[by Mr.Hengist]
Last night I was mulling over something VPOTUS Biden said regarding the current budget dispute: "The Republicans this time are totally, and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, are out of the closet." It's an interesting use of that phrase. Biden did of course mean this in the pejorative; they are "out of the closet" in terms of their public plans for the Federal budget, and pejorative in the sense that Biden thinks they intend to do wrong and wishes to debate against their nefarious plans. Nevertheless, what struck me was that he would use that turn of phrase at all - and that Liberals have let it slide. Progressives see themselves as gay rights advocates and the defenders of gay dignity, so how is it that one of their own can use this turn of phrase in this way - referring to Republicans revealing their true and (supposedly) harmful intent? If he had said, "the monster's out from under the bed" it would have been a different matter, but "out of the closet" is strictly associated with homosexuals revealing their orientation, and it's considered a good thing. Using it to describe what Liberals consider to be evil Republican goals is oddly inappropriate.
What, I wondered, would be the Progressive response if Republicans had used this "out of the closet" phrase in a similar way but aimed at Democrats? If, say, VPOTUS Cheney had remarked that we now see the Democrats "totally out of the closet" in regards to their intent to dramatically cut DOD funding? I imagined the response would be swift and strongly condemning. As luck would have it, today we are treated to a real-life example - and even better, it's not just used by Republicans but it's also aimed at Republicans.
A college Republican group called upon conservatives in the student body to "come out of the closet." University of Iowa professor Ellen Lewin's response, in an email back to the students: "F--- you, Republicans."
Vulgar and uncivil, certainly, and weren't Liberals decrying the "incivility" of the Right only a few of months ago after the Giffords shooting (by a non-right-wing madman, no less)? In a NYTimes blogpost just last week the Nobel laureate NYTimes columnist Dr. Paul Krugman's mask drops, falls to the floor, and explodes (to lift a phrase from Steven Hayward at Power Line) when he informed us that "Civility is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels." This would be the same Paul Krugman who joined the Right-bashing party by blaming the Right for the Giffords shooting (see here, and here). Note well the double-standards to which Liberals hold themselves vs. their political opposition; they demand civility from the Right as they continue to fling poo at them.
Call it another example of The Pretext of Principles. If it weren't for situational principles, what principles would they have left? This one: What we do is good, what they do is bad - always, even when it's the same thing.
Showing posts with label Political Correctness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Correctness. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Monday, November 15, 2010
Whittle Boils It Down, Part Six: Immigration, Assimilation, and the Rule of Law
Here's the Sixth part in Bill Whittle's excellent "Firewall" series on the core ideas of the Tea Parties. Part Five dealt with gun rights, and was the usual cool, rational tour de force, and I do recommend it. But, in my view, it lies a bit to the side of the main thrust of the series, which is to shine a clear light on the dizzying succession of absurdities which are leveled at the Tea Parties by their determined, well-funded adversaries.
The Tea Parties are a heterogeneous assemblage of groups, still very much finding its voice and finding its feet. They contain a fair share of flakes and philosophers, psychos and statesmen. They differ broadly on methods and on messages. They engage in their fair shares of far-sightedness and folly. They are still evolving. As such, they are easy pickings for those who would "pick their target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it." It's easy enough to pick and decontextualize the dumbass things that are said and done within established political entities, with lobbyists and press handlers and a measure of message momentum. To take a stew like the Tea Parties, still in full rolling boil, and dip the fork of opposition research into it, one is bound to come up with more than one unsavory ingredient.
All of the abject nonsense about racism, xenophobia, theocratic aspirations, and domestic terrorism has either dropped into the pot from fringe elements who are broadly denounced from within the Tea Parties themselves...or have been slipped into it from without. I can only get up so much of a head of steam about the foolishness which comes out of the mouths of some Tea Party adherents. I could really live a whole lot better without the selective harvesting of these mal mots, and their use as cudgels, but if someone said 'em, there's no use hiding 'em. It's the introduction of slanders spun of whole cloth which really chaps my chalupas. One of the real biggies, the great, steaming, nitrate-rich piles of pure felgercarb, is this whole bit about racism.
One may, of course, differ with the small-government, free-market, decentralized politico-economic model of the Tea Parties (the one thing they all have in common). One can, of course, hold to a model of greater intervention in the economy by a more robust centralized government. But all of this non-sense about xenophobia is simply not in code of the Tea Party program. If anything, the meritocratic opportunity society which the Tea Parties envision is one which leaves zero room for the identity politics which form a far more fertile patch of soil for the undue emphasis on differences whose excessive extension leads into the rank recesses of racism.
It is to this last point that Whittle speaks in this latest vid. One of the recurring themes in the Tea Parties' discourse is one of push-back against illegal immigration, and against those government policies which --in effect or by intent-- abet it. Naturally, among Transnational Progressives, any mention of protecting National borders is at best distasteful...at worst, it is a kind of nativist provincialism which is treated as interchangeable with xenophobia. The cult of multiculturalism will not brook any talk of assimilation, treating it as some Borg-like attempt to erase the essence of the soul of the somethingorother. They would have us replace the "melting pot" with a very busy salad.
