? Did the holiday (Christmas) Tree bomb plotter in Portland Oregan attend confirmation classes at the local Episcopal church? Did a Mennonite sniper kill ten people in the D.C. area in 2002? Was it an observant Jew who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood Texas?
In fact all the people who perpetrated the crimes discussed above had some connection, if not a singular devotion to the ideas of a particular prophet and religion, not Judeo nor Christian in origin. Perhaps Islam is the single most prominent connection between all these crimes.
Whether these crimes stand alone, or are part of some strategy to implement sharia law, or are the first steps to the establishment of a global caliphate is not relevant. These crimes, inspired by Islam, took place on American soil and the plots were hatched in our neighborhoods. These people walked our streets, shopped in our stores, attended our colleges and flying schools and even served in our military services. In some cases, authorities even knew what was happening and, because of cowardice or political correctness, took no action.
With little or no respect to Kyrie Ellison and the New York Times editorial board, I doubt that Echelon is getting much terror chatter out of Catholic dioceses or Methodist conferences. Holding congressional hearings is the very least someone in the federal government could do.
"Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists." President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001. There are those in American society who try to have it both ways....
"Every nation has to be with us or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or finance them are going to pay a price". Senator Hillary Clinton, September 13, 2oo1. There are those in American society who do both....
"If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security." George Orwell, from his 1942 essay, "Pacifism and the War.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the country is under assault from within by a political and media fifth column who fancy themselves aloof and somehow superior to the struggle....
I have a few questions for Mr. Ellison and the NYT. Was the Times Square bomber a destitute tea-partying Quaker opposed to health care reform? Did a hymn-singing Southern Baptist men's Sunday School class commandeer four airliners to attack New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11th 2001? Or attend an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan? Did the holiday (Christmas) Tree bomb plotter in Portland Oregan attend confirmation classes at the local Episcopal church? Did a Mennonite sniper kill ten people in the D.C. area in 2002? Was it an observant Jew who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood Texas?
In fact all the people who perpetrated the crimes discussed above had some connection, if not a singular devotion to the ideas of a particular prophet and religion, not Judeo nor Christian in origin. Perhaps Islam is the single most prominent connection between all these crimes.
Whether these crimes stand alone, or are part of some strategy to implement sharia law, or are the first steps to the establishment of a global caliphate is not relevant. These crimes, inspired by Islam, took place on American soil and the plots were hatched in our neighborhoods. These people walked our streets, shopped in our stores, attended our colleges and flying schools and even served in our military services. In some cases, authorities even knew what was happening and, because of cowardice or political correctness, took no action.
With little or no respect to Kyrie Ellison and the New York Times editorial board, I doubt that Echelon is getting much terror chatter out of Catholic dioceses or Methodist conferences. Holding congressional hearings is the very least someone in the federal government could do.
"Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists." President George W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001. There are those in American society who try to have it both ways....
"Every nation has to be with us or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or finance them are going to pay a price". Senator Hillary Clinton, September 13, 2oo1. There are those in American society who do both....
"If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security." George Orwell, from his 1942 essay, "Pacifism and the War.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when the country is under assault from within by a political and media fifth column who fancy themselves aloof and somehow superior to the struggle....
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Real Costs of Ethanol?
There's an interesting article in the March 2011 edition of the International Monetary Fund's quarterly publication, Finance & Development. The authors have concluded that consumers should get used to higher food prices.
One of the more interesting statistics cited in the piece is that in 2010, 15% percent of global corn production was consumed by the biofuels industry. According to a report by the OECD from January 2010, the amount of grain required to fill the average car gas tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year. There is also the matter of the amount of water, electricity, and fossil fuels required by the ethanol manufacturing process.
It seems government and industry are faced with a choice between providing affordable food for people and meeting arbitrary quotas for ethanol production. Among people of common sense, this is a no-brainer. Unfortunately common sense seems to be lacking in direct proportion to the amount of foodstuffs and money wasted on ethanol.
