Rants

Rant-Lite on Illegal Immigration

by La Shawn on 04.27.10

in Faith, Illegal Aliens, Rants

Update: Posts like this are incompatible with my goal to place my work in certain secular (and even some Christian) publications. It’s better to have a lower or at least politically correct profile. But still I write posts like this, and the archives are here to stay. (I was edgier back in the day.) I’ll let God sort it out. ;)

By the way, read Byron York’s latest: “The fact is, since the 1940s, federal law has required non-citizens in this country to carry, on their person, the documentation proving they are here legally — green card, work visa, etc. That hasn’t changed.”

So how is asking to see the documentation a violation?
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I used to be really angry about the way politicians were running this country. I used to be really angry when people made assumptions about me based on the color of my skin. I used to be really angry when readers and other bloggers said and wrote nasty things about me because I had a different opinion, the incorrect opinion. And nothing made me angrier than when black readers said I should shut up and go away because I was dangerous or self-hating or stupid or ugly or all four.

The anger was fuel that kept me writing, speaking, and going against the grain. It was invigorating. I wasn’t contrary for the sake of being contrary. I truly believe, will always believe, that conservatism is better for the country, and that liberalism degrades.

I’ve mellowed in middle age. Thank you, Lord! I’m not nearly as angry as I once was. Yes, politicians are still ruining the country. People still make assumptions based on the color of my skin. People still say and write nasty things about me. What’s changed?

It’s simple. First, I started trusting God more than men. That’s what Christians are supposed to do, but being fallen human beings, we give other fallen human beings too much credit. These days, instead of keeping my faith in a box and pulling it out when reading and studying the Bible or talking about it with others or attending church, I wear it like a pendant around my neck. Second, I stopped caring so much.

Some Christians are happy about Obama’s election, regardless of his views on child killing,  for instance, because he’s black (half, actually). Too sad for words. I used to seethe just thinking about the level of ignorance among people who seem to care nothing about an individual’s values, only his race. But the seething dissipated, thank God.

When I look at a person, politician or regular Joe, the first thing I want to know is whether he’s a Christian, a Bible-believing Christian. (There’s a difference.) Character follows. Is it high or low? (If he’s a Christian, his character is high, yes? Not necessarily, unfortunately. We’re still sinners.) For example, does the person cheat on his/her spouse? If he’s a Christian, does he believe babies born during botched abortions should be left to die? Does the self-labeled Christian call himself pro-choice? Next thing I want to know is whether he’s conservative politically, especially socially. The color of his skin has no part to play in my assessment. If you’re a conservative Christian with high character, you’re golden.

What precipitated this mini-rant? Pat Buchanan. Reading his latest this morning got me riled up a bit. Just a bit. Fully rested from last night’s sleep, lying in bed at pre-dawn and browsing the headlines on the Droid before I got up, I read “Whose country is this?” and felt a twinge of nostalgia. This is one of the reasons I started blogging.

Buchanan writes about Arizona’s new law to deal with illegal aliens, as the federal government has abdicated its constitutional duty to deal with illegal aliens. He writes:

We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.

What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as “misguided.” He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona’s sheriffs and police do not violate anyone’s civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.
…
The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

What we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot control its borders isn’t really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.

The tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right, the Constitution and federal law to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security.

At this point some of you liberals might be wondering why this makes me angry. Conservatives know, because they feel it, too. Here we have Barack Obama, a man who is a duly elected commander in chief of the greatest country on the planet, who swore to uphold the Constitution, which provides for protection of the states from invasion. And what does he have to say about Arizona’s burdened citizens? He called them misguided and announced an intent to protect illegal aliens’ civil rights. What about the constitutional rights of American citizens? Meh.

The implicit message is that Arizona is some kind of fascist state, overwhelmed law enforcement officers, dead rancher and border agents, and frustrated residents be damned. Arizona, Obama doesn’t care about you. He aims to protect the illegal aliens, not the people he actually has a duty to protect.

After the law passed, I watched an evening newscast. I saw an overweight, bespectacled, shirt-and-tie-wearing, office-working, no-accented Hispanic on the news implying, with a straight face, that the cops would stop someone like him and ask to see his papers. Har-har-har. In the old days, I’d have had the urge to throw whatever was in my hand at the TV.

Whose country is this? In our backward society, a taxpaying, law-abiding American citizen who complains about border-jumpers in our midst is branded a xenophobe. We live in a society where people can jump the border or overstay visas, in clear violation of our country’s laws, and our president turns not on the lawbreakers, but on his own people. We elected him to protect us, not the invader. How did this happen?

