What will he say this time?

Is it just me, or are people really not listening to our political candidates. I can understand people not listening to John McCain. He has nothing to say and has been using the same lame attacks for about three weeks now. However, why aren’t people listening to Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden. They have a ton to say. In fact, the more they talk, the more they reveal themselves. Here is one example and here is another example.

Some general talking points from these audio clips include:

• The Constitution doesn’t say what the federal government must do on my behalf. (Actually it does. It says that the federal government is to protect me and create an environment for me to prosper in. However, it condones little else.)
• The Supreme Court is wrong for not addressing the redistribution of wealth or the economic injustice in this society (My goodness, keep the courts out of this. If they courts [especially the Supreme Court] are supposed to interpret the Constitution, why would they even touch this issue seeing as it is not addressed in the Constitution.)
• Civil Rights movements didn’t break free from the constraints of the Constitution. (No, it redefined the Constitution to protect all citizens of the United States. It was not supposed to give give people the liberty to steal the money of hard working Americans.)
• The Constitution is actually a list of negative liberties. (Darn right it is. The Constitution was supposed to be a restraint on Government and all its dealings, not on the citizens. Remember where the founding fathers came from? Yah, they didn’t want an oppressive government.)
• The civil Rights movement didn’t do enough to bring about a “redistribution of uh, um, uh change” (you wanted to say wealth, right?)
• Redistribution of wealth is an administrative responsibility. ( Keep your butter finger government hands out of my pocket. You are supposed to do a good enough job for us to want to give you money, or at least not mind paying our taxes. That is the administrative role. Do a good job, earn our respect. Earn our dollar. Then manage the money to OUR advantage. But, since you can’t properly manage the redistribute halfway legitimate taxes [anyone remember Social Security], why would I want to trust you with the stealing and redistribution of my money.)
• The Constitution reflects “The” fundamental flaw that continues to this day. (What, the lack of a redistribution of wealth to the lazy or the down right racism that is rampant in all parts of the United States? Guess what, I have news for you, the majority of the U. S. is color blind now. Take a trip to California. It is hard to find racism there, unless it is directed at Mexican-Americans [and the African-Americans are the primary proponents of that racism]. However, Mr. Obama, you will find racism if you look for it. I mean, just look at the fact that estimates say that 95% of African-Americans will be voting for you.)

And here are a couple gems from this article.

People had a way of hearing what they wanted in Mr. Obama’s words. Earlier, after a long, tortured discussion about whether it was better to be called “black” or “African-American,” . . . According to Mr. Ogletree, students on each side of the debate thought he was endorsing their side. “Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me,” he said.

[In a Robotic Tone] Yes Master . . . Lead on oh Great One . . . The world will bow before your superior rhetoric . . .

But mainly, Mr. Obama stayed away from the extremes of campus debate, often choosing safe topics for his speeches. At the black law students’ annual conference, he exhorted students to remember the obligations that came with their privileged education. His speeches, delivered in the oratorical manner of a Baptist minister, were more memorable for style than substance, Mr. Mack said. “It’s the inspiration of the speech rather than the specific content,” he said.

Yes Great One . . . another great showing . . . your superior speaking ability sent shivers down my spine . . .

a mouse infestation at the review office provoked a long exchange about rodent rights — as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama himself thought about the issue at hand.

In dozens of interviews, his friends said they could not remember his specific views from that era, beyond a general emphasis on diversity and social and economic justice.

Yes master . . . you listen to my needs . . . you know who I am and what I want . . . you will give me my deepest desire . . . All will see you as our Savior from . . . um, uh, um  . . . What can you save us from, I didn’t hear that part?

In interviews, Mr. Obama was modest and careful. (In a rare slip, he told The Associated Press: “I’m not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.”)

Goodies

Some goodies that I’ve found interesting, enlightening, and maybe a bit scary in the last few days worth of news.

First up, Jesse Helms.