In this tight economy, some people have to choose between fuel and food. At this rate, nobody will be able to afford either. Perhaps all these ethanol devotees could consider a hunger strike on behalf of world food production.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - and is a bargain compared to eating and driving in 2011.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Progressives Gone Wild
Earlier this week CNN posted an article by John Blake, in which he described white Americans as "the new face of racial oppression". He uses the liberal media's favorite intellectual straw men, "they" and "some", to discuss purported calls for ethnic programs to promote racial pride, including "whiteness studies". Using a blend of innuendo and pop psychology with a few quotes from supposed white racialist intellectuals, he attempts to paint a picture of a racially fractured America, with white people on the sociological ropes. Seems that CNN has a vested interest in promoting the fiction of an oppressed white race to justify the continuing existence of the race-grievance industry.
Funny thing is I don't feel oppressed. I'm glad they told me about it though. Maybe I should find someone to sue....
Sherrod Brown, democrat, Ohio tried to hitlerize Republican governors who are trying to limit the political influence of public sector unions in their states. Following a trope devised by teachers unions that Hitler went after the labor unions in Germany, Brown embellished the tale with Stalin - a move for which he apologized today. His apology implied that his passion for the middle class apparently got the better of him, causing his "mistake". Uh, Sherrod you were talking about unions, not the middle class. Who knew that statist unionist progressives were such ardent champions of the middle class?
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - especially when the media and politicians get it so wrong....
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Phelps' Precedent
Today, the United States Supreme Court, by an 8-1 decision I've dubbed the Phelps' Precedent, affirmed the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to freely express themselves by picketing military funerals. There will surely be all kinds of learned commentary, both supporting and criticizing this ruling. We are a nation of laws, and I suppose it is appropriate that the Court should uphold the law and rule in favor of freedom of speech.
Today's legal ruling unfortunately highlights an abridgement that is beyond the purview of any court or legislature to correct - the diminution of human decency. In days gone by, Americans knew the difference between right and wrong. Their conscience was their guide. People understood the value of hard work and sacrifice, respected each other, and demonstrated reverential awe for God, and held family and country close in their hearts.
Now, many in American society are drawn to the pornographic. Pornographic can describe any action taken to elicit a quick and intense emotional reaction, not only something salacious or lewd, but shocking or titillating. Larry Flynt wrapped himself in the flag and almost single-handedly won First Amendment protection for pornography. Show gory photos of shattered babies in the aftermath of an abortion to get the antiabortion message across. Burn a cross or a flag or a Koran to show how bad those other people are or how bad you hate them.What passes for entertainment is replete with pornographic moral dysfunction and violence.
What Westboro does is no different. The problem is that they now see themselves as somehow legitimized by today's court ruling. Westboro has been waging a shrill and self-indulgent pogrom against the world since 1991. The Phelps' Precedent makes peddling a pornographic message of hate a constitutionally protected activity. In our free society, the law allows them to vent their spleen in the marketplace of ideas. The best thing we can do for ourselves is turn our backs and walk away.
The law truly is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, because legal and right aren't always the same thing.
Today's legal ruling unfortunately highlights an abridgement that is beyond the purview of any court or legislature to correct - the diminution of human decency. In days gone by, Americans knew the difference between right and wrong. Their conscience was their guide. People understood the value of hard work and sacrifice, respected each other, and demonstrated reverential awe for God, and held family and country close in their hearts.
Now, many in American society are drawn to the pornographic. Pornographic can describe any action taken to elicit a quick and intense emotional reaction, not only something salacious or lewd, but shocking or titillating. Larry Flynt wrapped himself in the flag and almost single-handedly won First Amendment protection for pornography. Show gory photos of shattered babies in the aftermath of an abortion to get the antiabortion message across. Burn a cross or a flag or a Koran to show how bad those other people are or how bad you hate them.What passes for entertainment is replete with pornographic moral dysfunction and violence.
What Westboro does is no different. The problem is that they now see themselves as somehow legitimized by today's court ruling. Westboro has been waging a shrill and self-indulgent pogrom against the world since 1991. The Phelps' Precedent makes peddling a pornographic message of hate a constitutionally protected activity. In our free society, the law allows them to vent their spleen in the marketplace of ideas. The best thing we can do for ourselves is turn our backs and walk away.
The law truly is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, because legal and right aren't always the same thing.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
What Did He Mean By "My People"?
What would be the reaction in politics and the media if white people referred to other white people as "my people"?
Suppose that John Ashcroft or Ed Meese or Janet Reno had referred to white people as "my people". Would the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan, the Congressional Black Caucus and Ben Jealous of the NAACP call for their job? Probably not Reno - she served as attorney general under the first black U.S. president - but that's another topic for another time....
