Community organizing explained
Posted: February 04, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009
Immediately after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from L. David Alinsky. He boasted about how Barack Obama had made extremely effective use of his training in the methods of David's late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul D. Alinsky.
David Alinsky gloated: "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday."
What was Saul Alinsky's model that Barack Obama used so successfully to defeat the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics? What is known today as "the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power" are fully set forth in Alinsky's 1971 book, "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."
Alinsky's worldview was that mankind is divided into three parts: "the Haves, the Have-Nots and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores." His purpose was to teach the Have-Nots how to take power and money away from the Haves by creating mass organizations to seize power, and he frankly admitted that "this means revolution."
He wanted a radical change of America's social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. Alinsky developed strategies to achieve power through mass organization, and organizing was his word for revolution.
He wanted to move the United States from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism.
"Change" was Alinsky's favorite word, used on page after page. "I will argue," he wrote, "that man's hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change."
Alinsky used what he called "general concepts of change" to move us toward "a science of revolution." What he called "change" meant massive change in our socio-economic structure, and what he called "organizing" meant pursuing confrontational political tactics.
Alinsky taught the Have-Nots to "hate the establishment of the Haves" because they have "power, money, food, security and luxury." He claimed that "justice, morality, law and order are mere words used by the Haves to justify and secure their status quo."
Read the rest...
Showing posts with label Liberaltarded. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberaltarded. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Nancy Pelosi: Dumb as a STUMP
WTF is it with politicians? How do these so obviously "dumb as dirt" idiots keep getting elected?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Fight Back Against the Tolerance Fascists
Here's the reality: 95% of the time, if not more, when people yowl about racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, hatred of the poor, the environment, old people, etc., it's not true. Worse yet, most of the people doing the shouting KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE. They're merely crying wolf for political gain because they believe they may benefit personally from it -- or in the case of organizations like the NAACP, La Raza, GLAAD, CAIR, NOW and the alphabet soup of other groups that make a living off of having grievances, because it keeps them rolling in money and publicity.
Read it all...
Read it all...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The British called - They want their guns back!
This is what's happening in Britain, but we're not far behind. We hear repeated calls for complete bans, but what will taking guns away from honest, responsible, legal gun owners accomplish, NOTHING. Drug dealers and predominantly ethnic gangs in major cities don't by legal guns. And shooting innocent people is part of their culture, and aren't we supposed to be more multi-cultural? Phone or write to your local MP/MPP and tell them to go after criminals instead of honest, law abiding citizens.
And this innocent Canadian young lady has more where with all and common sense then most leftist politicians. Have peek, she's great!
And this innocent Canadian young lady has more where with all and common sense then most leftist politicians. Have peek, she's great!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Killjoys blow smoke on character-building era
By IAN GILLESPIE
This last week, the province of Ontario made it illegal to smoke in a vehicle containing passengers under 16 years of age.
On some levels, I'm sure this is a dandy idea. After all, scientists tell us, although it packs far less of a satisfying buzz, second-hand smoke is still pretty doggone dangerous.
(Although the jury is still out on third-hand smoke, which as I understand it occurs when you kiss somebody who watched a movie that showed somebody smoking a cigarette.)
But sometimes, I wonder if we're being a tad overly-protective of our young people, particularly when I think back to the halcyon days of my youth in the mid-1960s.
Back then, of course, almost everybody smoked, including non-smokers, hockey players, pets, Sunday school teachers and my grandmother.
And while it's true my dad usually forced grandma to sit in the basement when she lit up, that actually had more to do with my dad's relationship with his mother-in-law than any concerns about the dangerous effects of tobacco.
I still fondly recall when, for no reason other than they were thoroughly fed up with me, my parents would drop me off for the day, or in one instance, for about 15 years, at my grandmother's house, where I'd happily light her cigarettes (because she was extremely health conscious, she smoked only menthol brands), crack open her bottles of beer and join her in gleefully insulting the neighbours.
I should point out that my beloved grandmother, who insisted on calling me Butch because she thought Ian was a wussy name, insulted everyone, regardless of their heritage, appearance or economic status. And not a day goes by when I don't thank my lucky stars grammy taught me so much about equality, inclusiveness and the life- affirming benefits of all-round, cranky cussedness.
Those were character-building times.
So too were the days when I'd visit my uncle and we'd load up his air rifle and pellet gun, find a comfortable perch in the back bedroom and then blast away at the various cats, dogs and squirrels that had the temerity to venture into his backyard.
Today, of course, some tree- hugging, pet-loving do-gooder would likely claim that taking pot shots at animals is cruel. To which I respond: Yeah, well, what about the hand-eye co-ordination? What about the vocabulary lessons I so effortlessly absorbed when my uncle missed his target? And what happened to your face? Huh!?
These are tough times, and I often wonder if today's kids, who know next to nothing about guns, or smoking, or how to pack an ice ball that'll leave a permanent mark -- are really equipped for facing the daunting challenges ahead.
I mean, who would you rather have leading us into the future? Somebody wearing a seat-belt, a helmet and a happy-face smile? Or somebody who understands how to empty a school with a smoke bomb made from a ballpoint pen?
I don't think I need to answer that.
This last week, the province of Ontario made it illegal to smoke in a vehicle containing passengers under 16 years of age.
On some levels, I'm sure this is a dandy idea. After all, scientists tell us, although it packs far less of a satisfying buzz, second-hand smoke is still pretty doggone dangerous.
(Although the jury is still out on third-hand smoke, which as I understand it occurs when you kiss somebody who watched a movie that showed somebody smoking a cigarette.)
But sometimes, I wonder if we're being a tad overly-protective of our young people, particularly when I think back to the halcyon days of my youth in the mid-1960s.
Back then, of course, almost everybody smoked, including non-smokers, hockey players, pets, Sunday school teachers and my grandmother.
And while it's true my dad usually forced grandma to sit in the basement when she lit up, that actually had more to do with my dad's relationship with his mother-in-law than any concerns about the dangerous effects of tobacco.
I still fondly recall when, for no reason other than they were thoroughly fed up with me, my parents would drop me off for the day, or in one instance, for about 15 years, at my grandmother's house, where I'd happily light her cigarettes (because she was extremely health conscious, she smoked only menthol brands), crack open her bottles of beer and join her in gleefully insulting the neighbours.
I should point out that my beloved grandmother, who insisted on calling me Butch because she thought Ian was a wussy name, insulted everyone, regardless of their heritage, appearance or economic status. And not a day goes by when I don't thank my lucky stars grammy taught me so much about equality, inclusiveness and the life- affirming benefits of all-round, cranky cussedness.
Those were character-building times.
So too were the days when I'd visit my uncle and we'd load up his air rifle and pellet gun, find a comfortable perch in the back bedroom and then blast away at the various cats, dogs and squirrels that had the temerity to venture into his backyard.
Today, of course, some tree- hugging, pet-loving do-gooder would likely claim that taking pot shots at animals is cruel. To which I respond: Yeah, well, what about the hand-eye co-ordination? What about the vocabulary lessons I so effortlessly absorbed when my uncle missed his target? And what happened to your face? Huh!?
These are tough times, and I often wonder if today's kids, who know next to nothing about guns, or smoking, or how to pack an ice ball that'll leave a permanent mark -- are really equipped for facing the daunting challenges ahead.
I mean, who would you rather have leading us into the future? Somebody wearing a seat-belt, a helmet and a happy-face smile? Or somebody who understands how to empty a school with a smoke bomb made from a ballpoint pen?
I don't think I need to answer that.
Shame on The Netherlands
This is a truly dark day for Holland. Being "Persecuted" by the legal system, for showing how muslims act, in accordance with their koran is now considered a hate crime. The truth is no longer a defence in the Netherlands. The unbridled fear, of the religion of "peace" has gripped the liberal leftists of Europe and, they have decided to sacrifice their own populations to the will of the violent, anti-western, anti-civilization islamists that they themselves have imported.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Dutch court to prosecute Wilders for Fitna
This is beyond the pale. That this can happen in the once most liberal country in the world is very worrisome. Has the Dutch, liberal, government gone that far down the the road to Dhimmitude that the complaints of nine muslims can turn the Judiciary upside down? SAD, sad day indeed.