He died recently, and our condolences and sympathy go out to his family and friends, of which he apparently had many. People who met him invariably found him courtly and affable, the quintessential gentleman, regardless of whether they agreed with him or not.

“If you took a poll of the pages and the people who work in the Capitol about who was the most popular member, I expect Jesse Helms would have won, which would surprise an awful lot of people in the press and people out in America who thought of Jesse Helms as a fierce individual,” (Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Senate Monday.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Fund said of Helms:

If Ronald Reagan was the sunny and optimistic face of modern conservatism, the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar of it was Jesse Helms.

Senator Helms was a man of character and consistancy, with few equals alive in our time. Mr. Fund ends with this:

Jesse Helms was a major influence on American conservatism, but his career provides a blueprint for anyone who represents an embattled minority viewpoint. You can, with persistence and unflinching determination, change the political odds in your favor.

We see liberal and socialist causes operating today based on the methods Senator Helms pioneered and championed for many years.

But the socialists who disagreed with him in nearly every way except method have besmirched his record by use of a myopic focus on several incorrect and inexcusable stands and a refusal to see Senator Helms’ rationale and larger worldview and philosophy.

The Day of Connecticut claims he was against civil rights progress. I, too, would be against much of what they consider to be progress.

I have referenced Booker T. Washington previously. The gist of his philosophy was that rather than trying to erase the effects of slavery by raising the black American above his comparable white American we ought to focus on erasing every wall or seperation or limiter between any race, allowing all to equally participate so much as they desire in the American Dream. Currently, American policy is racist, purportedly in favor of the black American, but by attempting to ease the way of the black American, they are damning the average black American to a life of desperation as by policy they are not allowed to compete in the marketplace of merit, only the bazaar of skin color.

I do not know enough of Senator Helms’ view on integration, and from reading the current crop of articles framing his life, I do not think I would agree with much of what he believed on the issue. At the same time, it is conceivable that the ideas of Booker T. Washington would be vilified with much the same hatred as has been directed to Senator Helms.

San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, BeyondChron.com, “The Voice of the Rest”, makes their view very, very clear: “Jesse Helms: Just A Dead Southen Bigot” (written by “a radical southern Italian atheist queer with a website”, Tommi Avicolli Mecca).

The Washington Post rises no higher than the “radical southern Italian atheist queer with a website”, and, in face, cannot even come with anything original. The Post re-posts an article they wrote 7 years ago: “Jesse Helms: White Racist“.

The National Review calls him a Patriot. One wonders if this were a according to a definition Obama would posit.

Speaking of Obama (that was a segue worth of Michael Medved), even the pro-socialist media are starting see that he cannot possibly support the massive amount of money and government largesse he has promised to each and every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory and Liberal Petproject to be found.

The LA Times adds up the cost of Obama’s agenda:

“I don’t think it all adds up,” Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama’s spending plans.

The Houston Chronicle points out that laundry-lists are often tossed once the person is elected:

In more than a year of campaigning, Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.

But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact.

The Houston Chronicle goes on to point out a distinct and significant difference between John McCain and Barak Hussein Obama:

Obama has said he would:

• strengthen the nation’s bridges and dams ($6 billion a year)
• help make men better fathers ($50 million a year)
• aid Iraqis displaced by the war ($2 billion in one-time spending)
• extend health insurance to more people (part of a $65-billion-a-year health plan)
• develop cleaner energy sources ($15 billion a year)
• curb home foreclosures ($10 billion in one-time spending)
• and add $18 billion a year to education spending.

It is a far different blueprint than McCain is offering. He has proposed relatively little new spending, arguing that tax cuts and private business are more effective means of solving problems.

It is socialism that Obama proposes. He is a socialist of the common order. Perhaps it is inexperience, perhaps it is that he honestly thinks this is the correct way, perhaps he hungers for the reality of the power that many ascribe to him in him nearly messianic coming.

And finally, some local goodness. My governor, Rod Blagojevich hears it from the media. The allegations against him are more serious than those for which former governor George Ryan was just sent to prison. And Obama is mentioned:

From the BloggingBlagoBlog.

