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.

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.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that black CNN reporter Suzanne Malveaux asked Hillary Clinton if she thought she was “black enough” to sustain support from black voters. According to news reports, the crowd of black journalists laughed at the question, realizing instinctually how stupid it was. But that would soon pass as Hillary started talking about something white politicians always talk about around black people: government programs. (Source)

Hillary said the problem of fatherlessness and high crime in the black community is not a “moral crisis but an economic crisis,” which is exactly what liberals of any color like to hear. No, it’s not individual immoral idiots who make babies they end up abandoning or who opt for a life in and out of the criminal justice system. No, it is the economy, and Hill has the fix. Not to worry about living decent, moral lives. That’s for everybody else.

Because of the slackness of too many black men, the government (called “the man” back in the day, meaning white man) has taken over. The government has to take up the family-breakdown slack with all sorts of subsidies. Because too many black kids aren’t living in stable homes, they rarely learn what it means to take care of a family. They end up unmarried parents themselves, repeating the shameful cycle. Because too many black kids live in homes where education is a low priority, the government has to create before- and after-school programs and expand summer school to compensate for lousy, apathetic parenting. Whether or not they’re on welfare, too many blacks see the government as some kind of money-toting savior, and they pass this warped thinking to their children.

That’s why in 2007, post-slavery, post-legal segregation, you’ve got a white idiot adopting an insulting dialect and promising supposedly educated black people more government programs if she’s elected president. That’s why John Kerry spoke before black crowds about Section 8 housing and other nonsense. (At the time, I said if he ever started talking about government aid around me, I’d have to resist the urge to curse him out.) White liberals know blacks, whether Harvard educated or high school drop-outs, love the promise of more government money and unearned benefits and finger pointing.

To top off her blackface speech, Hillary joked around about being in an “interracial marriage,” a reference to a dumb-as-dirt statement by author Toni Morrison about Bill Clinton years ago. She said he was “the first black President” because he “displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas,” and because of his “unpoliced sexuality” (Source)

And Morrison got away with that. But I’m a self-hater and a hater of black people. Yeah, I see what they mean.

Black columnist DeWayne Wickham wrote glowingly about Hillary’s blackface show. It’s quite sickening:

That Hillary Clinton was willing to go into a black church and quote in dialect a verse from James Cleveland’s stirring hymn I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired, and that she’s self-confident enough to joke with black journalists about the racial composition of her marriage, tells me a lot about her.

It says she has a comfort level with blacks that few white politicians enjoy. It suggests that she knows something about what it takes to make black churchgoers stand up and shout. And it shows that she has a good idea of what will cause a group of caustic black columnists to bend over with laughter.

While this shouldn’t be enough to get black voters to choose Clinton over her rivals in the race to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee–especially when one of them, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, is a black man who deserves serious consideration–it ought to get their attention.

Hillary’s adopting a “black” dialect in front of a black audience tells a black man like Wickham that she’s “self-confident.” Pandering to blacks and “joking” about her “black” husband means she’s comfortable with them in a way “that few white politicians enjoy.” I see. Too many black people are satisfied with so little. Embarrassing. It is offensive to me when someone (a politician, specifically) tries to appeal to me based on the color of my skin, whether it be through a patronizing dialect or the lure of government aid, but that’s me. (And it’s what separates most black conservatives I know from most black liberals I know.) For too many black people, it’s the only way to go. And white Democrats, who need black voters, know this.

I honestly don’t know how I’d react if a white person adopted that “black dialect” shucking and jiving or social program pontificating in my presence today. I’d feel very angry, but how would I behave? Would I be able to control my anger in the face of such insults? I hope I never have to find out. I’d hate to lose my religion.

Update (4:20 p.m.): Just heard from a white liberal, who offered this:

What would your white conservative friends offer by way of support for the black community if not government programs? Tough love? Benign neglect?…Why can’t Republicans attract many votes in this community? Could it be the latent racism that you refuse to acknowledge exists but that most black people recognize as part and parcel of the Republican strategy?

First of all, it’s not the government’s job to fix social problems or administer “tough love,” and that’s where people get it twisted.

Second, anyone who’s read more than a single blog post knows I detest when Republicans pull the courting-black-voters scheme. I don’t campaign or write for politicians, and I’m not the least bit interested in trying to persuade blacks or anyone else to vote for Republicans (I’m not a Republican, by the way). I couldn’t care less these days why 90 percent of black voters keep voting for liberals, and Republicans should stop wasting valuable time trying to get the “black vote.”

If you can’t pull in people with race-neutral ideas, don’t bother. If you have to resort to skin color pandering, pack up your stuff and go home.

Update II (8/15): A black woman writes:

“You said this on your site: ‘If you can’t pull in people with race-neutral ideas, don’t bother. If you have to resort to skin color pandering, pack up your stuff and go home.’

“This is partially true, but I think there is a need for conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) to go out and explain why those race-neutral ideas apply to different minorities too. I’m currently trying to get my university’s Republican chapter to host an open forum where we discuss how abortion, illegal immigration, affirmative action, etc. affect the black community. Outreach doesn’t have to mean creating more government programs (and it certainly shouldn’t for Republicans who *should* be standing on principle). And I say this as a young Black woman who is discovering my potential through conservative ideas for the first time in my life.

“The reality is that many, MANY black youth have never even heard many of the arguments that conservatives make. Thanks to years of liberal education and one sided debates, our gut reaction to the words “Republican” and “Conservative” is that those words describe people who are completely without compassion. It would benefit many of our youth to hear the actual arguments of conservatives, which are better reasoned and more logical 99% of the time.”

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.

Juan Williams, author of Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It (I reviewed his book here), has an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education.”

An excerpt:

“In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation…Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?”

Justice Marshall’s answer is surprising.

Monday, July 2 @ 7:49 p.m.: Although I understand what Juan Williams is trying to say in this article — that racial integration in government schools might not be all it’s cracked up to be — the principle behind it is very much alive and should remain so: the government should not mandate or sanction segregation/discrimination by race in government schools. In other words, even if certain schools end up primarily black or primarily white because of residential patterns, the government should not have the power discriminate against people based on race or prefer certain races to “balance” schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) was supposed to put an end to that power. It states in part (emphases added):

“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.

That is the principle of Brown v. Board of Education embodied in the CRA. How much clearer can it be?

If private individuals want to create racially exclusive schools (or hire certain people based on race), that’s their right as private business owners. We have freedom of association in this country, and that freedom includes (or should include) providing services to whomever we want to provide services. But the government must stay out of the skin color business.

Tuesday, July 3: Or to put it another way: “What [Brown] ordered was the removal of laws and policies prohibiting racially mixed schools. The principle it upheld was nondiscrimination — which would often (but not always) lead to racial integration.
…
“The real educational problems faced by minority kids today are not lack of white students to sit by but inadequate choice, lack of order, a shortage of good teachers and families who don’t make a priority of learning. Most parents, given a choice between racially balanced schools and safe, sound schools, would unhesitatingly choose the latter.”

Related posts:

• Juan Williams, Scared Leftists, Etc.
• Juan Williams, White Minority at UC, Etc.
• Education, the Global Economy, and You
• Super Post for Super Tuesday of Equality
• Dred Scott and the “Legacy of Slavery”
• Repeating History

And op-eds:

• Supreme Court hears race-based school assignment arguments
• Race preferences defeated in Michigan
• White Student Sues For Racial Discrimination
• Corrupt black leadership and culture of failure impede black progress

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 affects parents’ and students’ attitudes towards education. The current system gives parents no power, no control, no responsibilities. When parents can choose their kids’ schools – better yet, when they HAVE to choose their kids’ schools – they become more savvy and more involved.”

See his post at Cato-at-liberty on poor and marginally educated parents choosing schools for their kids. I reviewed a book of essays about the late libertarian Milton Friedman. One essay discussed private schools in Third World countries. I wrote:

The existence of private schools for the poor [in Third World countries] tends to weaken the argument against school vouchers that poor parents are unable or unwilling to pay for their children’s schooling. [James] Tooley proposes that, in the absence of government intervention, “grass-roots privatization of education” might possibly spring up in the United States as it has in developing countries.

Read the review.

Also see Measuring Catholic school performance.

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Sometimes, the truth needs to be uttered by one of your “own” before you believe it or act on it.