“I Will Not Stand Trial Alone”
by Baron Bodissey
There’s one thing you can say about the Dutch political establishment: it is thoroughly immune to irony.
The images of burning cars and firebombed synagogues have barely faded from the TV screens of the Netherlands.
The cries of “Heil Hitler!” and “Jews to the gas!” that mingled with “Allahu akhbar!” are still echoing in the glass-strewn streets.
Yet Geert Wilders — who speaks out against these barbaric forces, and proposes to halt the Islamization of his country in order to put a stop to them — is the one who is being prosecuted for “hate speech”.
The true heirs of National Socialism rage unimpeded through the streets of Europe, while Geert Wilders is the one who “incites hatred” and “insults groups of people”.
Go figure.
Wilders: Court decision is an assault on free speech
By Claudia van Zanten
The PVV leader said he was deeply affected by the ruling of the court in Amsterdam. The court decided Wednesday to prosecute PVV leader Geert Wilders for “discrimination, incitement to hatred, and insulting groups of people.”
“This is apparently is the way the Netherlands sticks together. If you give your opinion, you run the risk of being prosecuted. Taking part in the public debate has become a dangerous activity,” Wilders said in a response.
Islamization of the Netherlands
“If I have to stand trial, I will not be alone, stand trial alone, but also with the hundreds of thousands of Dutch people who reject the Islamization of the Netherlands,” says the PVV leader.
“Their opinion is only represented in The Hague [parliament] by the Party for Freedom. Who else will stand for our culture when I have to remain silent? This strengthens me in these harsh days,” he continues.
Wilders is worried of the costs of the court case. “We depend on small donations. The PVV is the only party that is not conditional on making itself dependent on subsidies. The ruling of the Court will endanger the survival of the Party for Freedom. The hundreds of thousands we will loose on the costs are impossible for us to afford.”
“A Black Day”
- - - - - - - - -
The PVV leader considers today “a black day.”
The court is of the opinion that the statements on Islam and Muslims produce a “reasonable suspicion of guilt”. Therefore, the Criminal Judge has to pass a judgment on it, the court finds. The Judge must also pass a judgment on Wilders’ comparison of the Quran with Mein Kampf.
Concern
The VVD [Liberal party] calls it worrisome that a parliamentarian is being prosecuted for statements which he makes as a politician. It is the task of member of parliament let his views be heard in society, according to VVD MP Fred Teeven.
“It is good that the justice is going to express itself in a debate that increasingly polarizes,” PvdA [Labour] member Ton Heerts says.
Support Geert Wilders in his battle for free speech and against dhimmitude.
Sign the petition in support of Geert
“I Will Not Stand Trial Alone”
by Baron Bodissey
There’s one thing you can say about the Dutch political establishment: it is thoroughly immune to irony.
The images of burning cars and firebombed synagogues have barely faded from the TV screens of the Netherlands.
The cries of “Heil Hitler!” and “Jews to the gas!” that mingled with “Allahu akhbar!” are still echoing in the glass-strewn streets.
Yet Geert Wilders — who speaks out against these barbaric forces, and proposes to halt the Islamization of his country in order to put a stop to them — is the one who is being prosecuted for “hate speech”.
The true heirs of National Socialism rage unimpeded through the streets of Europe, while Geert Wilders is the one who “incites hatred” and “insults groups of people”.
Go figure.
Wilders: Court decision is an assault on free speech
By Claudia van Zanten
The PVV leader said he was deeply affected by the ruling of the court in Amsterdam. The court decided Wednesday to prosecute PVV leader Geert Wilders for “discrimination, incitement to hatred, and insulting groups of people.”
“This is apparently is the way the Netherlands sticks together. If you give your opinion, you run the risk of being prosecuted. Taking part in the public debate has become a dangerous activity,” Wilders said in a response.
Islamization of the Netherlands
“If I have to stand trial, I will not be alone, stand trial alone, but also with the hundreds of thousands of Dutch people who reject the Islamization of the Netherlands,” says the PVV leader.
“Their opinion is only represented in The Hague [parliament] by the Party for Freedom. Who else will stand for our culture when I have to remain silent? This strengthens me in these harsh days,” he continues.
Wilders is worried of the costs of the court case. “We depend on small donations. The PVV is the only party that is not conditional on making itself dependent on subsidies. The ruling of the Court will endanger the survival of the Party for Freedom. The hundreds of thousands we will loose on the costs are impossible for us to afford.”
“A Black Day”
- - - - - - - - -
The PVV leader considers today “a black day.”
The court is of the opinion that the statements on Islam and Muslims produce a “reasonable suspicion of guilt”. Therefore, the Criminal Judge has to pass a judgment on it, the court finds. The Judge must also pass a judgment on Wilders’ comparison of the Quran with Mein Kampf.
Concern
The VVD [Liberal party] calls it worrisome that a parliamentarian is being prosecuted for statements which he makes as a politician. It is the task of member of parliament let his views be heard in society, according to VVD MP Fred Teeven.
“It is good that the justice is going to express itself in a debate that increasingly polarizes,” PvdA [Labour] member Ton Heerts says.
Support Geert Wilders in his battle for free speech and against dhimmitude.
Sign the petition in support of Geert
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Awakening of a Dumb (Gay) American
by Charles Winecoff
Having never been big on the holidays, I decided to do something different this past Christmas. Instead of sending fruit-of-the-month baskets to family and friends, I made gift donations to ActforAmerica.org, the grassroots watchdog group, founded by Lebanese-American Brigitte Gabriel that keeps an eye on the spread of Islamic supremacy and jihad here in the US.
Yes, Virginia, there is a jihad. I was pretty sure all Americans were aware of that.
But I quickly learned that the topic has basically become taboo here in the civilized world – kind of like the way homosexuality used to be before people fought back. Despite the fact that we are currently at war with Islamic extremists who are fervently devoted to annihilating the Great Satan (that’s you and me), I received two reactions for the donations I made.
One was silence. No perfunctory thank yous, just cold-as-a-morgue-slab silence. Apparently, such a gift didn’t deserve an acknowledgment. We don’t talk about those things.
The other was anger – please remove us from the mailing list immediately – upsetting to someone like me, who takes disapproval very hard. (For the record, ActforAmerica.org did not automatically add anyone to their mailing list, but simply sent out brochures about the organization.)
Of the two reactions, I preferred the anger; it seemed healthier, gave me something to respond to, and got me thinking. I realized I had to come out of the closet – again. The first time was in 1977, when, as a teenager, I had to cope with the fact that I was gay. Luckily, I lived in New York City, where gay people were visible and vocal. So as scared as I was, at least I knew I wasn’t alone.
But here in L.A., in 2008, it occurred to me that I might be alone. Still, the cat was out of the bag. I realized I couldn’t pass anymore as a good Left-leaning homo. The camouflage had worn thin. So I wrote an open letter to my friends and family. History certainly does repeat itself, doesn’t it? I share my second coming out with you here.
*********
Dear friends,
I probably should have done this a long time ago, but it has been too convenient (though hardly easy) to simply keep my mouth shut and try not to displease people or get myself into “trouble” in so-called polite society. I’ve always been a people pleaser, constantly changing my opinion to suit others - and frankly, most of the time, I’ve actually been afraid of saying what I really think. But I’m pushing 50 now, I’ve been through a lot – as we all have - and I simply cannot do it anymore.
I am gay and I am American. I didn’t choose either, but those are the facts. I have spent a lifetime working hard to overcome guilt and fear about being gay – and in my lifetime, I have seen a lot of progress in our society regarding the acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex relationships. No matter what obstacles gay people have faced, and no matter who was President, things have always moved forward. That’s a good thing, and at this late stage in my life I see that America is one of few places on earth where that is possible. A lot of people who do not live here are well aware of America as a place of change. But it has taken me all these decades to understand and appreciate how unique and special that is in this world.