Such Sensitivity

Alex Tokarev, writing in World on the Web comments on the current status of post-slavery racial sensitivity in America:

I’m from Bulgaria and still learning more about English language usage. Impressed by one of the presidential hopefuls I told my cousin,”This boy, Obama, is the best orator of them all.” She looked at me with fear and explained that it was dangerous to call a black man “boy,” since slave owners had used that term for their male slaves in the nineteenth century. It did not matter that I was not a slave-owner or that Obama had never been a slave.

Maybe you have to be an outsider to be surprised at such sensitivity, but I should point out that the world knows about slavery and segregation in America. It will benefit America to learn the history of the world. Other nations have had much worse for many more centuries and they do not brood on the past as much.

To Some, They’re Truth

The words of Jeremiah Wright, the wrong words he’s spoken and made a central part of his message for the 20 years Barak Hussein Obama has considered him a spiritual leader, to some, they are truth.

Mr. Wright, for I do not consider him to be worthy of reverence or title beyond that of a normal man, is not the only person to preach those words either.

They are a variant of the philosophy and world view known as Liberation Theology, specifically, Black Liberation Theology.

From GotQuestions.org:

Simply put, Liberation Theology is an attempt to interpret Scripture through the plight of the poor. It is largely a humanistic doctrine. It started in South America in the turbulent 1950’s when Marxism was making great gains among the poor because of its emphasis on the redistribution of wealth, allowing poor peasants to share in the wealth of the colonial elite and thus upgrade their economic status in life. As a theology, it has very strong Roman Catholic roots.

Liberation Theology was bolstered in 1968 at the Second Latin American Bishops Conference which met in Medellin, Colombia. The idea was to study the Bible and to fight for social justice in Christian (Catholic) communities. Since the only governmental model for the redistribution of the wealth in a South American country was a Marxist model (gained in the turbulent 1950’s), the redistribution of wealth to raise the economic standards of the poor in South America took on a definite Marxist flavor. Since those who had money were very reluctant to part with it in any wealth redistribution model, the use of a populist (read poor) revolt was encouraged by those who worked most closely with the poor. As a result, the Liberation Theology model was mired in Marxist dogma and revolutionary causes…

…Liberation Theology has moved from the poor peasants in South America to the poor blacks in America. We now have Black Liberation Theology being preached in the black community. It is the same Marxist, revolutionary, humanistic philosophy found in South American Liberation Theology and has no more claim for a scriptural basis than the South American model has.

The race problem in America is real, that is undeniably true. But I do not think it is true in the way many assume it to be.

First, slavery was an inexcusable evil and a dark time for America. Today, many of us can trace roots back to those who participated, freely or under coercion, in slavery in America.

But at the same time, many of us can’t. And a significant majority have ancestors from the both the ideological North and South in their blood, as well as those who had no part at all. There has been significant immigration by all races to America after the conclusion of the Civil War and the active work of slavery.

The continuing and very real race issue was summed up by a new friend of Ed Kaitz’s. Ed had been spending time with the Vietnamese immigrants who’d settled in the Bayous of Louisiana, and while flying home he met a an American Black who’d been studying psychology and working as a prison psychologist in Missouri.

Ed tells it like this:

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed.  It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

“They” are the Vietnamese Ed had spent time with, “we” are the gentleman’s own race, his fellow American Blacks.

Ed concludes his commentary on Obama’s inability to recognize the powerful forces of good in his life and the state of racism in America with this call to recognize real sources of ability and equality, accomplishment and future:

We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the “audacity of hope.”  With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of angst, resentment and despair.  Too bad he doesn’t direct that angst at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of goods since the 1960s.  What Obama seems angry about is America itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called “hungry” minorities.  Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to emulate.

Read Obama’s Anger at American Thinker.