A group called Policy Bridge, a non-profit organization in Ohio, released “The Rap on Culture” (PDF), a 16-page report on “anti-education” in the black subculture. Perhaps the report and subsequent discussions finally will convince blacks with children that they’ve got serious issues to deal with, and white guilt-tripping, taxpayers’ money, and government intervention will get you only so far.

[Although the study focused on black students in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, the findings apply to black students all over the country. Given the disparities in graduation rates, test scores, etc., it's not difficult to extrapolate from the data.]

“The Rap on Culture” focuses on a huge contributing factor in black student underachievement: destructive elements in the subculture, namely, a virulent “anti-intellectual” strain that all but guarantees the academic achievement will never close and may end up increasing as black children grow up to be adults who can’t compete in a global economy.

Yes, It’s All About Race

Whenever I say that underachievement, criminality, illegitimacy, generational poverty, and a tendency toward government dependency (and not just welfare; an entitlement mentality also is a form of dependency) are caused by something within black subculture, somebody somewhere calls me a self-hater.

(The researchers and many others use the word “culture” to describe the black community. I use “subculture” because we are part of the overall American culture. Black Americans are not a unique culture; we are uniquely Americans, and characteristics and features developed through the years and/or retained through oral tradition are subcultural, not cultural.)

But when black liberals say it, preferably backed by numbers and cold hard facts, suddenly it takes on new meaning. Perhaps it’s the way I say it, or that I say it, or that I say it in public space. Who knows, who cares. The kids — and not ignorant adults — are my main concern.

“The Rap on Culture,” which proposes the cause and cure for black student underachievement, begins on the right note:

The furor over radio talk-show host Don Imus’ slurs aimed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team sparked a national discussion of the racist and sexist language and imagery that pervade hip-hop and rap music and the urban culture. What seems to have been largely ignored in this debate are the anti-education messages that have led so many African-American youth away from the academic achievements exemplified by the talented Rutgers women. It’s interesting that this uproar over urban culture has erupted at a time when Congress prepares to debate whether to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted in 2002 to improve educational opportunity and accountability. In pushing his plan for education reform in 2001, President Bush spoke of the need to end the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” What if those “low expectations” not only refer to schools and teachers who fail to hold minority students to high standards of academic achievement, but also describe a devalued view of education in the black community itself? What if something about the culture enveloping black students, particularly those in low-income, urban environments, impedes academic progress?

Of course, the “what if” propositions are rhetorical. There is a devalued view of education in the black community. There is something about the subculture that works against excellence in education. It fosters a strain of “anti-intellectualism” or “anti-education,” a term used by the researchers. Blaming poverty or white racism or discrimination is easier and less embarrassing, but it is futile. Even poor students of other races outperform black students from upper-income households.

The researchers are honest enough to admit the issue is race, not class or poverty. They write:

“Talking about social class is much easier in this country than talking about race; it doesn’t pick at a scab covering centuries of pain,” they write. “Defining the achievement gap in largely economic terms may make for an easier discussion, but it may have contributed to a sense of hopelessness when it comes to education reform: If you want to ensure that all children achieve academically, then it would seem that you first need to eliminate the challenges of poverty. That view, without a doubt, is outside the ability of schools to fix and contributes to a sense that the problem of low educational attainment is intractable.”

As the researchers note, trying to “fix” poverty is a waste of time if the goal is to narrow the achievement gap. It is not the government’s job nor does it have the power to fix poverty. Some people are and will remain poor because they refuse to do any better. Unfortunately, such people continue to procreate, dooming children to at least a childhood of poverty. (As adults, they can overcome it.) What in the world can the government do to motivate people to get off their butts and go to work or stop making babies if they’re unmarried and don’t have jobs? Not much.

Poverty is correlated with academic underachievement, but the relationship between underachievement and a subculture of “anti-education” is much stronger. For more information on anti-intellectualism, see John McWhorter’s excellent book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (which the researchers also cited in the study). McWhorter is a black college professor who works with all races of students and has observed concrete differences between black students and everyone else. I won’t rehash or summarize it here. Buy the book.

Recommendations

Among the proposed solutions to the subcultural problem of anti-education are these:

• Creating a distinct category under No Child Left Behind for black boys
• Extending the school day and school year in “distressed communities”
• Attracting more black male teachers to serve as “role models” with incentives
• Setting aside funds for programs designed to keep black boys from dropping out of school

(Potential problems with these recs: Civil Rights Act violations. Will the funding be set aside for racially exclusive programs, or will policymakers use code words like “underserved” and “underrepresented”?)

And finally, in the second set of recommendations, the researchers get to what’s really important:

• Parents (and teachers) need to raise expectations
• Parents need to be more involved with their children’s education
• Turn off that darn TV!

Is this necessary:

• Teachers need to be free to come up with creative approaches to teaching black boys

Perhaps. And even further down in the recommendations, although it should have been at #1:

• Schools must set and insist on high standards of conduct in the classroom. Students must be orderly and respectful. (See Self-Regulation Skills and the Academic Achievement Gap)

Because the majority of black kids in this country are born to illegitimacy and grow up in homes and neighborhoods without residential fathers, a necessary parental element is lacking. Because of this subcultural slackness, the government, once again, has to step up as savior to black people. When will it end?

I suppose that in the end, it doesn’t matter who is doing the saving as long as kids are saved.

Post-Civil Rights Pessimism

I can’t say that I’m hopeful about blacks turning inward to deal with these issues. With at least two generations of blacks having come of age since the Civil Rights era, re-educating and training people to rely on themselves and clean up their own messes is an insurmountable task. Government, especially the federal government, is perceived to be fixer of all ills. Despite what people say in public, it’s strongly believed behind closed doors.

How does one convey to a entire generation of blacks that they must look to the government to do no more than keep law and order, clean the streets, pick up trash, make sure contracts are honored…that sort of thing? How does one teach people to develop a healthy distrust of government intervention and involvement in their lives when they’ve been weaned on it as if it were a lactating mother?

In a society where the stigma against a big belly and no ring has disappeared like so much vapor, how does one convince young people to stop fornicating and making babies while unmarried? Or to build stable families, when their parents and grandparents weren’t married? Instead of passing down the kind of values that will push their kids to success, they’ve passed down a plethora of pathologies that require them to play catch-up for the rest of their lives.

Mini-Lecture

Family is where it begins and ends, not government programs. Men and women – individuals who make babies with no intentions of getting married – bear a huge portion of the blame. Such negligent and slothful behavior sets up the unfortunate children for a lifetime of deprivation. And I’m not talking about lack of food or lack of clothing. Without a father in the house, children are practically sitting ducks for all kind of ills: criminality, drug use, incarceration, academic underachievement, and on and on. Without a stable, intact family, these children have no nest, so to speak, in which to grow and develop and learn the values that will help them become people who in turn value marriage and education.

Black people have only themselves to blame, not the white man who enslaved their forefathers, not the white sales clerks who look at them “funny” in stores, not Republicans, nor any other white person who lives today or who has ever lived.

I focus so much on family instability because I believe it is the most pressing issue facing black Americans today. Almost every racial disparity is linked to it in some way. It is the height of hypocrisy for black people to demand anything from anybody when they don’t give their own children what they need.

Addendum: Typos? I’ll correct them this afternoon. Gotta jet…

Update (1:03 p.m.): A commenter writes:

“I came across your blog a few months ago and have become a faithful reader because I finally found someone “like me” who believes as I do. I am a young(31), Christian, black teacher of 1st graders (majority black also), who is in the rare minority of women of my race who are both married and waited until after marriage to have my first child.

“I have very strong views on this topic. I agree that it is sad that blacks want government to do everything for their kids except have the sex for them to conceive them. I’m very fired up, but I’ll try to be brief! On a daily basis, I see kids in my school cursing, talking loud, not prepared with basic school resources such as pencils and homework, and showing a general lack of self worth. I also see many angry parents cussing out staff on a weekly basis. Saying all that, we have 5 parents in our PTO, but we have a school of over 400 kids. Parents, not government, have to make the change; but they don’t want to. We also have a government office in our school because so many of our parents and the community are on assistance. Any hour of the day, I can look outside my classroom door and see young girls, with strollers, going to an appointment.”

Read the rest.

Michelle Malkin cites federal law, which clearly states that encouraging and inducing illegal aliens to break the law is itself a crime:

“Any person who . . . encourages or induces an alien to . . . reside . . . knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such . . . residence is . . . in violation of law, shall be punished as provided . . . for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs . . . fined under title 18 . . . imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

Just FYI…Section 274 felonies under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, INA 274A(a)(1)(A):

A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he:

* assists an alien s/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or

* encourages that alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or

* knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.

