Really Making Black Lives Matter

I've spent tons of pixels over countless posts explaining how the bargain between between blacks and the left has been a Faustian one. The left regularly shaft blacks when the interests of blacks come in conflict with other interests of the left, whether it be unions, teacher's unions, or the possibility of gaining millions of new Democratic voters with Hispanic amnesty. And yet blacks still vote upwards of 90% as a block for the left. My plea to my fellows on the right has been to make a concerted effort to reach out to blacks. However Stephen Smith of ESPN, a black man, has taken a different tack for blacks to start exercising the true political power that they hold. Every black person, he says, should vote Republican for at least one election:

On Tuesday, ESPN regular Stephen A. Smith spoke at the Impact Symposium at Vanderbilt University on the topic of “How You See It: Perceptions of (In)Equality.”

Smith believes that every black person in America should vote Republican at least once so that both parties could address their interests.

“What I dream is that for one election, just one, every black person in America vote Republican,” he said. “Because from what I’ve read, and I’m open to correction, but from what I’ve read, Barry Goldwater is going against Lyndon B. Johnson. He’s your Republican candidate. He is completely against the Civil Rights Movement. Lyndon B. Johnson was in favor of it. What happens is, he wins office, Barry Goldwater loses office, but there was a senate, a Republican senate, that pushed the votes to the president’s desk. It was the Democrats who were against Civil Rights legislation. So because President Lyndon B. Johnson was a Democrat, black America assumed the Democrats were for it.”

He also added, “Black folks in America are telling one party, ‘We don’t give a damn about you.’ They’re telling the other party ‘You’ve got our vote.’ Therefore, you have labeled yourself ‘disenfranchised’ because one party knows they’ve got you under their thumb. The other party knows they’ll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest.”

Meanwhile, in the latest example of how the left makes use of the race card, here is Dick Durbin, on the floor of the Senate, charging Republicans with racism for holding up a vote on the nomination of Loretta Lynch for Attorney General until after the left agrees to terms on a particular bill.

Why is there no one following him up to the podium and calling him out on this? There is not the slightest hint of evidence that the right is holding up Lynch's nomination because of racial animus. Until people act with the courage of their convictions and start becoming absolutely vociferous in responding to these kinds of scurrilous charges, the race card will remain effective for the left. And if no one responds, what are people left to think?

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The Watcher's Question -- How Would You Improve Race Relations In America?

Each week the Watcher's Council holds a forum. This week's topic is "how would you improve race relations in America." Having been invited to respond, here is the extended version of my answer. A shorter version will appear at the Watcher's forum.

Update: The Forum has now been posted. There are several very good answers to the question. Do pay the forum a visit.

There will always be some degree of tribalism, it being human nature. But racism today is largely absent from this country. Those who harbor "racist" views are relegated to the very fringes of society. Virtually all Americans of whatever color or political persuasion would like to see nothing more than blacks fully embracing the opportunities life in this nation offers, and enjoying the fruits of their efforts equally with all others. So why are race relations problematic today, and why, by all metrics, are black Americans worse off than others? It can all be summed up in one picture:

This picture is from one of Rev. Al's protests a few years ago. The sign the woman is holding up says everything. Racism is no longer a real issue in society, but the left must maintain the canard that it is. Blacks must be made to see themselves as permanent victims of racism and as being championed by the race hustlers of the left. Moreover, it's important to note the poor grammar used on the sign. It screams out that the woman who wrote it has been failed by whatever schools she attended, thus limiting her opportunities to thrive in America.

So with that in mind, the first thing to understand about race relations is that the left are invested in seeing that the "racial divide" remains as wide as possible. This is political, as it has been since the early 60's, when the marxist "new left" -- our modern left -- made common cause with the heirs of Martin Luther King's civil rights movement. They morphed that movement from an effort to build a color blind society with equality of opportunity for all into a color centric, unified block of people who are fed daily a tautology that they are, and will ever be, permanently victimized by white conservatives. Actual history of support for blacks and civil rights was ignored or rewritten, and it was done so effectively that, to this day, blacks vote 90% as a block for Democrats. If the modern left ever loses even a portion of that block of support, it would be catastrophic. While quite literally everyone I know on the right would like to heal the "racial divide," for the left, their very political survival depends on using it to "divide and conquer."

Thus do you have Rep. John Lewis claiming that any effort to insure the integrity of the vote, something that should be of greater importance to blacks than any other racial group, is actually an effort to deprive blacks of their right to vote. Thus do you have a man at the pinnacle of academia, Harvard Prof. Henry Gates, and other black intellectuals teaching their students about critical race theory, color blind racism, white privilege, and to believe that black slavery was an unpardonable sin such that, irrespective of today's reality, they should keep their two hundred year old racial grievances alive until all blacks are paid reparations. Thus do you have the Department of Justice using disparate impact theory to claim that racism is rampant, despite the fact that they can find no actual incidents of racism in any individual instance. For the modern left, it is critical to keep blacks beliving that all of America today is nothing more than 1954 Selma, Alabama writ large.

The second thing to understand is that blacks have paid a heavy price indeed for their Faustian bargain with the left. By virtually every metric, while the lives of blacks have improved, and while many black individuals have been able to embrace the opportunities this country has to offer, a very substantial portion of blacks have not. It is obscene that, in America, some 25% of blacks live in poverty. It is obscene that, where in 1965, less than 30% of black children were born into a single parent family, that number is now over 70%. It is obscene that that 30 to 40 percent of inner city kids don’t graduate from school, and a very substantial number who do graduate are functionally illiterate. It is obscene that blacks are seven times more likely to commit violent crime than other races. And it is obscene that these problems are cyclical. Nothing the left has done for blacks has broken this cycle, and it all portends to get much worse as cities, where large numbers of blacks congregate and many of whom take public sector jobs, fall into bankruptcy and economic chaos from the failure of the blue political / economic model.