Doug Ross, at Opinion Journal, quotes Nicholas Stix in Mens News Daily regarding Barak Hussein Obama’s run against Alan Keyes. Regarding Barak’s religion Nicholas has this to say:

…Obama’s closest religious advisers — Fr. Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church – may have quotes from Scripture always handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity… The transcendent-non-transcendent motto the Rev. Wright has given Trinity is, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

Yes, we need a Marxist president. Exactly what the country needs.

More information on Black Liberation ideology.

LA Times speaks with moral relativism and class warfare.

Roger Simon writes, in homage to Andrew Goodman “Barak, I didn’t do it for this”

And what about the New Black Panthers?

The Bloody Face, Revisited

In response to the run-on sentences of David Klaess (I’m tempted to say he’s writing as though he’s drunk) responding to my previous post on abortion, I found my comments reaching “new article” length, and proceeded to do just that:

your a racest kook and furthermore extreamists like you are the people who cause more war death and distruction around the world thinkabout the fact that all those middle eastern terrorists feel as strongly about their causes as you do about yours dont get me wrong Im not condoning abortion but if your truly a god fearing person you must realize that god gave us our own free will so we eahc have the choice to rize or to fall if a woman wants to take an unborn life thats not up to me or you to decide or to punnish THATS UP TO GOD AND THE MOTHER TO DECIDE. also if everyone would stop worring about who’s racist or not and just worry if they are or not all of the sudden there would be no racism.

Of course it’s not up to me to punish mothers who choose to kill their children. It’s up to me to continue to love them and care for them and help them in any way I can.

Further, I can assure you that based on actions and stated intentions (that’s words), Messrs Jackson and Sharpton and many other their sycophants are indeed very racist, just because you’re not white does not mean you can’t be racist. And past racism against a person does not ever justify their own racism against another.

It is not racist but is instead the epitome of UN-racism to care enough for all people that you warn them of plots against them. There is no disputing the fact of Sanger’s racism and her frequent association with white supremacists and Aryans. So if there is no dispute, how is it racist to try and warn people of her nefarious designs against them?

Instead, I would submit that not only is it racist, but evil, to stand by and claim, as you do, that I ought to turn my head and ignore a struggling woman who might very well be carrying the next Einstein or Mozart in her womb, kill that future with the assistance of the Eugenics clinics.

David, it is indeed between God and the woman what her punishment ought to be, which is why you do not see many pro-life people who argue for the tightened regulation of abortion arguing for the punishment of the women except in cases of very late term abortion, instead arguing for the punishment of the doctors who perform such evil.

Abortions for the health of the mother or the child, even under the most loose definitions which include cases of diagnosed Downs Syndrome and other mental differences in the child, account for about 6 percent of all abortions. Abortions for rape and incest are only about 1 percent. (see data)

In cases of the babies health, which is better, a sick baby or a dead baby? When the babe is diagnosed with Down Syndrome or similar mental differences through amniocentesis, an admittedly unreliable testing method, is it morally ok to kill the child? Does such a child have less of a life to look forward to than a “normal” child?

And even in the cases of rape and incest: is it the child’s fault who their parents are and what the circumstances were of their conception? Why heap upon the mother the additional pain of abortion on top of the shame of rape or incest? It is known and accepted that mothers who go through abortions are significantly more likely to commit suicide, suffer from depression, or experience other emotional harm as a result of the abortion. Why add that to the hurt of incest? Are there not families waiting to adopt, to share their surfeit of love with the child, if the mother is not able or willing to keep it?

No David, following your thoughts and your words, you are either unknowingly (in which case, open your eyes) or willingly (in which case, shame, sir, shame for your evil thoughts) ignorant, racist, and unloving. I pray the God you reference grants you mercy, bringing you conviction and teaching to change your thoughts and your ways.

Hiding A Bloody Face

Abortion mill parent company Planned Parenthood, progeny of the racist white supremacist Margaret Sanger, has encountered an unexpected roadblock in the construction of a new abortion mill (aka. Planned Parenthood Clinic, or reproductive health clinic) in a suburb of my own beautiful Chicago.