The problem is that all of this is beside the point. That point is that one of the chief functions of a Nation-State is to guard the borders which, in large part, define it. It is to reinforce the membrane around the organism of State, and thus to preserve the integrity of that entity with respect to its surround. A cell with an overly porous membrane (or none at all) simply melts into a patch of protoplasm, indistinct and quite dead. Say what you will about the Nation State as a concept (sigh, I guess that includes you, Mike), but so long as it exists, it must preserve a certain structural integrity, which includes the regulation of passage across its borders. Ethnicity has nothing to do with this, except inasmuch as given ethnic groups may (lamentably!) be statistically (though by no means essentially) associated with the sorts of failed and failing states from which people show a tendency to want to emigrate, with the US as a prime destination. But (and this is the central point) that ethnicity is wholly incidental to the question of whether their quite legitimate grievances with their countries of origin entitle them to carry with them some of the lawlessness that they strive to escape, and to import it into this Nation by the sheer act of slipping into it extra-legally.
There are whole shadow infrastructures which subtend the passage of illegal immigrants into this country, vast criminal enterprises which I would flatter by referring to them as merely amoral. Emotional appeals about poor families, hoping to make a better life must be held up against clear-eyed acknowledgments of the brutal, lawless cartels which pad their clandestine balance sheets by flouting the legal structures of this Nation and marching those families across the frontier in the dead of night. An insufficiently guarded border is like one big broken window in the neighborhood. It signals a laxity and decadence which invites exploitation like a wounded seal in a school of sharks. The national security implications of poor border enforcement are obvious (or should be!). But there are subtler issues afoot here, issues having to do with the level of order which a Nation can assure its citizens (not so great for the people of border states, who are urged to avoid certain areas so as not to run afoul of well-armed Coyote caravans), and with the value of labor (materially deflated by the presence of an entire underground economy of desperate people willing to take less than a pittance for jobs which would otherwise have to compete for workers in the full light of day).
The leaky bottom of the labor market, as far as I've been able to discern, is the main point of contention within the Tea Party ranks when it comes to illegal immigration. It speaks directly to the integrity of the marketplace as a mechanism for assigning value to economic activity, and the distortions of that marketplace where the value of labor is so unbalanced by a vast pool of undocumented workers, pulling that value artificially downward. Throw in the whole bit about the government failing to act on its Constitutionally-mandated charter to enforce the borders, and there's a whole lot of principled ground for the Tea Partiers to stand on with regard to this issue, and not a bit of it has to do with racism. Fancy that.
Now, I would be the first to be attacked from some quarters of the Tea Parties (and no, not because I am Hispanic. Sheesh!), in that I do support some kind of mechanism for bringing many of the diligent and law-abiding illegal immigrants in out of the cold...though not without penalty, and not in a way which disadvantages those who have striven mightily and waited long to secure legal residency or citizenship. But such measures would be meaningless in the absence of robust border enforcement, and a national will to expel those who game the system and/or commit crimes while they're here (aside from the one about being here in the first place, that is). If this way of thinking appears racist to some, then I submit that their definitions of that word cry out to be revisited.
Anyway, here's Bill's take on the matter:
The Tea Parties are a heterogeneous assemblage of groups, still very much finding its voice and finding its feet. They contain a fair share of flakes and philosophers, psychos and statesmen. They differ broadly on methods and on messages. They engage in their fair shares of far-sightedness and folly. They are still evolving. As such, they are easy pickings for those who would "pick their target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it." It's easy enough to pick and decontextualize the dumbass things that are said and done within established political entities, with lobbyists and press handlers and a measure of message momentum. To take a stew like the Tea Parties, still in full rolling boil, and dip the fork of opposition research into it, one is bound to come up with more than one unsavory ingredient.
All of the abject nonsense about racism, xenophobia, theocratic aspirations, and domestic terrorism has either dropped into the pot from fringe elements who are broadly denounced from within the Tea Parties themselves...or have been slipped into it from without. I can only get up so much of a head of steam about the foolishness which comes out of the mouths of some Tea Party adherents. I could really live a whole lot better without the selective harvesting of these mal mots, and their use as cudgels, but if someone said 'em, there's no use hiding 'em. It's the introduction of slanders spun of whole cloth which really chaps my chalupas. One of the real biggies, the great, steaming, nitrate-rich piles of pure felgercarb, is this whole bit about racism.
One may, of course, differ with the small-government, free-market, decentralized politico-economic model of the Tea Parties (the one thing they all have in common). One can, of course, hold to a model of greater intervention in the economy by a more robust centralized government. But all of this non-sense about xenophobia is simply not in code of the Tea Party program. If anything, the meritocratic opportunity society which the Tea Parties envision is one which leaves zero room for the identity politics which form a far more fertile patch of soil for the undue emphasis on differences whose excessive extension leads into the rank recesses of racism.
It is to this last point that Whittle speaks in this latest vid. One of the recurring themes in the Tea Parties' discourse is one of push-back against illegal immigration, and against those government policies which --in effect or by intent-- abet it. Naturally, among Transnational Progressives, any mention of protecting National borders is at best distasteful...at worst, it is a kind of nativist provincialism which is treated as interchangeable with xenophobia. The cult of multiculturalism will not brook any talk of assimilation, treating it as some Borg-like attempt to erase the essence of the soul of the somethingorother. They would have us replace the "melting pot" with a very busy salad.