The third thing to understand is that the left takes blacks for granted. In the pantheon of left wing victim groups, perhaps no group gets more attention and ink, but falls lower on the scale of importance. No two things would perhaps benefit the black lower and middle class than good entry level jobs and better education. But those needs run up against the reality that unions, and especially teachers unions, are the financial foundation of the left. Thus did you have Obama, almost in his first days as President, end the school voucher program in the nation's worst performing school district. Thus do you have the D.C. city council voting to, in essence, keep Walmart from opening stores in their district. And thus do you have Obama on the cusp of legalizing millions of Central and South American illegal aliens -- nearly all of whom will be competing for jobs with the black lower and middle class -- in order to gain Decomcrat voters. When it comes to blacks, the left feels no need to balance their needs against those of leftwing economic interests because they have the only thing they need from blacks -- their votes -- already locked up.

The fourth thing to understand is the race card. The race card has been incredibly powerful tool, and the left has not hesitated to use it whenever possible since the 1960's. It has been used to silence all debate and end careers. It serves the triparte purpose of mining white guilt, keeping the focus off of the real problems in the black community, and keeping blacks focused on nursing historical racial grievances. How many blacks today see imaginary racism as their greatest threat? And when was the last time conservatives made an actual, concerted push to reach out to blacks? The answer to that last question is never. The RNC at the national level spends next to nothing on reaching out, having written off the black vote since 1964.

So, how to improve race relations? The answer in today's post-racial America starts and ends with politics. Conservatives must convince blacks that they have their best interests at heart -- that we see them as equal members in the melting pot. Conservatives must also convince blacks that the solutions we propose will, in the long term, work to their advantage. When conservatives call for the end to teacher's unions, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. When conservative call for an end to, or at least a lowering of, the minimum wage, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. When conservatives call for altering laws that decrease the stability of the family unit, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. Conservative must make their case, both that they have black Americans interests firmly at heart, and that blacks have been sorely used by the left.

But to do that, conservatives have to break through a wall of lies and propaganda from the left, at the national level, but most importantly, at the local level. They need to appear at every black forum to make their case, from the NAACP to Howard University to the inner city schools and the local black churches, despite the fact that they will be buried under an avalanche of race cards. And they need to become vociferous in immediately responding to the race card whenever it is played. All of that requires determination, money, and conviction. Rand Paul has flirted with it, and my hat is off to him for at least making some efforts in this regard, but it needs to become a focus for conservatives and Republicans alike, at all levels. That and only that is how you will improve race relations in America.

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Krauthammer & O'Reilly: A Wholly Bankrupt "Civil Rights" Movement (Updated)

I normally don't require validation for my thoughts and beliefs, but when it comes from Charles Krauthammer, it is always welcome. He opines below about Obama's likely topic for the speech Obama will give on the 50 year anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech - racist voting rights laws:



That is the drum I've been beating for years now. Blacks are being used by the left - and that includes their 'civil rights leaders' - in ways that give new meaning to the word "cynical." I credit blacks with the same intellectual capacity as all other beings on this earth. Indeed, many are smarter than I. But those blacks who are actually buying what the far left is selling them - that the biggest problems facing the black community today are "racist" voting rights laws and stand your ground laws - they are dumber than dirt. There just is no other possible conclusion.

For example, see:

Do Blacks Buy This Crap?

A Racial Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Black Civil Rights Leaders No Longer Have A Dream

Chris Lane: A Real "Trayvon" Case, But Where Are The Race Hustlers?

All Of The Stars Align - Time For Republicans To Court The Black Vote

Update: Bill O'Reilly hits the nail on the head:



My hats off to O'Reilly for making the plight of black America his focus and keeping at it for the past few weeks. The straw that broke the camel's back for O'Reilly on this were the race hustlers who went into overdrive in their efforts to lynch George Zimmerman on the alter of racial politics. It was their effort to portray America of today as not more than 1955 Mississippi writ large while wholly ignoring the real issues of black America that finally proved too much for O'Reilly.

Finally, finally, someone with a platform is saying the hard truths and doing so repeatedly. It is my sincerest hope that O'Reilly keeps this up - and that at least some blacks take the message to heart. As I have said over and over again, there is no excuse for black America to be lagging behind in this nation in the 21st century America. The problems in the black community - education, poverty, joblessness, family, crime - that these continue to exist today, are an obscenity.



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Black Civil Rights Leaders No Longer "Have A Dream"

On Aug. 23, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps of the Washington Monument and delivered one of the two most notable orations in our nation's history, (the other being The Gettysburg Address). MLK spoke of having "a dream" that one day, all Americans would be judged by "the content of their character, not the color of their skin." It was the perfect speech given at just the right time. It had moral clarity. It was a demand for nothing more or less than that America finally live up to its founding claim, that "all men are created equal."

Now, fifty years later, Democrat Representative John Lewis, a man who was there with MLK on that day, shows what has become of the civil rights movement. He is not a black civil rights leader, fighting to correct the ills of black America. He has become a full member of the far left, a movement that cynically uses blacks, feeding them the purest of canards so that they will remain a solid far left voting block.

The civil rights movement was once a moral imperative - one that has all but completely succeeded in this country. Today, anti-black racism doesn't even register on the scale of what now plagues black America - education, poverty, criminality, family. But the civil rights movement is now reduced to a cesspool in which only race hustlers dwell. And the poster child for that morphing of the movement is John Lewis.

In addressing the crowds at the fifty year celebration of MLK's speech, Lewis did not say word one about the problems facing black America. Instead, he chose to play the race card, claiming that the right of blacks to vote was under attack. What utter hore manure. And what an utter slime ball. If you are black, you ought to be far more outraged than I am.

