NO.

I did something this morning that I haven’t done in a very, very long time.

I shut the radio off during a news report.

It wasn’t before shouting.

I’m not proud of that, but the tantrumatic expressions of an entire generation marinated in the divisive and toxic stew of political correctness have reached a zenith for me.

It was yet another story about how people who are ostensibly adults have nothing better to do than gather outside a building with the President’s name on it, and angrily protest the fact that a man who has zero connection with a tiny (and I mean statistically insignificant) group didn’t “do” enough to specifically denounce them in the strongest possible terms.

Like so many other “outrages” surrounding the President’s communications, this is yet another misstep by the President.  Not because he didn’t do as our self-appointed betters in the media, and their shrinking audiences seemed to think necessary, but because he didn’t take the opportunity to set them straight.

Sadly, we have reached a point in this country where without any real consensus, as evidenced by a successful ratification process, whereby we have amended the First Amendment.  By allowing the creation of a de facto right to not be offended, we have enshrined the heckler’s veto, and subjected the freedom of expression to the censor of 50%+1.

If you are one of the people reading this, and saying to yourself “But Blackiswhite, some ideas are so repulsive that they should be shut down, by any means necessary.”, I’m going to tell you, unequivocally, you are wrong, and as un-American as you can possibly  be.  And I don’t care if you don’t like that.  I don’t give a good God Damn if you are “triggered” by that.  Despite all recent efforts to the contrary, life doesn’t come with “safe spaces” and places to color, suck your thumb, or cling to your blankie, while rocking back and forth.

America has been successful because of its freedoms.  The lynchpin of the entire experiment is embodied in the First Amendment, and we are all made to be better citizens by it when we participate in the marketplace of ideas, rather than demanding that the marketplace be shut down.  To silence someone for saying something you don’t like is lazy.  It is easy.  And it is tyrannical, because it ultimately punishes “bad” thoughts.  And given what is being “taught” in the ivory halls of academia today, it is sadly predictable.

It comes down to this:  Compulsion is easy; persuasion is difficult.  But persuasion doesn’t rely on fear or force for conversion, and it requires you to understand, to think about, and to evaluate your reasons for thinking the way that you do.  It also requires the deepest kind of honesty…honesty to yourself, because if you have to confront the reality that the facts don’t support what you believe, but you choose to believe it anyway, then your beliefs are not rational.  And that’s ok, too, but you no longer get to claim “consensus”, or that the “science is settled” or that someone is “on the wrong side of history”, or any other fatally weak rationale for not engaging in a debate, and instead, attempting to silence those who believe differently than you do.

All of this is bad enough, but this latest manifestation, in regard to the denunciations of the President, and the obligatory breathless reporting on it is not only a blatant double standard, but an engagement in a game that the subject can never win.  For better or worse, there is a segment of the population for whom nothing this President, or the party he claims affiliation with will ever be worthy.  The idea that he must be made to specifically denounce a group he has nothing to do with, in the strongest terms, is laughable, as is the implication by doing so, he will magically be granted their approbation.  To believe this is to believe that these same critics would abandon the “victimhood” status which they have employed to such great advantage, rather than simply moving the goal posts, as this twitter exchange illustrates .  The weakness that too many who suffer this kind of assault fail to see is that capitulating to these kinds of demands means allowing others to shape and form your own speech, until you fit into the same mold their as their own preferences, making you indistinguishable from those preferences, but less appealing, because those preferences won’t have your demonstrated proclivities toward the badpolitithougtspeech disfavored by the mob, and our self-appointed betters…thus ensuring the only real diversity that is “approved”… impervious to the irony that if it meets with such approval, it isn’t really an expression of diversity at all.

Being a citizen, rather than a subject, means that you will be exposed to things you do not like.  It means hearing things you don’t like hearing.  And it means that you can evaluate for yourself the merit of the ideas and speech that you are exposed to.  This is worthwhile, if only because you don’t surrender the sovereignty over your own conscience to others and their own subjective ideas about what is worthy of expression…which any citizen knows is dangerous, because sooner or later, YOU will be on the wrong side of what that 50%+1 deems worthy.  This is why the rule of law matters, and why we are all diminished when we engage in de facto exceptions.

