This amount of arrogance, the sheer impardonable pretension, is bound to be popular.
Now that a goose group has claimed responsibility for the forced landing in the Hudson, I fear a backlash against all geese. We must know that this is only a splinter faction, and doesn't respresent the attitude of all geese, and certainly not of fowl generally.
So I will not tolerate any intolerance against geese, ducks, loons, chickens, or turkeys here.
It has been known since April that the LA Times had a videotape (or recording) of Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn at a party for Jew-hater Rashid Khalidi. The Times story said
First the Times refused to release the tape because they said they didn't want to unduly influence the election.At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Department of Peace? Please, let's strangle H.R. 808 at birth:
(a) In General- The Secretary shall--
- work proactively and interactively with each branch of the Federal Government on all policy matters relating to conditions of peace;
- serve as a delegate to the National Security Council;
- call on the intellectual and spiritual wealth of the people of the United States and seek participation in its administration and in its development of policy from private, public, and nongovernmental organizations; and
- monitor and analyze causative principles of conflict and make policy recommendations for developing and maintaining peaceful conduct.
Over at Ace of Spades HQ, commenter Nicole writes:
Today I referred to my hair as "brown" ("dark brown" to be exact). I then proceeded to say "I hate the color brown--it's not strong enough; it's boring."
Am I a racist?
Yes, Nicole, you are a racist. Not for hating the color brown, but because you used the word "dark" in a potentially insensitive manner that could incite hatred. Shame on you. The only way to absolve yourself from this unspeakable act is to dye your hair blue and vote for Obama.
I've been highly entertained by the Democratic primary over the past several months. Not caring a whit about political correctness, I've found the charges of racism and sexism to be great fun. But Hillary crossed a line.
She may not have meant to cross it, but cross it she did. It's a line we all have been aware of, even alluded to by Michelle Obama in her gas station quote. And I've been dreading what would happen if some (especially right-wing) kook crossed the line. I never imagined that the allegedly astute Hillary Clinton would give this as a reason not to drop out:
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it,"It's OK to talk about the significance of assassination, and assassination attempts, as they relate to American history. As Memorial Day approaches we do well to remember Lincoln, the Kennedys, King, and others.
Ted Kennedy is fighting for his life and she has the lack of judgment to invoke RFK's assasination to make a political point-- a point which also injects the idea of killing a presidential nominee. Do not even attempt to spin this for me. It's not gonna work.And having done so, you don't then try to put yourself in a position that would be benefit from an assassination.
This is a melt down. Things are out of control at her campaign. I think with this remark, she's taken herself out of contention for VP. Not just because I'm angry, but because she's too out of control to ever be President.
Rafael Medoff at NRO notes that the State Department purposefully watered down a report on human rights abuses, especially in China, North Korea, and:Now it is the Palestinian Authority’s turn to benefit from the State Department’s excessive generosity. On March 13, State released an 84-page report [PDF] on “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism.” While describing anti-Semitic incidents in various countries around the world, the report was oddly reticent when it came to the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
Searching the report, I could find scarce mention of Palestine, and yet by all accounts this is the region of the world in which enmity for Jews and Israel is at its sharpest. Could this possibly be part of an effort to appease Mahmoud Abbas, in preparation for his May visit to the White House? After all, Abbas is not just a noted Jew-hater, he got a Soviet Phd in Jew hating.
President Bush wants to achieve something in his final days in office: peace in Palestine. To achieve that goal, he appears willing to overlook not only past sins, but current ones as well. For instance, in the wake of the murder of eight rabbinical students, Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch says that the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper (under Mahmoud Abbas' control)
... describes the murderer of eight yeshiva students in Jerusalem as a "groom" and his burial as his "wedding celebration." The story in Mahmoud Abbas's Al Hayat Al Jadida goes on to evoke the neighborhood Jabal Mukaber's "week of anticipation... preparing themselves for the wedding procession."Until, and not before, the PLO. Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority renounce acts of violence by civilians against civilians to achieve political ends, and acknowledge Israel's right to exist, they should not be allowed to set foot on American soil, and a fortiori, should not receive the public relations benefit from being seen hugging and shaking hands with the President of these United States.
The term "wedding" is the expression commonly used in PA society, and in PA schoolbooks as well, to describe the death of Shahids - Martyrs for Allah. According to Islamic tradition, they will wed the 72 Dark- Eyed Maidens (Virgins) of Paradise. [emphasis PMW]
From Moe Lane of Redstate and the Gateway Pundit comes this poor use of of leverage: six adult brats disrupt a Catholic Mass in Chicago on Easter Sunday. I don't care why, and hesitate even to say "Iraq war", because they don't deserve it. The important part to me is that they were there to compain about something the Church and probably the congregation is against, to gain for themselves some measure of attention.