Whose country is this? In our biblically illiterate society, some Christians imply that others who want illegal aliens to be prosecuted and/or deported are un-Christ-like. Does the same hold for the murderer? The armed robber? The rapist? The tax cheat? Are we reading the same Bible? What if the lawbreaker were a Christian…should the law hold him to a different standard because he’s a Christian? Some illegal aliens call themselves Christians. How do they and their Christian advocates reconcile breaking the law and expecting special treatment with biblical teachings to obey the law?

Are immigration laws unjust? Is it unbiblical for a country to create immigration laws and enforce its own borders? I’m patiently waiting for someone to make the biblical argument. E-mail me.

If I hadn’t witnessed this ignorance firsthand, I would not have believed it.

George Bush lost me on illegal “immigration.” I was deeply disappointed that a man I voted for pushed amnesty for illegal aliens.” “What about the people waiting in line to become citizens the legal way!” I shouted. I took it personally. Bush pushed the bill so hard, despite grumblings from the base, I suspected Mexico’s president had something on him. I still do.

This is the best I can do as a rant these days. God is running this world the way he sees fit, even if it makes little sense to me. Nothing pleases God more than my trust and faith in him. The Bible says so. That doesn’t mean Christians can’t act. We are to act in the world and advance the Kingdom within it. But we don’t need to run ourselves ragged worrying about the world. One thing we know for certain: He wins. Keep that in mind as you read/watch our leaders protect the foreigner and the lawbreaker over the native and the law-abider.

For my sanity, peace of mind, and physical health, I’m off he-said/she-said politics and focused on topics that don’t make me angry*, that I enjoy, and that are pleasing to God.

*I blog about child killing a lot these days, and child killing makes me angry. I have faith it's a God-pleasing, life-saving anger.

Slouching Toward Tyranny

by La Shawn on 09.09.09

in Liberals - Obama, Rants

Some people can’t hack it in a free society.

They want the government to manage every part of their lives, from the time they realize they have to work for a living until they’re ready for the grave. Such people are afraid of “cold” capitalism and the “rugged individualism” upon which the country was built–two of many reasons why the U.S. still is the greatest country on the planet.

As I’ve listened to and read about liberals’ (including elected officials) disdainful reactions to Americans exercising their constitutional rights by protesting government action, I was sort of sad. People who voted for Obama casually and carelessly accuse dissenters of racism for having the audacity to express discontent over government intrusion, control, and wastefulness.

Even lovers of socialism dreaming of a world in which the government pays their bills and manages their lives (and erodes their freedom in the process, a natural consequence) should see the irony of calling opponents of the “health care reform” bill racists and Nazis. Nazis were national socialists. Obama’s so-called reform bill is national socialism. Then again, it’s fashionable to call people racists and Nazis, especially if the protesters are white.

By the way, I don’t think it’s useful or effective for conservatives to call the other side Nazis, either. Let’s strive to be more original and cleverer than that.

Here’s a mini-lesson so simple, my six-year-old nephew could understand it. Fundamentally, “we the people” are the government, but in a constitutional republic such as ours, elected leaders represent us. Elected leaders of all stripes are prone to forget we have a Constitution and conveniently remember it when it comes to something they want. That’s human nature. I’ve got it. You’ve got it. We all have it. The character-building struggle is to rise above it.

A digression: I wanted to make sure you read Eboo Patel’s blog post. A blogger for the Washington Post, Patel had the straight face to call a Marxist an American patriot and lament the “vicious smear campaign” that led to his resignation from the Obama administration. That Van Jones, who fell on his own sword, was hired to work for the President of the United States is appalling enough. Similarly distressing is Patel himself, blogging regularly for a mainstream newspaper, works for the administration. (Well, he works for us, but you know what I mean.) Obama appointed him to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives.

Here we have a current political appointee spreading unmitigated propaganda in support of an anti-America Marxist (redundant, I know). Not an occasional op-ed. A daily blog. (Our hourly or minute-by-minute, his choice.)

Having said that, this is what makes America great. Everyone is free to spout his opinions, from harshly castigating the government and our elected officials to effusively proclaiming our love for them. It doesn’t sit well for me that an Obama appointee has a regular “free press” platform from which to push his man’s policies and sing his praises, and I don’t know how the Washington Post gets away with it. Someone who voted for the president? Okay. But someone appointed by the president? Come on.