In that regard, churches that harbor and assist illegal aliens (felonies, by the way) also are violating the law. Just a heads-up.

Could it be possible that some people who assist illegal aliens really don’t know the law? Since proper civic education is a thing of the past, it’s quite possible…
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Update: This post will no doubt bring out the La Shawn-haters. Here’s a reminder: You have no “first amendment” rights on someone’s blog. Mind your manners and accurately represent what I wrote, and I’ll allow you to join the discussion.

Otherwise, it’s into the troll ether you’ll go…

…and depending on my mood, I may send a copy of a particularly nasty comment (time- and date-stamped) to your boss.

I forgot to mention Lou Dobbs’s recent remarks. Check it out.

Long rant alert! Read at your own risk.

I don’t write about illegal aliens as much as I used to, especially the ones with the gall to demand rights they’re not entitled to, because the topic makes me angry.

Time and again I’ve broken my pledge to write about this issue “as a concerned citizen, not a ranting, angry blogger.” Oh, well. May as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg…

Trivia: Where did I steal that line?

For the past couple of days, I’ve seen this headline on Drudge: “CRACKDOWN, OKLAHOMA: Illegal immigrant bill nation’s toughest.” This morning I followed the link and felt a familiar stab of anger as I read the story. The idiotic governor of Oklahoma is reluctant to sign a bill that would protect his own citizens. (Also see this story)

The bill is similar to bills proposed by other states attempting to take up the federal government’s slack. While only feds are authorized to kick illegal aliens out of the country, states are well within their rights to crackdown on businesses operating within their borders that knowingly hire illegal aliens. If I ran things, businesses would be under strict liability for hiring illegal aliens; that is, just the presence of an illegal on the payroll means the company is in violation of the law, whether or not it “knowingly” hired the illegal.

But since I don’t run anything but this blog, I’ll use it to share my disgust at what my country is becoming: a balkanized, third world, uncivilized, rule of law-shamming mess. (Y’all better pray I don’t get elected to office.)

It seems the governor is just another pantywaist politico. Said Brad Henry’s mouthpiece: “Gov. Henry supports responsible and effective immigration reform, but he will withhold judgment on this particular bill until he has had an opportunity to review the final version.”

I echo the sentiments of “Don,” a guy who commented on the article: “If any of you in Oklahoma are reading this, take it from a San Diegan, you won’t know what hit you in a couple of years. You want all of these illegals to do your yard work and fix things on the cheap, but when their kids become teenagers and you have gangs and shootings in your schools, you’ll wonder what happened!”

You see, white people with the means to insulate themselves from illegal aliens can afford, physically and financially, to favor an influx of poor, Spanish-speaking, non-assimilating, under-the-radar Central Americans. They hire these people to clean their yards and toilets, and, unbelievably, take care of their children. But they don’t nor would they ever send their kiddies to schools with a mixture of poor Central Americans. Or blacks, for that matter.

[White elites have to share the highways with drunk illegal aliens like the rest of us. And they end up dealing with the consequences like the rest of us.]

Working- and middle-class Americans are the ones suffering. While illegal alien scourge-supporting elites are living it up in gated communities in California, for instance, everyone else is dealing with hispanic gangs. While the elites are working the kind of jobs that put them in contact with zero illegal aliens (well, maybe the janitor), working class folks have to compete for jobs with people who aren’t supposed to be here. Forget that illegal aliens are working for less money. I’m a staunch supporter of the free market, and if legal aliens were driving down wages, I’d complain less loudly. But since the market is being manipulated by illegal means, that’s a problem. (Understatement of the year!)

Brain cell-challenged black politicians are selling their own people down the river by coming out against immigration enforcement (perhaps “rule of law” is too complex for them to grasp) and scheming to form a black-brown coalition with hispanic politicians. Nitwits. Politicians care about lining their own pockets and picking up perks. Period. Blacks would be wise to speak out – instead of wimp out – against illegal “immigration.” I’m sure blacks living in dangerous neighborhoods in California or those who’ve lost jobs to illegal aliens can tell you some stories you’d never hear from the likes of career politician John Lewis.

By the way, sometimes, every now and then, leftist journalists make me want to puke. The way they slant stories to reflect their opinions is sickening. For instance, this article’s headline, “Black lawmakers combat anti-immigrant attitudes,” should read, “Black lawmakers combat anti-illegal alien attitudes,” but the reporter skews the story to make it sound as though we racist Americans hate “others” in general. I don’t know anyone who is against immigration per se or against Central Americans entering the country legally. It’s border jumpers and their entitlement attitudes, enabled by white elites who don’t have to live and work with them, we don’t like. It’s the traitorous American companies that hire illegal aliens that get our blood boiling.

And mine is boiling already, and it’s not even 9 o’clock!

My only consolation is that once hispanics start voting in a way that reflects their presence in the population, black politicians will be history. They can pander all they want right now, but it won’t do them a bit of good later. Hispanics are just as race conscious as blacks, if not more so. Once they become powerful enough, they’ll vote their own into office.

If black politicians think for one minute that hispanics are going to bend over backward for them and grovel the way white people do, they’re dumber than I thought.

And so are black people who think aligning themselves with any anti-white group is in their best interests. What a delusion! Controversial as this may sound, I’ll say it anyway: black Americans had better start looking on white Americans as they’re [this typo was here all weekend...curses!] their best friends. Forget past injustices or present-day petty prejudices. Yes, it was whites who enslaved blacks, but it was also whites who made amends for that enslavement. Whites are still making amends.

You think “brown” folks would do the same? What do they have to make amends for? They’re immune to guilt-tripping and whining, so black Americans addicted to living off the government via white guilt are in for a rude awakening.

I know which side my bread is buttered on, so to speak, and nowhere else in the world have blacks had it so good. And the gifts keep on coming: freedom, justice, opportunity – you name it, we’ve got it. The fact that some people are too lazy or stupid or apathetic to take advantage of opportunity or appreciate freedom or respect justice for all doesn’t detract from America’s greatness one bit. Each of us is free to live his own life, no matter how sorry or unproductive or wasteful.

If any of you “minorities” harbors fantasies of an America run by race-obsessed factions of a white people-hating, black-brown coalition, keep dreaming. America’s cultural decline would accelerate, and the country we know will cease to exist. Think about what I’m trying to tell you, and smarten up.

I’ll just keep praying and voting and hoping that people as frustrated as I am will tell the freakin’ truth about why America is what it is and stop being afraid of labels like “racist” or “fascist.” What’s it to you if people call you names? Don’t be such weaklings. Stand up and speak up for what you know is right, and deal with the consequences as they come.

OK, I’m tapped out. Have a nice day.

Update II: More spineless locals aid and abet lawbreakers.

Related:

• News Flash: Border Security Works
• Rosanna Pulido: American Patriot
• This Christian Isn’t “Torn” Over Illegals
• What “Birthright Citizenship” Actually Means
• Secure Our Borders Campaign

“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 voters decided to amend the Cherokee Nation’s constitution to remove the estimated 2,800 freedmen descendants from the tribal rolls, according to results posted Sunday on the tribe’s Web site. Now the tribe is defending itself against accusations of racism.”

I haven’t followed this incident, so I don’t quite know what’s going on. If you do, feel free to discuss it in this thread.
—————————————————————————-

In another “You’ve got to be kidding” moment,” I received an e-mail from Senator Sam Brownback’s “people” about a resolution apologizing to American Indians “on behalf of the people of the United States to all native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect inflicted on native peoples by citizens of the United States.” (See The Politico story)

First, Brownback is probably a nice enough man, but I’m disappointed that a conservative would come up with this tripe. And this isn’t the first time he’s drafted such a resolution; I’m just now finding out he’s been “pushing” this nonsense for some time.

Second, Brownback uses the term “Native American” (on his blog) I have just as much claim to that label, since I was born right here in America. I am a native American. Anybody born in America is a native of America (children of illegal aliens, too? not if I ran things). If by that term one is referring to the people here long before white Europeans arrived, then find a more accurate term to describe them. “American Indian” may not be accurate, either, but it seems to work just fine. It offends no one but bored white liberals with nothing better to do than bit** and moan about…I’ll let it go for now.

