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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The Cowards Are Winning The Nation Because We Are Letting Them

I have been watching the latest cultural crusades with some dread and trepidation.

The campaign against the Confederate Battle Flag is one in which cowards have not only prevailed, but engaged in an orgy of self-congratulation that would leave most rational witnesses convinced of the insanity of the most fervently committed, and it has enjoyed a success that could not have been possible until we empowered those among us who decided to be offended at anything.  Once we allowed offense to become a de facto crime, we robbed ourselves of the most powerful tool of personal and regional autonomy: The Burden of Persuasion.

Make no mistake.  This is where we have been headed the minute we set foot on this road.  One need only look back and recognize that this has been how the left has accomplished every major coup of the last 60 years.  What could not be won in persuasion, and therefore by legislative means, was won in courtrooms, by judges and justices peering in “the law”, and divining just the right purpose to reward petitioners by mining the necessary meanings from penumbras and emanations, until they have gotten so bold that they will announce their conclusions as rooted in shallow philosophy rather than actual jurisprudence.  And at the same time, they have set themselves up as the ultimate arbiters of culture, unafraid to take advantage of the general good nature of those they would browbeat into submission.  This, was in fact, their avenue to victory.  By claiming offense at anything and everything, they caused those they deemed themselves to be superior to surrender.  It is a cowardly way to advance an idea, a notion, a concept, or a worldview, but shame was not to stand in the way of victory.

It is said that one of the great flashes of genius in the Second Amendment is that it prevents compulsion and requires persuasion.  Small wonder, then that the Second Amendment is a touchpoint, and a sore one at that in the war that our cultural betters have been waging against us for years now.  I have largely stayed out of the battle over the Confederate Battle Flag, not because I didn’t think it mattered as a fight, but because it has been a convenient distraction and wedge to occupy good people in a never-ending battle against the cultural shock troops of our betters, while the very people who have fomented this conflict benefit from drawing everyone’s attention away from what they are doing.  Frankly, the only reason I’m commenting on this farce now has to do with a blog post that made its way around Facebook this week, where a “hero” took it upon himself to tear the battle flag off the back of a semi trailer.  The author waxed poetic about the vandal’s heroism, and about the “cowards” who fought for the losing cause of the Confederacy.   The aggressiveness of the ignorance underscored why this matters.

Back when I was young, and my skull full of mush, I believed in the nobility of the North’s cause in that conflict.  I too, referred to that banner as a traitor’s flag.  But when I got outside the halls of public indoctrination, and took the time to read first-hand accounts, and to dig deep into the history to understand the events of the era, I learned that not everything that I was taught was correct, and that it sure as hell didn’t tell the whole story.  But even when I didn’t know what I didn’t know about the conflict, I still wouldn’t have characterized the Confederates as “cowards”.  Knowing what I know now, I know that men don’t fight for years, in rags, sometimes barefoot, with as many of their number falling prey to malnutrition as to enemy action out of a belief in an institution that many of them weren’t wealthy enough to practice on their own, and it is cartoonish and silly to assert otherwise.

But flush in their recent judicial victories, complete with govern-given “rights”, and cultural victories against a symbol that represents a lot of things, good and bad, our betters now assume that persuasion is no longer necessary.  They show no hesitation at demonizing anyone who dares to think, or believe in ways in which they do not approve.  They seek to criminalize non-conformity, to bring the power of the state to bear against anyone who dares resist their collective will.  This is the essence of cowardice; the absolute refusal to persuade when compulsion has been made easy.  It shows no respect, despite demanding it still when “offense” is invoked, and it will brook no resistance.  The only view that is acceptable is their own, and if you cannot be made to voluntarily silence yourself, then they will shut you up by force, and make an example of you if necessary.  And when all else fails, they will attack the dead.

I read a tweet the other day by some Administration flunky, which expressed the view that states rights has been dead (and rightly so) since the Civil War.  In some ways, he was correct, but in the most important one, he was wrong.  I don’t recall any amendment repealing the Tenth Amendment, and until that occurs, Americans everywhere are free to exercise their rights within their home state to live in any way that they did not expressly grant the Federal government control over. And it is LONG past time to stop being polite, to our own detriment, and remind our betters and our rulers (BIRM) of that fact.

It’s been said that war is simply politics by other means.  Our betters believe that politics is war by other means, and that is why they are always on the attack.  If it feels like you’re always being put on the offensive, it’s because you are.  And its being done by people who are cowards, people who don’t want to have a conversation, people who don’t want to have a debate.  They are people who want to lecture.  They are people who want to scold.  No give and take is necessary, because they don’t have to afford you the courtesy or respect of acknowledging that your opposing (or even just different) thoughts and beliefs are honestly arrived at, derived, or earned.  They are people who eschew morals, but cling to their own ideology, and advance it by any means necessary as if it were the strongest moral imperative.  As long as your motives can be disregarded by the casting of aspersion, then they do not have to persuade you, because you…YOU…are a racist.  YOU are a hater.  YOU are a bigot.  YOU are a reactionary, and only their view may prevail.