(I don’t recall hearing or reading about the Post allowing a Bush appointee to blog. If you have examples, please send them my way, and pardon my ignorance.)

At least the paper allows comments, so real patriots can castigate Patel’s stunningly uninformed and incredible ideas.

You know, some free people tend to forget that freedom costs. They think it rained down from heaven. They think America is the rule instead of the exception. Reasonable and informed people know that American is a successful experiment, one that men and women fought and died to protect. They gave their lives so that I can express my disgust for misguided socialist policies. They sacrificed themselves so that we’d keep our rights to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress and criticize the government without fear of arrest, and all the rest you learned in school.

The majority of Americans elected a man who, despite having taught constitutional law, doesn’t seem to get the Constitution’s elegant simplicity and clarity and what it takes to protect our rights (unless it concerns racial grievances, also known as pseudo-rights) and the absolute necessity of ensuring the freedom of the individual.

Keep protesting and criticizing and calling the administration out. And let’s hope Obama will gain the title of “first biracial president to serve one term.” There’s no guarantee that a Republican will protect the freedom of the American people and the integrity of our system of government…

…but I’ll take my chances. :?

Democrats in Blackface

by La Shawn on 08.14.07

in Liberals, Rants

Democrat*Scroll down for update*

Even when I was still voting for Democrats, I noticed how condescending they and other white liberals tended to be. Trying to appear comfortable around black people, they usually ended up saying something dumb. Being yourself must be difficult when you’re trying to pretend you care about or even know any black people.

White liberals do have this going for them: as long as they’re self-deprecating around blacks, they can get away with saying just about anything, no matter how offensive.

Five years ago, when I first started calling myself a conservative, I wrote an op-ed about the lack of outrage among blacks over a white Maryland state senator calling then Lt. Governor Michael Steele an Uncle Tom during some redistricting controversy. In subsequent years, I noticed that no high profile black political bigmouth or journalist came to the defense of people like Condoleezza Rice when white liberals made offensive race-based comments to or about them.

That’s white Democrats’ privilege. As honorary blacks, they can shuck and jive with the best of them. And as long as they promise to feed more tax dollars into yet more social programs, they’re golden.

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The True Meaning of ‘Black Pride’

by La Shawn on 07.01.07

in BC Wisdom, Columns, Race Preferences, Rants

Justice Clarence Thomas***Scroll down for clarification***

Last week the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, could not use race as a tiebreaker when assigning students.

Although Justice Clarence Thomas is vilified by black liberals, he has a keener understanding of “black pride” than they have. Unlike white liberals, Justice Thomas believes black children can excel in predominantly black schools and don’t need to mix with whites in order to learn. So-called progressive blacks have bought into the white supremacist notion that black children must share classrooms with white children to be educated. They completely miss the irony of their own self-loathing, practically begging whites to allow their children to sit alongside theirs.

The true meaning of “black pride” has been lost.

I’m always — always — embarrassed whenever I hear a black person convinced of his own “high” intelligence arguing that the government should force whites to live around blacks, send their kids to school with blacks, and hire underqualified blacks. It’s as though the civil rights, “black pride” movement never happened. People fought and died, bled and cried to dismantle a government system that forced racial segregation. Decades later, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are fighting and crying to keep in place a government system that forces racial integration because we poor black folks can’t do a thing for ourselves without white folks around.

If blacks like Clarence Thomas and myself were pushing that line of crap, the slurs “Uncle Tom” and “Aunt Jemima” would be apt. But we’re saying the opposite. Black liberals are the ones begging white people to “accept” them. At the same time, black liberals are the ones raising their kids to believe this country, the greatest on the planet, is a cesspool of white racism and that white people are bound and determined to keep them down. Why the heck would you want to be around people you think are trying to keep you down?

Contrary to what some of you have been taught, Americans have a right to live wherever they want and avoid whomever they want for whatever reason. Private businesses have a right to hire whomever they want and avoid hiring whomever they want for whatever reason. It’s shocking to some people and might hurt black people’s feelings, but it is not illegal to want to be with certain people based on race or to avoid certain people based on race. We have the freedom to self-segregate, and the government does not have the authority, constitutionally or otherwise, to order people around to achieve some arbitrary racial balance (or imbalance, as was the case with Jim Crow). It didn’t have that authority in the days of Plessy v. Ferguson, and it doesn’t have that authority now.

For a lesson in true — as opposed to phony — black pride, read Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District et al (PDF).