The problem is that all of this is beside the point. That point is that one of the chief functions of a Nation-State is to guard the borders which, in large part, define it. It is to reinforce the membrane around the organism of State, and thus to preserve the integrity of that entity with respect to its surround. A cell with an overly porous membrane (or none at all) simply melts into a patch of protoplasm, indistinct and quite dead. Say what you will about the Nation State as a concept (sigh, I guess that includes you, Mike), but so long as it exists, it must preserve a certain structural integrity, which includes the regulation of passage across its borders. Ethnicity has nothing to do with this, except inasmuch as given ethnic groups may (lamentably!) be statistically (though by no means essentially) associated with the sorts of failed and failing states from which people show a tendency to want to emigrate, with the US as a prime destination. But (and this is the central point) that ethnicity is wholly incidental to the question of whether their quite legitimate grievances with their countries of origin entitle them to carry with them some of the lawlessness that they strive to escape, and to import it into this Nation by the sheer act of slipping into it extra-legally.
There are whole shadow infrastructures which subtend the passage of illegal immigrants into this country, vast criminal enterprises which I would flatter by referring to them as merely amoral. Emotional appeals about poor families, hoping to make a better life must be held up against clear-eyed acknowledgments of the brutal, lawless cartels which pad their clandestine balance sheets by flouting the legal structures of this Nation and marching those families across the frontier in the dead of night. An insufficiently guarded border is like one big broken window in the neighborhood. It signals a laxity and decadence which invites exploitation like a wounded seal in a school of sharks. The national security implications of poor border enforcement are obvious (or should be!). But there are subtler issues afoot here, issues having to do with the level of order which a Nation can assure its citizens (not so great for the people of border states, who are urged to avoid certain areas so as not to run afoul of well-armed Coyote caravans), and with the value of labor (materially deflated by the presence of an entire underground economy of desperate people willing to take less than a pittance for jobs which would otherwise have to compete for workers in the full light of day).
The leaky bottom of the labor market, as far as I've been able to discern, is the main point of contention within the Tea Party ranks when it comes to illegal immigration. It speaks directly to the integrity of the marketplace as a mechanism for assigning value to economic activity, and the distortions of that marketplace where the value of labor is so unbalanced by a vast pool of undocumented workers, pulling that value artificially downward. Throw in the whole bit about the government failing to act on its Constitutionally-mandated charter to enforce the borders, and there's a whole lot of principled ground for the Tea Partiers to stand on with regard to this issue, and not a bit of it has to do with racism. Fancy that.
Now, I would be the first to be attacked from some quarters of the Tea Parties (and no, not because I am Hispanic. Sheesh!), in that I do support some kind of mechanism for bringing many of the diligent and law-abiding illegal immigrants in out of the cold...though not without penalty, and not in a way which disadvantages those who have striven mightily and waited long to secure legal residency or citizenship. But such measures would be meaningless in the absence of robust border enforcement, and a national will to expel those who game the system and/or commit crimes while they're here (aside from the one about being here in the first place, that is). If this way of thinking appears racist to some, then I submit that their definitions of that word cry out to be revisited.
Anyway, here's Bill's take on the matter:
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Day of the Dove: A Modest Suggestion for Pastor Jones
First, the obvious: The planned burning of some 200 Korans by Pastor Terry Jones, of the Gainesville FL Dove World Outreach Center is a stupid idea. I'm no fan of the absurd prostrations of multiculturalists before the barbarous and bigoted threats of retaliation for any perceived slights against Islam, but this is simply unnecessary, unwise, and threatens mayhem far out of proportion to any "message" the congregants of this church may believe they are sending. It is, to any reasoning being, an insensitive provocation.
It is also a Constitutionally protected form of political expression which, some niggling fire codes notwithstanding, there is no legal grounds to suppress.
But just because Pastor Jones has a right to do this, does not make it the right thing to do. And, if that phrase sounds familiar, it should. It is the phrase which is so frequently uttered with respect to the planned mosque and Islamic cultural center within steps of Ground Zero. There is broad agreement that Imam Rauf has every right to go forth with the construction of that center. Religious freedom and private property rights are crystal clear on the matter. But this inarguable fact does not in any way diminish the staggering insensitivity of constructing an Islamic center --however many nods to interconfessional amity may be incorporated into its plan-- well within the debris field of an horrific attack on the West by those who were motivated by the most virulent strains of Islamist ideology. No, it was not "Islam" which attacked us, and therefore it is unwarranted to generalize that Jihadist atrocity to the whole of Islam. Duh.
But if Rauf is really interested in promoting peaceable coexistence between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, then the very best thing he could do would be to recognize the overwhelming opposition to the Cordoba House, and exercise his rights to find an alternate location for the structure. I suppose it would be well within bounds for him to publicly lament that the rift between his stated ideals and the reality of the current zeitgeist is such that such a step would be necessary. I'm not even altogether sure that I would disagree.
Now, I have no idea if Pastor Jones would be interested in the following suggestion, but he has a real opportunity to perform a mitzvah here. Long about September 10th, say, he could grab one of the many microphones which are doubtless being shoved in his face on a daily basis, and say something along the lines of: "It is no secret that I consider Islam to be opposed to the most cherished tenets of my faith, and I had planned to make a statement about the dangers of this heathen religion to the very soul of Christendom. But, upon reflection and prayer, and mindful of the far-reaching consequences should I exercise my Constitutional right of free expression, I have chosen --and am directing my flock to follow me in this-- to forgo that right, and to cancel the planned burning of the Moslem Book. I am dismayed that my ability to express my faith and my protest has raised such opposition, but the ideals of charity and tolerance which are the very soul of Christianity must win out over my concern at the corrosive effects of the Moslem heresy."