Third, I asked Brownback’s person why Brownback put forth such a resolution. It turns out that he read a book –– that’s right, a book –– about past racial injustices, and started wasting taxpayer’s money drafting empty resolutions presuming to apologize to American Indians “on behalf of the people of the United States.”

I mean, this sort of junk is characteristic of white liberals, who waste their time and our tax dollars issuing nonsensical and ineffectual apologies, not conservatives!

Fourth, how far back should we go with this apology nonsense? [Note: Whoa! It's been a long time since I deleted something in a post I thought was too controversial. The statement I'm deleting has been dissected and debated for centuries. I don't want this thread hijacked with that highly charged discussion, so I'm deleting my reference to it. I'll save it for another time and a different post.] While somebody’s drafting that resolution, let’s ask Arabs all over the globe to apologize for their people’s part in the American slave trade and the slave trade still going on in Africa. Yeah, that’s the ticket. If ever a blanket apology was warranted, it’s one from present-day Arabs to present-day black Africans.

Here’s a blanket “on behalf of” apology I’d support: If all the black thugs in every prison in the country got together and apologized for killing, terrorizing, and maiming their own people, I’d be their biggest supporter.

Fifth, how can I or any other black person accept an apology on behalf of someone else? I wasn’t wronged. The injustice wasn’t perpetrated against me. How presumptious and misplaced would it be for me to say, “OK, I accept the government’s apology for enslaving my great-great-great granddaddy”?

I hate it, hate it, hate it. After all the apologies are issued for everything that every government as ever done wrong to its own people and those of other nations, can we please just shut up about it already? I mean, come on! If only these meaningless apologies would stop the bit**ing and moaning…Good grief, I’m blowing a gasket.

In conclusion, I say to any white person or black person or yellow person or government purporting to apologize to me for harm they caused my ancestors, apology not accepted.

If, on the other hand, my government wants to apologize for forcing me to bear the burden of uninsured illegal aliens who drink, drive, and kill people and whose medical care I have to pay for, and for its failure to come down HARD on companies that hire illegal aliens…

…apology not accepted.

PS: Senator Brownback isn’t the issue here; it’s politically correct, misguided, empty “apologies” like his resolution. So if you’re reading this senator (or senator’s people), try not to take it too personally.

According to the Department of Labor, the issue is not that “affirmative action” is inherently unfair to all candidates, but that it wasn’t properly applied in this situation.

What is going on? The Civil Rights of 1964 was supposed to end the government skin game. But 43 years after people were killed and injured in the name of justice, and paid with blood, sweat, and tears for the right to be judged without regard to their skin color, our government is still judging citizens as members of racial groups instead of as individuals with equality before the law.

I can’t tell you how frustrating this crap is. I am tired of hearing and reading stories about people suing because the government didn’t discriminate in favor of them and listening to pea-brains defend the government’s use of race. What was the Civil Rights movement all about, for crying out loud? Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents killed Jim Crow so their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren could breathe life back into him? Why would any citizen want to give government the authority to judge us based on race? Well, as long as “our” race is the one receiving the benefits of the skin game, what does it matter?

Absolutely disgusting. If I wanted to stoop as low as my detractors, I’d call them self-haters for not having the decency even to be a little embarrassed for defending lowered standards for blacks. I mean, what’s more self-hating than that???

But I don’t, so I won’t. The things I’d say to such people if I weren’t a Christian…

I blog about this topic so much because race preferences are foul and demeaning, and liberals need to know that not all blacks want or need such patronizing policies. No amount of historical wrongs or present-day grievances — zero — will ever justify the odious practice.

At a time like this, I have to remember a line (with the smilie next to it) from a similar post. [Double secret coded message] Indeed! Have a restful weekend, readers.

(Hat tip: Discriminations)

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 their focus and blog about Supreme Court hearings related to a specific legal topic or Treo smartphone hacks or the Mercedes AMG or pork barrel politics in Washington or knitting without needles or homeschooling as a single parent.

I blog about the politics of race, which includes liberals’ obsession with skin deep-diversity and America’s overall dishonesty in dealing with and discussing race. That bothers the heck out of some people. They just can’t understand why a black person would want say “bad” things (i.e., anything that considers factors other than white racism) about other black people.

The way I see it, somebody has to say it, and since very few do, I volunteered.

I started writing about race and politics because I couldn’t stand the milquetoast, soft-pedaling prose I was reading. I figured there was somebody out there who wanted to read the truth, needed to hear the truth. I volunteered.

Many people, mostly blacks, resent me because my blog’s subject matter appeals to white conservatives. Some say it even appeals to white supremacists. As I’ve blogged numerous times, that’s not my problem. When you express yourself in a society that protects free speech, that’s the risk you take. White supremacists may twist my words, but I know for a fact some blacks do.

I won’t police my words or thoughts, especially for a bunch of fools I don’t even know.

I occupy a small space in the blogosphere, even though I’m probably the most well known black political blogger. One purpose of my existence in the online world is to provide a balance to standard-issue race-focused journalism. I’m so used to reading left-leaning race-related news articles from so-called objective journalists, who can’t seem to find any conservative blacks to interview for their stories, I no longer cringe. It’s just the way it is. That’s why I blog.

Most mainstream media articles that cover or touch on race are condescending and play to other liberals. But I’m not complaining. Instead, I’m blogging.

As long as the media and race hustlers paint blacks as victims of the “legacy of slavery” who just can’t help committing crimes or slaughtering people or having babies without the benefit of matrimony (setting their kids up for all sorts of problems, subsequently blamed on — you guessed it — racism) or complaining about phantom racism, you’ll find me right here, telling you what’s really going on. At LBC, you’ll read euphemism-free commentary on how people ruin their own lives with dumb decisions, and you’ll get it how I want to give it to you, not how others think I should give it to you.

My intent is not to be anyone’s mentor or role model or, necessarily, friend. I intend to use this blog to share my ideas and my work. If people like it, great! If they hate it, wonderful!

I suspect that part of the frustration people feel toward me is based on envy. This blog has gotten the attention of “big” bloggers, the media, editors, and others who’ve helped me build an audience. I notice that “big” conservative bloggers seem to do a lot more linking to smaller conservative bloggers than “big” liberal bloggers link to smaller liberal bloggers. I think it drives certain readers and bloggers crazy that I, of all people, have become a well-known blogger in the political blogosphere. Again, I can’t help that. I’m overjoyed that so many influential people visit this site – CNN producers, print editors, book publishers, agents, conservative writers and bloggers I admire – and that I’ve finally found something I’m good at and enjoy. If you’re not enjoying your life and what you do for a living, it’s got nothing to do with me.

Now, on to the state of Virginia!

Slavery Apologies and Diversity Pledges

I’m sure you’ve heard about apology-for-slavery resolutions in the Virginia legislature. I’m sorry, but I question the intelligence of anyone, black or white, who would even waste time with tripe like this, let alone taxpayers’ money. Raise your hand if you or anyone you know was a slave. Raise your hand if you or anyone you know owned slaves.

If an apology for slavery would bring down black-on-black crime rates, I’m cool with that. If an apology for slavery would mean an end to black race hustlers’ race hustles, then by all means, get on your knees and grovel, white man!

But it won’t make an iota of difference. It’s all a hustle. Certain blacks in America will never – and I mean never – be satisfied with apologies for slavery or lynching or for Jim Crow or from that sales clerk in the fancy department store who followed them around. Nothing will keep certain black folks – unfortunately, the ones who make the most noise – from bit**ing and moaning about “racism.”

Fellow conservative and friend Mychal Massie, who’s probably the only black person more conservative than I am – and that’s saying something – says this about the proposed slavery apology:

Blacks do not own the market on past suffering and injustice – yet today, blacks disproportionately (we are led to believe) suffer the effects of a rocky beginning in America. I submit alleged suffering has nothing to do with slavery, but rather, everything to do with one’s mental outlook and approach to life’s consequences, based in large part on decision making
…
“The average white person” doesn’t owe blacks special dispensation – in fact, no white person does. Blacks owe it to themselves to stop trying to extort benefit out of the past and grasp the overwhelming opportunity of the present. Slavery has nothing to do with not having better homes, better jobs or better lifestyles – but purpose and goals do. Low graduation rates have nothing to do with slavery – but purposefully failing, so as not to be “white,” and nonexistent parents do. (Source)

Just for telling the truth, Mychal gets the nastiest e-mails.