If Lewis cared about the plight of black America, he would have been beating his chest over something like the recent decision of Obama's Justice Dept. to sue Louisiana in order to stop their school voucher program. That is a voucher program that primarily helps poor black children escape failing public schools. Education really is the "civil rights" issue of our time. But have no doubt, when it comes to a decision of whether to support poor black children or the Teachers Unions, blacks lose every time. It is an obscenity. As is, for that matter, John Lewis fifty years on.

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Hughey Newsome: The Race Card, Detroit & Zimmerman

Hughey Newsome, a black businessman who lived in Detroit for the past ten years, looks at how the race card is used by blacks in the grievance industry and in government, from our President to Detroit, and its impact. This from Mr. Newsomee in the Daily Caller:

Living in the Detroit metro area most of the last decade, I have experienced many of the events leading to its bankruptcy.

Take, for example, the 2008 State of the City address by then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. With Detroit facing a perilous fiscal future and him facing ethics complaints, Kirkpatrick highlighted race. He sparked controversy by using the “n-word” while referencing an insult he received from some random person.

Kirkpatrick vowed to stand strong against this attack, and asked citizens to stand by him against a “lynch mob mentality.” He essentially used that slur to leverage racial tension, inciting and dividing the mostly-black city against mostly-white suburbs. After all, it was the people in the suburbs — many who either worked in Detroit or had economic ties to the city — who were frustrated with mounting city corruption and mismanagement.

The citizens of Detroit rallied behind their mayor. It was racial politics — pure and simple.

Five years later, Detroit is in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, and Kilpatrick – who resigned six months after his controversial address — was convicted of a series of felonies that may put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Kilpatrick is not the one bad apple who destroyed Detroit. Using race to cover for failure is commonplace. . . .

There are many similar examples of corruption and divisiveness involving city leadership where race is has often been used to rouse and incite but – most importantly – to distract from ineptness and unethical behavior.

Why is this dangerous?

Playing on peoples’ sensitivities and fears distracts attention from holding elected leaders accountable. Detroit’s political class understands this, and regularly delivers racial division rather than doing the hard work of attracting investment in the city. . . .

It’s not just Detroit where this game of racial division is played. This trick is played at the highest levels of government. . . .

George Zimmerman was found not guilty the same week Detroit declared bankruptcy. In the former case, too many — and too many who are too powerful — cast Zimmerman as a bigot despite no evidence validating this claim.

In his surprise address to the press about the Zimmerman verdict on July 19, President Obama mentioned the real bias that black men face on a regular basis. But rather than channel this concern into a productive conversation, he sought to leverage the racial tension he created to criticize “stand your ground” laws (which played no actual role in Zimmerman’s defense) and promote gun control. Obama’s question — “[I]f Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” — is particularly disheartening. On what evidence is this based? Does he not know that over 30 percent of Florida’s “stand your ground” claims are made by blacks and are 55 percent effective for blacks in court? Obama’s words of division and distrust – to advance a political agenda — diminish an opportunity to address real biases principally driven by media and entertainment. Too much time is spent complaining about and looking for the overt racism that has largely been banished from our society. Perversely, this effort to protect minorities from the bigot under the bed promotes the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that Obama’s predecessor sought to stamp out. . . .

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NYT Editorial On The Cornball Oreo Token House Negro Tim Scott

Is it time for some good old fashioned violence yet? Is it time to start getting attention by meeting false charges of racism with fists and feet? That is my conundrum. I doubt many conservatives will agree with me, but I think that it is.

I am livid at this point of being falsely accused of racism as a conservative, and in equal measure, I am infuriated at the left's treatment of any minority who dare not tow the progressive line. And there is no more scurrilous example of that than a recent NYT editorial by Univ. of Penn. political science Prof. (tenured, no doubt) Adolph L. Reed Jr.

Reed uses his poison pen to comment on the decision of South Carolina's first female governor - and the nation's first Indian American governor - Nikki Haley's decision to appoint black Republican Rep. Tim Scott to take over the Senate seat of tea party hero Jim DeMint. Sen. DeMint lobbied for the appointment of Scott because both share the same conservative ideology. Scott, a self made man and a darling of the tea party, was elected to Congress in a majority white district in SC over two white opponents, one of whom was the son of former SC Senator, Strom Thurmond.

According to Reed, while the appointment of Scott "seemed like another milestone for African-Americans," the reality is that "modern black Republicans" are "more tokens than signs of progress." As Reed later makes explicit, all minority conservatives, like Gov. Nikki Haley herself, were elected simply because "Republicans don’t want to have to think of themselves, or be thought of by others, as racist." Thus, when a Republican pulls the lever for a minority it is merely a psychological defense mechanism to hide their own rampant racism from themselves. And indeed, Prof Reed later asserts that the Tea Party itself is a cauldron of "thinly veiled racism."

All of which leads to the question, just how in the world does Prof. Reed define "racism?" He has an incredibly simple litmus test, one that has nothing to do with intolerance based in whole or part on the melanin content of one's skin - you know, actual racism. Instead, Prof. Reed defines racism as failing to support progressive policies nominally labeled as helping blacks. This is unconscionable.

The real travesty, of course, is that the left has been able to so mislead blacks with their false claims of racism. In any rational world, every single black American would have pulled the lever against Obama, a President who has overseen the single greatest economic decimation of blacks since WWII. They would not vote for a party that puts teachers union interests far ahead of the education of their children. They would not vote for a party whose commitment to the welfare state has done nothing positive for blacks, and indeed, has been one of the prime drivers in tearing apart the black family unit. They would not vote for a party that promises them a few handouts, but does not promise them jobs and advancement. The plight of far too many blacks in America today is an inexcusable and unnecessary tragedy.