OK, so I suspect we're not talking about someone with such an evolved capacity for verbal expression, but you get the general idea.
Now, were he to leave it to the punditry or make the statement himself, explicitly, the connection between Jones' possible actions and what one might hope Imam Rauf would choose could not be lost on those who struggle with their own feelings and ideals with respect to the Cordoba House. Justly or unjustly, book burnings evoke ugly images of orgiastic fascist exercises in thought control. Similarly, images of Victory Mosques simply cannot help but intrude on even the most sober discussion of what to do with the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory, which was struck by the landing gear of one of the hijacked planes.
Both of these men have a unique opportunity to teach a lesson on rights and Rights. I do hope they both choose to do the right thing.
It is also a Constitutionally protected form of political expression which, some niggling fire codes notwithstanding, there is no legal grounds to suppress.
But just because Pastor Jones has a right to do this, does not make it the right thing to do. And, if that phrase sounds familiar, it should. It is the phrase which is so frequently uttered with respect to the planned mosque and Islamic cultural center within steps of Ground Zero. There is broad agreement that Imam Rauf has every right to go forth with the construction of that center. Religious freedom and private property rights are crystal clear on the matter. But this inarguable fact does not in any way diminish the staggering insensitivity of constructing an Islamic center --however many nods to interconfessional amity may be incorporated into its plan-- well within the debris field of an horrific attack on the West by those who were motivated by the most virulent strains of Islamist ideology. No, it was not "Islam" which attacked us, and therefore it is unwarranted to generalize that Jihadist atrocity to the whole of Islam. Duh.
But if Rauf is really interested in promoting peaceable coexistence between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds, then the very best thing he could do would be to recognize the overwhelming opposition to the Cordoba House, and exercise his rights to find an alternate location for the structure. I suppose it would be well within bounds for him to publicly lament that the rift between his stated ideals and the reality of the current zeitgeist is such that such a step would be necessary. I'm not even altogether sure that I would disagree.
Now, I have no idea if Pastor Jones would be interested in the following suggestion, but he has a real opportunity to perform a mitzvah here. Long about September 10th, say, he could grab one of the many microphones which are doubtless being shoved in his face on a daily basis, and say something along the lines of: "It is no secret that I consider Islam to be opposed to the most cherished tenets of my faith, and I had planned to make a statement about the dangers of this heathen religion to the very soul of Christendom. But, upon reflection and prayer, and mindful of the far-reaching consequences should I exercise my Constitutional right of free expression, I have chosen --and am directing my flock to follow me in this-- to forgo that right, and to cancel the planned burning of the Moslem Book. I am dismayed that my ability to express my faith and my protest has raised such opposition, but the ideals of charity and tolerance which are the very soul of Christianity must win out over my concern at the corrosive effects of the Moslem heresy."
OK, so I suspect we're not talking about someone with such an evolved capacity for verbal expression, but you get the general idea.
Now, were he to leave it to the punditry or make the statement himself, explicitly, the connection between Jones' possible actions and what one might hope Imam Rauf would choose could not be lost on those who struggle with their own feelings and ideals with respect to the Cordoba House. Justly or unjustly, book burnings evoke ugly images of orgiastic fascist exercises in thought control. Similarly, images of Victory Mosques simply cannot help but intrude on even the most sober discussion of what to do with the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory, which was struck by the landing gear of one of the hijacked planes.
Both of these men have a unique opportunity to teach a lesson on rights and Rights. I do hope they both choose to do the right thing.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Nazi Smears Old & Busted? Whip Out the Race Card!
[by Mr.Hengist]
Let me just start this off by saying that "race relations", as they used to be called when I was a boy, are of no interest to me. I was raised in a racially colorblind household, and, come to think of it, I can't recall ever having seen even mild racism in my nuclear or extended family. I attended colorblind schools with a variety of peoples of different races, and so forth. As a result of this upbringing I believe that racism is just wrong. This was an issue to press with my parents' generation, and my parents in particular, and press they did. As for me, well, waging eternal war against racism is just not my bag.
Here in America, the advocates of racial equality won, thankfully. I was born at a time when the first inter-racial kiss on Star Trek was a notable event, and what seemed generations away back then has, after a generation or two, come to pass: we have a black* POTUS, as well as black Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, CEOs, and so forth. America has come a long way, yadda yadda yadda. The color barrier has been broken and racism dare not show its face in polite society. However, I'm of the opinion that racism has not been and never will be eliminated; we waged a world war trying to eliminate the f'ing Nazis and yet there are still admirers of that abomination to this day; racism, likewise, will endure. It usually takes some generations to make societal changes like these. We should neither sanction racism by law nor countenance it personally. I don't make friends with bigots, and I keep myself from slapping them.
I find myself in good company on the American Right. In the midst of my political conversion during the Spring and Summer of 2003, I found myself visiting rightwing blogs for reasons wholly unrelated to politics and, to my surprise, I found paraphrased there the famous quotation of Martin Luther King Jr. from his "I Have a Dream" speech, to the effect that he wished for a nation that would judge people not on their skin color but the content of their character. I found it on several different rightwing blogs, actually, and it took a while before I came to believe that, rather than simply being than a cudgel with which to beat the hypocrisy out of their ideological enemies, it was indeed, as it appeared: an expression of genuine desire. After a couple of years of reading rightwing blogs, columns, and publications, I came to realize upon reflection that not only was racism absent from the places I visited on the Right, but also absent too was the soft bigotry of low expectations to which I had become accustomed in my previous life as a Liberal (not that I shared it at the time, but it's so pervasive on the Left that I'd come to hardly notice it).