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Offending the Barbarians

Well, this week brought another series of murders in the name of “The Religion of Peace”.  These acts of savagery have become regrettably commonplace, but the reaction was different this time, because our betters, the relativist preachers and lecturers of the media were kin to those brutally murdered to avenge the honor of a god and prophet too impotent to tend to his own vengeance.  The chaos and confliction endemic to our “thought leaders” was telling.

We witnessed  large media outlets publicly take pains to be careful how they reported the story, out of fear of offending people who have a nasty and largely unchecked habit of killing anyone who offends them…in other words, pretty much anyone else.  Despite the near toxic irony of these media outlets being in a business that relies of the freedom of expression, including the freedom not only to offend, but to gore sacred cows with impunity, this was unsurprising, as these same outlets have been willing participants in a movement to shame, ostracize, and ultimately silence others who “offend” those who have been deemed by our betters to be beyond the reproach, criticism, questioning or mockery of others.  While the New York Times, MSNBC, and social justice warriors in every walk of society haven’t yet taken to killing those who have offended their delicate sensibilities with words, they have displayed absolutely NO reluctance to use their fainting couches as bludgeons against anyone who dares to utter anything that they deem unworthy of being said.  While cries of “racism” are the general default silencer, they have been unafraid to use “intolerance” and “white privilege”, and “______phobia” as well.

I would like to say that I’ve enjoyed seeing the bludgeon of “offense” used against the very people who have brought this perversion of our fundamental freedoms into favor, but I can’t.  Instead, I’m infuriated.  As a white Christian male, husband, and father, it has been open season on me, in my own culture, for most of my life.

And in response, I HAVE KILLED NO ONE.

I haven’t killed sitcom writers, who portray me as a bumbling idiot, worthy of derision from my wife, and contempt from my children.

I haven’t killed self-designated feminists, who seek to blame me for the oppression of women in a society in which I could, and have, worked for women, and in which I have known them as intellectual and spiritual equals.

I haven’t killed African-Americans, despite the ubiquitous claims of my personal practice of oppression, or enjoyment of it because “racism” and “white privilege” from racist grievance pimps, race hustlers, and their willing accomplices in academia and the media.

I haven’t murdered schoolchildren and other innocents, or suffered a massive psychotic break, despite believing in the Second Amendment and deeply resenting government’s numerous violations of it, and intrusions on to my right to bear arms, and the portrayal of myself and others who hold such beliefs by opportunistic politicians, media figures, and “academics”, as a wackjob and loon.

I haven’t killed those who maintain that I, and others like me are “bitterly clinging” to our Bibles and guns, and that we are members of an oppressive religion.  In fact, for a member of an “oppressive religion”, I am a failure, a characteristic I share with many others like me, as we haven’t “persecuted” anyone, despite continued infringement of our First Amendment rights by our own government, and a judiciary determined to ignore history, re-write the Constitution, and impose an interpretation of ten tortured words that would be completely foreign to those who penned them, and the man misquoted and misapplied to invoke this bizarro conception of what they had wrought.

If we were to compare grievances, I’ve just demonstrated that the “offences” to me, and others like me far exceed the followers of Islam, who “unexpectedly” are at the heart of every act of bloody savagery committed for the honor of a religion or its prophet in our world today.  And yet, here I stand, not yet having beheaded a single person, or not strapping on a bomb, and detonating it, and myself in a public place,and not attacking another religion’s house of worship…such as a Buddhist temple, synagogue, cathedral, or even  the offices of NPR or the New York Times ( I wouldn’t want our secular humanist brethren to feel left out).  This isn’t an accident; this is by design.

Because our betters have been so successful in using the fainting couch to cow us into creating a right “not to be offended” out of whole cloth, and elevating it to a position where it is far superior to all other rights, they have created their own gag, and contributed to the Barbarian’s belief that they are entitled to act like Barbarians, without thought or concern to consequences for doing so.  They have contributed to the “easy” response.  I’m not shocked, in the era of hashtag “diplomacy”, that I’m seeing “Je suis Charlie” all over the web.  But I’m not impressed.  The Fourth Estate surrendered its legitimacy, and surrendered its duty as a stalwart defender of freedom of expression.  It did this when it tried to stifle speech, rather than engage in it.  It did this when it tried to shut down the marketplace of ideas, rather than compete in it.  It did this when it exceeded its authority and tried to make a new right, not defend the ones central to their purpose.  And because they did this, they conceded our rights to the Barbarians.  They gave the enemies of civilization a veto.  And if civilization is to survive, we are going to have to step up, and do what our self-appointed betters no longer have the courage to do.

