So I guess the Dems aren't really all that "pro-choice", after all

Tonight's cognitive dissonance, Democratic Convention edition:

The Plain Truth

Today's food-for-thought, courtesy Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Steyn: Big Government's Back Alley

From Mark Steyn:

The back alley is back, and supersized: The above New Jersey clinic performs 10,000 abortions a year. When the pro-choice rally ends and Cameron Diaz, Ashley Judd and other celebrities d'un certain age return to Hollywood, and the upper-middle-class women with the one designer baby go back to their suburbs, a woman's "right to choose" means that, day in, day out, the blessings of this "right" fall disproportionately on all the identity groups the upscale liberals profess to care about - poor women, black women, Hispanic women, undocumented women, and other denizens of Big Government's back alley.

A government back alley, licensed and supposedly regulated, is worse than the old kind, because it implies the approval of the state, and of society. That's what Gosnell thought he had, when he murdered those babies and mutilated those teenage girls. That's what Planned Parenthood think they have, when they facilitate the sexual exploitation of Third World children. And, given the silence of the PC media, maybe they're right. Aside from the intrinsic evil of not only Gosnell but a state that knowingly colludes with him, these "little" abortion stories reveal an almost totalitarian mindset in the "pro-choice" movement's determination to brook no intrusion of reality upon the official myths. You may be one of those wealthy suburban "feminists" or "new men" indifferent to the fate of eight-pound "blobs of tissue" or 14-year old "women", but the gulf between propaganda and truth, between the fatuous feelgood bumper stickers and the rusty crochet hooks, is profound - and, in a world where statists and social engineers serve as ruthless enforcers for the prevailing ideology, its deep moral corruption will eventually swallow you, too. America should be at the very minimum deeply disquieted by these revelations. That it is not - that it is dismissed as a "little thing" - is even more disquieting.

Read it all here.

Daily Bell: Oath-Keeper Stewart Rhodes on the rise of authoritarianism and how law enforcement can take a stand for freedom

Today's reading, from the Daily Bell - Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, interviewed by the Daily Bell. An excerpt:

Daily Bell: Do law enforcement officials perceive the problems that you perceive? How many? The majority? What do the FBI and the ATF think of your organization? Have you heard from them?

Stewart Rhodes: Many rank and file police officers understand what is going on, and are very much aware of how the Bill of Rights has been relentlessly eroded. I don't know what percentage are awake. I'd like to say it was half, but I think it is less than that. But that is the point of my organization – to wake them up, and the percentage that are awake and aware, and studying the Constitution, is growing. The efforts of Oath Keepers Board Member Sheriff Mack, in particular, are making real headway among the police and sheriffs. In addition to many active duty police and sheriffs personnel who have become members, we now have several current serving police officers within our Oath Keepers state leadership. And for each officer who openly joins Oath Keepers, I think it is safe to say that there are hundred and perhaps thousands more who are of like mind, but who prefer to stay under the radar by not joining. So I can say without a doubt we are making an impact. The same is true among the military.

As for the federal officers, we have not heard directly or officially from the FBI or ATF, but we have heard from FBI agents, through intermediaries, who tell us that many among the rank and file are sympathetic to our position, but they also tell us that the powers that be in Washington are not happy, and would love to try to make us look like a militia, such as the Hutaree, so they can more easily discredit us. We intend to make it hard for them to do that.

One interesting bit of "intel" we got was from someone within the NSA who told us that the "powers that be" are "concerned about the Oath Keepers effect if/when they decide to give certain orders, but have no way to quantify that effect." In other words, we are like an iceberg: there is a very visible, credible "tip" of active duty who have stepped up and signed their John Hancock by joining, but there are many more who have not joined, and are thus the great mass under the surface that is hard to quantify. "They" don't, and can't, know how big that mass is until they test it. I like causing that kind of uncertainty in the minds of the self-anointed power elites. Hopefully it will make them hesitate to attempt to pull the plug, thus buying us more time.

Daily Bell: Here are some points you and other Oath Keepers adhere to and some questions regarding these points: You will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. Why not – what makes you believe this will be a problem?

Stewart Rhodes: Once a people are disarmed, they are nearly defenseless against oppression. That is something our forefathers understood, and it was the attempt to disarm them that finally led to the fighting that kicked off our Revolutionary War. Add to that example the many examples since of disarmed populations being tyrannized or even mass-murdered. It is a critical line in the sand that must not be crossed, and not just because our Second Amendment says so, but because it is a violation of the inherit, human right to self preservation, and because the lessons of history show what happens to people who allow themselves to be disarmed. And the wholesale disarmament during Katrina shows that it can, indeed, happen again, right here in America. ...

Read it all here.