Read the rest...
Having never been big on the holidays, I decided to do something different this past Christmas. Instead of sending fruit-of-the-month baskets to family and friends, I made gift donations to ActforAmerica.org, the grassroots watchdog group, founded by Lebanese-American Brigitte Gabriel that keeps an eye on the spread of Islamic supremacy and jihad here in the US.
Yes, Virginia, there is a jihad. I was pretty sure all Americans were aware of that.
But I quickly learned that the topic has basically become taboo here in the civilized world – kind of like the way homosexuality used to be before people fought back. Despite the fact that we are currently at war with Islamic extremists who are fervently devoted to annihilating the Great Satan (that’s you and me), I received two reactions for the donations I made.
One was silence. No perfunctory thank yous, just cold-as-a-morgue-slab silence. Apparently, such a gift didn’t deserve an acknowledgment. We don’t talk about those things.
The other was anger – please remove us from the mailing list immediately – upsetting to someone like me, who takes disapproval very hard. (For the record, ActforAmerica.org did not automatically add anyone to their mailing list, but simply sent out brochures about the organization.)
Of the two reactions, I preferred the anger; it seemed healthier, gave me something to respond to, and got me thinking. I realized I had to come out of the closet – again. The first time was in 1977, when, as a teenager, I had to cope with the fact that I was gay. Luckily, I lived in New York City, where gay people were visible and vocal. So as scared as I was, at least I knew I wasn’t alone.
But here in L.A., in 2008, it occurred to me that I might be alone. Still, the cat was out of the bag. I realized I couldn’t pass anymore as a good Left-leaning homo. The camouflage had worn thin. So I wrote an open letter to my friends and family. History certainly does repeat itself, doesn’t it? I share my second coming out with you here.
*********
Dear friends,
I probably should have done this a long time ago, but it has been too convenient (though hardly easy) to simply keep my mouth shut and try not to displease people or get myself into “trouble” in so-called polite society. I’ve always been a people pleaser, constantly changing my opinion to suit others - and frankly, most of the time, I’ve actually been afraid of saying what I really think. But I’m pushing 50 now, I’ve been through a lot – as we all have - and I simply cannot do it anymore.
I am gay and I am American. I didn’t choose either, but those are the facts. I have spent a lifetime working hard to overcome guilt and fear about being gay – and in my lifetime, I have seen a lot of progress in our society regarding the acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex relationships. No matter what obstacles gay people have faced, and no matter who was President, things have always moved forward. That’s a good thing, and at this late stage in my life I see that America is one of few places on earth where that is possible. A lot of people who do not live here are well aware of America as a place of change. But it has taken me all these decades to understand and appreciate how unique and special that is in this world.
Read the rest...
Democrats Smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960's
By Frances Rice
Character assignation. That's the tactic used by Democrats in the 1960's to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican who was fighting the Democrats and trying to stop them from denying civil rights to blacks.
The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death. In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Prior to his death, Democrats bombed Dr. King's home several times. The scurrilous efforts by the Democrats to harm Dr. King included spreading rumors that he was a Communist and accusing him of being a womanizer and a plagiarist.
An egregious act against Dr. King occurred on October 10, 1963. With the approval of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Democrat Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy - President Kennedy's brother - authorized the wiretapping of Dr. King's telephone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Wiretaps were placed by the FBI on the telephones in Dr. King's home and office. The FBI also bugged Dr. King's hotel rooms when he traveled around the country.
The trigger for this unsavory wiretapping was apparently Dr. Kings' criticism of the Kennedy Administration, according to the author David Garrow in his book, "Bearing the Cross". The justification given by the Kennedy Administration publicly was that two of Dr. King's associates, including David Levinson, had ended their association with the Communist Party in order to work undercover and influence Dr. King. However, after years of continuous and extensive wiretapping, the FBI found no direct links of Dr. King to the Communist Party.
The unrelenting efforts by Democrats to tarnish Dr. King's reputation continued for years after his death. To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan ignored the Democrats' smear campaign and made Dr. King's Birthday a holiday.
Today, while professing to revere Dr. King, Democrats are still trying to tarnish his image by making remarks that diminish his civil rights achievements and continuing to claim that Dr. King embraced Communism - a system that is secularist and socialist.
In reality, Dr. King was a Christian who held deeply religious beliefs and was guided by his faith and his Republican Party principles in his struggle to gain equality for blacks. He did not embrace the type of socialist, secularist agenda that is promoted by the Democrat Party today, which includes fostering dependency on welfare that breaks up families, supporting same-sex marriage and banning God from the public square.
An understanding of who the real Dr. King was can be gained from a glimpse of Dr. King as a young man who participated in an oratorical contest when he was 14 years old. The title of his speech was "The Negro and the Constitution" which had the following sentences: "We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance...We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule...."
If Dr. King were still alive, he would be slandered by Democrats in the same way that they smeared him in the 1960's and demean all black Republicans today.
Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info/
Character assignation. That's the tactic used by Democrats in the 1960's to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican who was fighting the Democrats and trying to stop them from denying civil rights to blacks.
The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death. In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Prior to his death, Democrats bombed Dr. King's home several times. The scurrilous efforts by the Democrats to harm Dr. King included spreading rumors that he was a Communist and accusing him of being a womanizer and a plagiarist.
An egregious act against Dr. King occurred on October 10, 1963. With the approval of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Democrat Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy - President Kennedy's brother - authorized the wiretapping of Dr. King's telephone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Wiretaps were placed by the FBI on the telephones in Dr. King's home and office. The FBI also bugged Dr. King's hotel rooms when he traveled around the country.
The trigger for this unsavory wiretapping was apparently Dr. Kings' criticism of the Kennedy Administration, according to the author David Garrow in his book, "Bearing the Cross". The justification given by the Kennedy Administration publicly was that two of Dr. King's associates, including David Levinson, had ended their association with the Communist Party in order to work undercover and influence Dr. King. However, after years of continuous and extensive wiretapping, the FBI found no direct links of Dr. King to the Communist Party.
The unrelenting efforts by Democrats to tarnish Dr. King's reputation continued for years after his death. To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan ignored the Democrats' smear campaign and made Dr. King's Birthday a holiday.
Today, while professing to revere Dr. King, Democrats are still trying to tarnish his image by making remarks that diminish his civil rights achievements and continuing to claim that Dr. King embraced Communism - a system that is secularist and socialist.
In reality, Dr. King was a Christian who held deeply religious beliefs and was guided by his faith and his Republican Party principles in his struggle to gain equality for blacks. He did not embrace the type of socialist, secularist agenda that is promoted by the Democrat Party today, which includes fostering dependency on welfare that breaks up families, supporting same-sex marriage and banning God from the public square.
An understanding of who the real Dr. King was can be gained from a glimpse of Dr. King as a young man who participated in an oratorical contest when he was 14 years old. The title of his speech was "The Negro and the Constitution" which had the following sentences: "We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance...We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule...."
If Dr. King were still alive, he would be slandered by Democrats in the same way that they smeared him in the 1960's and demean all black Republicans today.
Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info/
Monday, December 15, 2008
It’s This Bad
Theodore Dalrymple
Returning briefly to England from France for a speaking engagement, I bought three of the major dailies to catch up on the latest developments in my native land. The impression they gave was of a country in the grip of a thoroughgoing moral frivolity. In a strange inversion of proper priorities, important matters are taken lightly and trivial ones taken seriously.
This is not the charming or uplifting frivolity of Feydeau’s farces or Oscar Wilde’s comedies; it is the frivolity of real decadence, bespeaking a profound failure of nerve bound to have disastrous consequences for the country’s quality of life. The newspapers portrayed frivolity without gaiety and earnestness without seriousness—a most unattractive combination.
Of the two instances of serious matters taken with levity, the first concerned a 42-year-old barrister, Peter Wareing, attacked in the street while walking home from a barbecue with two friends, a man and a woman. They passed a group of seven teenagers who had been drinking heavily, one of whom, a girl, complained that the barrister and his friends were “staring” at them. Nowadays, English youth of aggressive disposition and porcelain-fragile ego regard such alleged staring as a justified casus belli.
The girl attacked the woman in the other party. When Wareing and his male friend tried to separate them, two of the youths, aged 18 and 16, in turn attacked them. They hit the barrister’s friend into some bushes, injuring him slightly, and then knocked the barrister to the ground, knocking him down a second time after he had struggled to his feet. This second time, his head hit the ground, injuring his brain severely. He was unconscious and on life support for two months afterward. At first, his face was so disfigured that his three children were not allowed to see him.
The doctors told his wife, a nurse, that he was unlikely to survive, and she prepared the children for their father’s death. She wrote in a journal that she kept as she sat by his bed, “Very scary feeling that all his natural life is gone.” Nevertheless, he made an unexpected, though partial, recovery. His memory remains impaired, as does his speech; he may never be able to resume his legal career fully. It is possible that his income will be much lower for the rest of his life than it would otherwise have been, to the great disadvantage of his wife and children.
One of the two assailants, Daniel Hayward, demonstrated that he had learned nothing—at least, nothing of any comfort to the public—after he had ruined the barrister’s life. While awaiting trial on bail, he attacked the landlord of a pub and punched him in the face, for which he received a sentence of 21 days in prison.
Before passing sentence for the attack on Wareing, the judge was eloquent in his condemnation of the two youths. “You were looking for trouble and prepared to use any excuse to visit violence on anyone you came by. It is the callousness of this that is so chilling. . . . You do not seem to care that others have been blighted by your gratuitous violence.”
You might have thought that this was a prelude to the passing of a very long prison sentence on the two youths. If so, however, you would be entirely mistaken. Both received sentences of 18 months, with an automatic nine-month remission, more or less as of right. In other words, they would serve nine months in prison for having destroyed the health and career of a completely innocent man, caused his wife untold suffering, and deprived three young children of a normal father. One of the perpetrators, too, had shown a complete lack of remorse for what he had done and an inclination to repeat it.
Even at so young an age, nine months is not a very long time. Moreover, when I recall that for youths like these a prison sentence is likely to be a badge of honor rather than a disgrace, I cannot but conclude that the British state is either utterly indifferent to or incapable of the one task that inescapably belongs to it: preserving the peace and ensuring that its citizens may go about their lawful business in safety. It does not know how to deter, prevent, or punish. The remarks of the policeman in charge of the case were not encouraging. He said afterward that he hoped that “the sentences . . . send a clear warning to people who think it is acceptable to consume large quantities of alcohol, then assault members of the public in unprovoked attacks.” If the law supposes that, as Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, “the law is a ass—a idiot.”
As for Peter Wareing, even in his brain-damaged state, he had a better appreciation of things. He was evidently a man of some spirit: having been a salesman, he decided to study for the law, supported himself at law school by a variety of manual jobs, and qualified at the bar at the age of 40. The extent of his recovery astounded his neurosurgeon, who attributed it to Wareing’s determination and “bloody-mindedness.” He is avid to get back to work, but the contrast between the nominal 18-month sentence for his attackers and his own “life sentence,” as he called it, of struggle against disability is not lost on him. “If there were real justice,” he said, “they would have gone to prison for life.” Could any compassionate person disagree?
Perhaps the final insult is that the state is paying for him to have psychotherapy to suppress his anger. “I have this rage inside me for the people who did this,” he said. “I truly hate them.” Having failed in its primary duty, the state then treats the rage naturally consequent upon this failure as pathological, in need of therapy. On reading Peter Wareing’s story, ordinary, decent citizens will themselves feel a sense of impotent rage, despair, betrayal, and abandonment similar to his. Do we all need psychotherapy?
A second case similarly illustrates the refusal of the British state to take the lives of its citizens seriously. An engineer—Philip Carroll, the father of four—was tinkering with his car outside his home. Four drunken youths sat on a wall on his property, and he asked them to leave. They argued with him, and one of them threw a stone at his car. He chased this youth and caught him, but between 20 and 40 more youths loitering drunkenly nearby rallied round, and one 15-year-old hit the engineer to the ground, where he too banged his head and received severe brain damage. Unconscious for 18 days, he needed three operations to survive; and now he too has an impaired memory and might never work again.
According to his parents, the culprit, Michael Kuba-Kuba, felt deeply ashamed of what he had done, but this did not in the least prevent him during the trial from claiming (unsuccessfully, in the event) that he had been acting in self-defense. This does not sound like genuine shame to me but rather an attempt to get away with it. Before passing sentence, the judge said: “I have to try to ensure that the courts will treat incidents like this with great severity, to send out a message to other young people that violence is not acceptable.”
Another prelude, you might think, to a stiff sentence—but again you would be wrong. The young man got 12 months, of which he will serve six. Six months for the active life of a man—for having caused 30 or 40 years of disability, as well as incalculable suffering to the disabled man’s family! It is not difficult to imagine Kuba-Kuba returning from prison to a hero’s welcome, because he had simultaneously gotten away with near-murder and survived the rite of passage that imprisonment now represents. The message the judge sent out to other young people, no doubt unintentionally, was that youths may destroy other people’s lives with virtual impunity, for the British state does not care in the least about protecting them or deterring such crimes.
Two aspects of the case went unexamined in the newspapers. The first was that Kuba-Kuba’s parents were the owners of a grocery store specializing in African foods, and were deeply religious. The young man doubtless did not grow up in abject poverty, then; nor would he have derived his readiness for violence from anything his parents might have taught him.
The second was that Kuba-Kuba was a talented athlete, apparently of Olympic standard. He was a promising soccer player, so promising that several major teams were seriously interested in recruiting him. If, as seemed likely, he had made the grade, he would have become a multimillionaire by his early twenties, earning more in a year than most people in a lifetime. Lack of economic prospects and the frustration it entails can hardly explain a propensity to violence in his case, therefore.
We must look elsewhere for the source of his violent conduct. Possibly he was born a sport of nature, a creature biologically destined to violence—no doubt there are such cases. But far more likely was that an aggressive popular culture that glorifies egotistical impulsivity and denigrates self-control influenced him. Although his parents presented him, in their statements, as a paragon of virtue, he already had a conviction for theft, and he clearly hung about with teenagers who drank a lot and made a nuisance of themselves. Carroll confronted the youth who threw the stone precisely because he was exasperated by the unruly behavior that prevailed in his neighborhood, undeterred and unpunished by the state. A senior policeman said after the attack, “We have gangs of young people hanging around on street corners being abusive, intimidating and causing trouble. . . . They don’t give a damn about the police or the criminal justice system.”
And who can blame them? What deterrent, punishment, vengeance, or protection for society is six months in prison for having injured a man so badly that he did not recognize his wife or children for several months afterward, that he now has poor eyesight, has lost his sense of smell and taste, has to wear a brace on one foot and a hard hat to protect his skull, and says of himself, “I just have no interest in anything or anyone”—having previously been a highly successful man?
Having seen how the British state takes the serious lightly, let us now see how it takes the trivial seriously.
The newspapers reported the case of an Oxford student who, slightly drunk after celebrating the end of his exams, approached a mounted policeman. “Excuse me,” said the young man to the policeman, “do you realize your horse is gay?”
This was not a very witty remark, but it was hardly filled with deep malice either. It was, perhaps, a manifestation of the youthful silliness of which most of us have been guilty in our time. And Oxford was once a city in which drunken students often played, and were even expected to play, pranks on the police, such as knocking off their helmets.
The policeman did not think the student’s remark was innocent, however. He called two squad cars to his aid, and, in a city in which it is notoriously difficult to interest the police in so trivial a matter as robbery or burglary, they arrived almost at once. Apparently, the mounted policeman thought—if thought is quite the word I seek—that the young man’s remark was likely to “cause harassment, alarm or distress.” He was arrested and charged under the Public Order Act for having made a “homophobic remark.”