A last special mention needs to be made of Prof. Reed's incredibly intellectually dishonest effort to suggest that South Carolina is itself a hotbed of racism. Reed notes that the state is (present tense) "home to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond." That is beyond the pale. Calhoun, Brooks and Preston were Democrats who lived and died over a century ago. The late Strom Thurmond was a Senator who started his career as a segregationist Democrat before altering his view of race in Ameica post-1970. This would be akin to me noting that the left is the ideological home of Marx, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, in addition to noting that the last member of both the KKK and the U.S. Senate was Democrat WV Senator Robert Byrd. Arguably, none of those individuals define the left in the U.S. today, just as none of the individuals Reed sites mean that racism is rampant in SC today. Prof. Reed is simply despicable.

It really is time to stop accepting these false and scurrilous charges of racism. It is past time to meet such charges with a measured, rational response. It should be obvious that, after 50 years of the left using this tactic to effectively distort our politics, such responses are useless. It is time to treat such charges the same way I would expect blacks to react at being called "niggers." It should be met with seething anger and, where appropriate, violence. C'mon, who wouldn't want to see Prof. Reed on his knees cupping his recently kicked balls, or even better, Chris Matthews trying to clean his bloody nose and dust himself off as he got up off the floor.

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Michelle Obama Plays Blacks Like A Cheap Violen

When progs play the race card, it is usually to mine white guilt and end debates they can't win on the merits - but not always. Sometimes the race card is solely meant for consumption by the black population itself. And that is how Michelle Obama played it the other day when she proclaimed that contesting voter i.d. laws is the "civil rights issue of our time."

Perhaps the most scurrilous aspect of the U.S. society today is how the vast majority of the black population is both screwed and manipulated by the far left - and in particular, by blacks in leadership on the far left. The myriad of deep and systemic problems facing blacks in the U.S. today do not arise out of white discrimination. A broken education system, disintegration of the black family unit, a black middle class being devastated in the Obama economy, massive unemployment and the lowest median net worth of any racial group in America are just a few of the problems facing blacks - and every last one of them can be laid, in whole or in large part, at the feet of the far left. That those problems should so plague the black community in America in the 21st century is unforgivable.

As a threshold matter, polls on the topic of voter i.d. laws show that the vast majority of Americans - 75% - support such laws. With such broad support, Michelle and the rest of the progs of the far left know that they are not going to be able to mine white-guilt on this issue. Theirs is a pitch being made directly to the black population in order to get them to turn out and vote in November for Obama. The message, repeated ad infinitum by the progs today, is:

Look at all those racist crackers out there trying to keep you from voting. Now don't worry about any of your other problems, and don't worry that the Obama economy has devastated blacks. Don't worry that Obama is willing to consign black children to a failing educational system in order to support the teachers' unions. The single most important thing you can do is come out and vote for those of us protecting you from this non-existant virulent racism.

Michelle and the progs are beyond shameless. Whoever said "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time" did not take into account our modern black population. They will turn out and they will vote about 9 to 1 in favor of a man who has done more damage to the black community as a whole than the KKK did in its entire history.

Now I will agree with Michelle Obama on one point. The most important right in our democracy is the right to vote. Inherent in and central to that right is the proposition that each legal vote will be fully counted.

As to physical act of voting, the claim that a requirement for a picture i.d. will be unduly burdensome is a canard of the highest order. Getting a picture i.d. - which you would need to have in order to board a plane, enter a federal courthouse, enter the DOJ, attend the Democratic National Convention, enter the White House to see Michelle Obama, or buy alcohol - is not an onerous or unreasonable impediment to voting. I don't know of one person the left can point to who, in a state that has enacted voter i.d. laws, was actually kept from casting a ballot if they had a right to do so. Indeed, the lead plaintiffs the left have raised in voter i.d. cases either seem to have committed voter fraud (Indiana) or were, in fact, able to easily secure a free picture i.d. (Pennsylvania).

Voter i.d. laws are directed at the second half of voting rights, insuring that each legitimate vote cast is fully counted. Vote fraud is insidious, because it dilutes the vote of all legitimate voters. It is real, and it has impacted on numerous elections, including national elections, perhaps most recently the Senate race of 2008 in Minnesota.

I am not sure whether the progs are trying to suborn voter fraud or merely trying to get out the black vote. I strongly suspect that it is both. But in any event, if the black population were rational, they'd tell their prog masters to pack it. Blacks should be the first people standing in line in support of voter i.d. laws. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died since our country's inception in order to ensure that blacks have the right to vote, and that their vote would be fully counted. Ensuring that should be the most jealously guarded of all rights for blacks. The 90% of blacks that are still toiling away on the Democrat's plantation really need to figure out that the tune Michelle Obama is playing on that cheap violen is not "Lead Me To The Promised Land," its a bit older than that.

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Lefties Don't Argue, They Throw A Tantrum

This is not news anywhere near as much as it is verification:

Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.

No kidding? Do read the column for the full explanation.

Bookworm Room has as the catchphrase on her site, "conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts." It is tough indeed to be tolerant of opposing opinions in that instance. My own take on the left is that they seem to have precious little intellectual honesty and their method of rhetoric is invariably to demonize and delegitimize their opponents rather than engage in debate of the relevant issues.

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Thomas Sowell Blasts The Obama Administration's Use Of The Race Card

What is happening in black inner city schools is a tragedy.  Black school children are stuck in incredibly poor schools and are not getting an education that will allow them to become competitive.  Although Obama sends his two children to the best DC private schools, one of his first acts in office was to end a program that would have given DC's poor the same option for their children.  And now, in an election year effort to take the focus of blacks off the poor state of education - and the fact that Obama and the left are wholly complicit with it - the DOJ and the Dept. of Education are conducting a campaign to punish schools that punish black males statistically more frequently than whites. This from Prof. Sowell:

[T]he biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong -- namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups.

The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice against schools that discipline black males more often than other students. According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, this disparity in punishment violates the "promise" of "equity."

Just who made this promise remains unclear, and why equity should mean equal outcomes despite differences in behavior is even more unclear. This crusade by Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is only the latest in a long line of fraudulent arguments based on statistics.

If black males get punished more often than Asian American females, does that mean that it is somebody else's fault? That it is impossible that black males are behaving differently from Asian American females? Nobody in his right mind believes that. But that is the unspoken premise, without which the punishment statistics prove nothing about "equity."

What is the purpose or effect of this whole exercise by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice? To help black students or to secure the black vote in an election year by seeming to be coming to the rescue of blacks from white oppression?

Among the many serious problems of ghetto schools is the legal difficulty of getting rid of disruptive hoodlums, a mere handful of whom can be enough to destroy the education of a far larger number of other black students -- and with it destroy their chances for a better life.

Judges have already imposed too many legalistic procedures on schools that are more appropriate for a courtroom. "Due process" rules that are essential for courts can readily become "undue process" in a school setting, when letting clowns and thugs run amok, while legalistic procedures to suspend or expel them drag on. It is a formula for educational and social disaster.

Now Secretary Duncan and Attorney General Holder want to play the race card in an election year, at the expense of the education of black students. Make no mistake about it, the black students who go to school to get an education are the main victims of the classroom disrupters whom Duncan and Holder are trying to protect.

What they are more fundamentally trying to protect are the black votes which are essential for Democrats. For that, blacks must be constantly depicted as under siege from whites, so that Democrats can be seen as their rescuers.

Promoting paranoia translates into votes. It is a very cynical political game, despite all the lofty rhetoric used to disguise it.

Whether the current generation of black students get a decent education is infinitely more important than whether the current generation of Democratic politicians hang on to their jobs.

Too many of the intelligentsia -- both black and white -- jump on the statistical bandwagon, and see statistical differences as proof of maltreatment, not only in schools but in jobs, in mortgage lending and in many other things.

Some act as if their role is to protect the image of blacks by blaming their problems on whites. But the truth is far more important than racial image.

Wherever we want to go, we can only get there from where we are. Not where we think we are, or wish we are, or where we want others to think we are, but where we are in fact right now.

But political spin and pious euphemisms don't tell us where we are. After a while, such rhetorical exercises don't even fool others.

If we don't have the truth, we don't have anything to start with and build on. A big start toward the truth would be getting rid of the kinds of statistical hoaxes being promoted by Secretary of Education Duncan and Attorney General Holder.

And on a final note, it was the social engineering justified on the grounds of statistical differences in loans received by blacks that destroyed credit standards, put Fannie and Freddie on steroids, and was the direct cause of our economic meltdown of the past five years. That same social engineering was strengthened and made a permanent part of our laws with the passage of Dodd Frank. This use of statistics alone to create the impression of racism where none exists is a systemic malignancy that must be ended.

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Holder's DOJ Drops The Race Card On Texas's Voter ID Law

Our race baiting Attorney General, who has directly compared any attempt at insuring the sanctity of the ballot with a return to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes, has struck again. The Justice Department today officially "objected to a new photo ID requirement for voters in Texas because many Hispanic voters lack state-issued identification."

This from Politico:

[T]he new law, known as S.B. 14 and signed by Gov. Rick Perry last May, requires that the state issue special free IDs for voting. However, there would still be a cost to individuals who lack the required underlying documentation, like a birth certificate, Perry wrote.

"There is a statistically significant correlation between the Hispanic population percentage of a county and the percentage of a county’s population that lives below the poverty line. The legislature tabled amendments that would have prohibited state agencies from charging for any underlying documents needed to obtain an acceptable form of photographic identification," Perez noted.

Perez said many voters were likely to have difficulty getting to a Department of Public Safety office to get an ID, either because of distance or limited hours.

"Even after submitting data that show over 600,000 registered voters do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by DPS – and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic – the state has failed to propose, much less adopt, any program for individuals who have to travel a significant distance to a DPS office, who have limited access to transportation, or who are unable to get to a DPS office during their hours of operation," Perez wrote.

So there are 600,000 people, largely hispanic, registered to vote in Texas for whom there is no proof of their citizenship. Yet the DOJ's concern is not with the sanctity of the ballot box, but with insuring that 600,000 people are able to vote without even minimal proof of citizenship. And on top of that, Holder's DOJ justifies this travesty it on civil rights ground. The true irony here is that, in a democracy, the penultimate civil right is the right to vote and, equally, to have that vote fully count. Vote fraud insures that valid votes do not fully count.

As Stacey McCain has weighed in on this, writing:

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, “civil rights” has become a code phrase for “whatever Democrats want,” so that anyone who disagrees with Democrats is said to be “anti-civil rights.” . . .

Isn’t the Justice Department’s entire rationale for opposing the Texas voter ID law an extension of the belief that the partisan interests of the Democratic Party are coterminous with “civil rights”? Democrats actually believe they have the right to win elections, even by blatantly illegal means, and so any measure that might prevent ineligible people from voting is a violation of “civil rights.”

Now you know why “corrupt Democrat” is redundant: No honest person would ever get involved in the Democratic Party.

Also a worthwhile read as regards vote fraud was an NRO column by Hans A. von Spakovsky, "Not A Race Card." As he points out, vote fraud has a long and ignominious tradition in the U.S., and minimal efforts to protect the sanctity of the vote are both warranted and do not amount to an attack on minorities.

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Oiks & America's Revolting Unwashed Masses

James Taranto has a great column at the WSJ on "oikiphobia" - a recently coined term describing the modern liberal elite on both sides of the pond.

An Oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, . . . , and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.