Why Chuck can't get his business off the ground

Today's vast-regulatory-state video:

Steyn: The Republic of Paperwork

Another from Mark Steyn:

When the law says that it’s illegal for a storekeeper to offer his customer a cup of coffee, you should be proud to be in non-compliance. What the hell did you guys bother holding a revolution for? George III didn’t care what complimentary liquid refreshments a village blacksmith shared with his clientele. Say what you like about the Boston Tea Party, but nobody attempted to prosecute them for unlicensed handling of beverage items in a public place.

This is the reality of small business in America today. You don’t make the rules, you don’t vote for people who make the rules. But you have to work harder, pay more taxes, buy more permits, fill in more paperwork, contribute to the growth of an ever less favorable business environment and prostrate yourself before the Commissar of Community Services – all for the privilege of taking home less and less money. ...

Read the rest here.

A Greek tragedy

From the October issue of Vanity Fair -- Michael Lewis takes a look at the sad economic and moral decline of Greece:

As Wall Street hangs on the question “Will Greece default?,” the author heads for riot-stricken Athens, and for the mysterious Vatopaidi monastery, which brought down the last government, laying bare the country’s economic insanity. But beyond a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for each working adult), there is a more frightening deficit. After systematically looting their own treasury, in a breathtaking binge of tax evasion, bribery, and creative accounting spurred on by Goldman Sachs, Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.

(Father Arsenios at the Vatopaidi monastery, overlooking the Aegean Sea, in Mount Athos, Greece. He is considered by many to be Vatopaidi’s C.F.O., “the real brains of the operation.”. Photo: Vanity Fair / Jonas Fredwall Karlsson)

After an hour on a plane, two in a taxi, three on a decrepit ferry, and then four more on buses driven madly along the tops of sheer cliffs by Greeks on cell phones, I rolled up to the front door of the vast and remote monastery. The spit of land poking into the Aegean Sea felt like the end of the earth, and just as silent. It was late afternoon, and the monks were either praying or napping, but one remained on duty at the guard booth, to greet visitors. He guided me along with seven Greek pilgrims to an ancient dormitory, beautifully restored, where two more solicitous monks offered ouzo, pastries, and keys to cells. I sensed something missing, and then realized: no one had asked for a credit card. The monastery was not merely efficient but free. One of the monks then said the next event would be the church service: Vespers. The next event, it will emerge, will almost always be a church service. There were 37 different chapels inside the monastery’s walls; finding the service is going to be like finding Waldo, I thought.

“Which church?” I asked the monk.

“Just follow the monks after they rise,” he said. Then he looked me up and down more closely. He wore an impossibly long and wild black beard, long black robes, a monk’s cap, and prayer beads. I wore white running shoes, light khakis, a mauve Brooks Brothers shirt, and carried a plastic laundry bag that said eagles palace hotel in giant letters on the side. “Why have you come?” he asked. ...

Read it here.

Porretto: Making Amends

From Francis Porretto, on the hard choices ahead. An excerpt:

We stand, God willing, at the end of the Progressive Era in American politics and political thought. One way or another, the edifice will shortly come crashing down. The only questions that remain are whether a recognizable United States of America will rise from the rubble.

Many Americans, however, will not. That's guaranteed.

Our current political order does not resemble our Constitutional basis in any way. Every stricture of the Constitution has been abrogated. Most states treat their own constitutions as palimpsests, from which any clause may be deleted and to which any permission might be added, entirely at the will of the rulers. As for county and municipal charters...do I really need to go on?

The prevailing order compounds Corporatism[1] with Social-Welfare Fascism.[2] Under such a scheme, persons will flow steadily away from the "economic means"[3] and toward the "political means,"[4] in obedience to the established incentives. As the current state of affairs has obtained for nearly a century, a terrifying number of Americans and pseudo-Americans have made themselves utterly dependent on the State for their sustenance. They own no means of support -- no skills by which they could create value for others.

The key phrase in the paragraph above is "made themselves." Reflect on it.

When -- not "if" -- the Corporate Social-Fascist State exhales its bloody final breath, the economy that results will not have provisions for those dependents' support. As they will be unable to support themselves, their continued existence will depend wholly upon the kindness of others. But, given the immense damage that's been done to our economic foundations by Progressive policies, the crash is overwhelmingly likely to be massive. Many of us who can support ourselves on our own abilities will be hard pressed. Many others will disdain to succor of persons they deem complicit in their own fates.

There will be suffering. It will be massive. Some will die.

Yet the reckoning is at hand. It cannot be delayed much longer: even if the rising some foresee should fail to materialize, our current profligacy and laissez les bon temps roulez insouciance cannot last more than a year or so from here. No matter how well politically connected you are, you cannot consume what no one has produced.

Americans' charitable impulses and capacities, even if nominally quantitatively adequate to the demands that will be placed upon them, will fail to reach some persons in time. That, too, is guaranteed.

As one who holds notions of collective responsibility in low esteem, I dislike to proceed from here, but intellectual honesty requires it:

We brought this on ourselves. ...

