Those who own a property have the right to continue owning that property, and what they do with their justly owned and acquired property is entirely their own look-out.
If you happen to be the owner of a unique piece of art, say the Mona Lisa, and you decide to set fire to it, then that is a terrible tragedy, but it is your property. No government should ever have the right to intervene.
Apartheid in South Africa was a crime against humanity. You can argue the reasons. Some say that it was racial prejudice translating into attempted genocide. Others that it was a violation of human rights of equality and justice. Full Story »
Gay marriage will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Last week, actor Tom Hanks called Mormons who supported California’s Proposition 8 “un-American.” Today Hanks apologized.
He shouldn’t have, because he’s right.
Anyone who would support curtailing the civil rights of a minority group is un-American. Codifying discrimination in a state constitution or in the U.S. Constitution is un-American. And supporting people who aim to curtail civil rights and codify discrimination, as the LDS Church did with regard to Prop-8, is un-American.
And I’ll say this to anyone who supported Prop-8 - you acted un-American too.
The image is striking. A fat, sweaty and uncomfortable-looking white man is squatting on the back of a large black man. The white man is holding a dry canvas bag over the head of the black man and looking sadly and nervously at the camera.
The Truth Commission was unlike any trial the world had ever seen. In exchange for complete disclosure about all past crimes, both known and unknown, claimants would be given complete absolution. In the case of this one sweaty white man, his victim had asked that he demonstrate how he had tortured him.
Waterboarding has become famous. Place a thick, heavy and wet fabric over your victim’s head, and then hold them stationary. It causes no lasting physical damage, but gives a very real sense of drowning. Anyone who has ever had a similar experience knows it is terrifying. Full Story »
By Jeff Huber William S. Lind, co-creator of the Fourth Generation Warfare concept and director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism, says a lot of smart things about national security, but he doesn’t say any of them about the issue of gays and women in the military. My admittedly limited experience of the gay lifestyle hasn’t endeared me to it: my older male dog humps my younger male dog, my younger male dog humps my leg, and I pay all the bills; an arrangement, come to think of it, not so different from my experience of marriage. So I don’t, so to speak, have a dog in the fight over whether gays or women should be “allowed” to serve in the military, but Lind makes such a cock and bull argument against it I feel obliged to apologize on behalf of the entire heterosexual male community.
In a pair of recent opinion pieces, Lind asserts that we shouldn’t let women and gays in the armed services because if we do, “men who want to prove they are real men will not join.”
Lind’s relative manliness doesn’t necessarily add to or subtract from his opinion’s validity, but unnamed sources who knew him when assure me that the closest he ever came to wearing a uniform was Full Story »
A person consists both of their being and of the works that their being produces. Whether those works are physical or as intangible as the time spent on a particular task.
A traditional Westminster approach to politics, with a typical Left / Right political duopoly, has become the gold standard of democratic representation. It is also conflicted and inherently incapable of resolving its core contradiction. Full Story »
On the eve of the election, the New York Times editorial board wrote up an excellent critique of Bush’s last minute, lame duck executive orders that he signed on November the first. Here are some excerpts:
Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. Full Story »
It’s official - I’m already sick of hearing about this “historic election.” It’s better than hearing about “historical” elections as Ken Jennings has complained, I suppose - at least “historic” refers to something “famous or important in history” or “having great and lasting importance” instead of something that has the character of history. Reagan’s election in 1980, FDR’s election in 1932, Lincoln’s election in 1860, Jefferson’s election in 1800 - those are all “historical” elections. Let’s give Obama at least to the end of his term before calling his election “historical,” OK? But I digress.
As I was saying, I’m already tired of hearing about how Obama’s election was historic. Not because it’s not true, but rather because it’s already overdone. I lost count of the number of times I heard the phrase “historic election” even before President-elect Obama took the stage in Chicago election night, never mind all the times I’ve heard it on the radio and read it on nearly every webpage, blog, and news site I’ve visited since election night.
There’s another reason I’m sick of the phrase, too. It’s not enough. Full Story »
“If the polls are right, if it don’t rain and the creek don’t rise, the winner of the presidential election is sure to be . . . Lyndon Baines Johnson. When he signed the epochal Civil Rights Act of 1964, Johnson knew he was also signing away the South and, with it, much of the white vote elsewhere as well. “We have lost the South for a generation,” he supposedly said back then.
A significant number of southern whites, even men, figure to vote for Barack Obama. Cohen cites blacks who have excelled in high-profile fields like politics and entertainment. Since most southern and conservative white men don’t care about politics and are unmoved by Oprah and Denzel Washington, what would make them vote for a black man? Full Story »
2 Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
James Dobson and the Christian Right activists at Focus on the Family seem to have forgotten that scriptural promise. Then again, there is a great deal of the Bible they seem to have forgotten, or chosen to blatantly ignore. Their real “focus” is on scare tactics to frighten conservative evangelicals away from any flirtation with voting for Barack Obama, who may as well be the devil incarnate masquerading beneath a veneer of seductive charisma.
The latest instrument in this campaign of emotional intimidation is a “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” [download PDF at website] produced by Focus on the Family Action, the PAC arm of Dobson’s organization. Full Story »
There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence
- Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”
When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust me to tell the truth about these folks, maybe you’ll trust their own words.