And this too-childish-for-words diversity pledge thing at the University of Virginia…I… just don’t know what to say. But I’ll think of something.

The student council proposed a so-called diversity pledge to…who knows? Someone tell me what is a “diversity pledge?” A promise to always consider the skin color of fellow students? Hmm…content of character, and all that, doesn’t apply. Is it a promise not to notice differences like skin color? Wait a minute. You can notice differences if doing so is beneficial but not detrimental, right? Isn’t that inconsistent and a bit…hypocritical?

Apparently, there were some “incidents” of a “prejudice” nature at the school. In one such incident, some idiot spit on two homosexual students, and the student council came up with a “pledge” to…what? What does spitting on someone have to do with diversity, for crying out loud? Call the campus police and file assault charges! Why does a nasty incident like that change just because the “spitees” are homosexuals? Will freshman have to sign a piece of paper promising not to spit on homosexuals? Would the campus police or faculty deal with it differently because the people spat upon are homosexuals or black? If so, why?

Because of Orwellian, thought police hate crime laws, that’s why. I guess I answered my own question. Such inane college resolutions are not that big a deal in the long run, just kids stuff, I suppose, unless the intent is to stigmatize freshmen who don’t sign it or agree to it by publishing the list? The list: what does that remind you of? Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Black List, maybe? It’s insanity. It’s stupid, and somebody needs to say so. I volunteer.

If you need a “diversity pledge” to act like a responsible, courteous adult, no matter what color skin someone is born with or who they have sex with (besides a child), a diversity pledge ain’t going to help you.

This is why I blog about the dumb obsession liberals have with skin deep-only diversity, thought policing (which applies mostly to white straight male thinkers), and other silliness. Covering racial politics from an angle you don’t find in mainstream media or in “polite” conversation are two of the many reasons why I blog the way I do. I take the heat because what I do is necessary. God willing, I’ll be around for a long time to do it.

And if you don’t like it and can’t deal with it, then for the sake of your mental health, stop reading the blog!

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 Peter Lange’s statement about the Group of 88 later.

My surface-level reaction: Mr. Lange, vent some of your “free speech” concerns on Mike Nifong, who race-baited his way into a weak case and, hopefully, out of a job.

People are fired up, angry (for the record, I certainly don’t endorse sending people ad hominem-laced e-mail; it’s a shame that some professors are being personally attacked, but that, as I’ve been told, is life), and it’s on Nifong’s head. But bloggers are the ideal scapegoat for Duke’s “African American” professors who endorsed that idiotic and embarrassingly ignorant ad.

That act has consequences. Get it? Deal with it.

——————————————————————–

We are listening to our students. We’re also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday. They know that it isn’t just Duke, it isn’t everybody, and it isn’t just individuals making this disaster…These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves.

So begins the infamous ad displayed in the Duke Chronicle back in April and endorsed by 88 professors at Duke University, previously known as the “Group of 88 (now 87),” in the wake of obviously-phony-from-the-beginning accusations of gang rape by a black stripper against three white lacrosse-playing men at Duke. Read the whole ad.

[Update: The Johnsville News links to a PDF copy at the end of the post. Right-click on it, choose "Save As" and save it to your hard drive. To read, open in a photo viewing or editing program.]

Rewind: The “We Are Listening” Advertisement

Man. Victimologists and other liberals make my job too easy. There’s no challenge to it anymore. Oh, well. Duty calls.

The silly ad, a bunch of quotes uttered by anonymous, victim-minded black students, was a gratuitous, irrelevant, inflammatory piece of trash meant to inflame already high racial tensions and cast Duke’s lacrosse-playing white boys as predatory, drunken brutes who routinely brutalize black women…and look at big black men funny.

Note this very important point: the ad, purported to be about “racism and sexism” on campus, focuses mainly on perceived racism. It is not, as the Group of 88 likes to claim, a statement about violence against women. It’s about the perceived prejudice of whites toward blacks at Duke and black students’ feelings of inadequacy. When a microphone is thrust in their faces, some blacks will always, always drone on about subjective “racist” incidents that may have little, if anything, to do with race or might be legitimate reactions by whites.

The whole ad is maddeningly trite and disingenuous. For instance, check out this line, probably uttered by a black female student: “You go to a party, you get grabbed, you get propositioned, and then you start to question yourself.”

So is this chick trying to say that white boys grab and proposition her at Duke parties, or is she referring to what happens to her at parties attended mainly by blacks? My guess is the latter, but her out-of-context quote is meant to demonize the white male students, particularly the lacrosse players, which is the whole purpose of the ad and why a bunch of privileged professors with grudges against white males signed it in the first place.

The whole ad, the whole concept behind the ad, is a joke.

Fast Forward: Inane Statement #2

Now the very delicate professors are whining about how misunderstood they are, that we’ve “misinterpreted” their signed statement endorsing a gratuitous, irrelevant, inflammatory piece of trash ad. From the News & Observer (emphases added):

That ad has been a subject of heated debate on blogs, and its signers have received angry and sometimes racist e-mail messages…William Chafe, a history professor who signed both the ad and the letter, said the bloggers’ interpretation of the ad has become the version people accepted. And that’s wrong, he said. “We’re trying to simply set the record straight and clarify we never claimed the lacrosse players were guilty,” Chafe said.

The “bloggers” Chafe is referring to is none other than history professor KC Johnson, who started blogging about the case because of the professors’ endorsement. (Thanks!)

For more Duke coverage, see The Johnsville News, LieStoppers, Crystal Mess, and Forensics Talk.

Did the “Group of 88″ learn the first time? No. Instead, they issued another inane (and irritatingly undated) public statement, something else we can parse, mock, dissect, rip to shreds, and call them on. The professors’ new letter is overloaded with CYA, revisionist history backtracking. An excerpt from An Open Letter to the Duke Community (emphasis added):

The ad has been read as a comment on the alleged rape, the team party, or the specific students accused. Worse, it has been read as rendering a judgment in the case. We understand the ad instead as a call to action on important, longstanding issues on and around our campus, an attempt to channel the attention generated by the incident to addressing these. We reject all attempts to try the case outside the courts, and stand firmly by the principle of the presumption of innocence.

I’ll go ahead and call it as I see it: Bullsh**!

A woman levels serious allegations of gang rape against a group of men. The woman happens to be black, and the men white. Some black students decide to use the occasion to vent anger over petty or imaginary slights, and you, esteemed and vaunted “scholars,” thought it was a good idea to sign your names to it, innocently oblivious to the possibility that some people might think you were rushing to judgment against the men, inciting racial strife, and using the opportunity to verbalize your personal race and class envy issues? And you’re surprised by the reaction of rational people?

OK.

My Dearest Professors…

…by signing on to a public ad, especially one filled with unfounded accusations, you thrust yourselves into the public arena. If you can’t take the criticism, shut the heck up. Take it from a blogger who’s had more than her share of invective-filled e-mail. Once you hit “Publish,” you’re fair game. In fact, you, oh esteemed scholars, have a responsibility to be extra careful when making public statements about and endorsing public statements of Duke students, particularly when felony charges are flying around.

One more jab before I go. In your new letter, you wrote, “The disaster is the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus.” So where’s the proof of all this “sexism, racism, and sexual violence” on campus?

Answer: A bunch of embarrassing and juvenile statements, uttered under the cower cover of anonymity, by a handful of disgruntled black students.

I think I’m done here. I’m going for a walk…

Addendum: Can’t.Get.Out.The.Door. Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse notes that the professors dish it out but can’t take it. Bill Anderson, writer and LBC commenter, says this about Chafe, the group member quoted in the N&O:

On top of signing this inane statement, William Chafee declared last spring that the lacrosse team was akin to the two men who murdered Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. One should think about that statement, and then wonder why he even would want to teach at Duke if it is being overrun by murderous racists.

This is the mentality of these people. They use words like “genocide” and “rape” and have no idea what they are saying. Truly pathetic.

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 hispanic-on-black crime in California.

Reading yet another story about hispanic-on-black gang violence (free reg. req.), I thought about the stunning lack of blanket news coverage on network or cable TV or a “national debate.” An excerpt:

Two weeks ago, Lovett’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Green, was standing with a group of friends on Harvard Boulevard, just south of 206th Street, when two men approached them in broad daylight. Without saying a word, one suspect pulled a gun and opened fire, killing Green and wounding three others, witnesses and police said.

Ernesto Alcarez, 20, was later arrested and charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime because the Dec. 15 shooting is believed to have been racially motivated. The other suspect, Jonathan Fajardo, 18, is still at large. Both are members of the 204th Street gang, authorities say.

Such a brazen act of violence has highlighted the racial tensions that have held this working-class neighborhood in a state of fear for years, residents and city officials said.

Where are the “African American” summits and protests and loud calls for an end to the violence? As I wrote yesterday in “Selective Outrage Over Black Crime Victims,” such protesting and shouting is not profitable or satisfying. Rage against perceived slights by whites commands a lot more time and energy in the black community.

For instance, who could ever forget (or be allowed to forget) when comedian Michael Richards called a couple of black men niggers during his routine? Press conferences, and demands for money and self-flagellation were daily fare. But hispanics killing blacks, and for the dumbest shi*, barely registers on the outrage scale.

It certainly didn’t help matters that Richards groveled and prostrated himself before a sleazy and unworthy caricature of a man like Jesse Jackson. The whole lot of them are idiots, including anyone who thinks being called a nigger by a white man during a comedy routine is worse than being killed by a freaking hispanic gang thug because you wandered into his “turf.”

Ah, but the difference is that Richards has money; hispanic ignorant gang thugs don’t. As a white liberal type, Richards carries the guilt of phantom racism. Hispanic gang members couldn’t give a rat’s a** about your slave of a great-great-great-great grandfather, and neither do you. It’s all about profit and penance.

And people say I hate black people?

Every year, taxpayers dump millions of dollars down the toilet on so-called gang violence reduction programs. Without addressing the real issues — weak family structures, low character, spiritual vacuity– it’s a waste of hard-earned money and precious time.

Forget about government programs. Get back to family values. Sorry to sound so simple for you government-is-savior-white-man-is-racist types reading this blog. Communities need to look to themselves — and in the mirror — if social pathologies like gangs are going to be fixed.

And blacks ought to come out strong against illegal “immigration.” It is not in the best interest of black Americans, especially lower income black Americans, for this nation to allow illegal aliens to pour over the border like water. Depressed wages, discrimination, overburdened social services, law enforcement that treats people unequally, disrespect for our laws and our way of life, gang violence — blacks in America should be the least likely group to “embrace” the criminal alien.

If you, black reader, are dreaming of some dumb “coalition” with our “brown brothers” to fight the “white power structure,” you’re as dim-witted as white people say you are.

***
Side note: Isn’t it almost pleasingly ironic that hate crime laws are backfiring on white liberals? Designed to punish the thoughts of heterosexual, traditional-minded white men, hate crime laws as applied to latino animal thugs killing black people (who cares about “hispanic hate?”) are ineffective, and they defeat the purpose of punishing “guilty” whites.
***

In summary, a white man calling a black man a nigger in a club garnered more attention than routine gang-murders of blacks in LA. The alleged gang-rape of a black stripper and prostitute captured the jaded minds of white liberals and their black lackeys all over the globe and caused so-called black academics to reveal how intellectually hollow and stultifying comical they really are. Yet, there will be no joint “Group of 88″ statement decrying the murders of decent black folks by latino gangs in LA.

Community “leaders,” national race-baiting, tax-exempt groups, grassroots folks, where the heck are you???

Related posts:

• Gangs of Illegals
• Greatness Falls
• The Perversity of “Diversity”
• Racialist Double Standards

Update (1/5/07): Patterico weighs in on black-on-white hate crims.

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 effusive lead about the new “pro-diversity” campaign to attract “minorities,” but the important part is how the fire department intends to do that. As originally conceived, affirmative action would require FDNY to look farther and wider for qualified black candidates. Affirmative action as practiced today means lowering qualifications.

How low will they go? FDNY is dropping the college requirement altogether if applicants have held a full-time job for six months, but this New York Daily News story reveals more of the truth. The department is “considering a change in the way the test is scored.” That story also notes the “surge” in Latino fire fighters. I’d be interested to know how they scored on the employment test as a group.

(I’d guess that criminal records are disqualifying “minorities,” too. By the way, whenever you see that m-word, it means black.)

Although the article mentions only a change in the way the test is scored (residents are given extra points, for instance), test changes usually mean that reading comprehension and mathematical portions are either de-emphasized, removed or “dumbed down.” I’ll bet $1 that’s what the FDNY plans to do if it hasn’t already.

I happen to know a bit about this. Last year the Denver Fire Department intended to dumb down its test to hire more blacks.

Last year I spoke to Denver’s Chief Larry Trujillo, who said a story in the Rocky Mountain News (one I linked to) misquoted him. If I recall correctly, the story left the impression that he favored a watered down test. He was adamantly opposed to this, expressing pride that he, a “minority,” had gone through the same process as other recruits. But he believed “something” needed to be done to bring in more blacks.

Intending to do a story about this, I called CWH Management Solutions, the consulting company hired to create the department’s newer and easier-for-blacks test. There I was, a little ole freelance writer and blogger, talking to three people on a conference call. I kept trying to get to the heart of thing: What sort of test ensures that a greater percentage of blacks will pass it?

Like a good interviewer, I’d done preliminary research before calling. I knew that as a group, blacks tended to score lower than whites on standardized tests. I wanted to know why. I found out part of the answer.

The more “g-loaded” a test was, the worse blacks performed on it. General intelligence is represented as g. Most standardized tests are basically IQ tests. Intelligence is what we use to reason abstractly and solve problems. While there are different sets of skills that can be measured, what is generally being tested is our overall level of intelligence, hence, general intelligence. The more of this ability the test measures, the more g-loaded the test.

Whenever you read or hear about some institution or other changing tests like the SAT or civil service exams (No one advocates changing medical board or pilot exams. I wonder why…) so that more people of races other than white can pass it, it means the test’s g-load will be decreased.

Back to CWH. I knew the consulting firm designed tests that reduced the g-load, but I wanted at least one of the three people on the telephone to say it. No matter how many ways I asked the question, I never got a straight answer. I asked if they planned to make the test easier. No. I asked if I could see a sample of the test. No. I asked exactly how they intended to ensure that blacks would do better on their test than on the current one. Just as the web site reads, the “leader” of the three said the new test would measure a “broader range of job related abilities than traditional written tests” in order to identify “well-rounded, motivated, and qualified” applicants.

In other words, the goal was to play down what made blacks look bad — abstract reasoning ability — and play up “interpersonal” skills.

Why is cognitive ability important? In general, cognitive ability predicts life outcomes, and cognitive tests are the best predictors of job performance. The higher the ability, the better recruits are able to learn and develop the skills necessary to be good firemen or policeman, for example. Study after study has shown this to be true.

(When people speak of different “intelligences,” like the faddish emotional and multiple “intelligences,” they don’t know what they’re talking about. Intelligence is the ability to think abstractly and solve problems. Period. People who use those terms are not referring to these abilities. )

Bottom-line: To eliminate the “disparate impact” g-loaded tests have on blacks, test-makers eliminate the g-load.

I googled Chief Trujillo to find out whether the Denver Fire Department ever implemented the dumbed down test, and I pulled up this: “Push to hire more in fire department goes nowhere.”

Oh well.

Why do blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites? Is it in the genes, the environment, or both? Read, theorize, discuss — when you find the answer, let us know. In the meantime, we’ll keep pretending it has to do with slavery and segregation.

Addendum: Somewhere along the way, proportionality became the measure of non-discrimination. Since blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should represent at least 13 percent of fire department employees, for example. Anyone of average intelligence knows how unsustainable and illogical that is.

If blacks are overrepresented in certain government agencies, that’s OK.

Update (12:22 p.m.): Whenever you think something goes without saying, it’s best to say it anyway.

When I asked why blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites, I’m basing the question on the body of research I’ve read about IQ and employment tests. Commenter Frank offers a point of clarification. IQ tests certainly measure something, and cognitive ability correlates with life outcomes and predicts job performance. If you disagree, make the argument and support it with sources, as I’ve done here and here.

If you don’t think IQ tests properly or adequately measure cognitive ability, or that cognitive ability isn’t all that important, make the argument and support it.

Emotional I-refuse-to-believe-blacks-are-dumb type of responses are part of the problem with this dumbed down country. Think and argue.

Related posts:

• Intelligence: The Last Taboo
• Intelligence: Some Research
• Repeating History
• Firehouse Diversity
• Racist Firefighters Exam
• Quotas

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, the immorality of race preferences, and the unvarnished truth about skin color and cultural “diversity.” I expect naysayers to misrepresent this post as they do others, but that can’t be helped. I have no control over it.