The President recently said that the only thing we all have in common is government.  It is small wonder then, that so many among us keep trying to imbue it will power it was never meant to have, in part to stamp out any non-conformity with what it would plan for us.  I think that we could set the cultural cannon fodder back on their heels if we would only stand.  It wouldn’t mean being rude; merely firm.  But then, if they continue to criminalize thought, and continue to presume that they know what is in our hearts, then they should be weary.  Getting what one has wished for has been the undoing of many people throughout the years, and the fact is that if they are determined to make me, and my friends outlaws, then I am quite sure that we will be the scariest damn outlaws to ever walk the Earth.

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Lord Zero Demonstrates His Faulty Leadership Skills

Obama, speaking to the press as the summit ends, on Cuba: “The policy we’ve had in place for 50 years hasn’t work the way we wanted – the Cuban people are not free.”

Which is only one-half of why we don’t get in bed with the Kommunist Killer Klowns of the World.  Whether he feels it is proper or not, the President of the United States can confer legitimacy and approval on foreign leaders and their nations in how he acts toward them.  While Obama appears never to have met a thug or petty tyrant that he did not feel an obvious affinity for, he clearly does not recognize or value the message that has been sent in the past.  Obama is correct in the statement he makes.  The Cuban people are not free, but when we trade with their country and warmly embrace their thugs-in-chief, we send a demoralizing message to the people who dream of a better life like the kind we have enjoyed here.  It also portends things to come here.  When you embrace evil, it will flow back to you.  The little compromises are already in place.  Universal healthcare, which will of course mean that someone else will tell you what you can eat, and how to live, and classifications of byproducts of natural biological processes as pollutants, and imposing a ridiculous cap and trade scheme, and increasing intrusions into your personal life, all for your own good, means that he really doesn’t think that there is much wrong with what these international bad actors are doing.  Too bad our leader thinks we can’t see it.

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The World’s President Makes Me Ashamed of My Country

Much ado was made during the campaign by pundits, observers, and commentators, including myself, of Michelle Obama’s unfortunate remark that since her husband started running for President, for the first time she was proud of her country. This remark revealed her to be an ingrate, and yet another person suffering from that special brand of cognitive dissonance that requires the sufferer to feel ashamed of being a citizen of the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet. Now that her left-leaning husband with the concealed past occupies the big chair and is busy enslaving us all to generations of the debt he is using to feed and grow the entitlement culture that threatens to transform us into another European state, I understand what it means to be ashamed of my country. Especially when he goes abroad.

Don’t get me wrong. I have every confidence that this is a temporary malady, one that can be quickly reversed by replacing the the current occupant of the Oval Office with someone who understands the history and character of this country and her people, rather than someone who is so intent on preening for the world’s admiration and adulation that he cheerfully apologizes to other nations for our exceptionalism, which he glibly characterizes as arrogance, and submits to and or pals around with thugs and toughs of the world, who find the rights we believed in enough to enshrine in law to be silly and foolish notions fostered by a decadent and weak people who have spent too much time holding the tyranical regimes and leaders of the globe at bay, and not enough time under their boot heels.

It isn’t enough that Lord Zero has demonstrated an EPIC FAIL! understanding of this Country’s history and law. Hell, he did that prior to the campaign when interviews he gave showed him expressing a soul-crushingly wrong view of the Constitution (that it is a flawed document), or the opinion that we were going to have to stop living like Americans and start living like people in other nations (the cornerstone of his doctrine of the Politics of Lowered Expectations™). No, Lord Zero has to go abroad and spend his time seeking the approval of foreign leaders and their subjects, and little or no time looking our for American interests. His trip to the G20? Plenty of time with his face on camera, but he agreed to a framework that submits our financial system to foreign oversight. And then there was the bow.

Lord Zero could barely muster a nod for England’s Monarch, but bowed deeply and graciously for the Saudi King. This did not go unnoticed in the Saudi Press, and when enough hue and cry was raised here at home that the Administration could no longer remain silent on the subject, two equally ridiculous lies were offered up to an irritated American public in a half-hearted effort to tell us that we really didn’t see what we all saw. From there, Lord Zero ventured to Turkey, where he felt compelled to tell the Turks that we are not a Christian nation, a lie of the most vile type, because it contains a kernel of truth, around which the tapestry of falsehood is woven. We do not have a state-sponsored religion, but the foundations of this country, and the men who set the framework were undeniably Christian, as was the character of its civil institutions up until the Supreme Court decided to take a line from a letter to a church and give it the effect of law, in clear contravention of actual law in place at the time. Despite the unrelenting effort since then to drive religion from nearly all aspects of public life, the majority of people in the nation still identify themselves as Christian. No matter. The press, being the good little stooges they are, dutifully, and timely trotted out their splashy cover stories questioning the role of Christianity in our country today, and suggesting that we are no longer a Christian nation.  When Lord Zero utters such demonstrably false things in when visiting other countries, he does so with the authority established by all of his predecessors, and gives those regimes who vacillate between being jealous of us and outright hating us encouragement and succor, and dampens the hope of decent people in other nations who see our nation as an example, pushing back the gloom of socialism, and the creeping spectre of totalitarianism.