Accusations of racism, however, are cudgel in the hands of Liberals. They're also big on calling us Nazis, notwithstanding the irony. Racists, like Nazis, have no legitimate currency in our realm, and no say in our national debate. That's why they demonize us by calling us these names; not because it's true, but because they would have their idological competition eliminated from the debate without having to address our arguments on merit. We end up having to defend ourselves from these scurrilous attacks which in turn reduces the time we can spend talking about the flawed policy and wrongdoings of our opponents and it taints our image in minds of the gullible and uninformed. It's a despicable political tactic.
You'll want proof, of course. By way of example I give you Rush Limbaugh, who was most recently pilloried when he tried to buy an ownership stake in a football team. The Left used one of Alinsky's tactics (see "Rules for Radicals"): "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It". The Left set their sights on Limbaugh and opened up with all guns blazing - blanks. The quotes used against him were either fabricated or decontextualized. That was the best they could do, and bear in mind that Limbaugh has been broadcasting for the last twenty-five years. That's an hour or two a day, five days a week, most of the year, year after year, and despite the vast wealth of material through which they are free to comb for examples to bolster their charge, again, this is the best they can do. If, like me, you think as serious an accusation as racism should be backed up by evidence, then that's not just weak tea, that's homeopathic tea, but then, Liberals neither require proof to make accusations against their political opponents, nor do they see this as being a problem.
All this brings me to my pet piñata of a dinosaur media columnist: Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, and his latest column, "Obama needs to stand up to 'reverse racism' ploy" (WaPo - July 22, 2010 - A19). Let's start with the title, which calls out the "reverse racism ploy" of the Right. "Reverse racism" is sort of like racism, but in reverse. It's when people of other ethnicities are accused of racism - other than white, of course. That is to say that racism, as defined by the Left, is when whites discriminate against people of other ethnicities, so the reverse of that would be when people of other ethnicities discriminate against whites (or, occasionally, ethnicities other than their own). Racism is, by their definition, exclusively the province of white people; racism, when exhibited by non-whites, is the reverse of that. "Reverse racism" is, therefore, a divisive and racist term itself (it's a racist term, in that they have a special term for wrongdoing by a particular racial group). Congratulations, Eugene! Right out of the gate, you've beclowned yourself.
Let's move on to the body of the text:
This was not, however, an accusation that when "minories reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites." What it illustrated was that the NAACP, which hosted the event, applauded and gave approval to Sherrod's recounting of her tale of when she racially discriminated against a white farmer, not doing all she could to help him (when she was working for a non-profit). She states that she was of the opinion that he should seek help from "one of his own kind." She went on to say that she had since come to believe that poor whites are also worthy of her help. Middle class and rich whites should still, presumably, be helped "by their own kind." (in her own semi-coherent words, "That’s when…it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white — it is about white and black — but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes." )
There's the Gates/cops incident, in which Gates threw a tantrum, ranting and shouting about how he was being racially harassed when the police came to protect his home from burglars. They had asked him to step outside of the house, which is a standard police procedure which removes a person from any potential threat in a dwelling; even if a homeowner insists from within their own house that everything is OK, the police will ask them to step outside and say the same thing, just in case the homeowner is being coerced by, say, somebody behind the door, holding a gun on him. The problem with what POTUS Obama did was that, before any investigation, and before all the facts were known, Obama characterized the police as having acted "stupidly." This was unpresidential and possibly racially motivated, as Gates is black and the police were mostly white, but not provably so. That was the attitude, by and large, of the Right on this flap; it was Gates who was the primary object of scorn on the Right, for playing the race card, and POTUS Obama a distant second for inappropriately injecting his uninformed opinion on an issue of minor national significance - and, predictably, automatically siding with the black guy screaming "Racism!"
Then there's the then-nominee for the SCOTUS Sotomayor, who made an arguably racist statement in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That remark was less about wise Latinas as it was about how white men are not as wise or fair as Latinas.
That should have disqualified her for the nomination to the Supreme Court. Don't think so? Fine, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine the SCOTUS nominee of a Republican POTUS had said the following: "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina who hasn't lived that life." Kinda pops out at ya now, doesn't it?
Remember, these are Eugene Robinson's cited examples of false charges of racism by the Right against POTUS Obama.
He goes on:
The last thing the Left wants is to have a serious discussion with their political opposition about the future of this country and Liberal vs. Conservative policies. Instead, as always, they seek to eject their opposition from the discussion by manufacturing accusations of racism against them. Granted, when your ideas are as bankrupt and divisive as theirs, it's understandable why they would like to avoid that debate, even if it means throwing serious accusations of evil around. It's understandable, and shamefully so.
Shame on Eugene Robinson, shame on the Left, and shame on you willing Liberal dupes who live in your Liberal bubbles. You will never understand your political opposition, or have a coherent political discussion with them, until you start to listen to what they have to say for themselves. When you let fools like Robinson (or the busted ThinkProgress) explain the Right to you instead of actually listening to the Right, you end up sounding incoherently disconnected from reality and dishonest.