Oiks have been around for a long time.  One can find their beginnings among the groups identified by Orwell in his Notes on Nationalism.   That said, both Orwell and Taranto miss that the modern left also have a distinct animus towards Christianity and Judaism.  But with that proviso, this from Taranto:

If you think it's offensive for a Muslim group to exploit the 9/11 atrocity, you're an anti-Muslim bigot and un-American to boot. It is a claim so bizarre, so twisted, so utterly at odds with common sense that it's hard to believe anyone would assert it except as some sort of dark joke. Yet for the past few weeks, it has been put forward, apparently in all seriousness, by those who fancy themselves America's best and brightest, from the mayor of New York all the way down to Peter Beinart.

What accounts for this madness? Charles Krauthammer notes a pattern:

Promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Krauthammer portrays this as a cynical game: "Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. . . . What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument."

But this has its limits as a political strategy. Krauthammer writes that "the Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November," and no one will credit him for boldness in that prediction. Some may disagree with his reckoning as to the reason for that likely loss: that "a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them."

But can anyone argue that a show of contempt is a winning political strategy? The question answers itself and implies that the contempt is genuine.

What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings"--or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.

In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama's notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion. (Ironically, Obama recently said through a spokesman that he is Christian.) . . .

So if some Americans are afraid of people "who have what seem to be strange religions," it must be a totally irrational reaction to "economic insecurity." It couldn't possibly have anything to do with an act of mass murder committed in the name of the religion in question.

And Reich doesn't just fail to see the obvious. He dehumanizes his fellow Americans by treating their values, feelings and opinions as no more than reflexive reactions to material conditions. Americans in fact are a very tolerant people. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was no serious backlash against Muslims. What makes them angry--what makes us angry--is the bigotry of the elites.

The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as the Associated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude:oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes--whom he amusingly dubs "oiks"--is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of "culture" tie in with economic and social policy . . .

The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect. . . .

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.

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Knight Of The Living Racist Dead

Zombies sucking out the brains of LA Times reporters.  Marie Antoinette.  Gone With The Wind.  Read Bookworm Room, and the Ace of Spades to find the common thread.  It is low hanging fruit, but what Book and Ace do with it rises to the level of art.

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Holder Playing A Devalued Race Card

This from the Daily Caller:

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.

Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder said, according to the Times. “Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

Whomever said that the Constitution is the last refuge of the scoundrel had it wrong. Its the use of the race card.

In truth, probably the greatest contribution that the Obama Administration has made to America has been the devaluing of the race card to the point that it is now largely worthless. There was a day when the race card trumped all - when playing the race card would send one's critics scurrying for cover. It grossly distorted our political system for decades. Those days are over. Holder is, at best, incompetent. The fact that he is black is only incidental, and should play no role whatsoever in his treatment. Indeed, is there anyone in America who could possibly think that the charges being raised against Holder have even the smallest iota of basis in racism?

Holder needs to be called to account for making this charge, that it is the color of his skin rather than his incompetence and bias for which he is being called to account. I really want to see Issa go after him on this. I want to see Holder justify his claim. I want to hear Holder justify special treatment on account of his skin color. It is far beyond time that the race card be challenged in all public forums.

Update: Rep. Allen West has weighed in on the above issue:

Florida Republican Rep. Allen West told The Daily Caller on Monday that Attorney General Eric Holder’s use of the race card as a way to attack those who are criticizing him is “reprehensible.”

“I think this is absolutely the last card in the deck, and that shows how weak their ground is,” West said in a phone interview. “But, what that means is they want to make white individuals afraid of continuing to put the pressure on Eric Holder because they don’t want to be seen as racist, and that is something that we have got to move beyond.”

Amen.

(H/T This Ain't Hell)

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Race Card Chickens Coming Home To Roost

"Hey, You racist crackers, c'mon back, all is forgiven."

- Paraphrasing Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga), 18 Jan. 2011, as he bemoaned "white flight" from the Democratic Party

I pointed out in a 2008 post that the left discovered the race card a half century ago and have since relied on it and its permutations as the major vehicle by which they gain and maintain power. And I pointed out, several months before the last election, that the race card was loosing all of its legitimacy and with it, the ability to brow-beat the electorate into submission.

And now we are seeing that those observations were accurate. The left made an unprecedented effort over the past two years to tar virtually everyone who criticized Obama as racist. The result - the election of 2010 saw "white flight" from the Democratic Party in historic proportions. And now reality is dawning on the race baiters. In particular, Rep. John Lewis, last seen manufacturing charges of racism against the Tea Party, had this to say today:

A leading civil rights leader in Congress believes the Democratic Party is losing too many white voters.

In an interview, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Democrats need to "go all out" to win back white Southern voters before the next election.

White voters preferred Republican candidates by almost two-to-one in the midterms last year. Their support helped the GOP win 22 seats in the states that make up the Old Confederacy. The Democrats' only pickup in the region was the New Orleans district where the party holds a registration advantage.

Since November, there have been a string of defections by Southern Democratic state lawmakers, which has prompted renewed speculation about the party’s future in the region. Former Alabama Rep. Artur Davis (D) said Democrats should even consider running as Independents if they want to succeed.

Lewis, who was a civil rights activist before being elected to Congress in 1986, said he's concerned the party is losing its diversity, which will make it difficult to reclaim the lost seats.

"We've got to go all out and get white voters, especially white men, to come back to the Democratic Party," he told The Ballot Box. "I just think it's important for the Democratic Party to roll out and try to reveal itself and not become a party that is split along racial lines." . . .

Too late John. When you turned the Civil Rights movement from a morally pure movement aimed at achieving equality into a blunt instrument for delegitimizing your non-racist political opponents, you're downfall was inevitable. For my part, I am amazed it has taken this long for this canard to be exposed and revulsion to it begin to take shape.

Hat Tip to Flopping Aces that has up a great post on this topic.

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Andrew Klavan Nails It: The Robotic Argument Of The Left To All Opposition

Although virtually every person on the right has pointed this out in so many words, Andrew Klavan nails it. He does the best job I have seen yet of describing the lefts attitude towards - and response to - all opposing arguments.