If your god commands that you kill to defend his honor, he’s a pretty impotent god.

If your god tells you that anyone who doesn’t believe in you is worthy of any punishment you care to make them suffer, he is a petty and impotent god.

If your god demands that you kill anyone who leaves his service, he’s a bloodthirsty and impotent god.

If your god has offered to reward murders in his name by giving you other humans for your pleasure in the afterlife, he is a barbaric and impotent god.

If you believe that it is your duty and obligation to behead those who insult Islam, then you are not worthy of the company of human beings.

And if you would use the tolerance and conventions of civilization as a means to infiltrate and undermine society until you have the numbers to assert yourself by bloodshed, then you deserve an extreme segregation from civilization that must be exacted to make it happen…until you learn, or until you aren’t a threat to others.

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On the Coronation of Our Nation’s First Monarch…

What I learned from Barry the Usurper’s speech:

1. Progressivism sees the ultimate aim of government as the removal or mitigation of consequences for those it has deliberately enslaved with gilded shackles.

2. Logic has no place in the actions of government. You MUST believe that deportation is physically impossible, but verification of tax status and criminal background checks for the very same people can be accomplished with the wave of a wand.

3. “New tones” and “civility” only apply to discourse directed toward the monarch and his prerogatives; he will be as insulting, as condescending, and as reckless with the truth as he likes. He may impugn the character of his opponents, and assassinate any character he choses without acknowledging that he never had a right to claim the moral high ground that he has. And if you expect something different, that’s your problem, not his.

4. Breaking the law should never be rewarded, unless the Monarch deems it proper to do so.

5. Redefining terms and words in order to rhetorically spin dross into gold is acceptable linguistic alchemy.

6. Claiming cover based on the actions of predecessors whom you have reviled and disrespected at every turn isn’t despicable and toxically ironic when the Monarch does it.

7. If Congress doesn’t pass a law that the Monarch wants, the Monarch can refuse to enforce the law that exists…and such a trick is capable of repetition.

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“UNEXPECTEDLY”

When I was a young man, about a week or so out from high school graduation, my friends and I piled in a Suburban and went up north to Hammond Bay for a few days of sailing and fishing.  On the second day, we all woke up, and everyone was eager to get on the boat and do some sailing.  Except me.  I could smell rain, and I suggested that we wait.  After some grumbling back and forth, we agreed to go over to the port, and hang out there for a while.  I grabbed my fishing pole and went to the end of the pier.  I sat there, casting my line out, and slowly reeling it in, while watching the sky along the coastline to the north.

After about ten minutes, one of my friends sat down next to me and was doing the same.  We sat there, casting, reeling, and looking north, while listening to the sound of the reels and the rising waves.  Twenty minutes later, we could see a wall of rain about a mile off to the north.  The wind picked up, and a small power boat came into the middle of the harbor, dropped anchor, and zipped everything up.  “It’s raining pretty hard up there.” my friend observed.  “Yup.” was my only reply.  The casting and reeling continued for another twenty minutes.  The wind was blowing harder, the temperature had dropped, and the wall of rain was only a half mile or so away.   My friend looked up and said “It’s raining pretty hard up there.”  I looked up, and said “Yup.”, and continued to cast and reel.   Ten minutes passed.   Two more boats came in, and tied up, their passengers rushing off to their cars waiting in the parking lot.  The wall of rain was now less than a quarter mile away.  My friend stopped reeling, and stared at the rain as he said “It’s raining pretty hard up there.”  I stopped, and shivered in the wind as I regarded the rapidly approaching wall of rain.  “Yup.” was my only reply.

Three minutes later, a raindrop the size of a half-dollar slammed into my forehead, followed by another.  And another.  We got up and ran as hard as we could for the Suburban, but in the minute or so it took us to get there, we were drenched.