Listen to the victim, abused by the system
The basis is racist, you know that we must face this
In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but over the past 17 years it’s been impossible for me to hear the song without mapping its penetrating, undeniable truth onto our American context. Our black auslanders aren’t recent arrivals (although many of our brown ones are), but they nonetheless remain social, political, economic and cultural outsiders, and whatever progress they may have made in the several hundred years since they first arrived in shackles, only a fool can believe that the basis is no longer racist.
Fifty-one years ago this morning, if you stood on the steps of Little Rock High School, you could hear the angry white mob chant “Two, four, six, eight; we don’t want to integrate!”.
Arkansas’ Governor Orval Faubus was taking a stand against the Supreme Court ruling that ordered all United States public schools to racially integrate and sent the state’s National Guard to block the entrance to the school for the black students. Twenty days later on this date President Eisenhower broke the blockade and sent in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the nine students inside. Here is a short but great documentary of what happened during that month. Full Story »
With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.
— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.
We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.
— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10. Full Story »
Bitch, please. This isn’t Cosmo, and never mind how I can come up with four or five of those titles right off the top of my head. These are a few simple, surprisingly little-known facts about feminists that I’ve put together as a service to the astonishingly large number of people who toss the “f” bomb around without a clue as to its meaning, its history or how asinine they sound. Ignorance may be bliss, but idiots get on my last nerve, so let’s start with a helpful definition.
“Feminism(here we go) is a discourse that involves (endlessly variable) movements, theories and philosophies (immensely important though often migraine-inducing) which are concerned with the issue of gender (and sex, because, hey, biology exists) difference (if that’s not too divisive), advocate equality (or equity, or parity, or some therapeutic ball-busting) for women , and campaign for (and argue about) women’s (or womyn’s, or humyn’s (I didn’t make that up)) rights and interests (including women of any color, any religion, and any orientation, but expect all estrogen hell to break loose if anyone says the words “class” or “race”).” *
So much for helpful. How about “women are human?” Let’s go with that… Full Story »
There’s a game I used to play with my geopolitics university students. I’d get them to form a circle and then I’d ramble about in the middle linking them up with black cotton thread. It would form a dense and incomprehensible jangle, tying them up in improbable ways. I’d always leave a few free.
Then I’d get one of the untied students to “attack” one of the tied students. As he moved towards the other, he would have to cross the threads in the middle and would quickly draw others into the conflict.
The thread, I told my students, are the ties of international trade and politics. And Russia has just played silly-buggers with everyone else’s party. Full Story »
While awareness and externalities were memes in the Green Constitutional Congress, they weren’t the only ones. For that matter, neither was the most important one. Bruce Mau made that abundantly clear with his repetition of a single phrase in every question he asked by way of introduction to the panelists’ monologues: “Can we imagine…” Imagination was the defining meme of the Green Constitutional Congress, and it ran through the content of every monologue in some way. Full Story »
Whatever the private depths of American bigotry may be, one thing is clear. In publicly sanctioned discourse, a powerful black man is no longer anybody’s nigger, but a powerful woman is still every misogynist’s bitch.
Yes, I’m angry about that.No, I don’t plan to get over it, shut up about it or stop working to change it. It seems you’re even angrier than I am, because your rage has evidently destroyed any principles or intelligence you may once have had. Hillary Clinton tried to show you the big picture, but if it’s only about women’s issues for you, let this woman point out what your resentment vote for John McCain will buy you and me and all of our daughters and sisters and friends for the next eight years or so. Full Story »
Periander, however, understood Thrasybulus’ actions. He realised that he had been advising him to kill outstanding citizens, and from then on he treated his people with unremitting brutality.
Herodotus, Histories
What Herodotus knew in 440BC, some 2,500 years ago, was this: opportunity is set on the margin. It is the historical power to choose either astonishing innovation, or “unremitting brutality”.
Consider the power of the margin. Say the average inter-city passenger airplane can carry a maximum of 150 passengers. Now, they may fly full at peak times, but they don’t at others, so the airline will set themselves a target of 85% occupancy. Plus, they’ll want a 15% profit (at least) on their capital.
This means that the airline doesn’t begin to make a profit until the 109th person gets on board. Everyone is important, but a plane that flies with only 108 people on board runs at a loss.
These subtle marginal effects can rock markets, bankrupt companies, and destroy nations. Full Story »
An unknown candidate, a gathering of Minutemen, Bob Barr (or maybe not), and immigration. Do progressives have anything in common with these people on this topic? Well, maybe. Just a bit.
The image is striking. A fat, sweaty and uncomfortable-looking white man is squatting on the back of a large black man. The white man is holding a dry canvas bag over the head of the black man and looking sadly and nervously at the camera.
It’s official - I’m already sick of hearing about this “historic election.” It’s better than hearing about “historical” elections as 
2 Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Part one in a series.
There’s a game I used to play with my geopolitics university students. I’d get them to form a circle and then I’d ramble about in the middle linking them up with black cotton thread. It would form a dense and incomprehensible jangle, tying them up in improbable ways. I’d always leave a few free.
While awareness and externalities were memes in the Green Constitutional Congress, they weren’t the only ones. For that matter, neither was the most important one. Bruce Mau made that abundantly clear with his repetition of a single phrase in every question he asked by way of introduction to the panelists’ monologues: “Can we imagine…” Imagination was the defining meme of the Green Constitutional Congress, and it ran through the content of every monologue in some way. 
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