* Regarding my usage of the word "black" instead of the more PC "African-American": yes, that's right, I still say "black". I know, I know, black people aren't actually black, they're brown, in the same way that I'm not white. As inaccurate as these hues are in describing our relative pigmentation, they are a more accurate description of the thing we're talking about than the term "African-American". There are lots of black people who are not from and have never been to Africa, just as there are lots of people who are fishbelly white who actually live there, and, perhaps just as confoundingly, black people who were born in, say, Canada are not, obviously, African-American. As far as our use of language goes, black beats colored beats negro beats darkie beats the-n-word-I-can't-say-because-I'm-white-even-if-I-do-so-in-contempt-of-it, but African-American is just silly and so I generally avoid it.
Let me just start this off by saying that "race relations", as they used to be called when I was a boy, are of no interest to me. I was raised in a racially colorblind household, and, come to think of it, I can't recall ever having seen even mild racism in my nuclear or extended family. I attended colorblind schools with a variety of peoples of different races, and so forth. As a result of this upbringing I believe that racism is just wrong. This was an issue to press with my parents' generation, and my parents in particular, and press they did. As for me, well, waging eternal war against racism is just not my bag.
Here in America, the advocates of racial equality won, thankfully. I was born at a time when the first inter-racial kiss on Star Trek was a notable event, and what seemed generations away back then has, after a generation or two, come to pass: we have a black* POTUS, as well as black Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, CEOs, and so forth. America has come a long way, yadda yadda yadda. The color barrier has been broken and racism dare not show its face in polite society. However, I'm of the opinion that racism has not been and never will be eliminated; we waged a world war trying to eliminate the f'ing Nazis and yet there are still admirers of that abomination to this day; racism, likewise, will endure. It usually takes some generations to make societal changes like these. We should neither sanction racism by law nor countenance it personally. I don't make friends with bigots, and I keep myself from slapping them.
I find myself in good company on the American Right. In the midst of my political conversion during the Spring and Summer of 2003, I found myself visiting rightwing blogs for reasons wholly unrelated to politics and, to my surprise, I found paraphrased there the famous quotation of Martin Luther King Jr. from his "I Have a Dream" speech, to the effect that he wished for a nation that would judge people not on their skin color but the content of their character. I found it on several different rightwing blogs, actually, and it took a while before I came to believe that, rather than simply being than a cudgel with which to beat the hypocrisy out of their ideological enemies, it was indeed, as it appeared: an expression of genuine desire. After a couple of years of reading rightwing blogs, columns, and publications, I came to realize upon reflection that not only was racism absent from the places I visited on the Right, but also absent too was the soft bigotry of low expectations to which I had become accustomed in my previous life as a Liberal (not that I shared it at the time, but it's so pervasive on the Left that I'd come to hardly notice it).
Accusations of racism, however, are cudgel in the hands of Liberals. They're also big on calling us Nazis, notwithstanding the irony. Racists, like Nazis, have no legitimate currency in our realm, and no say in our national debate. That's why they demonize us by calling us these names; not because it's true, but because they would have their idological competition eliminated from the debate without having to address our arguments on merit. We end up having to defend ourselves from these scurrilous attacks which in turn reduces the time we can spend talking about the flawed policy and wrongdoings of our opponents and it taints our image in minds of the gullible and uninformed. It's a despicable political tactic.
You'll want proof, of course. By way of example I give you Rush Limbaugh, who was most recently pilloried when he tried to buy an ownership stake in a football team. The Left used one of Alinsky's tactics (see "Rules for Radicals"): "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It". The Left set their sights on Limbaugh and opened up with all guns blazing - blanks. The quotes used against him were either fabricated or decontextualized. That was the best they could do, and bear in mind that Limbaugh has been broadcasting for the last twenty-five years. That's an hour or two a day, five days a week, most of the year, year after year, and despite the vast wealth of material through which they are free to comb for examples to bolster their charge, again, this is the best they can do. If, like me, you think as serious an accusation as racism should be backed up by evidence, then that's not just weak tea, that's homeopathic tea, but then, Liberals neither require proof to make accusations against their political opponents, nor do they see this as being a problem.
All this brings me to my pet piñata of a dinosaur media columnist: Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, and his latest column, "Obama needs to stand up to 'reverse racism' ploy" (WaPo - July 22, 2010 - A19). Let's start with the title, which calls out the "reverse racism ploy" of the Right. "Reverse racism" is sort of like racism, but in reverse. It's when people of other ethnicities are accused of racism - other than white, of course. That is to say that racism, as defined by the Left, is when whites discriminate against people of other ethnicities, so the reverse of that would be when people of other ethnicities discriminate against whites (or, occasionally, ethnicities other than their own). Racism is, by their definition, exclusively the province of white people; racism, when exhibited by non-whites, is the reverse of that. "Reverse racism" is, therefore, a divisive and racist term itself (it's a racist term, in that they have a special term for wrongdoing by a particular racial group). Congratulations, Eugene! Right out of the gate, you've beclowned yourself.
