Racism in America

"The bottom line is that the civil rights struggle is over and it is won. At one time black Americans didn't share the constitutional guarantees shared by whites; today we do. That does not mean that there are not major problems that confront a large segment of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems nor can they be solved through a 'conversation on race.' Black illegitimacy stands at 70 percent; nearly 50 percent of black students drop out of high school; and only 30 percent of black youngsters reside in two-parent families. In 2005, while 13 percent of the population, blacks committed over 52 percent of the nation's homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer. Such pathology, I think much of it precipitated by family breakdown, is entirely new among blacks. In 1940, black illegitimacy was 19 percent; in 1950, only 18 percent of black households were female-headed compared with today's 70 percent. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks. If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for many black Americans will remain bleak."

--George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

Obama's executive experience

Do we really want this guy to be President of the United States of America? Please read this Wall Street Journal article: Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

Here's some of it:

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

The thought of Obama as President should scare the hell out of every thinking American.

Go read the rest.

A video note to Mr. Obama

This is a moving tribute to the absolute necessity of fighting for freedom.

[Via The Jawa Report.]

Misconceptions

It seems that the Brits have been fed a line of bull about Americans by their own media.

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.

Let's see. What is their primary source of news? The BBC.

Also, Glenn Reynolds weighs in.

Unintended consequences?

Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee whose protheses have been considered an unfair advantage by the Olympic Committee, has finally gained permission to compete.

"I am ecstatic," Pistorius told reporters in Milan, Italy. "When I found out, I cried. It is a battle that has been going on for far too long. It's a great day for sport. I think this day is going to go down in history for the equality of disabled people."

My question is: are there athletes out there who are so competitive that they will voluntarily undergo amputations in order to gain a competitive advantage?

Sounds farfetched? I wouldn't be so sure, if I were you . . .

This is what we need in a Commander-in-Chief

Bush blows up at an incredibly naive and argumentative question posed by a member of our oh-so-professional press corps. Ignore the blow up, though, and just listen to what he has to say. The man understands very well what we're up against; and does a good job, though with little eloquence, of explaining what that is.

Too bad he can't run for a third term. I'm not sure any of the presidential candidates really understand the sacrifices that are required of this nation, and its leadership, to rid this world of the islamofascist threat.

Frankly, I don't think most of us Americans fully understand that, either. I guess we just want to get back to watching our "reality" shows, so we can't be bothered by real-world realities.

Reckless abandonment

Calling it like he sees it

President Bush has finally decided to speak out and call Congressional Democrats on their blatant attempts to surrender to terrorists.

"Democrat leaders in Congress seem more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need to fight the battles in Iraq."

Gateway Pundit has more. Go read the whole thing.

House search in Baghdad

Omar Fadhil describes a nighttime house search by U.S. forces in Bagdad.

It was around midnight and we were gathered around the fire in the backyard when we heard someone talking in English in the street.

Go see what that was, Mohammed told me.

I approached the front door and peeked into the street, a number of Humvees were there. I returned to the group and told them we might have some company.

Almost every Friday night we gather with some friends for drinks and a barbecue. We all take turns hosting the nights: yesterday was our turn.

Did you notice the last paragraph? It talks about the weekly barbeque that Omar and his friends and family have at their homes in Baghdad. It must be pretty darn safe in that part of Baghdad to have weekly barbeques out in the backyard, eh? You wouldn't know it, though, by watching the news, now would you?

So what else are we not getting accurately from our news media?

Go read the whole thing -- you'll find that Omar and his guests found our soldiers to be polite, professional, and friendly.

[Via Kim Priestap at Wizbang!.]

Then . . . and now

Stephen, over at Horsefeathers, dug up an Arthur Chrenkov archive containing excerpts from an interview of the last surviving military leader of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, Marek Edelman. Mr. Edelman talks about fascism in 1943 and about Islamic fascism in the 21st Century.

Interviewer: Not a day seems to go by in Iraq without a terrorist attack, and in the last few days two Polish soldiers and a Polish journalist have died.

Edelman: And do you know any war where nobody dies? I don't. Alas, it's in man's make-up; there's a fatal flaw there that makes him kill, for pleasure or over some silly beliefs.

Interviewer: So this war is one over some silly beliefs?

Edelman: Now, now. Who started killing people? Americans didn't invade a wonderful democratic Iraq. There was a dictatorship there, torture, terror.

Interviewer: But there are people who say it's not our business.

Edelman: And whose business is it? Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.

