Guns, Equality, A Land Where "Thieves Rule The Night," & An Insane NYT "News Analysis" (Updated)

There is an old saying, God created man, Samuel Colt made them equal.

We saw the exercise in equality play out in the news just the other night when an intruder broke in on a woman and her two young children. They tried to hide from him in an attic crawl space. He sought them out. The woman had a .38 caliber revolver that she emptied into him, then escaped unharmed with her children. In another story in the news, a young woman in India and her boyfriend were on a bus, unarmed, when they were attacked by several men. The men beat the boyfriend, then gang raped and disemboweled the woman.

[Update: This from Instapundit - GOOD: Delhi Gang-Rape: Indian Women Stocking Up On Guns For Protection. God created man and woman. Col. Colt made them equal.]

Those are anecdotes. So what happens on a meta-scale when a nation is disarmed, and people are unequal to the criminal element? For that, we can compare the U.S. and the U.K.

In the U.K., gun ownership is virtually banned. Even the police force in the U.K. is, for the most part, unarmed. Raw figures show that the UK has a lower homicide rate than the U.S., 1.2 per 100,000 of population in the U.K. versus 4.8 in the U.S. But when it comes to violent crime overall, the UK is a much greater hotbed than the U.S., with 2,034 violent criminal incidents in the U.K. per 100,000 of population versus 486 in the U.S. An anecdote from a British police officer gives a chilling feel for the ramifications of a disarmed society - where the criminals are very often more powerful at the point of the crime than either the citizens or the police. This from the Police Inspector Blog:

An ATM raid is where a gang steals a digger, a flatbed truck and some old 4X4 vehicles. They then drive in convoy, at night, to an isolated bank or other ATM site, use the digger to smash the ATM out of the wall, load it on to the flatbed and ‘make off’ to a dump site.

At the dump site, which will be a field or a clearing in a wood somewhere, the kind of place they also use to burn the metal out of stolen cable, the ‘engineer’ will be waiting in another 4X4, ready to cut the ATM open and release the cash. The cash is then divided and the gang abandon all but the getaway vehicles and run for home.

This is a high value business. Some ATM’s have up to £1/4 million inside if they are ‘hit’ at the right time. Every county police officer knows where I am coming from with this. Here is the bad bit for us.

If an insomniac wandering about in the early hours sees such a raid and calls it in, we have to respond. When we eventually arrive, single crewed or if we are lucky, double crewed, if the offenders are still there or if we come across the convoy ‘making off’ we can expect to be met with extreme violence by at least eight hardened criminals. They are better armed than us and will ram our family saloon cars off the road in an instant.

If police officers are caught in the open they will be met with baseball bats, iron bars and firearms. They will also be heavily outnumbered. Even if we manage to get one of the counties very few police dogs to respond, the dogs can be stabbed or shot and the handlers beaten half to death. This has happened in Ruralshire. With our tiny numbers of police available for such a huge county, our pathetically underpowered vehicles and our uniquely unarmed status, the thieves rule this county at night now, not us.

It would seem that disarming the populace has the effect of making them game animals for the predators. And the same holds true for the police. It has the point of making the law abiding citizens unequal when it counts most, when their lives and liberty are on the line.

Equality is perhaps the greatest good - so the progs assure us. They demand equality for women, for minorities, some even for flora and fauna. You have to wonder why these calls for equality end completely when it comes to the ability of the average law abiding person to protect their lives and liberty?

Update: As we prepare for the upcoming Obama push to limit the availability of guns to law abiding Americans, the NYT continues their daily rhetorical support for such measure with a "news analysis" piece, More Guns = More Killing. Even for the wildly partisan NYT, this one should win an award for its over the top and under sourced claims.

The NYT notes that the NRA solution to Sandy Hook style massacres is to expand legal gun ownership among the law abiding and to put armed individuals in our schools. The Times then tries to make the point that more guns just means more killing by using the examples of Latin American countries, all with unstable governments, poor economies, many with massive problems of narco-terrorism, and several with left wing insurgencies, such as FARC. They are not quite relevant comparisons to the U.S..

The NYT also relies heavily on quotes from David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He makes the remarkable claim that “[t]here is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all.”