Actually, the left's rhetorical device is aimed not merely to the speaker, but it is equally aimed at all potential listeners. To them, the message is that, regardless of what the speaker has to say, the listener should pay no heed because the speaker is illegitimate. That is the whole basis for the race card, PDS, and of course, this past week's blood libel.

A hat tip to the best blog you will find down under (water at this point), Crusader Rabbit. Do pay them a visit and wish them some dry weather.

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Civility & Other BS

Republicans took 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in the 2010 election. That occurred because the majority of Americans were mad as hell - mad at the direction Obama was leading the country; mad at the way the left was thuggishly going about its business; and mad at the left's disregard of America's core principals. The majority of Americans voiced that anger in the lead-up to the 2010 election, and they were motivated by that anger to vote the Democrats to the most devastating defeat of either party in nearly a century.

Make no mistake, today's calls for "civility" from the left are nothing more than a call to curb the momentum of the right and to blunt their disagreement with the left's agenda. It is the last gasp of the left's recent effort to delegitimize conservatives with a blood libel - that the right's passioned disagreement with the left's agenda led to the mass murder in Arizona. And the only reason that effort failed was because virtually everyone on the right side of the aisle stood up and called "Bull S***!!!!!"

The right's problem over the past decade has been far too much "civility" whilst the left has daily used scurrilous ad hominem attacks to delegitimize the right. Obama, in just the past three months, has referred to conservatives as "hostage takers" and "enemies" of Hispanics. Rep. Clyburn has spent the past year calling the Tea Party movement "racist" and, most recently, described Sarah Palin as attractive but stupid. How's that for civility?

Where were the calls for civility when the far left was calling Bush a liar and comparing him to Hitler, or when they were calling Cheney the second coming of Satan? What about when the left were willing to do or say anything to undermine the war in Iraq and our nation's national security for their own political gain?

If the left wants civility, they should start with their own house. Knock off all the ad hominem attacks, apologize for the grotesque attempt to tar the right with a blood libel, and admit that their effort was undertaken without a shred of evidence. They should further come clean that the aim of this attack was not to improve civil discourse - charging your opponents with complicity in murder is not not conducive to that end - but was aimed at delegitimizing conservative speech. Until then:


And here is my prediction. Any new found "civility" on the left will not last more then nine days - which is when Obama will take the podium to give the State of the Union speech. You can rest assured he will make ad hominem attacks against the right. The guy is a child of the far left - and that's what the far left does. Intellectual honesty and a desire for robust debate on the issues are far from their strong suits. It's just that, up until a few days ago, their rhetorical paradigm usually worked.

Update: Don Surber expresses similar thoughts, as does I Own The World and Nice Deb.

Related: This on the intersection of left wing civility and logic (H/T Legal Insurrection)

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Palin: "Within Hours Of A Tragedy Unfolding, Journalists And Pundits Should Not Manufacture A Blood Libel"

Below is Sarah Palin's video commentary on the mass murder in Arizona. She strikes, I think, the right tone, both in mourning for the losses and responding to her critics and others who have seized on this event to delegitimize their opposition. The text of her speech is here.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

I imagined that blood libel remark, wholly accurate, would shake the left wing hornet's nest. And yet again, I see it is Rep. Clyburn, the left's leading player of the race card and the man who wants to use this event to shut down right wing talk radio, who is among the first to respond. This from Rep. Clyburn:

"You know, Sarah Palin just can't seem to get it, on any front. I think she's an attractive person, she is articulate," Clyburn said on the Bill Press radio show. "But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what's going on here." . .

Clyburn said that Palin didn't grasp why such rhetoric was so troubling, regardless of the motivations of the alleged shooter of Giffords. The No. 3 House Democrat referenced the Civil Rights Era, and said that some of the shrill rhetoric in modern politics are reminiscent of that time in history.

"I have some experiences that maybe she does not have," he said. "When I see and hear things today that are reminiscent of that period of time, I am very, very concerned about it, because I know what it led to back then, and I know what it can lead to again."

Let's see, stunning arrogance - yep. Condecension to his political opponents - yep. Race card against all those who oppose the left rather than address the specific issue - yep. It's a Clyburn trifecta. What an absolute scumbag.

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Motivations For Murder & Manipulation

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

- Winston Churchill

Almost three days removed from the horrid mass murder committed by Jared Loughner in Arizona, sufficient information now exists to bring some perspective and clarity to the acts not only of Loughner, but to the acts of the left in the wake of Loughner's killing spree. The former was caused by severe mental illness. The latter, bearing only a tangential relation to the former, arises out of the left's desire to stop conservative speech by any means possible.

As Maggie's Farm puts it, Loughner didn't accompany his killing spree with shouts of "Rush Limbaugh Akhbar!!!" There is not a shred of evidence tying him to Palin, Limbaugh, or the Tea Party movement. He appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic who went under the radar simply because he took no threatening acts in the community prior to his killing spree - or at least none that would cause the Pima County Sheriff's Dept. to react. One of Loughner's few friends, in a recent interview, speculated that Loughner's motive was just to "fuck things up to fuck shit up," adding that Loughner wanted "to watch the world burn."

The far left has not allowed the lack of evidence - or indeed, contrary evidence - to slow them down. Instead, they ascribe responsibility for the murders to the right on the grounds of creating a climate of "hate." The NYT is leading the charge in their editorial today:

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

Yet a look over the last decade shows conclusively that the left is light years beyond the right in terms violent rhetoric and political vitriol (See Malkin, Cupp, PJM, Rush, Wash. Examiner, Hot Air, McGuire, and the WSJ on the hisotry of our political discourse). Indeed, if political vitriol were the cause of violence, the MSNBC studios would be knee deep in blood. And as to martial metaphors, there are more examples of that from Obama than from Palin (PJM, Seraphic Secret). That said, such metaphors are, as Charles Krauthammer points out, a regular part of political speech that derive from the days when the path to political power was through military campaigns.

