“Republican reaction to the president’s reaction to the crude gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is a measure of how serious the GOP is about checking the spread of big government.
Every time I turn around, there’s a Republican insisting that Big “O” take over where Big Oil has (allegedly) left off. This, Sarah Palin has been demanding as loudly as James Carville; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as urgently as clown Keith Olbermann. The consensus on both sides of the political aisle seems to be that where British Petroleum has failed to stop the spread of the oil slick, the president will prevail.
If I didn’t know Republicans better, I’d think they were making political hay out of the Deepwater Horizon leak, now in its fifty second day. …
So what does the idolatrous Idiocracy want from its Golden Calf?
The Oprah faction confuses righteous indignation with righteousness; it wants Obama to come unhinged. The Disneyland division is hoping that off-shore oil explorer, acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” will help the film directors of BP to plug the oil plume. Cameron’s plan includes that liquid metal robot from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Obama must realize that there is no way such a plan could fail.”…
What do I recommend? For the root of the environmental despoliation of the ocean and other state-controlled expanses of water—and the ultimate solution to it—read on. The column is “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann.”
The liberal worldview that saturates our society accounts for why the constructs applied to every-day moral dilemmas are perverse and perverted. Thus, to raise the perfectly proper question of the infringement on private property rights and freedom of association that is the Civil Rights Act of 1964—this is framed as racist; as an act that casts aspersions on the personality and core values of the actor.
Yet for an Hispanic advocacy group, the “Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund,” with a wink and a nod from the officials of Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, to issue illegal aliens with a document that masquerade as an official stamp of approval—this is cast, not as forgery, usurpation of authority, etc., but as a helpful “solution” to the problem of trespass.
“… the Princeton police departments and the Mercer County sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices have endorsed their use.”
Fox News reported, approvingly, that law-enforcement believes it’ll help them in their law-enforcement activities. Flash a La Raza I.D. card at the cop and he’ll crack a smile and wave you by.
Arizona is also removing—horrors!—from classrooms teachers with heavily accented or ungrammatical English. In its report, Fox News applied the race construct to this welcome news, but not to the segment it aired about the wonders of St. Augustine College, the blacks-only school that fasttracks pigmentally endowed kids into Ivy universities and government positions about which WASPs can only dream.
Asking English teachers in an English-speaking country to speak properly is an act of racial supremacy; barring whites from a school in the same country—not at all.
Examining only certain stories through the prism of race is, in itself, a form of subliminal, subtle propaganda.
The win “followed the defeat of an incumbent Republican senator, Robert Bennett of Utah, by conservative forces in that state. And it came after the recent decision by Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida to drop out of the Republican primary for Senate in the face of a surge by a Tea Party favorite, Marco Rubio.”
Not wishing to delve into the issues, and say unseemly, hick words such as “Constitution,” the New York Times has chalked the defeat of the establishment candidate to “A strong anti-Washington sentiment.” Of course they would.
Update I (May 19): “March with Martin Luther King, vote with Barry Goldwater.” Rand Paul vacillates about his opposition to the federal regulation of private property wrought by the Civil Wrong’s Act. This is the strict propertarian/libertarain position, apparently “repulsive” to mainstream America, claim NPR and RM. It cannot be denied that Rand Paul comes across as sour.
Part I
Part II
Update II (May 20): SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT, somewhat weakly, I think. Backing away from First Principles…
“I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.
“As I have said in previous statements, sections of the Civil Rights Act were debated on Constitutional grounds when the legislation was passed. Those issues have been settled by federal courts in the intervening years
“My opponent’s statement on MSNBC Wednesday that I favor repeal of the Civil Rights Act was irresponsible and knowingly false. I hope he will correct the record and retract his claims.”
“The issue of civil rights is one with a tortured history in this country. We have made great strides, but there is still work to be done to ensure the great promise of Liberty is granted to all Americans.
“This much is clear: The federal government has far overreached in its power grabs. Just look at the recent national healthcare schemes, which my opponent supports. The federal government, for the first time ever, is mandating that individuals purchase a product. The federal government is out of control, and those who love liberty and value individual and state’s rights must stand up to it.
“These attacks prove one thing for certain: the liberal establishment is desperate to keep leaders like me out of office, and we are sure to hear more wild, dishonest smears during this campaign.”
Update III:Civil Wrongs: When I allude to the Civil Rights Act, as I have every so often, it never occurs to me that for the reasoning advanced in these posts, I could be construed as a racist. Respectable scholars advance the same arguments: Richard A. Epstein, Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England, 1995), and Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: The Story of How Through The Centuries Private Ownership has Promoted Liberty and the Rule of Law (New York, 2000).
I guess what I’m struck by is the incredulity and the indignation the cable cretins are expressing at Paul’s pretty standard, if hard-core, libertarian position. Dare I say that the founders held similar, if not identical, views about the sanctity of private property?