Read the rest here. If you aren't preparing yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally for the coming storm, which will likely make our current economic situation look rather pleasant by comparison, you're doing yourself and your family a grave disservice.

Mr. Porrento adds to his analysis here, and here.

"You can smell the sulphur in the air"

From the Globe & Mail, on the coming collapse of the welfare state in Europe. An excerpt:

Democracies produced Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fulfilling the expectation of Socrates and Machiavelli that democracies end in tyranny. Now democracies are fulfilling the complementary expectation of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman that democracies end in bankruptcy. Put a democracy in charge of the Sahara, Mr. Friedman once said, and sand itself will become scarce. Democracies are indeed profligate trustees – or have been for the past 30 or 40 years. Mr. Friedman’s primary fret, though, was the tendency of democracy to centralize political and economic power in the same hands. Most critiques of democracy reflect this elemental distrust. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb,” Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, “voting on what to have for lunch.”

Democratic self-deprecation isn’t quite as funny as it once was. Mobs have already taken to the venerable, iconic streets of European states, notably among them Greece, birthplace of Athenian democracy. It’s apparently easier to give wealth away than it is to take it back. Democracy assembled the welfare state peaceably enough. Can democracy dismantle it as peaceably? No, it can’t. The mobs are not finished. ...

Read it here.

"What fresh hell is this?"

From small business owner Warren Meyer, writing on the regulatory state:

... Consider Ventura County, Calif., just north of Los Angeles. We run a campground and marina in the county, and when we took it over, the docks were getting a bit old. The county condemned a small building on the docks, so we bought a modular office (about the size of a shipping container) and moved it into the parking lot next to the dock entrance. Thus began a bewildering journey through the Ventura County offices. Before we could even begin to permit the new office, we needed permission from the county to demolish the building the county had condemned--that cost us a couple hundred dollars and several forms. Then we needed a disposal permit for the demolished building--more forms, more time and another check.

Once the old building was gone, we then needed a variety of permits for the modular office, including--at the height of my frustration--a soil sample from under the concrete of the parking lot where the office sat. Each approval required another payment and a lot of my time figuring out the next step, because nowhere is the whole process documented.

Somewhere along the way an enterprising employee of mine made coffee in our new (not yet legal) office for the early morning fishermen, but we soon found that to continue to provide coffee would require the installation of a triple cleanup sink, which in turn would add marginally to the load on the current septic system, which in turn would trigger a county requirement for us to build a new $2.5 million sewage treatment facility. Uh, never mind on that coffee. ...

Read the whole thing here. Our burgeoning regulatory state stifles productivity, which in turn stifles job growth. Is it any wonder that states like California have been facing an exodus of businesses for years? Or that California's broke?

Doctor Zero: The Answer to Socialism

From Doctor Zero:

American socialism has long functioned under the principle that a strong central government, lavishly funded by the middle and upper classes, should influence the economy in the name of “social justice,” and provide benefits to the lower class. The power and cost of the government have steadily increased – surging under the previous two Presidents, and exploding under the current one. Its financing has shifted to deficit spending and direct control through mandates and regulation, since endless tax increases became politically painful.

I believe this system is very close to total collapse. If nothing else triggers it, the explosive bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare will. The half-life of American socialism may now be measured in years, rather than decades. If we let it run its course and crash, its death throes will be unspeakably painful.

...

The appeal of socialism comes from more than just using money taken from the wealthy to buy the votes of the poor. It is also an expression of rage, from those who believe capitalism has treated them unfairly. Too many people seem quite willing to put up with a reduction in their modest standard of living, as long as they believe some faceless “fat cats” are getting soaked. Those who follow the bitter politics of envy should understand that every system of ordering human affairs produces both the rich and the poor. In our current situation, what cats are fatter than the political elite? As of 2008, two-thirds of our Senators were millionaires, and all of them enjoy lavish perks, incredible benefits, and gold-plated retirements, including plush lobbying and consulting jobs… when they’re unlucky enough to fall through the few holes in a 90% incumbent re-election safety net. Many of our representatives, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, live like royalty by abusing their power. Every nickel of a politician’s fortune comes directly from your pocket, without your willing consent to purchase products or services.

The lens of socialist envy is rather selective about which targets to focus upon. Its political allies are never presented to the public as object of hatred. Neither are those with enough popularity to insulate them from criticism, such as entertainers and professional athletes. Anyone who supports the Left out of hatred for the evil rich would benefit from considering a list of the fabulously wealthy people they have not been instructed to hate. ...

Read it here. Whether we can pop the pustule of socialism without a dramatic, and possibly violent collapse of the system remains to be seen.

It's the Constitution, stupid: What the Tea Partiers really want

From Ron Futrell at Big Journalism:

... Saturday on CNN, Don Lemon had political consultant David Gergen on and they wrestled over whether the movement was racist because they only saw one black person in the crowd at the Sarah Palin speech before the Tea Party Convention. They should’ve invited Kenneth Gladney on the show and asked him. