Vultures of a feather

Obama Bashes GOP on Immigration at Bush Library Address:

I supported George Bush on a few issues I thought were important, but when it came to immigration he was on the wrong side. On this, Obama recognizes a kindred evil spirit.

'via Blog this'

Plus ça change

Pleas for a radical reform of the Roman Curia and the manner of appointing bishops...1931.

Same complaints. Same solutions proposed (sans females, of course)

Vatican Diary / Future curia, old project:

"Aliquando autem totus episcopatus alicuius nationis ita est compositus, veluti si coecorum, claudorum et infirmorum omne genus esset refugium." 
"Sometimes it seems as if the whole body of bishops of a nation is composed so that it becomes a refuge for the blind, lame and sick."

Very funny.

'via Blog this'

Pas d'ennemis a gauche

Funny how, when the MSM's culprit is toward the Right, when, say, there's a gun incident with Whites being killed by Whites or the rare non-Black that kills a Black*, it's the general atmosphere or language or attitudes of the White Right that foster these bad things. But when you've got Muslim jihadis blowing people up or shooting them, it's all carefully restricted to certain limited and special and extreme non-representative enclaves of Islam.

Ya know?

As I've often said, in all the years post 9/11 that I have lived in San Francisco, I have heard droolingly enraged rants against Bush and Republicans and the Religious Right, but aside from one demonstration about Iranian hanging of gays, I have never, ever, heard anything remotely similar directed to Muslims or Islam, or even Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin.

Liberals tend to hate and loathe the Right. Fair enough. But bring Islam --that most illiberal religion-- into the picture and they grow immediately and strangely circumspect. Ex Cathedra's theory is that they do this, consciously, because they see Islam as a non-White religion. And liberals revere all things non-White.

--

*The chronic pattern of murders among Blacks are only of local interest; we are positively discouraged from knowing about Black attacks on Whites, be it flash mobs, home invasions, or whatever.

Propaganda

How often do I see the same themes and memes in movies? Even if the star is a White guy, the only cripplingly conflicted or foolishly incompetent characters are White men. We have the spunky and fearless anti-authority and lethal Black or Latin babe. The grimly determined no nonsense Black guy. And here, the conflicted White guy lead gives up his leadership role to the Asian guy. And the Black guy threateningly lectures a cowardly White guy, in Ebonics and in the presence of an admiring blonde White woman, on how to be brave. The the sassy Latin girls bravely saves the stupid and immobilized White guy. It goes on and on.

Instead of propaganda in the form of Socialist Realism, we have Liberal Unreality teaching us the way the world is ought to be and what our place in it should be. And when we notice, or say, that that is not how the world really is, suddenly we're the ones with the problem.

Maybe some day we'll develop our own Solzhenitzyn.

Bad memory

Ordered Liberty » The ‘Public Safety’ Follies:

He complains that "the Gitmo bar", the lefty lawyers who rushed to give pro bono defense support for the Gitmo detainees, has been too influential in making policy.

I had to work with a very generous donor to my old workplace, who told me one day with great pride, and the attitude of one who'd assume I shared this attitude, that a lawyer friend was flying down to Gitmo to provide this legal service to the prisoners. As if that were the coolest thing.

I had to use my suppression and repression skills --which are better than I'd like-- to make believe it had not happened.

Too many of those folks, very well off and successful, gained moral capital in each others' eyes by their default assumption of American blame and inferiority.

'via Blog this'

Just askin'

So. The Tsarnaev family got into the US as refugees.

And then voluntarily returned to the place they were refugees from...?

--

We report, you decide

Four female prison guards impregnated by same inmate - CBS News:

...the 25 defendants participated in running the activities of the Black Guerilla Family - a prison and street gang - from behind bars in Baltimore City.

Four corrections officers-Jennifer Owens, Katera Stevenson, Chania Brooks and Tiffany Linder, who are also facing charges - allegedly fell pregnant to inmate Tavon White while he was behind bars. White made as much as $16K a month and "showered three of them with expensive gifts including cars and jewelry."

Charging documents reveal Owens had "Tavon" tattooed on her neck and Stevenson had "Tavon" tattooed on her wrist.