The young man spent a night in jail. Brought before the magistrates the following day, he was fined $140, which he refused to pay. The police then sent the case to the equivalent of the district attorney, who brought the student before the courts again but had to admit that there was not enough evidence to prove that his conduct had been disorderly.
The degree to which political correctness has addled British consciousness, like a computer virus, and destroyed all our traditional attachment to liberty, is illustrated by the words of one of the student’s friends who witnessed the incident. “[His] comments were . . . in jest,” he said. “It was very clear that they were not homophobic.” In other words, the friend accepted the premise that certain remarks, well short of incitement to commit violence or any actual crime—words that merely expressed an unpopular or intolerant point of view—would have constituted reasonable grounds for arrest. One consequence of the liberal intelligentsia’s long march through the institutions is the acceptance of the category of Thoughtcrime. On the other hand, political correctness permits genuine incitement to murder—such as the behead those who insult islam placards carried by Muslim demonstrators in London four months after the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper—to go completely unpunished. Other people, other customs.
Goodness knows how much time of how many people this episode in Oxford had wasted, and at what cost to the taxpayer—all in a country with the highest rate of crime (that is to say, of real crime) in the Western world. I could not help comparing the alacrity with which the police dealt with the “homophobic” remark with their indifference to an act of arson my wife witnessed shortly before we left England.
She noticed some youths setting fire to the contents of a dumpster just outside our house, a fire that could easily have spread to cars parked nearby. She called the police.
“What do you expect us to do about it?” they asked.
“I expect you to come and arrest them,” she said.
The police regarded this as a bizarre and unreasonable expectation. They refused point-blank to send anyone. Of course, if they had promised to make every effort to come quickly but had arrived too late, or even not at all, my wife would have understood and been satisfied. But she was not satisfied with the idea that youths could set dangerous fires without arousing even the minimal interest of the police. Surely, some or all of the youths would conclude that they could do anything they liked, and move on to more serious crimes.
My wife then insisted that the police should at least place the crime on their records. Again, they refused. She remonstrated with them at length, and at considerable cost to her equanimity. At last, and with the greatest reluctance, they recorded the crime and gave her a reference number for it.
This was not the end of the matter. About 15 minutes later, a more senior policeman telephoned to upbraid her and tell her she had been wasting police time with her insistence on satisfaction in so trivial a matter. The police, apparently, had more important things to do than suppress arson. Goodness knows what homophobic remarks were being made while the youths were merely setting a fire that could have spread, and in the process learning that they could do so with impunity.
It is not difficult to guess the reason for the senior policeman’s anger. My wife had forced his men to record a crime that they had no intention whatever of even trying to solve (though, with due expedition, it was eminently soluble), and this record in turn meant the introduction of an unwanted breath of reality into the bogus statistics, the manufacture of which is now every British senior policeman’s principal task—with the sole exception of enforcing the dictates of political correctness, thereby to head off the criticism levied at them for many decades by the liberal Left—not always without an element of justification. Proving their purity of heart is now more important to them than securing the safety of our streets: and thus Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Another story in the newspaper then caught my eye: the government wanted to ban smoking in British prisons.
At first sight, this might seem like a serious rather than a frivolous idea. More than nine-tenths of prisoners smoke, and, if they continue to do so, about a half of them will die prematurely as a result. The evidence that smoking is bad for the health has long since been overwhelming and incontrovertible. Therefore, the government could reasonably claim that the proposed ban was evidence of its solicitude for the welfare of the most despised of all sections of society, prisoners. And after all, what could be more serious, less frivolous, than saving lives, or trying to do so?
In general, I am not sentimental about the rights of prisoners. I don’t think the proposed ban infringes any of their rights; but it seems to me that there are plenty of reasons for treating prisoners decently and humanely other than the observance of their supposed rights. Decency and humanity are goods in themselves, after all. The proposed ban was not only hypocritical but gratuitously cruel and inhumane, and likely to prove ineffective into the bargain.
But it would be wrong even if effective.
Smoking is not illegal in Britain, and the government derives large revenues from the consumption of tobacco, indeed far larger than the profits of the tobacco companies. It uses these revenues not to lessen the taxes of non-smokers but merely as one among many other sources of revenue. Although high taxation on tobacco does discourage smoking, that is not, and never was, its primary aim.
At bottom, the proposal looks like the arbitrary bullying of a defenseless population in a fit of Pecksniffian moral enthusiasm. It is to deprive that population of a small privilege long accepted by custom and usage. And, of course, the moral enthusiasts of the government will not bear the practical cost of enforcing the ban; the prison wardens will. The proposal is an example
of the soft and creeping totalitarianism that comes with unctuous offers of benefits and avowals of purity of intention, rather than the boot-in-the-face variety of Orwell’s description. It is the insinuation of the government into the nooks and crannies of everyday life, on the pretext that people are incapable of deciding anything for themselves. Everyone is a child for whom the government is in permanent loco parentis (except children, of course, who can consent to sex at age 16 and are to be given the vote at the same age, if Chancellor Brown has his way).
The newspapers confirmed what I had long perceived before I left Britain: that the zeitgeist of the country is now one of sentimental moralizing combined with the utmost cynicism, where the government’s pretended concern for the public welfare coexists with the most elementary dereliction of duty. There is an absence of any kind of idealism that is a necessary precondition of probity, so that bad faith prevails almost everywhere. The government sees itself as an engineer of souls (to use the phrase so eloquently coined by Stalin with regard to writers who, of course, were expected to mold Homo Sovieticus by the power of their words). Government thus concerns itself with what people think, feel, and say—as well as with trying to change their freely chosen habits—rather than with performing its one inescapable duty: that of preserving the peace and ensuring that citizens may go about their lawful business in confidence and safety. It is more concerned that young men should not smoke cigarettes in prison or make silly jokes to policemen than that they should not attack and permanently maim their elders and betters.
One definition of decadence is the concentration on the gratifyingly imaginary to the disregard of the disconcertingly real. No one who knows Britain could doubt that it has very serious problems—economic, social, and cultural. Its public services—which already consume a vast proportion of the national wealth—are not only inefficient but completely beyond amelioration by the expenditure of yet more money. Its population is abysmally educated, to the extent that in a few more years Britain will not even have a well-educated elite. An often cynical and criminally minded population has been indoctrinated with shallow and gimcrack notions—for example, about social justice—that render it singularly unfit to compete in an increasingly competitive world. Not coincidentally, Britain has serious economic problems, even if the government has managed so far—in the eyes of the world, at least—to paper over the cracks. Unpleasant realities cannot be indefinitely disguised or conjured away, however.
Therefore I have removed myself: not that I imagine things are much better, only slightly different, in France. But one does not feel the defects of a foreign country in quite the same lacerating way as the defects of one’s native land; they are more an object of amused, detached interest than of personal despair.
Returning briefly to England from France for a speaking engagement, I bought three of the major dailies to catch up on the latest developments in my native land. The impression they gave was of a country in the grip of a thoroughgoing moral frivolity. In a strange inversion of proper priorities, important matters are taken lightly and trivial ones taken seriously.
This is not the charming or uplifting frivolity of Feydeau’s farces or Oscar Wilde’s comedies; it is the frivolity of real decadence, bespeaking a profound failure of nerve bound to have disastrous consequences for the country’s quality of life. The newspapers portrayed frivolity without gaiety and earnestness without seriousness—a most unattractive combination.
Of the two instances of serious matters taken with levity, the first concerned a 42-year-old barrister, Peter Wareing, attacked in the street while walking home from a barbecue with two friends, a man and a woman. They passed a group of seven teenagers who had been drinking heavily, one of whom, a girl, complained that the barrister and his friends were “staring” at them. Nowadays, English youth of aggressive disposition and porcelain-fragile ego regard such alleged staring as a justified casus belli.