For a standard recitation of white liberal paternalism, read Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent. “The White Man’s Burden,” indeed.

Update: In case anyone has trouble spotting the issue in this post, allow me to be explicit: I’m not demeaning the idea of “black pride” in itself; I’m demeaning black liberals’ idea of black pride. Those are two very different things.

Monday, July 2 @ 9:00 a.m.: Check out my latest Townhall column, Black Pride, White Paternalism.

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Notes on ‘The Rap on Culture’

May 22, 2007

Update III (5/23): I am SHOCKED that this piece made it into a newspaper. It’s the ugly, barely-reported truth. Update II: I forgot to mention a study that showed black students from intact “religious” families perform better in school than their counterparts. Also, choice is key. Libertarian Andrew Coulson notes that “the school system itself [...]

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Just Another Illegal ‘Immigration’ Rant

May 4, 2007

Monday, May 7: Attention, Maryland readers. An organization that receives taxpayer funds is encouraging illegal aliens not to cooperate with federal authorities during illegal alien raids. Some of these illegals have stolen – stolen – other people’s identities. Michelle Malkin cites federal law, which clearly states that encouraging and inducing illegal aliens to break the [...]

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Senator Brownback’s Meaningless ‘Apology’ Resolution

March 8, 2007

Update: Commenter Renee dropped a link to this story, one I’d planned to look into: “The Cherokee Nation’s vote this weekend to revoke the citizenship of the descendants of people the Cherokee once owned as slaves was a blow to people who have relied on tribal benefits…In Saturday’s special election, more than 76 percent of [...]

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Get Rid of Race Preferences!

February 23, 2007

Since November 2003, I’ve documented on this blog all the reasons why race preferences have got to go. Here is one more. Instead of simply hiring the most qualified job candidates, a private prison firm doing business with the government rejected candidates based on race and hired others based on race. Qualified blacks, Asians, whites, [...]

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Virginia (and other things) on my mind…

February 5, 2007

Lend Me Your Ears… This post isn’t addressing anyone in specific. It’s just a collection of thoughts that have accumulated in my head during this extremely busy day. Don’t take it personally. Some bloggers focus on Supreme Court hearings or Treo smartphones or cars or politics in Washington or knitting or homeschooling. Some bloggers tighten [...]

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Duke Group of 88 Issues Another Inane Statement

January 17, 2007

Wednesday, January 24: Hello fellow, Duke case followers. This post is closed to commenting. Resume the discussion at the latest post, Unnatural Selection on Both Sides? Thursday, January 18: I’m not a big fan of John Podhoretz, but I recommend “Orwell University Duke Profs’ P.C. Travesty.” Update (1/17 @ 6:12 p.m.): I’ll respond to provost [...]

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Hispanic-on-Black Violence: Protestors, Where Are You?

January 3, 2007

Update: Good news about black folks! The man’s a hero. That was a totally selfless act. ————————————————– Warning: Rant below. This post is categorized under “Comedy” not because violence is a laughing matter. I just find it humorous that so-called civil rights groups and various race hustling camera-hogs are transparently absent and deafeningly silent about [...]

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New York City Fire Department to Lower Hiring Standards

August 10, 2006

Update II (8/11): Flashback Friday — Police department lowers safety standards for black officers. Celebrate diversity! ———————————————————— Celebrate diversity! New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has succumbed to the pressure. One of the finest fire departments in the country will lower its hiring standards to attract more black recruits. This Newsday article begins with an [...]

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The Perversity of ‘Diversity’

July 13, 2006

Monday, July 17: John at Discriminations blogs about a law school dean’s idea of diversity, which he doubts goes deeper than melanin. I concur. ——————————————————————- No matter how much hate e-mail I get or how many nasty blog posts my opinions generate, I will keep talking and writing about the hypocrisy of racialist double standards, [...]

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The Registered Traveler Card

January 20, 2006

I fly at least three times a year, sometimes more. I consider myself a “frequent flyer.” The bored-looking Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents don’t know that. So every time I fly, I’m subjected to a monotoned, “Ma’am, please remove the laptop from the case,” even though it’s halfway out of the case already. As if [...]

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Blog Irony

December 18, 2005

I try to keep posts like this to a minimum so as not to fool haters into believing I’m following their antics or will change anything I do or say. Just a few of observations: 1) Blogging for over two years, I’ve learned a lot about obsessive human behavior: jealousy, envy, cyber-stalking, bad parody, the [...]

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