Why am I telling you this story?  Because our government is doing the same thing.

Just as it was utterly predictable that we would get wet if we didn’t react to the obvious threat, our government refused to react to the obvious threat of a terrible disease, and suspend air travel from the affected area in west Africa, and the inevitable happened.  It flew in with a passenger from the affected area.  And while that passenger has since passed, he didn’t do so without infecting Americans with a disease that has a 70% mortality rate, according to the new data from the World Health Organization.

The government, facing the obvious question, has decided that rather than stopping the flights now, it is imperative to keep these flights going, because stopping them will make us less safe from the virus.  This causes anyone with three brain cells and the knowledge that England and France (FRANCE!!!) believe otherwise to stifle a collective “That’s quite possibly the dumbest thing we’ve ever heard.” , but actually, this makes a perverse sort of sense when you consider that this excuse originates in the same town where not spending more on an agency or program than we spent last year is somehow a “cut”.

The fact is that a travel ban from West Africa would lead to questions about other immigration…and those questions would lead to questions about Enterovirus 68, which has killed several American children, and the emergence of which corresponds to the resettlement of all the “children” from south of border. (Unexpectedly!) and then people would be questioning an ideological touchstone of this Administration for reasons that could not logically be defined as “racist”.  And they can’t have that.  The illusion of the naked emperor’s resplendent garb is simply too precious, especially to the emperor himself.  Protecting the first failure, which ignores the wisdom of previous generations who saw the wisdom in health screenings as a condition of entry into this country, means committing more errors, which will, in turn, cost more American lives.

To combat this obvious failure, which would even cause Helen Keller to say “What the hell…?”, the meme has been floated that being  concerned about this silly, given that tobacco, alcohol, and obesity kill tens of thousands more in this country annually, so being concerned this government’s stubborn insistence to continue to allow people from affected areas to travel to this country and potentially infect Americans with a dread disease with a 71% mortality rate that heretofore was unseen among our population is somehow foolish “panicking”.  “Panic” is of course, hyperbole.   Panic is afoot in this nation today, but it is found in the offices of Democratic incumbents seeking re-election to the United States Senate, not among the average American who realizes that common sense and logic are being deliberately suppressed in favor of purely political considerations that have already needlessly cost the lives of Americans, and place countless others at risk

It isn’t panic that most Americans feel about this, it is ANGER.  Justifiable, controlled, and focused ANGER.

And when the response is to draw comparisons to other causes of death, such as from alcohol, tobacco, and obesity, they have a right to be even angrier, as the lyric “One of these things is different from the other/One of these things is different from the rest.” plays loudly in the radio of their minds.  The fact is that we are all dying, a  little bit each day, and for most Americans, these causes are also incremental.  They kill, but because they are patient, and slow, they feel like they are contributing factors, and not direct causes.  And more importantly, they are the result of choices WE make, not choices that our government refuses to make.   That is the difference, and it is an even greater irritant when we consider the steps that government takes to “protect” us from these incremental harms.  Minimum ages in order purchase the products.  Taxes to discourage purchase.  PSAs.  Fitness and nutrition programs.  Millions and millions of dollars spent annually to “protect” us from cutting off the years we would otherwise spend in wheelchairs, warehoused in a “home” somewhere, staring off into space, exhausting our resources, and more commonly, the taxpayers’ money, and yet this same government, afraid to threaten a source of new votes purchased with our money refuses to take common sense measures to reduce the number of Americans exposed to and infected with a disease that will cause fever, liquefied internal organs, seizures, and death while bleeding out of every orifice, all in a span of days.  That kind of dual-mindedness would hopelessly confuse Bob Arctor.

And when the government decides to do “something”, it is to appoint a political hack to “take the point” (and the blame) for an executive who’d rather be golfing, until it’s time to blame someone for the inevitable failures.

We have a right to be angry.  And they are the ones who should be panicking.

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Yet Another Government Employee Shows Contempt For We The People

There was a lot of discussion today in the blogosphere about the exceedingly biased and silly coverage of the April 15 Tea Parties around the nation.  Their cynicism was matched only by their contempt.  Its alright.  They will carry the water for the Left…all the way to bankruptcy, and that’s fine.  If the fact that they have completely discredited themselves doesn’t bother them, it doesn’t bother me.  In fact, I welcome the silence that will come when their soapboxes are taken from them and given to their creditors in the oblivion that they are racing towards.  No, what irritates me is when people in my own government forget their place and start casting aspersions toward the people they are supposed to serve.  Case in point?