The girl attacked the woman in the other party. When Wareing and his male friend tried to separate them, two of the youths, aged 18 and 16, in turn attacked them. They hit the barrister’s friend into some bushes, injuring him slightly, and then knocked the barrister to the ground, knocking him down a second time after he had struggled to his feet. This second time, his head hit the ground, injuring his brain severely. He was unconscious and on life support for two months afterward. At first, his face was so disfigured that his three children were not allowed to see him.
The doctors told his wife, a nurse, that he was unlikely to survive, and she prepared the children for their father’s death. She wrote in a journal that she kept as she sat by his bed, “Very scary feeling that all his natural life is gone.” Nevertheless, he made an unexpected, though partial, recovery. His memory remains impaired, as does his speech; he may never be able to resume his legal career fully. It is possible that his income will be much lower for the rest of his life than it would otherwise have been, to the great disadvantage of his wife and children.
One of the two assailants, Daniel Hayward, demonstrated that he had learned nothing—at least, nothing of any comfort to the public—after he had ruined the barrister’s life. While awaiting trial on bail, he attacked the landlord of a pub and punched him in the face, for which he received a sentence of 21 days in prison.
Before passing sentence for the attack on Wareing, the judge was eloquent in his condemnation of the two youths. “You were looking for trouble and prepared to use any excuse to visit violence on anyone you came by. It is the callousness of this that is so chilling. . . . You do not seem to care that others have been blighted by your gratuitous violence.”
You might have thought that this was a prelude to the passing of a very long prison sentence on the two youths. If so, however, you would be entirely mistaken. Both received sentences of 18 months, with an automatic nine-month remission, more or less as of right. In other words, they would serve nine months in prison for having destroyed the health and career of a completely innocent man, caused his wife untold suffering, and deprived three young children of a normal father. One of the perpetrators, too, had shown a complete lack of remorse for what he had done and an inclination to repeat it.
Even at so young an age, nine months is not a very long time. Moreover, when I recall that for youths like these a prison sentence is likely to be a badge of honor rather than a disgrace, I cannot but conclude that the British state is either utterly indifferent to or incapable of the one task that inescapably belongs to it: preserving the peace and ensuring that its citizens may go about their lawful business in safety. It does not know how to deter, prevent, or punish. The remarks of the policeman in charge of the case were not encouraging. He said afterward that he hoped that “the sentences . . . send a clear warning to people who think it is acceptable to consume large quantities of alcohol, then assault members of the public in unprovoked attacks.” If the law supposes that, as Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, “the law is a ass—a idiot.”
As for Peter Wareing, even in his brain-damaged state, he had a better appreciation of things. He was evidently a man of some spirit: having been a salesman, he decided to study for the law, supported himself at law school by a variety of manual jobs, and qualified at the bar at the age of 40. The extent of his recovery astounded his neurosurgeon, who attributed it to Wareing’s determination and “bloody-mindedness.” He is avid to get back to work, but the contrast between the nominal 18-month sentence for his attackers and his own “life sentence,” as he called it, of struggle against disability is not lost on him. “If there were real justice,” he said, “they would have gone to prison for life.” Could any compassionate person disagree?
Perhaps the final insult is that the state is paying for him to have psychotherapy to suppress his anger. “I have this rage inside me for the people who did this,” he said. “I truly hate them.” Having failed in its primary duty, the state then treats the rage naturally consequent upon this failure as pathological, in need of therapy. On reading Peter Wareing’s story, ordinary, decent citizens will themselves feel a sense of impotent rage, despair, betrayal, and abandonment similar to his. Do we all need psychotherapy?
A second case similarly illustrates the refusal of the British state to take the lives of its citizens seriously. An engineer—Philip Carroll, the father of four—was tinkering with his car outside his home. Four drunken youths sat on a wall on his property, and he asked them to leave. They argued with him, and one of them threw a stone at his car. He chased this youth and caught him, but between 20 and 40 more youths loitering drunkenly nearby rallied round, and one 15-year-old hit the engineer to the ground, where he too banged his head and received severe brain damage. Unconscious for 18 days, he needed three operations to survive; and now he too has an impaired memory and might never work again.
According to his parents, the culprit, Michael Kuba-Kuba, felt deeply ashamed of what he had done, but this did not in the least prevent him during the trial from claiming (unsuccessfully, in the event) that he had been acting in self-defense. This does not sound like genuine shame to me but rather an attempt to get away with it. Before passing sentence, the judge said: “I have to try to ensure that the courts will treat incidents like this with great severity, to send out a message to other young people that violence is not acceptable.”
Another prelude, you might think, to a stiff sentence—but again you would be wrong. The young man got 12 months, of which he will serve six. Six months for the active life of a man—for having caused 30 or 40 years of disability, as well as incalculable suffering to the disabled man’s family! It is not difficult to imagine Kuba-Kuba returning from prison to a hero’s welcome, because he had simultaneously gotten away with near-murder and survived the rite of passage that imprisonment now represents. The message the judge sent out to other young people, no doubt unintentionally, was that youths may destroy other people’s lives with virtual impunity, for the British state does not care in the least about protecting them or deterring such crimes.
Two aspects of the case went unexamined in the newspapers. The first was that Kuba-Kuba’s parents were the owners of a grocery store specializing in African foods, and were deeply religious. The young man doubtless did not grow up in abject poverty, then; nor would he have derived his readiness for violence from anything his parents might have taught him.
The second was that Kuba-Kuba was a talented athlete, apparently of Olympic standard. He was a promising soccer player, so promising that several major teams were seriously interested in recruiting him. If, as seemed likely, he had made the grade, he would have become a multimillionaire by his early twenties, earning more in a year than most people in a lifetime. Lack of economic prospects and the frustration it entails can hardly explain a propensity to violence in his case, therefore.
We must look elsewhere for the source of his violent conduct. Possibly he was born a sport of nature, a creature biologically destined to violence—no doubt there are such cases. But far more likely was that an aggressive popular culture that glorifies egotistical impulsivity and denigrates self-control influenced him. Although his parents presented him, in their statements, as a paragon of virtue, he already had a conviction for theft, and he clearly hung about with teenagers who drank a lot and made a nuisance of themselves. Carroll confronted the youth who threw the stone precisely because he was exasperated by the unruly behavior that prevailed in his neighborhood, undeterred and unpunished by the state. A senior policeman said after the attack, “We have gangs of young people hanging around on street corners being abusive, intimidating and causing trouble. . . . They don’t give a damn about the police or the criminal justice system.”
And who can blame them? What deterrent, punishment, vengeance, or protection for society is six months in prison for having injured a man so badly that he did not recognize his wife or children for several months afterward, that he now has poor eyesight, has lost his sense of smell and taste, has to wear a brace on one foot and a hard hat to protect his skull, and says of himself, “I just have no interest in anything or anyone”—having previously been a highly successful man?
Having seen how the British state takes the serious lightly, let us now see how it takes the trivial seriously.
The newspapers reported the case of an Oxford student who, slightly drunk after celebrating the end of his exams, approached a mounted policeman. “Excuse me,” said the young man to the policeman, “do you realize your horse is gay?”
This was not a very witty remark, but it was hardly filled with deep malice either. It was, perhaps, a manifestation of the youthful silliness of which most of us have been guilty in our time. And Oxford was once a city in which drunken students often played, and were even expected to play, pranks on the police, such as knocking off their helmets.
The policeman did not think the student’s remark was innocent, however. He called two squad cars to his aid, and, in a city in which it is notoriously difficult to interest the police in so trivial a matter as robbery or burglary, they arrived almost at once. Apparently, the mounted policeman thought—if thought is quite the word I seek—that the young man’s remark was likely to “cause harassment, alarm or distress.” He was arrested and charged under the Public Order Act for having made a “homophobic remark.”
The young man spent a night in jail. Brought before the magistrates the following day, he was fined $140, which he refused to pay. The police then sent the case to the equivalent of the district attorney, who brought the student before the courts again but had to admit that there was not enough evidence to prove that his conduct had been disorderly.