There is a growing movement in the United States to mainstream mediocrity and define deviancy down. All cultures, ways of life, or however you want to define the ideals under which we live, are not equal, nor were they meant to be. American culture, for lack of a better term, is far better than any other on earth, including its diverse subcultures.

Among the native-born population, subcultures develop under the influence of American culture. They are dependent on and part of the main culture.

Some groups of foreigners retain part of their culture while assimilating into American culture. Other foreigners retain all of their culture and have no desire to assimilate into American culture. The latter group is a threat to how we live.

In fact, the immigrant of old is quickly becoming a relic. People land on these shores and demand from us that which would have gotten them imprisoned or killed in their home countries. With everyone from homosexuals to Muslims glomming on to the “civil rights” meme, it’s no great surprise that illegal aliens — lawbreakers — have become emboldened to demand “civil rights.”

I put the phrase in quotes because these people don’t want the obligations that come with those rights; they only want the benefits. Illegal aliens who’ve broken our laws take to our streets and demand the protection of our laws. They want to be special, not equal. They don’t want to play by the rules; they want exceptions. But the sword cuts both ways.

Illegal alien protests are only a small example of a much larger problem in the U.S. I don’t know exactly when the seed was planted, but I’d say it began to sprout and flourish in the last 20 years or so. What am I talking about? Diversity, the idea that value exists in differences, as defined by social engineers. There’s nothing valuable or worth celebrating about differences per se. Differences just are. But someone sold the idea that the dominant culture was no better than its subcultures, and that all values were equally valid and “good.” Or that the culture of an African or other third world country was not inferior to American, or Western culture.

Anybody with eyes, ears, heart, and mind knows this is not true. The ideals upon which our country was built are far superior to any other. And yes, the people who dared to dream of such a place and participate in this grand experiment are superior to others in all the ways that count.

Why do reasonable people allow the dumbing down and degradation? Why are we complicit in our own destruction? Why have we let social engineers and America-haters define for us what is good and evil? For instance, like it or not, America exists because of those vilified “dead white males.” Centuries of western thought culminated into where and how we now live. A system that is highly ordered and allows individual liberty and provides economic incentive is far superior to one that is disorganized and represses individuals and forces people to labor for the benefit its rulers. A nation whose people share a common language and culture is far superior to a balkanized one where different cultures are constantly jockeying for position.

What makes America unique is e pluribus unum, one made out of many. While America may not have begun with diverse racial and ethnic groups, the founders laid the foundation for a time they had not foreseen. That’s the beauty of it. Guided by the hand of God, they didn’t need to foresee it. All they needed to do was build the foundation on solid, objectively good principles, and yes, Christian values, and the rest fell into place. America wasn’t built on “white values.” It was built on human values, with recognition to God-given rights.

But people opposed to these rights are trying to break the foundation and create something new, something that is doomed to fail. America works because it is America. It will cease to work if it becomes a third world nation and dominated by inferior subcultures. Special interest groups and organizations intent on tearing up the foundation and changing the dominant culture to suit their needs are destroying the country.

Where did this idea of special or “group rights” come from? As much as I appreciate what the Civil Rights movement has done for me, it was this era that group rights became acceptable, particularly for “minorities.” I won’t get into why I think that’s the case because I’ve written about it before and don’t have time to get into here.

For instance, blacks are not judged as individuals. We are a group with special, not equal, rights. In the aftermath of the movement, into the 1970s, racial entitlements crept in. The mere fact that a person was black meant that he was automatically regarded as someone needing remedial help. Special admission tracks and hiring quotas were set up. All types of grievance, no matter how trivial and ignorant, became legitimate in the eyes of guilty whites. Equal opportunity gave way to equal outcomes, the absence of which was evidence of “racism.”

The same is happening with “Hispanics” and Latinos. Group rights, special rights, are all the rage. Based on misplaced white guilt, the dominant culture started to cave long ago, turning their collective back on objective truths and principles and allowing every racial and cultural minority group with a grievance to make claims and demand that which they don’t deserve and didn’t earn. Every racial and cultural minority — except whites — is allowed to lobby for its race and culture, to demand acquiescence (and tax dollars).

Ed Morrissey expresses my thoughts in his post on respect for our way of life, particularly the idea of equal treatment under the law.

A couple of weeks ago I posed the question of why we allow racial double standards. Why are groups that promote the interests of people of African or Latin American or Middle Eastern descent acceptable, but groups that promote the interests of whites, or people of European descent, unacceptable? I have yet to hear or read a logically sound answer. Emotion-laden responses are a dime a dozen, as they typically are when race is discussed. Nobody wants to think about the questions and answer them honestly.

As far as racialist groups are concerned, I believe Americans should show more loyalty to their country than to their skin color. But if we’re going to accept one group’s racial grievances as legitimate, we have to use the same standards and accept the grievances of all racial groups, including whites.

In that “controversial” post, I blogged about an hispanic racialist group called La Raza, which has zero interest in “diversity.” Last month I wrote about race-based, government-subsidized schools in California supported by La Raza in “I’m A Libertarian on Education.” Michelle Malkin’s latest column is about similar La Raza-supported schools.

Imagine, if you can, a government-subsidized school that promoted white separatism. The outrage would be unbelievable. (I have no problem with race- or sex-based private schools. Freedom of assembly is guaranteed in our Constitution.) But groups like La Raza are not condemned. They are courted and coddled. Karl Rove recently spoke to the racialist group, droning on about “immigration.” Joseph Farah does an excellent job expressing my thoughts on the matter. Read it and learn.

Rove said:

Everything that this country is, everything that we have achieved, everything that we hold, everything that we promise, is because we are a nation of diversity, brought together by immigration, and sharing a common dream.

Lawrence Auster, whom some call a racist, also expresses my thoughts. You see, unlike most, I listen to what people have to say before I make judgments, especially if what they say is considered “politically incorrect.” Their desire to protect America and maintain our way of life is far more important to me than the color of their skin. Auster responded to Rove:

So, diversity is everything that America is, everything that it means, and this diversity is only held together by … no, not by the self-evident truths that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” but by a “dream.” Held together by a dream? What is a dream? A dream is someone’s wishes and desires. Bush and Rove have cast aside the objective truths of human nature that America was founded on and are declaring a new America, founded on everyone’s wishes and desires.

Those objective truths of human nature, the ones that enable each and every inhabitant of this country to live his life in peace and benefit from the labor of his own mind and hands, regardless of skin color or country of origin. The perversity of diversity is that it denies men these rights, engineering coercive policies, whereby one man’s freedom and the fruits of his labor are slowly siphoned away to those who didn’t earn them and to whom he’s done no harm.

Diversity, as defined by leftists, is a skin deep-only mish-mash of false premises based on raising the “self-esteem” of one group and alleviating the guilt of another at the expense of objective truth and to the detriment of us all.

The problem I encounter when I write posts like this is that I’ve touched on many different subjects — race preferences, illegal “immigration,” God — and tried to pull them together in an organized and coherent manner. Sometimes I fail. Certain people will read this post and render judgment without taking the time to read a few pages of the archives to get a better sense of context. As I wrote before, that can’t be helped. I trust that thoughtful, mature, and smart people who really want to learn and expand their own thinking will invest the time to read other posts before they comment.

The Cultural Decline category is worth a read. The Race Preferences category will shed light on why I criticize racial grievances. The Faith category will also help you understand why I think and write the way I do. There are several pages in each category, so click Next Page at the bottom to keep reading.

I can’t allow misunderstanding, misreading, and misinterpretation to deter me from my mission. I despise hypocrisy, moral relativity and equivalency, “diversity” as defined by white liberals, special rights, degradation of the principles that made America the great country it is today (principles which, ironically, give people who hate those principles the freedom to speak out against them!), and anyone who presumes to judge me based on my membership in a racial group rather than on my worth as a human being and an individual.

I despise cowardice, effeteness, pettiness, and people who tell me how and what I ought to think, especially when the “advice” is based on my membership in a racial group.

Diversity, as defined by leftists, has led to the perversion of American ideals. I predict that one day, after I’m long dead and buried, perhaps when those born this decade are old men and women, America won’t be great, as defined by this generation. It will be a balkanized, multilingual mass of racial and ethnic groups fighting over dwindling resources while the elites — the white liberals who engineered the whole mess — observe their dastardly handiwork.