Let's move on to the body of the text:
"After the Shirley Sherrod episode, there's no longer any need to mince words: A cynical right-wing propaganda machine is peddling the poisonous fiction that when African Americans or other minorities reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites."Leaving aside the false pretense that Robinson or Liberals have up until now been mincing words, the "right-wing propaganda machine" is what Leftists imagine to be the rightwing equivalent of their own propaganda machines. Like, say, JournoList, in which Liberal journalists and academicians colluded to coordinated smears of their political opposition and spike stories which made their side look bad. They imagine that since they work together in this way, their opposition must as well, and having imagined it to be possible, they suppose that it's probable, and having supposed that it's probable, they conclude that it must be true, and so with the speed of a caffeinated ferret they know to be true that which they've only imagined. Proof is no longer necessary for Leftists to delude themselves. At any rate, the target of Andrew Breitbart's posting of the clips of Sheley Sherrod was not her; it was aimed at the group to which she was speaking, the NAACP. The NAACP, which is working together openly with the openly racist "Nation of Islam". This was in response to the NAACP calling out racism in the Tea Party, citing now-debunked accusations of racism (see Power Line's "Don't leave it to Cleaver", parts 1 through 17).
This was not, however, an accusation that when "minories reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites." What it illustrated was that the NAACP, which hosted the event, applauded and gave approval to Sherrod's recounting of her tale of when she racially discriminated against a white farmer, not doing all she could to help him (when she was working for a non-profit). She states that she was of the opinion that he should seek help from "one of his own kind." She went on to say that she had since come to believe that poor whites are also worthy of her help. Middle class and rich whites should still, presumably, be helped "by their own kind." (in her own semi-coherent words, "That’s when…it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white — it is about white and black — but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes." )
"A few of the purveyors of this bigoted nonsense might actually believe it. Most of them, however, are merely seeking political gain by inviting white voters to question the motives and good faith of the nation's first African American president. This is really about tearing Barack Obama down."This had nothing to do with POTUS Obama. The fact that this Marxist racist worked for the USDA was something of an embarassment to the Obama Administration, and she was fired for it. Now they've apologized for that, since, I guessing, they're of the opinion that if you're a Marxist racist, and not just a plain old racist, that's OK.
"With the Obama presidency, though, has come a flurry of charges -- from the likes of Breitbart but also from more substantial conservative figures -- about alleged incidences of racial discrimination against whites by blacks and other minorities. Recall, for example, the way Obama's critics had a fit when he offered an opinion about the confrontation between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a white police officer. Remember the over-the-top reaction when it was learned that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had once talked about how being a "wise Latina" might affect her thinking."Well, no, there haven't been a flurry of charges about incidents of racial discrimination against whites by blacks and other minorities. Robinsons WaPo readers are not expected to doubt this despite having little recollection of any such thing, but rather his assertion alone, in their minds, will make it so. He imagines it, and so he asserts it, and on that basis they believe. His examples?
There's the Gates/cops incident, in which Gates threw a tantrum, ranting and shouting about how he was being racially harassed when the police came to protect his home from burglars. They had asked him to step outside of the house, which is a standard police procedure which removes a person from any potential threat in a dwelling; even if a homeowner insists from within their own house that everything is OK, the police will ask them to step outside and say the same thing, just in case the homeowner is being coerced by, say, somebody behind the door, holding a gun on him. The problem with what POTUS Obama did was that, before any investigation, and before all the facts were known, Obama characterized the police as having acted "stupidly." This was unpresidential and possibly racially motivated, as Gates is black and the police were mostly white, but not provably so. That was the attitude, by and large, of the Right on this flap; it was Gates who was the primary object of scorn on the Right, for playing the race card, and POTUS Obama a distant second for inappropriately injecting his uninformed opinion on an issue of minor national significance - and, predictably, automatically siding with the black guy screaming "Racism!"
Then there's the then-nominee for the SCOTUS Sotomayor, who made an arguably racist statement in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That remark was less about wise Latinas as it was about how white men are not as wise or fair as Latinas.
That should have disqualified her for the nomination to the Supreme Court. Don't think so? Fine, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine the SCOTUS nominee of a Republican POTUS had said the following: "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina who hasn't lived that life." Kinda pops out at ya now, doesn't it?
Remember, these are Eugene Robinson's cited examples of false charges of racism by the Right against POTUS Obama.
He goes on:
"Before Sherrod, the cause celebre of the "You Must Fear Obama" campaign involved something called the New Black Panther Party. Never heard of it? That's because it's a tiny group that exists mainly in the fevered imaginations of its few members. Also in the alternate reality of Fox News: One of the network's hosts has devoted more than three hours of air time in recent weeks to the grave threat posed by the NBPP. Actually, I suspect that this excess is at least partly an attempt by a relatively obscure anchor to boost her own notoriety."Robinson will not let his lack of comprehension of the arguments of his opponents stand in the way of his characterizing them as being frivolous or malevolent - a pitch-perfect Liberal. In this case, what has the Right outraged has less to do with the New Black Panther Party than the Department of Justice. The New Black Panther Party is, indeed, a tiny group of violent racists who are, on the whole, of little consequence. During the 2008 election two of them, one armed with a billy club, were stationed just outside a polling station, and were intimidating voters. It was a clear violation of law, and regardless of the merits of the case, the DOJ had the case won through a default judgement, had they but taken it. The New Black Panthers did not show up, nor did they send representative council, and so would have lost the civil suit filed against them by the DOJ had only the DOJ accepted it. Deliberately, they did not do so, and it is the contention of J. Christian Adams (and initially corroborated by two of his colleagues, now a third) that it is the internal policy of the DOJ that the voting rights laws will not be enforced in the defense of white voters. The Right has a problem with that. So should the Left, but they don't. Instead, they mischaracterize these allegations and their political opposition.