Update IV: Howard Fineman is one of the most detestable journos. Here’s howhe turns Rand Paul’s principled defense of private property into something dark and dreadful. This does not take skill, but a wicked sleight of hand:
“…Some of that old-time, race-based attitude—a Kentucky mix of romantic benevolence and cruel disdain (immortalized in D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation)—has seeped into the groundwater of the Tea Party. I attended one of its first rallies, in Louisville more than a year ago, and I saw on the ground some of the anti-busing elements of old there.
If Dr. Rand Paul doesn’t immediately apologize for holding his victory rally at a private club—and doesn’t abandon his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act—then he will not only pollute the Tea Party, he will severely damage the GOP’s chances of winning control of either the House or Senate this fall.”
Update V (May 21): Writes Richard Spencer at AltRight (but what, for heaven’s sake, is HBD?):
As revealed by the above video, Rand is a proponent of a sunny-side up, left-libertarian version of American history.
Racial discrimination within public institutions should be stamped out; discrimination in the private sector, however, probably should not be, as this would entail a prying federal government and likely violations of multiple Constitutional amendments. But never fear! Racial discrimination isn’t just immoral, it’s bad business, and if the government just gets out of the way, all non-economic discrimination will come to an end on its own.
Through Rand certainly goes further than any other politician in criticizing Civil Rights, there’s a lot wrong with his view.
The argument that private businesses are more profitable when they serve everyone is often correct, particularly in a mass consumer society — though one shouldn’t forget that value is ultimately subjective. An entrepreneur might be able to charge higher prices, and receive more personal satisfaction, by operating a restaurant that caters only to whites (or Jews or Chinese or Indians), and he should have the right to do so.
Of course, instances of businesses refusing service are exceedingly rare….
THE LATEST IN THE ANNALS OF DHIMMITUDE. The American Society for Muslim Advancement (very literally) plans to erect a “Mega-Mosque” at Ground Zero. They say (taqiyya anyone?) that this is a peace offering—a center intended to foster Muslim tolerance and temperance.
I agree with the apoplectic activists: this amounts to lording it over the dhimmis-in-training. It is a triumphant act of supremacy, as the erection of minarets and the mosques has been throughout the annals of Islam. This is a bitch slap to the subjugated population.
However, as much as I approve of the activists (and I do not mean to be cynical), theirs is nothing more than frenetic cry-baby Brownian motion. There is no intellectual force, much less real force, behind a demand for sensitivity from those you believe to be worse than insensitive.
Such activism reminds me of the victim impact statement in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition and kindness from entities incapable of such sentiment.
When you’re reduced to asking a cunning conqueror to be nice; you’ve been bitch slapped good. Besides, ask yourself, “Why the distrust of fellow Muslims?” The Muslims in question say they are sincere in their endeavor; why doubt them?
Activists are acting out of emotion and have failed to examine what they’re really saying and, then, say it out loud.
Restricting acquisitive property rights in a free society should never be entertained. I’ll fight you if you try! But what other course of action are these emotion-driven protests hoping for? Again: what the activists are ludicrously requesting is kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors—for they refuse to go straight to the heart of the matter and address the only legitimate, if incremental, course of action:
And much more (use the search facility on this site, and on IlanaMercer.com, please).
Update (May 17): Myron’s interesting comment down here seems to imply that unless the Ground-Zero controversy passes the Israel-parallels test, it is deserving of no more than a dismissive shrug. Well, I’m an American commentator, first; making sure that every American dilemma passes the fairness-to-Israel test is not the mandate I’ve accepted or will ever pursue. I’ll leave that “yente,” “boba,” neocon kvetching to others (my “Holocaustism” comment applies here).
The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque examples Myron brings support the point of historical conquest, plonked as they were on Jewish sacred sites. But because Americans don’t know or care about them, Myron dismisses the concerns expressed by misguided, hysterical activists, to which “Begging For Muslim Sensitivity” gives voice (but slams).
Again: We disagree about the Israel Test.
Moreover, building the Mosque on the site of an Islamic victory against the West is symbolic—and a harbinger of things dhimmi to come. There is something nihilistic, atomistic, and effete in dismissing, even accepting, what I believe is a bitch slap from Islam’s messengers. It is the hallmark of the liberal, Western man. Muslims are too macho to dismiss insults and one-upmanship from “our side.”
I more than approve of Myron’s refusal to turn “the Towers into the Beit Hamikdash (Temple of Jerusalem).” It fits right in with my anti-hysteria, anti- 9/12 projects sentiments—these are designed to sustain the state of heightened emotional arousal that arose in the aftermath of 9/11.
And emotional arousal does nothing for clear thinking (although it helps in bed).