The degree to which political correctness has addled British consciousness, like a computer virus, and destroyed all our traditional attachment to liberty, is illustrated by the words of one of the student’s friends who witnessed the incident. “[His] comments were . . . in jest,” he said. “It was very clear that they were not homophobic.” In other words, the friend accepted the premise that certain remarks, well short of incitement to commit violence or any actual crime—words that merely expressed an unpopular or intolerant point of view—would have constituted reasonable grounds for arrest. One consequence of the liberal intelligentsia’s long march through the institutions is the acceptance of the category of Thoughtcrime. On the other hand, political correctness permits genuine incitement to murder—such as the behead those who insult islam placards carried by Muslim demonstrators in London four months after the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper—to go completely unpunished. Other people, other customs.
Goodness knows how much time of how many people this episode in Oxford had wasted, and at what cost to the taxpayer—all in a country with the highest rate of crime (that is to say, of real crime) in the Western world. I could not help comparing the alacrity with which the police dealt with the “homophobic” remark with their indifference to an act of arson my wife witnessed shortly before we left England.
She noticed some youths setting fire to the contents of a dumpster just outside our house, a fire that could easily have spread to cars parked nearby. She called the police.
“What do you expect us to do about it?” they asked.
“I expect you to come and arrest them,” she said.
The police regarded this as a bizarre and unreasonable expectation. They refused point-blank to send anyone. Of course, if they had promised to make every effort to come quickly but had arrived too late, or even not at all, my wife would have understood and been satisfied. But she was not satisfied with the idea that youths could set dangerous fires without arousing even the minimal interest of the police. Surely, some or all of the youths would conclude that they could do anything they liked, and move on to more serious crimes.
My wife then insisted that the police should at least place the crime on their records. Again, they refused. She remonstrated with them at length, and at considerable cost to her equanimity. At last, and with the greatest reluctance, they recorded the crime and gave her a reference number for it.
This was not the end of the matter. About 15 minutes later, a more senior policeman telephoned to upbraid her and tell her she had been wasting police time with her insistence on satisfaction in so trivial a matter. The police, apparently, had more important things to do than suppress arson. Goodness knows what homophobic remarks were being made while the youths were merely setting a fire that could have spread, and in the process learning that they could do so with impunity.
It is not difficult to guess the reason for the senior policeman’s anger. My wife had forced his men to record a crime that they had no intention whatever of even trying to solve (though, with due expedition, it was eminently soluble), and this record in turn meant the introduction of an unwanted breath of reality into the bogus statistics, the manufacture of which is now every British senior policeman’s principal task—with the sole exception of enforcing the dictates of political correctness, thereby to head off the criticism levied at them for many decades by the liberal Left—not always without an element of justification. Proving their purity of heart is now more important to them than securing the safety of our streets: and thus Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Another story in the newspaper then caught my eye: the government wanted to ban smoking in British prisons.
At first sight, this might seem like a serious rather than a frivolous idea. More than nine-tenths of prisoners smoke, and, if they continue to do so, about a half of them will die prematurely as a result. The evidence that smoking is bad for the health has long since been overwhelming and incontrovertible. Therefore, the government could reasonably claim that the proposed ban was evidence of its solicitude for the welfare of the most despised of all sections of society, prisoners. And after all, what could be more serious, less frivolous, than saving lives, or trying to do so?
In general, I am not sentimental about the rights of prisoners. I don’t think the proposed ban infringes any of their rights; but it seems to me that there are plenty of reasons for treating prisoners decently and humanely other than the observance of their supposed rights. Decency and humanity are goods in themselves, after all. The proposed ban was not only hypocritical but gratuitously cruel and inhumane, and likely to prove ineffective into the bargain.
But it would be wrong even if effective.
Smoking is not illegal in Britain, and the government derives large revenues from the consumption of tobacco, indeed far larger than the profits of the tobacco companies. It uses these revenues not to lessen the taxes of non-smokers but merely as one among many other sources of revenue. Although high taxation on tobacco does discourage smoking, that is not, and never was, its primary aim.
At bottom, the proposal looks like the arbitrary bullying of a defenseless population in a fit of Pecksniffian moral enthusiasm. It is to deprive that population of a small privilege long accepted by custom and usage. And, of course, the moral enthusiasts of the government will not bear the practical cost of enforcing the ban; the prison wardens will. The proposal is an example
of the soft and creeping totalitarianism that comes with unctuous offers of benefits and avowals of purity of intention, rather than the boot-in-the-face variety of Orwell’s description. It is the insinuation of the government into the nooks and crannies of everyday life, on the pretext that people are incapable of deciding anything for themselves. Everyone is a child for whom the government is in permanent loco parentis (except children, of course, who can consent to sex at age 16 and are to be given the vote at the same age, if Chancellor Brown has his way).
The newspapers confirmed what I had long perceived before I left Britain: that the zeitgeist of the country is now one of sentimental moralizing combined with the utmost cynicism, where the government’s pretended concern for the public welfare coexists with the most elementary dereliction of duty. There is an absence of any kind of idealism that is a necessary precondition of probity, so that bad faith prevails almost everywhere. The government sees itself as an engineer of souls (to use the phrase so eloquently coined by Stalin with regard to writers who, of course, were expected to mold Homo Sovieticus by the power of their words). Government thus concerns itself with what people think, feel, and say—as well as with trying to change their freely chosen habits—rather than with performing its one inescapable duty: that of preserving the peace and ensuring that citizens may go about their lawful business in confidence and safety. It is more concerned that young men should not smoke cigarettes in prison or make silly jokes to policemen than that they should not attack and permanently maim their elders and betters.
One definition of decadence is the concentration on the gratifyingly imaginary to the disregard of the disconcertingly real. No one who knows Britain could doubt that it has very serious problems—economic, social, and cultural. Its public services—which already consume a vast proportion of the national wealth—are not only inefficient but completely beyond amelioration by the expenditure of yet more money. Its population is abysmally educated, to the extent that in a few more years Britain will not even have a well-educated elite. An often cynical and criminally minded population has been indoctrinated with shallow and gimcrack notions—for example, about social justice—that render it singularly unfit to compete in an increasingly competitive world. Not coincidentally, Britain has serious economic problems, even if the government has managed so far—in the eyes of the world, at least—to paper over the cracks. Unpleasant realities cannot be indefinitely disguised or conjured away, however.
Therefore I have removed myself: not that I imagine things are much better, only slightly different, in France. But one does not feel the defects of a foreign country in quite the same lacerating way as the defects of one’s native land; they are more an object of amused, detached interest than of personal despair.
Friday, October 10, 2008
What Caused Our Economic Crisis?
H/T The Mouthpeace
How Congress Failed To Protect Our Economy
How We Win This Debate: Tell America To Google The Facts!
How Congress Failed To Protect Our Economy
How We Win This Debate: Tell America To Google The Facts!
Liberal admits Carbon Tax won't reduce emissions
H/T Bourque Newswatch
Liberal candidate Bob Friesen made a startling admission this week during Manitoba's only televised federal election campaign debate.
I was on the media panel for the debate and was surprised to hear Friesen admit his own party's carbon tax plan might not result in households reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
The former turkey farmer, who is running in Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia against Tory incumbent Steven Fletcher, was trying to explain how his party's carbon tax would help reduce emissions in Canada.
The whole purpose of the plan is to reduce emissions by "putting a price on carbon."
Friesen used all the scripted buzz words like how we have to put a tax on pollution in order to reduce our output and how -- inexplicably -- all Canadians would be better off financially.
Unfortunately for Friesen, when you drill down on the issue and examine how it would actually affect an average family, the plan falls apart.
It falls apart because the taxes imposed on a family would likely have little to no effect on the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. It wouldn't change their behaviour.
It's something even Friesen, after I pressed him on the issue, admitted to.
"It might not change behaviour," Friesen acknowledged during the debate.
Well, if it's not going to change behaviour, then it's just a straight tax grab.
According to the Liberal's Green Shift plan, an average Canadian family who heats their home with natural gas would pay up to $266 a year in carbon taxes on their gas bill.