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)

Congresswoman Schakowski opined that yesterday’s tea parties were “despicable” and “shameful.”

Consider that for a moment.  A member of Congress, an elected official stated that the peaceful assembly of MILLIONS of Americans across the country to protest an out-of-control government Hell-bent on enslaving us to debt that we will NEVER be able to pay off decided to show her level of comprehension and understanding by calling the gatherings “despicable” and shameful.”

Despicable Des”pi*ca*ble\, a. [L. despicabilis, fr. despicari to despise; akin to despicere. See Despise.] Fit or deserving to be despised; contemptible; mean; vile; worthless; as, a despicable man; despicable company; a despicable gift. Syn: Contemptible; mean; vile; worthless; pitiful; paltry; sordid; low; base. See Contemptible. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

Shameful Shame”ful\, a. 1. Bringing shame or disgrace; injurious to reputation; disgraceful. His naval preparations were not more surprising than his quick and shameful retreat. –Arbuthnot. 2. Exciting the feeling of shame in others; indecent; as, a shameful picture; a shameful sight. –Spenser. Syn: Disgraceful; reproachful; indecent; unbecoming; degrading; scandalous; ignominious; infamous. — Shame”ful*ly, adv. — Shame”ful*ness, n. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

Doesn’t really seem to fit, does it?  While I’m relieved that Mensa doesn’t have to worry about reviewing her application for admission, I am sad that her village is missing its idiot.  Every village needs its idiot to hold out as an example to its children of how not to be when they grow up.

Who is Congresswoman Schakowski?  She is a career politician.  She was elected to her sixth term in Congress last November, and before her first election to the United States House of Representatives, she served for eight years in the Illinois General Assembly.  Before that?  From her website:

For twenty years prior to her election to the State House, Schakowsky fought for the public interest and rights of Illinois citizens. As Program Director of Illinois Public Action (1976-1985), the state’s largest public interest organization, she fought for energy reform and stronger protection from toxic chemicals. As Director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens from 1985-1990, she organized across the state for lower cost prescription drugs and tax relief for seniors, financial protection for the spouses of nursing home residents and other benefits for the elderly. She has been deeply involved in the fight to protect women’s reproductive freedom.

Think about what this doesn’t say.  It doesn’t say she has ever held a real job.  It doesn’t say she has ever taken the risk of being an entrepreneur.  It doesn’t say that she has ever had to make a payroll.  What it does say is that she has spent nearly twenty years in elected office, and more than a decade in Washington D.C., which is more than enough time to lose touch with the concerns of everyday Americans, assuming that she ever was in touch with them to begin with.

It also doesn’t tell you that her husband, Robert Creamer, pleaded gulity to tax violations and bank fraud for writing rubber checks and failing to collect withholding tax from an employee.  The Honorable Congresswoman’s response toher spouse’s guilty pleas:

“In my heart, I know that these mistakes do not define or diminish this good man, or the good work that he has done over the last 40 years or that he will do in the future,” Schakowsky, D-Ill., said after her husband’s court hearing.

I forgot.  Character doesn’t matter when you are a Democrat, or married to one.  But the money quote?

Schakowsky, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, said she doesn’t think her husband’s plea would prompt a primary challenge next year in her heavily Democratic district.

The sad thing is, she was correct.  Still, one wonders just how much training is required to denounce the people who are unhappy about paying the bill for your idiotic spending spree that will undeniably transform the nation and force government dependency on us all, and yet fail to recognize the application of your chosen charges against the American people to your own spouse, who violated the law and failed to pay taxes.  That is a special brand of hypocrisy.  Perhaps we should refer to it as the “Democratic Standard”…you know, the one that is different from the one applied to you and me.

Think she needs to hear about it?  Me too.  Drop her a line at:

Washington, D.C.
2367 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2111
Fax: (202) 226-6890

And maybe you can send her a dictionary while your at it. 

H/t to Folly and XBradTC

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