This has all of the elements of lunactivism, all rolled into a nice little package.
They call it "raising awareness", but it's an attention-getting device no different than a toddler's temper tantrum.
The setting chosen for the idiocy ensured the brats' phyical safety.
They wasted leverage. Catholic Mass, like almost all church services, is open to everyone, and a disruption like theirs was sure to result in blog stories like this one. I feel dirty and ill-used even giving them the attention they were after, but I feel compelled to note the absurdity of it all.
The lunactivism is shown most clearly because they were preaching to the choir: most of the cathedral goers are probably against the war, but the act of lunacy drives a wedge between the activists and their audience. All of the worshippers were aware of the war. were The only awareness they raised was a negative perception about those opposing it.
And guess what: despit the best efforts of anti-war leftists in Congress and nursery schools, Iraq is becoming a country again: it's own country, not ruled by a thug and not run by our enemies. In time, we will leave there, too. But for now, our armed forces are giving terrorism a bad name in Iraq.
And so there is this from Michael J. Totten:
Meanwhile, "Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War" and the Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice are giving anti-war activism a bad name in America.
The response to Barack Obama's speech yesterday responding to criticism of his pastor and mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright has fallen in to a pattern as predictable as the speech itself. White Liberals fawned, black liberals swooned, and conservatives (who, unlike liberals, mostly don't care about skin color) pointed out that the whole thing was a Big Lie:
TalkingPointsMemo wets its collective pants:
Obama went big, consciously presenting his personal story -- and candidacy -- as both symbol and realization of American history, addressing race, Wright, and more.
I just finished watching Barack Obama's "race" speech. Obviously I'm not a supporter, but I thought it was flatter than last night's Jolt Cola. And Obama needed a jolt to overcome the inflammatory comments made by his longtime pastor and spiritual advisor.
Do you believe that acknowledging the very real legacy of discrimination--racism, sexism, bigotry, whatever-phobia--is best addressed by investing in the health, welfare and education of all children in the ways that Barack Obama supports? Does he support, for example, school choice and/or private school vouchers? Does he support, for example, a flatter, fairer tax system, which undeniably allows the disadvantaged poor to keep more of their own money? Or does he believe that we must "take care of" the disadvantaged by spending more on failing schools and raising taxes on those who provide jobs ("reverse the tax cuts") to Americans AND middle-class Americans (what about that "renounce the middle class" thing?) so we can fund more government programs?
Barry had to come out and endorse Wright's message of racial hatred while claiming not to do so, and that's just what he did. "White folks do it, too" is not only irrelevant to the question at hand, but is false. White folks do not preach idiotic conspiracy theories from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday -- at least not if they want to stay in the preacher business.True, we must learn from and remember our past. The echoes of racism and slavery are here; they are in our every day. The echoes of the past ripple through these United States, they stain our conscience, they strain our unity. However, they are echoes. By their very nature, they come from the past. Echoes weaken over time and distance. They diminish. They die.
Those who, with courage and honesty, look at the great American landscape and see those echoes are right, and they are just. But they who take those echoes, who reinforce them, and give them greater amplitude ... they are wrong. Reverend Wright is wrong.
[Originally posted 3/13/08 12:57pm ; updates below]
Barack Obama's pastor is a racist who thinks 9/11 was our fault. OK. There are a lot of racists who think 9/11 was our fault, though not many in senior advisory positions for presidential campaigns. Why is this an issue?
As the inimitable FrankJ says:
Obama's book's title, The Audacity of Hope, came from a sermon of his pastor Jeremiah Wright. I guess he chose another sermon of Wright to base his book on, it would be called Jesus Hates Honkeys.
The existence of Wright offends me as a Christian, but this is supposed to be who Obama got his spiritual teachings from? In fact, secretly being a Muslim might actually be better than taking this guy's sermons seriously.
But isn't Obama's faith off limits for criticism? After all, we didn't dig up kooky things Mitt Romney's pastor or Hillary Clinton's priestess say. Why Obama?
This isn't vague references to being a (*gasp*) Mormon or obscure rules about goat sacrifices. These are specific statements made over a long period of time by someone the candidate has called a "mentor". That is implicit endorsment of the man's views.