The NYT let's that statement stand, apparently unable to find anyone around their water cooler who might contest it. To assist the NYT on this, let's point out that one who would contest it would be professor and author John Lott, who has studied the correlation between gun ownership and violent crime and written extensively on the topic. This from an interview with Prof. Lott:

There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn’t tell the whole story. Don’t statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don’t understand is that this “acquaintance murder” number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. “Acquaintance” covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won’t tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn’t this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of “shall-issue” laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent. . . .

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won’t more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

The NYT brings up Australia as proof that gun bans are effective.

After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. Before then, Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent, and there have been no mass killings, said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.

They don't quite tell the whole story. The homicide rate in Australia, low in 1996 at 1.9, increased in the three years after their gun ban before dropping to 1.3 in 2007. Regardless, overall, violent crime in Australia has exploded since gun control was imposed, with the sum of violent crime, including sexual assaults, robberies and assaults, increasing about 20% in just 12 years.

In comparison, the violent crime rate in the U.S. has fallen precipitously in the same time frame:

Indeed, it would seem Australia is going through much the same experience as Britain, with a fairly low homicide rate, but a disarmed populace increasingly suffering at the hands of violent criminals who hold the upper hand at the point of their crimes. When "thieves rule this country at night," that is not a society in which I would like to live. Nor would most of the NYT's employees, I would imagine, were the violence ever to be directed into their fantasy world.

Back to the article. The NYT writes:

“To put people with guns who are not accountable or trained in places where there are lots of innocent people is just dangerous,” Ms. Peters said, noting that lethal force is used to deter minor crimes like shoplifting. . . .

There are a number of responses to this. The NYT provides zero facts to justify Ms. Peters bald assertion. According to Dr. Lott, statistically, the degree at which civilians with gun permits criminally misuse their weapons is very low, and indeed, no higher or lower than that level of misuse among trained police officers. Moreover, according to at least one retired LAPD detective, it is quite likely that gun permit holders are actually more experienced with their weapons than the average police officer. This bald claim by Ms. Peters is just pure arrogance combined with a mistrust of the unwashed masses.

Lastly, there is this gem from the NYT.

“If you’re living in a ‘Mad Max’ world, where criminals have free rein and there’s no government to stop them, then I’d want to be armed,” said Dr. Hemenway of Harvard. “But we’re not in that circumstance. We’re a developed, stable country.”

The canard in Dr. Hemenway's analysis is glaring. Criminals will always have "free reign" for a period of time when a crime is being committed - at least if the intended victims are unarmed or otherwise unable to mount an effective defense. Police respond after the fact, when the criminal's carnage has either been done or been stopped. For example:

1. Sandy Hook Elementary School was a "gun free zone" where the teachers and staff were prevented by law from carrying concealed weapons. Once the shooter gained access to the school, police were notified. It took police twenty minutes to arrive, during which time the shooter killed 26 children and teachers.

2. In Texas, two men attempted a home invasion. Inside the home were a teen age boy and his young sister. The boy retrieved his father's AR15 and proceeded to shoot the criminals, protecting his life and the life of his sister. Police arrived in time to take the suspects to the hospital.

3. In Georgia, a home invasion ended when a woman, defending herself and her two small children, shot her assailant five times. Police arrived in time to take the suspect to the hospital.

4. In Texas, during the Luby Cafeteria Massacre that claimed the lives of 23 people, a diner at the cafeteria who had left her weapon in her car in order to comply with Texas gun control laws at the time, testified that she could easily have stopped the massacre had she had her weapon in her purse. Police response time was about 15 minutes.

5. In Connecticut, during a home invasion by two men, the husband, Dr. Petit, was beaten and put into the basement. There were no guns available to Petit or his family. Over the next seven plus hours, Dr. Petit's wife was strangled and their two daughters, one 11, the other 17, were tied to their beds and raped. Near the end of the ordeal, Dr. Petit was able to free himself and went to his neighbor's house to call the police. The police arrived, set up a perimeter, then stood in place for nearly half an hour, waiting for more back up. During that half hour, the criminals poured gasoline over the two daughters - both still alive - then set them on fire.