Interviewer: Many people do understand that, but they don't understand why the Americans have to go to the other side of the world and fight over Iraq now.

Edelman: And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.

Go read the whole thing. It provides a reality-based perspective on what's going on in the world today.

Here is another worthwhile link that takes you to an account by Marek Edelman of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

A world without America

Found here.

Hanging party

It seems that the Iraqi government has hundreds of volunteers who would like to be Saddam Hussein's executioner.

Charity: Liberal vs. Conservative

Thomas Sowell discusses a book, "Who Really Cares" by Arthur C. Brooks, that examines "the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives when it comes to donating their own time, money, or blood for the benefit of others." Here's how Sowell begins:

More frightening than any particular beliefs or policies is an utter lack of any sense of a need to test those beliefs and policies against hard evidence. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate "forgiveness" of loans to Third World countries, a "living wage" for the poor and a "safety net" for all.

But these are all government policies -- not individual acts of compassion -- and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. Depending on what those consequences are, there may be good reasons to oppose them, so being for or against these policies may tell us nothing about who is compassionate or caring and who is not.

I have to say that this fits well with my observations over the last 30 years, or so, though there are notable exceptions.

This is well worth considering.

Could this be all about "self?"

The McCord family . . .

. . . needs your prayers.

Envy

Gagdad Bob talks about the evil of envy.

Evil:

You can put any fancy spin on it that you wish, but no one can convince me that our struggle with Iran or with North Korea is anything other than a struggle against pure, unalloyed evil. But what if you are too sophisticated to believe in the primitive idea of evil? Then I’m afraid you may be too sophisticated to survive your own magical ideology. In naively embracing “peace” you are ensuring your own doom, which frankly wouldn’t bother me if I and my friends and family and beloved cosmonauts didn’t have to go down with you.

And Envy:

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, if your conception of human nature is faulty, then your political philosophy is going to be dysfunctional. One of the reasons leftism is so inherently dysfunctional is that it revolves around the appeasement of perhaps the single most spiritually destructive human emotion of them all, constitutional envy. In the formulation of the brilliant psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, envy is the primary mode of expression of the death instinct. It is present in everyone, but can be exacerbated by early childhood experiences so that later in life it becomes a crippling barrier to psychological health and happiness. For envy prevents one from appreciating what one has. It can only attack the person or system believed to possess what one lacks. In this regard, it is the polar opposite of gratitude, which is one of the prerequisites of human happiness. As a matter of fact, Klein’s most famous book is entitled Envy and Gratitude.

This guy is unapologetic, but he makes cogent arguments. Recommended.

Essence vs. Existence

Gagdad Bob does a good job of defining essence and existence and applying them to contemporary societal and religious issues.

For the religious man, essence is prior to existence and determines existence. God knew you before you were bearthed and begaialed and keeps a running count of every hair on your head.

For the leftist, existence determines essence. You are an accident. You have no a priori transcendent essence, but your essence is determined by accidental factors such as race, class and gender.

It's well worth the read.

Predation

Michelle Malkin, once again, hits the nail squarely on the head in her op-ed discussing sexual predation in our nation's capitol.

Washington is embroiled in another sex scandal. A sure-bet win for the Republicans in Florida is now imperiled. The Dems look to be one seat closer to regaining control of the House. But the latest one involving disgraced GOP Congressman Mark Foley's predatory emails and lecherous instant-message exchanges is more than just a political nightmare.

It's a parental nightmare.

And, speaking as the parent of two girls, I have to agree.

Recommended.

Irony

Jeff Jacoby has an insightful op-ed up about the violence being perpetrated in Islam's name. Here's his conclusion (emphasis added):

In every case, the pretext for the Muslim rage was the claim that Islam had been insulted. Freedom of speech was irrelevant: While the rioters and those inciting them routinely insult Christianity, Judaism, and other religions, they demand that no one be allowed to denigrate Islam or its prophet. It is a staggering double standard, and too many in the West seem willing to go along with it. Witness the editorials in US newspapers this week scolding the pope for his speech. Recall the State Department's condemnation of the Danish cartoons last winter.

Of course nobody's faith should be gratuitously affronted. But the real insult to Islam is not a line from a papal speech or a cartoon about Mohammed. It is the violence, terror, and bloodshed that Islamist fanatics unleash in the name of their religion -- and the unwillingness of most of the world's Muslims to say or do anything to stop them.

You should read how he got there. Recommended.

Doomsday clock