So just what has the right done to cause this "gale of anger." They have fought against massive deficits, over-taxation, and out-of-control spending. They have fought against Obamacare on the grounds that it is unaffordable and an unconstitutional expansion of federal power. In short, they have fought against the radical pull of our government to the left. So what do any of those things have to do with homicidal mania or, more generally, hate? Well, nothing, of course. Those are all very legitimate political arguments.

So there is something else at work here.

Brit Hume, on Monday, noted that:

It has become a habit of the American left to equate disagreement with liberals and liberalism with hate. So convinced do they seem of the virtue of their cause that the only possible explanation for resistance to it must be hatred. In the past week, at least two prominent liberal commentators spoke of the need to resist the right, quote, ‘Obama hate machine.’

George Will in a column today, speculates that blaming the right for an act such as this is literally part of progressive DNA:

A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first. . . .

I think that both Hume and Will let the left off far too easy. Will implies unconscious action where there is clearly malice aforethought. Hume postulates what is in essence an insanity defense for the left - that they are mentally incapable of seeing their opponents as having any reasonable basis for disagreeing with them. I think that gives short shrift to the intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy of the left pushing this blood libel.

What the left has done here is seize on the Arizona mass murder, not because they believe the right somehow created the environment for homicide by their political arguments, but because the left sees it as an opportunity to delegitimize the right. The goal for the left is to create a situation where they won't have to engage in those political arguments that go to the heart of the direction of our country. They are losing those arguments on an epic scale, and they will do anything at all, including using the dead and injured from a psychotic's attack, to try and turn their fortunes around. They are shameless beyond words.

This is, in many ways, nothing more than an extension of throwing the race card, something that the left has relied upon for decades to end debate. Thus it is wholly appropriate that the left's most veteran race card aficionado, Rep. Clyburn (D-SC), would use the mass murder as justification for imposing the Fairness Doctrine, a law that would effectively silence conservative talk radio:

The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'

'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.' . . .

For its part, Soros mouthpiece Media Matters is calling on Fox to fire both Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has sent out a fund raising letter asking for donations to allow him to "fight Republicans and other 'right-wing reactionaries' responsible for the climate that led to the shooting." Chris Matthews has cited Mark Levin and Mark Savage as talk radio personalities for particular note in his discussion of the Arizona mass murder.

All of this is despicable. It is intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy on a grand scale. As Michelle Malkin says today,

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.

They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.

Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.

And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.

Update: Legal Insurrection has one ridiculous example of how the left is trying to mine the climate of hate meme . They quote Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Me) writing at HuffPo, who claims that the Obamacare repeal bill must be renamed in the wake for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting:

A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend -- but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don't think that word is in there by accident -- my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation's history, it's not the message we should be sending.

(emphasis added)

A final thought. In essence, the left now wants to make paranoid schizophrenics the arbiter of appropriate speech in America - at least for those who oppose the left. How's that for an insane idea?

Update: Hot Air brings good news for America, bad news for the left wing slime machine doing their best to use the mass murder to delegitimize its political opposition:

CBS polled almost 700 adults in the wake of the mass murder in Tucson committed by Jared Lee Loughner to determine whether the media spin that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six others was a political act had resonated with the public. Perhaps surprisingly, the spin machine seems to have failed. A majority of 57% say that politics had nothing to do with the shooting, and even a plurality of 49% of Democrats agree.

This means our nation is firmly in the "you can't fool all of the people all of the time" leg of Lincoln's tripart theorem. What that likely means is that ever more discordant attempts to delegitimize the right will have a rebound effect. The Krugmaniacal left wing slime machine should proceed with caution.

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Thomas Sowell On Bean Counters & The Race Card

A few days ago, the NY Times ran an article on race in baseball. What concerned the NYT?

Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.

The question is why.

It is more than a mysterious quirk: the third-base coaching position carries greater prestige, the pay is better and the position is often a steppingstone to a managerial job. . . .

This was all too much for Thomas Sowell, who notes that this race based obsession is not only ridiculous, but additionally has already severely harmed our nation by leading to our current economic mess:

. . . This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.

At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes, and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations, and income brackets if there were not something strange or sinister going on.

Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.

Ask the bean-counters: Where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented? They can’t tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody’s fault!

. . . At our leading engineering schools — M.I.T., CalTech, etc. — whites are underrepresented and Asians overrepresented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?

. . . In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education, and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same.

One of the things that got us started on heavy-handed government regulation of the housing market were statistics showing that blacks were turned down for mortgage loans more often than whites. The bean-counters in the media went ballistic. It had to be racism, to hear them tell it.

What they didn’t tell you was that whites were turned down more often than Asians. What they also didn’t tell you was that black-owned banks also turned down blacks more often than whites. Nor did they tell you that credit scores differed from group to group. Instead, the media, the politicians, and the regulators grabbed some statistics and ran with them.

The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it — and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.

Amen

I would also note that this type of bean counting is, in the context of discrimination, known as the disparate impact theory. It has done untold damage to our nation since it was introduced - the subprime housing bubble and the destruction of our methods of determining credit ratings being the seminal examples. The Supreme Court went a long way to putting a stake in the heart of this theory in the Ricci decision last year, at least in as much as it pertains to civil rights laws. But it is still alive and well in our financial sector - and indeed, Obama and the far left have strengthened it. It is madness that must be stopped.

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An Overdrawn Race Card - Part II

I wrote a long post below on how the race card is rapidly losing its legitimacy - and all the ramifications of that for the far left. Now, even Jon Stewart is taking notice that the race card is overdrawn.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Race Card Is Maxed Out
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

(H/T Legal Insurrection)

As Legal Insurrection points out, what brought this to Stewart's attention was Maxine Walters and the CBC playing the race card in order to escape accountability for their actions.

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