The planned clinic in Aurora was being constructed by Weitz Construction when pro-life activists found they’d lied in their permit requests to the city. The structure was bought and paid for by Planned Parenthood, and was to be used exclusively for that purpose. But on the permit filings Gemini Office Development listed the tenants as “unknown”.

In this city, opinion is never very far away, and there are a few telling opinions on this issue.

First, from the pro-abortion side. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn (the Tribune ran the original article revealing the true nature of the building project) begins his piece on the conflagration this way:

Well of course Planned Parenthood representatives didn’t tell the truth to Aurora city officials while they were building a new clinic in the western suburb.

Why is it such a matter-of-fact thing, Mr. Zorn?

Their goal was straightforward: To open a reproductive-health clinic on land zoned for such purpose.

Indeed, no one denies their goal, but still, why the secrecy?

But they had to use a certain amount of stealth because abortion is one of the services Planned Parenthood offers. And foes of abortion rights, longtime losers in the battle for public opinion, traditionally raise all kinds of rukus when Planned Parenthood comes into a community.

“Longtime losers”? If, as you say, the pro-life ideology is such a loser in the battle for public opinion why the hiding, the subterfuge, the concealment? There have indeed been cases of crazies causing physical harm to abortion doctors, in some cases killing, and destroying clinics. Such actions on the part of individual vigilantes are wrong and the perpetrators have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Those few cases are not a suitable excuse if, as Eric claims, abortion is such a universally accepted procedure. Hey, it’s only a baby.

In his smug pride, assured of the moral superiority of his position, he implies that Planned Parenthood and the services is provides ought to be as amoral as a Best Buy or Walmart. As if the killing of babies and the emotional and physical damaging of mothers, the admitted genocidal aims of abortion as issues are anywhere near the moral level of a big box store selling baubles and gewgaws. It makes me want to scream.

(P)oll after poll shows that, even after all the picketing and haranguing and hurling of moral opprobrium in the last 34 years, roughly 2 out of 3 Americans still support Roe v. Wade — the 1973 decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an early-term abortion.

Reading the other polls on the page, I see, not a losing pro-life ideology, but a closely divided America leaning to the side of further limiting the availability of abortions.

Responding to the news, the Reverend Dr. Johnny M. Hunter, DD. National Director of LEARN Inc., which claims to be the largest evangelical pro-life black organization, compares racial tragedies of true similarity. Unlike the sad Mr. Zorn, Dr. Hunter understands the proper order of morality and compares things which really ought to be compared.

Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed within 3 days by abortion.

Abortionists snuffs out the lives of 1,452 African-American children each day. This is womb-lynching, the implementation of black-genocide.

LEARN has been instrumental in providing an alternative voice in the African American community, speaking the truth when so many of their self-proclaimed moral leaders seem to fall completely for the thinly veiled eugenics plans of Sanger and her confederates.

Do they not have the wisdom, Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson, to know what Kimberly Jane Wilson’s father knew? That “not everyone who smiles in your face is your friend”?

Is their ignorance willful or blissful?

Racism in a white person is bad enough, but when you subscribe to a belief system whose known and stated goal is the control or extermination of your own race, is it racism still?

Back at the clinic building, the sides wait for the court hearings to proceed deciding whether Planned Parenthood broke the law in concealing their intent and what, if any, punishment there ought to be for such duplicity.

Mr. Zorn believes, as a good relativist, that there is no moral condemnation for breaking the law in order to achieve what he believes to be the greater good, the opening of a Eugenics Clinic. Also, as every relativist must, he believes he is right.

UPDATE: A Federal judge has just ruled that Planned Parenthoods rights are not being denied as it is being prevented from using it’s new clinic until the legal battles are over. The clinic will stay closed until all appeals are completed.

More On Fighting Racism With Racism

Predictably, the newswire and blogosphere are awash with opinion on the Supreme Court decision commented on here.