Someone with such finely tuned hearing that he can pick up racism in Geraldine Ferraro's assessment that Obama is popular precisely and only because of his skin color should be able to detect it when it's preached at him from the pulpit.
Obama cannot get away with disavowing knowledge of this guy's views, nor with distancing himself from specific statements. He has to either throw this pastor under the bus, or better, explain why he disagrees with the pastor and still goes to the church.
[Update: Obama answers on HuffPo
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
While that answers many questions, it raises others. Saying that "he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor" introduces irrelevancy. No one said he was your political advisor, just that he was a senior advisor to your campaign and on career moves.
Let's play Parse The Clintonese™, shall we?
[...] And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
"And the sermons I heard him preach"
Obama heard several sermons. He equivocates mightily: he does not deny hearing these hate-filled sermons, though he seems to deny it. And he does not deny that other, possibly more offensive material is appeared in other sermons; he merely says that the sermons he "heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God" and our neighbor. Every sermon says that, but what else do they say? And because something is "related to" something else which is orthodox and positive doesn't mean that it is itself orthodox and positive.
Still and all, I am glad that the Senator has repudiated the remarks made by the retiring pastor. I regret asking that he throw the pastor under the bus, but now that he's done it, let's just move on.]
[Update 20080316
It seems I was right to parse 'the sermons I heard always said' as Red Herring. He was there.]
You want hate crime? This is a hate crime. Palestinians cheer a massacre at a Jewish school. Eight students were killed, 35 others injured. The gunman, a Muslim and supporter of Hamas, was killed by a an off-duty Israeli Army officer who lived nearby.
The jihadist hate group Hamas probably planned the attack, and certainly praised it afterward. This is their modus operandi: stir up hatred and praise terrorism, lob bombs at the Israelis, and then become outraged when they retaliate on poor widdle Hamas. It's possible that Hamas didn't actually get involved in the attack until it was clear that it was popular with the Palestinians, at which time they opportunistically and cynically claimed credit.
Like the attack at Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in 2007, there was a Jewish hero. Unlike Professor Librescu, trapped in a gun-free zone, this hero was armed and stopped the killer dead.
Now that's a cause for celebration.
Do you?
[This was originally posted at my tech blog, before I split off political and philosophical rants here and left the stuff I actually know anything about over there. I'm posting this here now because in thinking about the Global War on Terror and its impact on civil liberty, I wanted to get back to basics. I now see several flaws in my reasoning and perspective, and will address those in an upcoming post. ]
I've been thinking lately about human rights. You know, the kind for which men died at Normandy, at Lexington, and Golgotha.
That kind which stem not from the lifestyle to which you are accustomed, not from your power to secure them, nor from government largesse, but those which you have by virtue of your existence.
Warning: I have made no effort to keep the following suitable for the small-minded in general nor for Hate Crimes Commissioners in particular. Others may read freely on...
...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....
I don't favor government regulation or interference in speech or press, and think we have too much interference already. Remember that as you read what follows. Because I think that unless we ourselves restrain them, our freedoms of speech and press will soon be gone.
Free speech and press are free in the sense of having no legal restraint on the content of what is said. But every outrageous conspiracy theory, every statement with which our nation's enemies agree, and every criticism of our country does have a cost. In addition, there are already many constraints on speech, including restrictions on fighting words, on "hate speech", and on lying for gain.
I have never liked the phrase "Speaking truth to power", conjuring as it does a Marxist class struggle in which those in power do not know the truth, but the keepers of truth have no power. In reality, those claiming to do it are often repeating the tired KnownFacts™ and talking points from their favorite blog to people who would be disinclined to contradict them for fear of being politically incorrect.
We are free to make fools of ourselves with outrageous conspiracy theories, but when these are repeated they lead to distrust in reality, especially among those already convinced of the relative nature of truth. They lead directly to Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell, purveyors of simple falsehoods who are, or were, unwilling to accept that our nation is the object of a concerted attack by a foreign group who seek nothing less than its destruction.
We are free to disagree with the government, or with any particular agent or institution in government. But is it wise to do so? Many liberals believe, or act as if they believe, that they must always disagree, at the top of their little lungs, with whatever those in power say (as long as those in power are conservative or Republican).
Some who would describe themselves as civil libertarians agree with constraints on "hate speech" and on false advertising, and support further penalties for them, without so much as considering the contradiction between free speech and curbing hate speech. Even if something is true, many would say, if it might lead someone else to be angry against a protected group, it must not be said. But what do they think of attacks on the government and its policies, even when they are in alignment with the policy positions of our nations enemies? These things, they say, must be protected as free speech.