HAVE TO HEAT HOMES
I asked Friesen how that would encourage families in Winnipeg -- who already lower their thermostats at night and already have well-insulated homes -- to use less natural gas.
They have to heat their homes.
And if they have to a pay a $22-a-month carbon tax, they're still going to heat their homes. There's not much they can do to change behaviour.
Friesen agreed. Which means the plan doesn't work.
Even if you accept the Liberal's argument they would cut income taxes by an equal amount, the plan still doesn't work because it doesn't reduce emissions.
If you raise a consumption tax by $266 and cut income taxes by $266, all you've done is taken money from one pocket and put it into another.
And you haven't reduced emissions.
Besides, the Liberal's numbers don't even add up.
They claim an average family would pay about $250 a year from the carbon tax. But on natural gas alone, the party estimates the average household would pay between $228 and $266. Well, that brings the household to an average of $247 before including all the other carbon taxes.
For example, the carbon tax would be applied to diesel. So everything that gets shipped by truck -- which is almost everything -- will go up in price. If you drive a diesel vehicle, your price is going up. If you live in the north where transportation costs are already high, a carbon tax would see prices soar further.
And your bus pass would go up, too.
Under the Liberal plan you would pay a 95-cent carbon tax on a 20-pound tank of propane. Again, it's not going to make you have fewer BBQs. It's simply a straight tax.
Electricity costs would also go up under the carbon tax. The carbon tax would be applied to coal, which generates a lot of Canada's electricity.
But it would also apply in provinces like Manitoba, which still relies on natural gas and coal as backups to hydro power.
The upshot is a carbon tax would cost an average Canadian household much more than $250 a year.
And it wouldn't result in fewer emissions.
Even Bob Friesen understands that.
You can watch him on Shaw Cable Channel 9 Sunday at 6 p.m. during a rebroadcast.
ASTONISHING VIDEO EVIDENCE FOUND!!! the Clinton administration admitting their policy of "BANK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION".
Amazing, just amazing. This whole debacle was created by a succession of Democrats, and they now blame Republicans. Carter created it (CRA), Clinton loosened up requirements, Obama sued banks to get them to make very risky mortgages available to low income, high risk people. To make banks comply with Clinton's "Bank Affirmative Action" requirements. Barney Frank and the democrats blocked any efforts to reign in and oversee the looming crisis. But Hey, Blame Bush. These people should be in jail, not elected office!
Read more...
Read more...
Dion Screws up, again and again and again
H/T Dr Roy's Thoughts
In an attempt to have an English interview with CTV, Mr Dion couldn't wrap his head around a straight forward easy question. This Joker wants to be Prime Minister of a predominantly English speaking nation, and can't understand simple English? I think that after the election he should go back to academia and study a little more English.
Listen to the lame excuse offered by Geoff Regan(L).
In an attempt to have an English interview with CTV, Mr Dion couldn't wrap his head around a straight forward easy question. This Joker wants to be Prime Minister of a predominantly English speaking nation, and can't understand simple English? I think that after the election he should go back to academia and study a little more English.
Listen to the lame excuse offered by Geoff Regan(L).
Thursday, October 9, 2008
In Canada spies are us
H/T Canada Free Press
by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
January 26, 2005
Operation Sidewinder. It sounds like a Hollywood spy movie starring Harrison Ford.
For a long time, Sidewinder moldered on the shelf as just another conspiracy theory.
In reality, Sidewinder was a controversial report put together by a small but hard-working team of RCMP and CSIS (Canadian Security & Intelligence Service) officials.
It was Sidewinder that sounded the first alarm bells that China is one of the greatest ongoing threats to Canada’s national security and Canadian industry.
But even after Sidewinder was side swiped by former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, intelligence proves that there is no doubt that an active Chinese Intelligence Service has been able to gain influence on vital sectors of the Canadian economy, including real estate, high technology and security. The bottom line is that this unprecedented influence gave China ongoing access to economic, political and some military intelligence in Canada.
Operation Sidewinder met with a fate that silenced ringing alarm bells. Officially entitled Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada, it was buried. Following orders from persons unknown, CSIS watered down Sidewinder’s worrisome conclusions and replaced it with a revised document called, Echo.
CSIS officials maintain that they buried Sidewinder because it relied on nothing more than conspiracy theories--even though http://www.asianpacificpost.com heralded the news in August 2003 that some 3,500 Chinese spy companies had been identified operating in Canada and the United States.
While CSIS claimed that conspiracy caused them to go mum, other intelligence sources are saying that political pressure forced CSIS to abandon the Sidewinder report.
Read on...
by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
January 26, 2005
Operation Sidewinder. It sounds like a Hollywood spy movie starring Harrison Ford.
For a long time, Sidewinder moldered on the shelf as just another conspiracy theory.
In reality, Sidewinder was a controversial report put together by a small but hard-working team of RCMP and CSIS (Canadian Security & Intelligence Service) officials.
It was Sidewinder that sounded the first alarm bells that China is one of the greatest ongoing threats to Canada’s national security and Canadian industry.
But even after Sidewinder was side swiped by former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, intelligence proves that there is no doubt that an active Chinese Intelligence Service has been able to gain influence on vital sectors of the Canadian economy, including real estate, high technology and security. The bottom line is that this unprecedented influence gave China ongoing access to economic, political and some military intelligence in Canada.
Operation Sidewinder met with a fate that silenced ringing alarm bells. Officially entitled Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada, it was buried. Following orders from persons unknown, CSIS watered down Sidewinder’s worrisome conclusions and replaced it with a revised document called, Echo.
CSIS officials maintain that they buried Sidewinder because it relied on nothing more than conspiracy theories--even though http://www.asianpacificpost.com heralded the news in August 2003 that some 3,500 Chinese spy companies had been identified operating in Canada and the United States.
While CSIS claimed that conspiracy caused them to go mum, other intelligence sources are saying that political pressure forced CSIS to abandon the Sidewinder report.
Read on...
AMERICA HAS ENOUGH OIL TO BE THE # 1 OIL-PRODUCING NATION IN THE WORLD
H/T The Astute Blogger
According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia.
An oil field was just recently discovered in the South Dakota/Montana region which has three times as much oil as the Rockies.
There is also a tremendous amount of oil in the ANWR region.
All that oil, and we don't drill for it.
Why?
Because of pressure from environmentalists.
We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.
I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.
That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.
According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia.
An oil field was just recently discovered in the South Dakota/Montana region which has three times as much oil as the Rockies.
There is also a tremendous amount of oil in the ANWR region.
All that oil, and we don't drill for it.
Why?
Because of pressure from environmentalists.
We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.
I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.
That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.
Liberals crafted heavily criticized food inspection system
OTTAWA -- The architecture of the recently revamped food inspection system - an issue that has dogged the Conservatives during the federal election - was crafted when the Liberals were in power in 2005, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed.
The design of pilot tests for the Compliance Verification System (CVS), rolled out at federally regulated meat plants in April, began in August 2005, said Brian Evans, the agency's executive vice-president.
At the time, the agency was operating under the direction of former Liberal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, who lost in the 2006 election. Ujjal Dosanjh, currently seeking re-election in Vancouver, was in charge of food-safety policy as minister of health; he now serves as health critic for the Liberals.
Read on...
The design of pilot tests for the Compliance Verification System (CVS), rolled out at federally regulated meat plants in April, began in August 2005, said Brian Evans, the agency's executive vice-president.
At the time, the agency was operating under the direction of former Liberal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, who lost in the 2006 election. Ujjal Dosanjh, currently seeking re-election in Vancouver, was in charge of food-safety policy as minister of health; he now serves as health critic for the Liberals.
Read on...
1000 Sundays
H/T Little Green Footballs
Obama says, Rev Wright introduced me to my "Christian Faith". Which then begs the question,what were his religious beliefs before that?
Obama says, Rev Wright introduced me to my "Christian Faith". Which then begs the question,what were his religious beliefs before that?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