Now Lord Zero is making it a priority to open relations with Cuba, a country oppressive enough that people will risk traversing the shark infested waters between Cuba and Florida for a chance to live in a free country. The fact that we have made it a policy for decades to not engage in trade with this regime since its current thuggish cadre, lead by the Castro Brothers, installed themselves as more equal than all the others in the island worker’s paradise means nothing to Lord Zero. His is the agenda of CHANGE! And if he can earn the admiration of a Marxist dictator in the process, well even better! And then today, he met with Venezuelan president for life Hugo “What Free Speech?” Chavez. Again, by itself, no surprise, but it is very difficult not to be ashamed of your country when it elects a leader who can clearly become such fast friends with a petty tyrant like Chavez. Pictures really do speak a thousand words, and this one gives any freedom loving American reason to be ashamed. I am beginning to believe this man (lowercase) would swap spit with Uncle Joe Stalin if he could.

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Part Of Me Says Not To Be Too Hard On Him…He Only Said What The Teleprompter Told Him, But Lies and Damn Lies From The POTUS Are Simply Unbecoming

Lord Zero’s attempt to discredit the Tea Parties, on the eve of Tax Day:

<blockquote>Now, you will recall that some argued this recovery plan is a case of irresponsible government spending, that it’s somehow to blame for our long-term deficit projections, and that the federal government should be cutting instead of increasing spending right now. So I want to tackle this argument head on.

 

To begin with, economists on both the left and the right agree that the last thing a government should do in the middle of a recession is to cut back on spending. You see, when this recession began, many families sat around the kitchen table and tried to figure out where they could cut back. And so have many businesses. And this is a completely reasonable and understandable reaction. But if everybody — if everybody — if every family in America, if every business in America cuts back all at once, then no one is spending any money, which means there are no customers, which means there are more layoffs, which means the economy gets even worse. That’s why the government has to step in and temporarily boost spending in order to stimulate demand. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now.</blockquote>

If someone doesn’t hurry up and nail a clue to the back of this clownshoe’s hand, we are going to be destroyed by debt.

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Disagree With Barack Hussein Obama And His HOPE! and CHANGE! For America? Then You Too Might Be A Right-Wing Extremist!

The Department Of Homeland Security has released a new report that would only too happily designate many people who admit to disagreeing with Lord Zero and The O Crew as “Right-Wing Extremists”, including yours truly.  Yes, the same group of political hacks that put Slow Joe Biden in a position of power and gave him a soapbox from which to make ignorant pronouncements has concluded that those who hold views contrary to the current administration and are not afraid to admit it might be right-wing extremists.  First, they make us proud to be designated as haters because we don’t see the wisdom in tolerating our society to suicide, and now they attempt to affix another perjorative term to our breasts.  The Left’s Petty Tyrants do love their labels.  If it didn’t smack of the very claims they were accusing the Bush administration of for the last eight years, it might almost be amusing.  Instead, it is indicative of just how little they do not understand.  I know people they are trying to pigeonhole into this group, and I have to wonder if they realize the colosal  mistake they are making.  What is it they say about United States Marines?  No better friend and no worse enemy?  Yeah, I think that is the can that some faceless political appointee has seen fit to shake up, then stand over as he pushes the tab.  I hope that this isn’t the declaration of war by our government against the people who so strongly embody the values and principals that made founded and built this nation into the envy of the world, but I’m having trouble reading it any other way.  This is what happens when you teach people that they have a right to do whatever they want, fill their empty mush skulls with the notion that if they can argue a behavior or activity is victimless, and that rich people (who are always defined as someone else) actually owe everyone else all that they have, whether or not they worked for it.  Two generations of learned academics spewing this tripe in the Nation’s classrooms, and we are turned from the Land of Opportunity, which requires the beneficiary to want it and work for it, to the Land of Entitlement, which only requires that someone else works for it, so Government can take it from them and give it to you.  I’m really starting to think that this can’t end well.

Read it for yourself, but put away the brakables first.

http://nicedoggie.net/media/DHS_right_wing_extremism.pdf

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