Now, of course political speech should be the most protected. But because something may be said, must it be said? Because the government takes a position, is it necessary to publicly contradict it, even if you disagree with it? Why not just shut up?
Disagreements with the government must be aired, the answer comes, because we must keep the government in check.
The best then that can be said for these disagreements is that they are a bitter medicine which will in the long run be good for us. That implicitly admits that the statements do us harm. This manner of thinking arrogates the judgment of the speaker above that of the rest of us.
Take, for instance, the blinders-on anti-American reporting of Juan Cole. Rather than admit that progress is being made in Iraq, Cole continues spout to doom and gloom, in a clear effort to convince his readers that the effort in Iraq is a foregone failure. Why? What possible good could come of that?
Newt Gingrich recently told the National Press Club that civil libertarians should imagine the kind of restrictions that will come about if an American city is lost to terrorism. You can guess, without reading it here, the Keith Olbermann reflexive reaction. Liberty is preserved, Olbermann says, by its exercise. That is true in a vacuous sense, as is most everything Olbermann says, but ignores the result of abusing liberty.
We do so at our own peril. For if we continue to take up the cause of our nation's enemies, we draw ourselves ever closer to the day in which one of them is successful in destroying one of our cities, or an allied city, or several such. We risk overly broad restrictions on free speech such as McCain-Feingold. Balance the benefits and the cost. The likelihood of the foregoing must be very small indeed, or the benefits of the action very great, to take any action which could result in it.
Nate Nelson has a post over at Redstate about the latest hate crime law Congress is trying to pass. The bill is unconstitutional on its face, being an attempt to intrude Federal power into State and local matters. Nate does a good job of listing the reasons why it's such a bad bill, and why hate crimes laws are so bad in general.
But Nate misses the point of hate crime legislation. It isn't to punish those who commit the crimes per se, even though that is how the laws are written. The purpose of hate crime legislation is to legislate morality.
The illogic of passing laws with the expressed purpose of punishing people who break other laws is transparent. If the haters in question were going to obey the new law, they would have obeyed the old one.
It's a truism that 'you can't legislate morality', but of course the law does affect morality. What you cannot do is pass a law and expect a given person to be moral because of it. What you can expect is for society as a whole to tend to internalize as moral what the law says. How many politicians excuse or even justify their behavior with "I have done nothing illegal"? And so for ordinary folks, as well, especially the young and the shallow.
Hate crime laws put the people on notice that the government doesn't like people being picked on for their skin color, religion, etc. The biggest problem is their failure to generalize: if you're going to have hate crime laws, make it double-extra-illegal to victimize someone based on their group membership, period, and quit trying to make lists. Everyone would be covered equally by the law, then.
But that would not fulfill the other purpose, which is to let Democrats act like they're doing something to advance the cause of their current crop of victims.
Dr. Sanity likes to refer to the Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) as displacement: unable to attack Islamic fascism because to do so would violate Tolerance, Multiculturalism, and their anti-jingoism, the Western Left instead turns their ire against George Bush.
But what of these memes:
I hate racism. My parents raised their children not to see other people for their race, wealth, or outward appearance, but to treat everyone the same. The idea of using violence against someone because of they are different is difficult for me even to consider. Hate someone for their their religion or sexual orientation? How silly. Even sillier is hating someone for their race or gender, something over which they have no control.
The Congressional majority appears to be filled with race-baiters and fearmongers. Unfortunately, they aren't content merely to stir up trouble, like other race-baiting fearmongers. No, these folks want to assert federal authority to prosecute based on their perceptions of your perceptions. What race-baiting fearmongers think you are thinking will become the standard by which your actions will be judged.
The standard drumbeat from the left for years has been that the right is ... I won't use the phrase involving throats ... trying to pass laws to legislate morality. As if anyone ever tried to pass a law they considered immoral. But now, a veritable stampede of House Democrats are trying to turn people into non-racist, non-sexist, and otherwise legislate their version of morality.
HR 1592, like all thought crime laws, would make some crimes more illegal if you're thinking certain illegal thoughts while you commit them. It also extends the Federal hate crime definition to include sexual orientation and gender.
Motive is always a dispositive factor in finding a person guilty or not guilty of a crime. The same physical action can be considered
Sticks and stonesBut the one who responded to the ethnic slur is filled with hate, and is committing a crime based on the perceived or actual race of his victim. Or maybe it was all about the poker game and testosterone. Tough to tell, isn't it? Are their actions really any different?
May break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.