Politico (with a nod to Debra Burlingame on Facebook) reports that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder became frustrated during congressional testimony because members of the U.S. Congress kept questioning his decision and motivation regarding the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation incident during the 2008 election at a Philadelphia polling place. In his remarks, he drew a distinction between those alleged victims of the Black Panthers, and those who struggled to get voting rights for African-Americans in 60's America, a group to whom he referred as "my people".
Mr. Holder said there is no equivalency between voter intimidation in 2008 America and that stuff in the 60's. Mr. Holder stated that any comparison was "inappropriate" and "...a great disservice to those who put their lives on the line for my people" (emphasis added). The writer informs the readers at the end of the fourth paragraph of the Politico piece that United States Attorney General Holder is black, perhaps implying that by "my people", Holder meant people like himself.
In fairness to Mr. Holder, one could assume that he's actually referring to the people, many of whom were eastern liberals much like himself, except for the ones who weren't, who put "their lives on the line" as his people. However, the writer seems to believe that Holder's decision to not prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation is somehow colored by Holder's race. After all, it was Mr. Holder who bravely pointed out that Americans were afraid to have a discussion about race, although he didn't say Americans, whether his "people", or perhaps some other eastern liberal Americans.
The members of congress seemed confused by this. One member even accused Mr. Holder of a holding a double standard on voting rights for those "...other than African-Americans....". First a member of congress and and now this writer for Politico. No wonder Mr. Holder was at pains to explain that "This Department of Justice does not enforce the law on the basis of race".
Whew boy, I'm glad he cleared that up! For a minute there it seemed that United States Attorney General Eric Holder was of the same mind as the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.
Seems to me that Holder doesn't really have excuse for refusing to at least investigate, if not prosecute, the New Black Panthers. Using a congressional hearing to dismiss similarities between thuggery in 2008 America and the historic desire for social and political equity makes a mockery of that voting rights struggle in the 60's he claims to revere.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when government officials make extralegal and racially biased decisions under the color of law.
Suppose that John Ashcroft or Ed Meese or Janet Reno had referred to white people as "my people". Would the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan, the Congressional Black Caucus and Ben Jealous of the NAACP call for their job? Probably not Reno - she served as attorney general under the first black U.S. president - but that's another topic for another time....
Politico (with a nod to Debra Burlingame on Facebook) reports that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder became frustrated during congressional testimony because members of the U.S. Congress kept questioning his decision and motivation regarding the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation incident during the 2008 election at a Philadelphia polling place. In his remarks, he drew a distinction between those alleged victims of the Black Panthers, and those who struggled to get voting rights for African-Americans in 60's America, a group to whom he referred as "my people".
Mr. Holder said there is no equivalency between voter intimidation in 2008 America and that stuff in the 60's. Mr. Holder stated that any comparison was "inappropriate" and "...a great disservice to those who put their lives on the line for my people" (emphasis added). The writer informs the readers at the end of the fourth paragraph of the Politico piece that United States Attorney General Holder is black, perhaps implying that by "my people", Holder meant people like himself.
In fairness to Mr. Holder, one could assume that he's actually referring to the people, many of whom were eastern liberals much like himself, except for the ones who weren't, who put "their lives on the line" as his people. However, the writer seems to believe that Holder's decision to not prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation is somehow colored by Holder's race. After all, it was Mr. Holder who bravely pointed out that Americans were afraid to have a discussion about race, although he didn't say Americans, whether his "people", or perhaps some other eastern liberal Americans.
The members of congress seemed confused by this. One member even accused Mr. Holder of a holding a double standard on voting rights for those "...other than African-Americans....". First a member of congress and and now this writer for Politico. No wonder Mr. Holder was at pains to explain that "This Department of Justice does not enforce the law on the basis of race".
Whew boy, I'm glad he cleared that up! For a minute there it seemed that United States Attorney General Eric Holder was of the same mind as the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.
Seems to me that Holder doesn't really have excuse for refusing to at least investigate, if not prosecute, the New Black Panthers. Using a congressional hearing to dismiss similarities between thuggery in 2008 America and the historic desire for social and political equity makes a mockery of that voting rights struggle in the 60's he claims to revere.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, especially when government officials make extralegal and racially biased decisions under the color of law.
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