There are several articles written on either side of the issue published in the last few days which give a perspective on the views surrounding this:

1. BloggerNews.net writes a scathing rebuke of the ACLU and their responses to this debate.
   

   (T)he ACLU disagrees with the 14th (”equal protection”) Amendment — which requires equal treatment before the law for all. Nice to be able to pick and choose which amendment you support!

2. Bowling Green News, in an opinion editorial contains a tortured and incoherent response to the ruling, spewing facts and figures I’d really like to see on paper, with proof.
   

   Chief Justice John Roberts said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Thanks, Justice Roberts, for that clarification. I never would have been able to figure that one out on my own, I see now why you were chosen as to be the highest judicial officer in the country. If it’s really that simple then why is it that more than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority?

   Well, if we understood that and applied it, Roberts wouldn’t have needed to say it. Apparently we weren’t able to figure it out in application. And by minority does he realize this also means people of mexican and asian descent? And does he even pause to consider the social assumptions, the real root causes of such poverty among that particular demographic?

3. The New Republic delves into Justice Kennedy’s “Controlling” opinion, which it turns out is less opinion and more the apparent fevered ramblings of a an old mind, great as it may once have been.
4. Black America Web has a perspective from the NAACP perspective, American Black leadership, which appears to me to be more of the same standard liberal social perspective we see so prevalent today. Feel good fixes more than actual solutions. Style over substance.

Global Warming So Much Hot Air, Fighting Racism With… Racism?

The Chicago Sun-Times, my new home-town newspaper, published an article recently noting a few of the many claims made against the religious dogma known as Global Warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Read the article and weep, if your name is Al Gore. Otherwise, just read the article.

In the shadow of the landmark decision by the Supreme Court striking down key provisions of Brown v. Board of Education, ideologues, politicos, and public school administrators are struggling to find new policy now that they’re not allowed to be racists any longer. Racism in any form is evil. W.E.B. DuBois was, and his philosophies continue to be, as racist as any other. The idea that by artificially creating “diversity” at any given social strata benefits no one, and harms many, most of all the ones the do-gooders purport to be assisting.

When any person, regardless of any unchangeable characteristic (such as race, gender, etc), is advanced artificially because some higher “level” of society is not “diverse” enough, that one’s most harmed are: first, the individual or individuals being elevated, and second, those they represent symbolically or actually. Role models are important, there are none who can deny this fact. When a whole generation of black Americans are seeing role models in the form of rap stars who are in and out of jail as frequently as they are on and off the stage. When the women the girls look to dress like whores and sluts, selling and subserviating themselves to men and boys. There is no respect or honor here, there will be precious little in the generation who looks up to them.

Rather than elevation there is opportunity. Booker T. Washington, a contemporary of W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, and promoter of the plight of the black American post Civil War during the reconstruction, espoused the idea that instead of artificially elevating an unready person who would then doubtless fail, adding insult to injury, “proving” the lies believed by the ex slave owners, and damaging the fragile plight of the newly freed humans, we ought to remove any restrictions that hindered the black American any more than the white American. Given opportunity, the strong would succeed, no matter their race. And those black Americans who succeeded because of their own strength would be less likely to fail and far better role models. Out of the Tuskegee Institute and the dreams and visions of Booker T. Washington came such shining examples as George Washington Carver, arguably one of the paramount inventors of America and one of the more prolific of all time. His inventions benefited millions with additional uses of common agricultural products, growing the demand for products common to the extremely poor, depressed post-war south. The Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black American Fighter Squadron formed during WW2 had one of the best records of success for bomber escort missions, to the point where bomber groups would ask for and demand them as escorts for their missions. These are examples of opportunity seized, and any of the Tuskegee Airmen would make excellent role models, several of them are still alive today (I’ve met them). George Washington Carver, were he alive, would make an excellent role model as well, and you can meet him, in books and articles, and every time you eat a peanut butter sandwich.