Of interest:

• Bogus Rights
• Know Your Freedoms
• How Not To Be Poor
• Walter Williams On Customs, Traditions And Moral Values
• John Kerry’s Racist Rhetoric
• Anti-Lynching Legislation

And this taking off your shoes thing…hate it. Only last year taking off shoes was optional. If you beeped, then you’d take them off and go through the metal detector again. Now it’s mandatory. At least at Reagan National Airport.

I shouldn’t complain, really. I’m fortunate I can afford to fly (barely), but the “security” stuff gets old, you know? I’m resentful that I, probably the most unlikely kind of person on the planet to blow up an airplane, got picked for a “random search” at the gate once, if you can believe that. The whole thing was absolutely stupid. Some gloved “security” person going through my personal things, as if I were any sort of threat! It was an empty, politically correct display of how dumb the government can be. A random search?

I shouldn’t get upset about this stuff. But you see, knowing that undocumented illegal aliens are underneath the terminals working on airplanes while I, an American citizen, am being searched for sharp objects or a bomb raises my blood pressure.

But there may be a “lesser of two evils” solution. Starting this summer, the TSA will offer something called the Registered Traveler card. Frequent flyers like myself can avoid “security” searches and all that other nonsense for a fee. And a government background check into my private affairs:

The program is intended to let frequent air passengers avoid delays and to free up security screeners to focus on other travelers.

The TSA already has tested Registered Traveler at five airports beginning in the summer of 2004 through September 2005. Now it wants private companies to run the program, which was popular with frequent travelers.

Before the companies are allowed to sell Registered Traveler cards, they have to demonstrate that they can somehow figure out whether applicants are members of terrorist sleeper cells by plowing through bank records, insurance data and other personal information available commercially — or by some other method. (Source)

I don’t like it, but this is the age of terrorism. I can either keep complaining about stupid airport security, stop complaining and live with it, or relinquish some of my privacy rights so I can avoid it. Some choice. Life is a series of trade-offs.

Related Update: Speaking of illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement canceled a contract with a private detention facility that held illegal aliens for budgetary reasons, reports Debbie Schlussel.

1) Blogging for over two years, I’ve learned a lot about obsessive human behavior: jealousy, envy, cyber-stalking, bad parody, the lure of online anonymity, just to name a few. I’ve been accused of self-hate, black-hate, woman-hate, Clinton-hate — the list is as long as it is ridiculous.

But the most ridiculous accusation is “excessive” self-promotion. Writers, performers, business people, companies — you name it — use web sites to promote themselves. That’s what a web site is for, and a blog is no different. After all, most people who blog aren’t being paid to blog. They do it for free, and readers have access to free content.

Why not use your blog to promote your non-blog writing, TV and radio appearances, and other activities? Plenty of bloggers worth reading promote themselves, but I’m the one who gets called out for it. You’d have to be a stone cold fool not to use a decently-trafficked site to sell a book, for example. In fact, I’m adding book promotion to my services list. I suspect that most of the complainers have no comprehension of how to run a business or make money from it, how business works, and how to use time and resources efficiently.

People who do little writing outside of blogging may not feel the need to promote themselves, but I do. I speak at blog conferences, workshops, and seminars, and this site is where I promote those things. I write op-eds, book reviews, and articles, and this site is where I promote those things. That’s what a web site is for.

Some bloggers choose to generate traffic by criticizing other bloggers and constantly complaining about what other bloggers do; I choose to generate traffic by providing good content, marketing myself, and my work. People who go into business for themselves have been doing it for millennia, and I’m no different. So far it’s paying the bills, and I consider myself blessed to have the opportunities.

2) The haters aren’t exactly stupid, though some come dangerously close. They know success when they see it. As my “enemies,” they may not openly acknowledge reading this blog several times a day, learning or benefiting from what I have to say, but they definitely do. Recently I discovered that a few “haters” incorporated some advice I gave about site design and traffic generating.

I give a lot of blogging advice via e-mail but choose not to do so on the blog for several reasons: a) I’m in the business of giving blogging advice; b) I don’t want people who claim not to like me to benefit from anything I’ve learned about blogging to make their own blogs better. Yes, it’s selfish human nature, and I am, admittedly, human.

3) And here is the irony. Some bloggers have asked for links, graciously benefited from my linkage, and even advertised on this site, and then turn tail and start complaining about the method I’ve used to gain popularity. Unbelievable. This has happened too many times to count, and such people fail to see the irony.

My site has grown popular for several reasons, but the most important one is my outspokenness. I like controversy, and I know controversy draws readers. I have the profile and readership because I blog the way I want to, and I’m not afraid of anyone. If other bloggers want to exploit that to bring new readers to their sites, that’s fine with me. Linking to other bloggers is what bloggers do. When I was relatively unknown, higher profile bloggers linked to me, and I do the same for others.

What I loathe, however, is when some of these same bloggers dare to criticize my blogging style after they get their links and readers, the same style they once exploited! The hypocrisy is maddening. I promote this blog, and for that I’m accused of excessive promotion and arrogance, but some of the same people running their mouths about it have requested links and benefited, directly or indirectly, from that promotion and “arrogance.”

I don’t set out to offend anyone, but telling the truth about them often does. The seething undercurrent of animosity toward me has a lot to do with my race, I suspect, and my faith and political affiliation, i.e., who I am. I saw how much white liberals resented my existence when black liberal bloggers gave them “permission” to hurl border-line racial epithets because they didn’t like a particular post. I’ve always known how condescending some white liberals can be, and the blogosphere has shown me how…pardon my liberal regression…how bigoted they can be.

And I get criticism from across the political spectrum. A few conservative bloggers have made it known, as if I solicited their opinion, that they don’t like the way I criticize Bush. A few conservative women bloggers didn’t like remarks I made about having a woman as president and reacted the same way they claim liberals do: take one statement or word out of context, harp on it, and create a big, irritatingly mindless blog swarm until the original meaning of the statement is lost. Some Catholic bloggers delinked me because of innocuous remarks I’d made about the late pope, and so on, and so on.

What’s troubling about such criticism is that it came from people who LOVED me until I blogged about one thing they disagreed with.

That’s out of my system now. If this post doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry about it. I’ve allowed myself no more than two nonsensical rants a year.

Warning: Shameless self-promotion below!

I’m preparing for tomorrow night’s Crash Course on Blogging seminar. “Walk-ins” are welcome.

Addendum: For some reason, I’m reminded of one of my favorite monologues from A Few Good Men. If I may be so bold:

JESSEP
You want answers?

KAFFEE
I think I’m entitled to them.

JESSEP
You want answers?!

KAFFEE
I want the truth.

JESSEP
You can’t handle the truth!

JESSEP
Son, we live in a world that has walls.
And those walls have to be guarded by men
with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You,
Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater
responsibility than you can possibly
fathom. You weep for Santiago and you
curse the marines. You have that luxury.
You have the luxury of not knowing what I
know: That Santiago’s death, while tragic,
probably saved lives. And my existence,
while grotesque and incomprehensible to
you, saves lives.

You don’t want the truth. Because deep
down, in places you don’t talk about at
parties, you want me on that wall. You need me
on that wall.

We use words like honor, code,
loyalty…we use these words as the
backbone to a life spent defending
something. You use ‘em as a punchline.

I have neither the time nor the
inclination to explain myself to a man who
rises and sleeps under the blanket of the
very freedom I provide, then questions the
manner in which I provide it. I’d prefer
you just said thank you and went on your
way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a
weapon and stand a post. Either way, I
don’t give a damn what you think you’re
entitled to. (Emphasis added)

Love it.

“I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history…”

The notion of a special month for black history may be hurting rather than helping efforts for racial equality, Freeman believes. When Wallace wonders whether racist attitudes may be harder to eradicate without the education that Black History Month provides, Freeman retorts: “How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!” (SOURCE)

Yeah, right. I wish it were so, Mr. Freeman. But the “civil rights” hustle industry isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Its race-baiters workers aren’t about to give it up and get real jobs. They’ll make sure we all keep talking about it. An honest day’s work (for a change) would do their souls good, but hey, race baiters have to pay the bills, too, don’t they?

Also see What Black History Month means to me.

Note: I forgot to link to the source earlier.

Addendum: I take it back! I liked Freeman in Glory and on The Electric Company kids’ show.