The lessons of the above anecdotes are blatantly clear. If you have a weapon, you can defend yourself, your family and others. If you are disarmed by law or choice, then you are wholly at the mercy of criminals. And as the above scenarios makes clear, while we may not live in a "Mad Max" country, there is nothing to keep "Mad Max" from visiting you or your loved ones. Dr. Hemenway has apparently been lucky in his life to date, but that has not been because he has any concept for the reality of crime, violence or self defense.

Related Posts:

- Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

Linked at Larwyn's Linx, Nice Deb and the Watcher's Council. Thanks.

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Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today we celebrate the life and works of a towering American and a great Republican, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He braved discrimination, intimidation and violence to bring an important message to our country, that we should strive to be defined as Americans rather than by the color of our skin.

We are much closer today to realizing the goals of Martin Luther King. In his honor, I post below his most famous and eloquent speech. That speech came near a century after Republicans stood their ground against the expansion of slavery, igniting a bitter civil war that claimed more American lives than any other war in our history. That speech came near a century after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in America. On a sultry summer day, on August 28, 1963, Rev. King led a march on Washington. And there he spoke of a dream:



For a round-up of posts on this MLK, see NiceDeb.

And here is the text of that speech, made available from the website American Rhetoric:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Amen, Amen.

That this nation was stained with slavery at its inception and that for decades thereafter, it was stained with the most brutal of racism are disgraceful blots on our history. The phrase "all men are created equal" is perhaps the most memorable and aspirational of phrases to emanate from our Founding Fathers. A level playing field for all is what we should demand without the slightest willingness to compromise. It is what Rev. King fought for and in which I firmly believe. There is no room for racism of any kind in America today. In the words of Rev. King, "let freedom ring."

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The National Association For The Advancement of Some Colored People

The NAACP, once a great organization that pursued equality before the law and an end to racism, is today a corrupt organizaiton that embraces racism and reverse racism as a tool for political power. And if you happen to be black but don't embrace your status as a victim, the NAACP may well be your enemy.

Several months ago, at a Town Hall, Kenneth Gladney, a conservative black, was beaten up and subject to racial slurs by SEIU thugs. Now the NAACP has weighed in with a rally . . . wait for it . . . on the side of the SEIU thugs. Coming on the heels of the NAACP's praise for Robert "KKK" Byrd, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. But it is firm evidence of the NAACP's utter corruption. Gateway Pundit has the story - and the video.

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True Politicization

How does one define "politicized?" Everyone likely remembers how the left cried "politicization" over the Bush Administration decision to can several Assistant AG's because they did not follow up on voting rights cases. But every administration prioritizes classes of cases that they want to see Justice pursue. What Bush did was nothing different. That certainly did not stop the left wing spin machine from howling "politicization." But if the word politicization is to have any meaning, it must be something more far more insidious than merely setting priorities. It must mean lawlessness, unequal application of the law, or falsifying facts for political reasons. And we are seeing numerous outrageous examples of it from within the bowels of the Obama and Clinton Administrations - as well as, of course, the MSM.

First there was Elena Kagan, currently undergoing hearings as Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. When she worked in the Clinton White House, in an effort to justify Clinton's veto of a law banning partial birth abortion, she was involved in the alteration of an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology report. ACOG could find no set of circumstances where late term partial birth abortion was necessary to preserve the health of the mother. But Kagan herself added the language 'the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.'" Read the whole story here and here. ACOG amazingly remained silent after the alteration and for years it went not merely unpublicized, but Kagan's language served as the basis for several court rulings. In short, Kagan was part of a major fraud involving the politicization of science.

Then there was Obama Interior Dept. which, a few weeks ago, convened a panel of experts on offshore oil drilling. At the conclusion of the panel, the Interior Dept. forwarded the experts a draft of a report for their approval. Only after receiving the expert's approval did the Interior Dept. insert into the final report the lie that these experts supported Obama's decision to impose a six month moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Fortunately these experts, unlike the AOGC, chose to immediately point out the falsity.

The above are casebook examples of the politicization of science. But then there is politicizing the administration of our laws. If former career Justice Dept. Attorney J. Christian Adams is to be believed, that is precisely what is occurring.