Racism occurs any time there is any measurement based on race. There is an important distinction between measurements based on race and measurements which take race into account. A measurement based on the incidence of terror propensities would be pointless in todays world if it did not take into account the religion and race of its sample. We need to know who is more LIKELY to be a terrorist. And right now, though it is dreadfully unpopular to say so, radical Muslims and those of Middle-Eastern descent are more LIKELY to be involved in terrorist action. Security is a numbers job. We don’t KNOW when and where and who and how. We can only guess based on when and where and who and how are more LIKELY. This is not a judgment, per se, on any race or creed, merely a statement of fact which happens to be rather sad in it’s results. A measure of crime will show that young black males are more LIKELY to be incarcerated than counterparts of other races. This is another very sad fact, but it does not make a judgment based on race, it merely takes race into account in measuring another, important, metric.

Racism is where you take those who have done no wrong and, because they, inescapably and through no choice of their own, belong to a particular category and either benefit them or cost them. Racism is always evil.

And if you like to read about odd and unethical experiments which nonetheless shed light on burning questions of human nature and vast social evil, the Milgram Experiments are classic cases studying the propensity of normal humans to do harm to other humans in given authority structure situations.

Oakland Permits Anything But Good News

The infamous and frequently overruled Ninth District Court of Appeals strikes again, this time describing “[Christians' speech rights] as ‘vanishingly small…’” So is it time to put them on the Endangered Species List?

An employee bulletin board and e-mail system for the city of Oakland, California, has been used by employees to advertise events and issues on the “war, health-care, peace, employee outsourcing, racism, slavery, spirituality, hate, the Gay-Straight Employee Alliance, tolerance, homosexuality, ‘coming out,’ diversity, sexuality, etc.,” Employees could post on nearly anything but threatened or actual violence against other employees.

The city approved emails on establishing an “altar” for Day of the Dead. Other e-mails have said, “I personally think the good book (Bible) needs some updating…”

The local Gay-Straight Employees Alliance “was openly allowed to attack the Bible in widespread city e-mails, to deride Christian values as antiquated, and to refer to Bible-believing Christians as hateful.”

But when two ladies posted an advertisement for a Good News Club, they were threatened with termination. They posted a sign saying:

“Good News Employee Associations is a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family values.”

“If you would like to be a part of preserving integrity in the Workplace call…”

Upon seeing the posting, however, the ladies’ supervisors ordered the announcement taken down. They said that “homophobic” literature like the posting could lead to penalties including termination.

Besides noting that some religious free speech rights are “vanishingly small,” the court wrote, “Public employers are permitted to curtail employee speech as long as their ‘legitimate administrative interests’ outweigh the employee’s interest in freedom of speech.”

Free speech can only be limited if they incite immediate violence, are obscene, and three other categories that I have forgotten. Governments can also impose time, place, or manner restrictions, in some public and semi-public venues such as protest permits, etc. But when groups are permitted to speak on controversial issues that are offensive to some, religious issues should not be precluded because they are offensive to others.

This topic reminds me of the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated radio and TV stations to show both sides of a controversial issue. The concept initially sounds fair, but when critiqued from a free market perspective, is full of logical fallacies. I’ll post on it tomorrow.

Seattle School District Sends Students to “White Privilege Conference”

The Seattle education establishment is in the news on two controversial issues, one I posted a few days ago, the other here.

For the first time:

Seattle Public Schools are sending students from four high schools to attend the annual White Privilege Conference.

The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression.

This conference is not about beating up on white folks.

The issue was covered by the Wall Street Journal
The New White Power Movement which listed the web site of the White Privilege Conference, and gave an excerpt from its frequently asked questions page:

Q. What is privilege?

A. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious. White Privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

The SoundPolitics blog posted on the response a columnist received when he wrote on the issue. Elliott Bronstein, the white spokesman for Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights and on a task force “to end institutional racism within City government,” said the column was “a galling insult to many parents with school-age children.”

’They have endured a system run mostly by whites and on white terms,’ he wrote. ‘And for them to be told, ‘Oh, it’s the District, they’re obsessed with race over there. They are driving us farther apart.’

All this funded by taxpayers.