Category Archives: Argument

Racism consists of a mindset or a worldview that boils down to impolite and impolitic thoughts and words written, spoken, preached, or tweeted.

If that’s all racism is, you ask, then what was the knee on George Floyd’s neck? Was that not racism?

No, it was not.

Judging from the known facts, the knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck was a knee on a man’s neck. That’s all that can be inferred from the chilling video recording in which Floyd expired slowly as he pleaded for air.

Floyd begged to breathe. But the knee on his neck—“subdual restraint and neck compression,” in medical terms—was sustained for fully eight minutes and 46 seconds, causing “cardiopulmonary arrest.”

There are laws against what transpired between former Officer Derek Chauvin and Mr. Floyd.

And the law’s ambit is not to decide whether the offending officer is a correct-thinking individual, but whether Mr. Chauvin had committed a crime.

About Officer Chauvin’s mindset, the most the law is supposed to divine is mens rea—criminal intention: Was the officer whose knee pressed on Floyd’s neck acting with a guilty mind or not?

For fact-finding is the essence of the law. The law is not an abstract ideal of imagined social justice, that exists to salve sensitive souls.

If “racism” looks like a felony crime, then it ought to be prosecuted as nothing but a crime and debated as such. In the case of Mr. Chauvin, a mindset of depraved indifference seems to jibe with the video.

This is not to refute the reality of racially motivated crimes. These most certainly occur. It is only to refute the legal and ethical validity of a racist mindset in the prosecution of a crime.

Surely, a life taken because of racial or antisemitic animus is not worth more than life lost to spousal battery or to a home invasion.

The law, then, must mete justice, in accordance with the rules of evidence, proportionality and due process. Other than intent, references to the attendant thoughts that accompanied the commission of a crime should be irrelevant—be they racist, sexist, ageist or anti-Semitic.

Ultimately, those thoughts are known only to the perp….

… READ THE REST ON CNSNews.com: “Resist the Left’s Conflation of ‘Racism’ With the Law, for Chauvin and Beyond.”

*Image via CNS.News (Photo credit: Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Biden Out House (Oops, White House) To Border Invaders: Not Now, My Lovelies. Please.

Argument, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Republicans

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Says the Biden Administration to the invaders of the southern border: “This is not the time to come” and invade the United States.

The premise of such soft whispers of love between the Democratic Party and its growing constituency: There will be a time to breach the US border. Or, in the breathy language of love, “Not now, my lovelies. Bide your time. Let me catch my breath first.”

The leaders of our country are, frankly, a farce, the laughing stock.

The farce determination is extended to the Republicans, who are MIA (Missing In Action). From the GOPers it’s basically, “We love you kids. But do it legally.”

And Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for Biden, was all over conservative torpor:

To the question from a Republican journalist about, “OMG, smugglers are throwing kids over a wall into the desert,” Psaki shot back:

MS. PSAKI: “And are you concerned more about the kids safety or are you concerned about kids getting in? Or tell me more about your concern here.”

Q: “Kids’ safety is, as you just mentioned, the main concern.”

Not mine.

MORE HERE on what my answer would have been: “Open Sesame: The Piss-Poor ‘Conservative,’ Immigration Positions That Admit You Into Polite Company “

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Vaccine Passports: The End Of American Liberty

Argument, Conservatism, COVID-19, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Liberty, Republicans

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An invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have.–Glenn Greenwald

How disturbing is it when not even Tucker Carlson frames the extent of the violation that is a vaccine passport in severe enough terms.

While Tucker did “call the idea ‘Orwellian,’ [he] asked Glenn Greenwald if he felt like the idea would work to convince more Americans to get the vaccination.”

Utilitarianism is common among the punditry: judge a policy by its aggregate positive outcomes, and not by whether it is just or unjust, violates rights or not.

Sean Hannity reduced the vaccine compulsion to privacy: a matter between a doctor and his patient. This is better than utilitarianism, for at least Hannity pinpointed an individual right.

However, only journalist Glenn Greenwald said what needs saying (this daily Caller report is not good; some of the stuff “reported” or inferred was not said or meant, although this next was):

“Well, I think you have to start with noting how draconian of an invasion this is in three different ways,” Greenwald said. “Number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don’t want in their body, a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have. Secondly, gathering a new database that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses, and then thirdly, you are restricting people’s movement. Freedom of movement is one of the most fundamental rights we have. It’s actually guaranteed in the Constitution. …

Herd immunity will be arrived at eventually.

“Why is it necessary to stigmatize [those choosing not to vaccinate] and create a caste system?” Greenwald asked. ”

Typically, Sen. John Kennedy, with his contrived Southern act (he’s Ivy League) and rehearsed, overwrought cracks, puts Trump’s party back decades. On March 9, 2021, he told “Fox News Primetime” host Trey Gowdy that Americans love the 1 million legal immigrants coming in annually, and object ONLY to illegal, Biden-created chaos on border.

On vaccine passport, Kennedy “shone” just as brightly. Hannity, who treats his mostly friendly guests as family members, was expecting an erudite objection from Kennedy about the coerced-vaccine plan. The senator representing Louisiana needs to rehearse to disgorge his faux Southern witticisms. Thus was he caught unawares by Hannity, a generally fawning interviewer.

To the question about vaccine passports, Kennedy the cretin replied with a non sequitur:

A vaccine passport would be “terribly unethical,” croaked Kennedy, and not because it would threaten an individual’s dominion over his body, but because “EVERYBODY DOES NOT YET HAVE ACCESS TO THE VACCINE.”

NEW ON YouTube: David Vance In Conversation With ilana mercer

Argument, Britain, Conservatism, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, The West

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Interested interviewers: I am laconic, not loquacious.—ilana mercer

A YouTube CHAT With UK’s illustrious and debonair David Vance: The lads (David and his producer) treated me so very kindly. (As in welcoming and mannered, rather than like other requests constantly received from ego-bound interviewers, concerned with rambling with me about their own views, which, being laconic, not loquacious, I cannot do.) We laughed hard, sharing that Sir Humphrey Appleby sense of humor.

The topics: The Systemic Racism irrational rot, deconstructed in columns, and my latest on the wussification of the West, as manifested in the book-burning Seuss saga and the conservative response thereto.

Hint: We both argue process—the right of freemen to think, speak and write impolite thoughts. We refuse to debate the content of those thought, because that would be conceding the Left’s Argument, as conservatives habitually do.

I was delighted to be asked by David to come on more regularly.