Obama, who promised to lead us into post-racial America, instead has saddled us with a Justice Dept. that uses race to determine whether or not to apply the law. To be more specific, if you are black and engaged in voter intimidation or voter fraud, you may well get a free pass from Obama's Justice Dept. Do see this entire interview:





If possible, even more outrageous is that the Justice Dept. has refused to respond to lawful subpoenas from the Office of the Civil Rights Division seeking to investigate DOJ's unequal enforcement of the laws based on racial preferences. Apparently, the Justice Dept. is not only engaged in unequal application of the law, but holds itself to be above the law.

All of this should be not merely front page news across the nation, but is of the ilk that the press should be harping on until guilty parties are held liable. It is not, of course, because the MSM itself is politicized. Take for example the recent exposure of Ezra Klein's invitation only Journolist-site which brought together some 400 left wing members of the press. This from Andrew Breitbart:

Ezra Klein’s “JournoList 400” is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because – to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails — he wasn’t liberal enough. . . .

I think we’ve seen a paradigm shift, and that the March 20 story will be remembered by conservatives as evidence of how the media accepts attacks on conservatives without due diligence. . . .

. . . The “JournoList” is the story: who was on it and which positions of journalistic power and authority do they hold? Now that the nature and the scope of the list has been exposed, I think the public has a right to know who shapes the big media narratives and how. . . .

As we already uncovered in our expose on the “Cry Wolf” project, members of academia and think tanks are actively working to form the narrative used by the press to thwart conservative messages. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, the reporters on the listserv mimicked the talking points invented and agreed upon by the intellectuals who were invited to the virtual cocktail party that was Klein’s “JournoList.”

And let us not forget the participation of Media Matters in the larger picture of intimidation and mockery for any reporter, like Weigel, who dares stray from the one acceptable liberal narrative in the media. Flying its false flag as a “media watchdog,” the $10 million-or-so per year agitprop command center creates and promotes a system of conformity in which it relentlessly attacks anyone who strays from the Soros-funded party orthodoxy.

The deluge of intimidation showered upon the occasional heretic by Media Matters represent another distinct layer in the media infrastructure that ensures true believer liberals are overrepresented and conservatives had better watch their step.

The fact that 400 journalists did not recognize how wrong their collusion, however informal, was shows an enormous ethical blind spot toward the pretense of impartiality. As journalists actively participated in an online brainstorming session on how best to spin stories in favor of one party against another, they continued to cash their paychecks from their employers under the impression that they would report, not spin the agreed-upon “news” on behalf of their “JournoList” peers.

The American people, at least half of whom are the objects of scorn of this group of 400, deserve to know who was colluding against them so that in the future they can better understand how the once-objective media has come to be so corrupted and despised. . . .

So at any rate, if during the Bush years you were scratching your head wondering what the word "politicized" - a word splashing across your screen every few minutes - meant, well, now you have some real world examples to define the word for you. That is of course not the only difference between today and the Bush years. Today, you are hearing the word "politicized" a lot less, if at all. It must have fallen out of favor on Journolist.

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Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last!

Today we celebrate the life and works of a towering American and a great Republican, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. His finest moment, his most moving speech, was an eloquent plea for equality and a reminder that, as recognized at the time of our nation's founding, all men are created equal. That speech came near a century after Republicans stood their ground against the expansion of slavery, igniting a bitter civil war that claimed more American lives than any other war in our history. That speech came near a century after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in America. And the speech came near a decade before the far left took Rev. King's dream of equality and turned it on its head, seeking in its stead political power on the marxian theory of permanent victim classes. On a sultry summer day, on August 28, 1963, Rev. King led a march on Washington. There, he made a speech that has reverberated through history:



And here is the text of that speech, made available from the website American Rhetoric:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Amen, Amen. That this nation was stained with slavery at its inception and that for decades, it was stained with the most brutal of racism are disgraceful blots on our history. The phrase "all men are created equal" is perhaps the most memorable and aspirational of phrases to emanate from our Founding Fathers. A level playing field for all is what we should demand without the slightest willingness to compromise. It is what Rev. King fought for and in which I firmly believe. There is no room for racism of any kind in America today. In the words of Rev. King, "let freedom ring."

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