The last thing the Left wants is to have a serious discussion with their political opposition about the future of this country and Liberal vs. Conservative policies. Instead, as always, they seek to eject their opposition from the discussion by manufacturing accusations of racism against them. Granted, when your ideas are as bankrupt and divisive as theirs, it's understandable why they would like to avoid that debate, even if it means throwing serious accusations of evil around. It's understandable, and shamefully so.
Shame on Eugene Robinson, shame on the Left, and shame on you willing Liberal dupes who live in your Liberal bubbles. You will never understand your political opposition, or have a coherent political discussion with them, until you start to listen to what they have to say for themselves. When you let fools like Robinson (or the busted ThinkProgress) explain the Right to you instead of actually listening to the Right, you end up sounding incoherently disconnected from reality and dishonest.
* Regarding my usage of the word "black" instead of the more PC "African-American": yes, that's right, I still say "black". I know, I know, black people aren't actually black, they're brown, in the same way that I'm not white. As inaccurate as these hues are in describing our relative pigmentation, they are a more accurate description of the thing we're talking about than the term "African-American". There are lots of black people who are not from and have never been to Africa, just as there are lots of people who are fishbelly white who actually live there, and, perhaps just as confoundingly, black people who were born in, say, Canada are not, obviously, African-American. As far as our use of language goes, black beats colored beats negro beats darkie beats the-n-word-I-can't-say-because-I'm-white-even-if-I-do-so-in-contempt-of-it, but African-American is just silly and so I generally avoid it.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thoughts on Fort Hood
I've been monitoring the coverage of the murderous rampage at Fort Hood (I steadfastly refuse to call it a "Tragedy."). I am as struck by the eagerness on the Right to declare it an unalloyed act of Islamist terrorism, as I am by the refusal on the Left to speak aloud the idea that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's religion played any role at all. In the former case, Hasan's contacts with known Islamist radicals are correctly highlighted, In the latter, his obvious signs of mental illness are emphasized. Both sides commit the error of allowing ideological bias to corrupt their perception (let alone their interpretation) of the available evidence.
It may well prove that Hassan was gripped by a delusional system which took the form of murderous religious grandiosity (clearly there were indications of thought disorder of increasing severity over time, and religious themes are common in delusional processes). It may be that a kind of vicarious traumatization did in fact take place in the course of his work with combat veterans, resulting in such a pronounced decompensation even in the absence of first-hand trauma in battle (i.e., exacerbating a pre-existing mental instability). These may prove to be legitimately mitigating circumstances in the eventual outcome of the case (vs. the steely-eyed, clear-thinking fanatic scenario, for example).
However, even granting these possibilities, the willful exclusion of the role which Hasan’s Islamopathy (as in “Osama bin Laden is not so much a Muslim as an Islamopath,” It’s a term I coined the other day, of which I’m growing increasingly fond) is itself a kind of madness. If ever there was a glaring example of how political correctness paralyzes the processes of rational thought, it is this. Whether Hasan was shouting “Allahu Akhbar” as a battle cry, or as a prayer to preserve his soul in what even he must have seen as a probably fatal act, the fact remains that his religion (and his demented interpretation thereof) was somewhere in the mix. To insist otherwise is willfully to exclude the evidence of one’s senses.
The latter is by no means an exclusive proclivity of ideologues on the Right or the Left, to be sure. But I have noted with dismay that the comments I have read on the Right do factor in his mental illness (even if they discount any exculpatory value it may have to the matter at hand), while their counterparts on the Left have widely been characterized by a deafening silence on the matter of Hasan's religion...except to note that it may spur the widespread anti-Muslim backlash which even 9/11 conspicuously failed to bring about.
Events such as these serve to underscore that we live in times in which bias and bigotry and willful blindness can both speed the bullets with more or less equally devastating effect.
It may well prove that Hassan was gripped by a delusional system which took the form of murderous religious grandiosity (clearly there were indications of thought disorder of increasing severity over time, and religious themes are common in delusional processes). It may be that a kind of vicarious traumatization did in fact take place in the course of his work with combat veterans, resulting in such a pronounced decompensation even in the absence of first-hand trauma in battle (i.e., exacerbating a pre-existing mental instability). These may prove to be legitimately mitigating circumstances in the eventual outcome of the case (vs. the steely-eyed, clear-thinking fanatic scenario, for example).
However, even granting these possibilities, the willful exclusion of the role which Hasan’s Islamopathy (as in “Osama bin Laden is not so much a Muslim as an Islamopath,” It’s a term I coined the other day, of which I’m growing increasingly fond) is itself a kind of madness. If ever there was a glaring example of how political correctness paralyzes the processes of rational thought, it is this. Whether Hasan was shouting “Allahu Akhbar” as a battle cry, or as a prayer to preserve his soul in what even he must have seen as a probably fatal act, the fact remains that his religion (and his demented interpretation thereof) was somewhere in the mix. To insist otherwise is willfully to exclude the evidence of one’s senses.
The latter is by no means an exclusive proclivity of ideologues on the Right or the Left, to be sure. But I have noted with dismay that the comments I have read on the Right do factor in his mental illness (even if they discount any exculpatory value it may have to the matter at hand), while their counterparts on the Left have widely been characterized by a deafening silence on the matter of Hasan's religion...except to note that it may spur the widespread anti-Muslim backlash which even 9/11 conspicuously failed to bring about.
Events such as these serve to underscore that we live in times in which bias and bigotry and willful blindness can both speed the bullets with more or less equally devastating effect.
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