'via Blog this'

S'pose

The American Marx, Professor Rawls, is the philosopher of Justice As Fairness, who "envisions a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights cooperating within an egalitarian economic system." He has his devotees play a little game of make-believe to ferret out their values. He tells them to put themselves behind "the veil of ignorance" and decide what kind of society they'd like to be born into, without knowing who they'd be born as, where, etc. He expects, rightly, that most pussified souls will choose an egalitarian liberal welfare state, where anyone's chances of more than subsistence survival are greatest.

I believe this is called "acting out of self-interest and fear?" I thought bold and brave liberals eschewed that crass emotion, along with H8, as something only rightwingers experienced. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Being a man of thinking...ok, being a man whose natural inclination is to live in his head...I like thought experiments. My own little sorties into that realm have been enjoyable for me, if uncomfortable for my readers. So here's another one --inspired by the 1951 sci-fi flick When Worlds Collide--which I'll leave up to you.

A large body is discovered, hurtling through space toward Earth. As it approaches, it is further discovered, surprisingly, that it is not an asteroid but a small planet. And even more amazing, very much like Earth. Rather than colliding with us, it slows down and settles into an orbit not so far from us. Travelling from our Earth to the new planet is not very difficult. 

So, we have a possible new home for, well, a part of the human race. A new start for a some of us. And guess what: you are put wholly in charge of this project. You get to choose who goes and under what conditions. You alone.

So?


BTW, the Wiki article about the movie, of course, contains this bit of critical wisdom:

Adilifu Nama, Cal State professor of Pan African studies, regards the collision between the two worlds as a type of metaphor for the then-ongoing post-colonial confrontation between the developed nations and the third world. He views the film as confirming a form of "whites only" racial segregation found in the United States during the period, as inferred by "the visual absence of blackness". As evidence, he notes that only "white people" survive the disaster. Thus the film "overtly advocates white racial homogeneity as a requirement for the preservation of the American way of life".

Hard to argue with that.

--


--

Perversity

No, not the usual Ex Cathedra kind.

Hope This Works. God Help Us. 

For some perverse reason, I found this perversity very funny.

Shut up, he explained

Every society and group has taboo subjects. In our current ebonicoid style, we have the phrase, "Do you really want to go there?" This means, "Do you actually want to cross that line of taboo and bring up a subject of which we are all very well  aware and which we know is dangerous?"

As I've said before, parts of the American experiment are an opus contra naturam, a work against nature. Neither democracy nor freedom come naturally to human communities. If they did, we would not need to enshrine them in Bills of Rights. To the extent that we have had these things, I think John Adams' insight is true: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” And a particular people of this kind as well --English Protestants-- one that had the cultural capacity to overcome tribalism and allow people different from themselves, especially in opinion, to be allowed to live, much less speak. That is a rare capacity.

One of George Bush's greatest errors was believing that everyone on earth --much less Muslims--wants the kind of liberty that Americans have. Not even all Americans want it. We want freedom for ourselves and people like us. We don't really want it for ideas or people we hate or who threaten us. Ask Mayor Nutter. Even to tolerate such folks it is a very much learned behavior.

We have varying ways of enforcing these Thou Shalt Nots. In unapologetically religious societies, we have blasphemy laws. In crypto-religious liberal societies, we have "hate speech" laws.  Hate speech flourishes in Islamic countries. Blasphemy is a proud achievement of the West. Both regard each other's strictures and behaviors with horror. They are essentially the same.

In the West, we have politically correct shorthand to explain to people that they should shut up. Das raciss is my favorite, of course. If you don't agree with the idea of genderless marriage, you are homophobic bigoted H8er. If you are, in the words of the British Chief Rabbi, a "Christian atheist" like Richard Dawkins, your atheism is anti-Semitic. And, of course, if you suspect that Islam might be hugely, even fundamentally, significant in the Boston bombings, you are an Islamophobe.

Racist! Homophobe! Anti-Semite! Islamophobe! In the Universal Translator aboard the Enterprise, they all come out the same way:

Shut up!

--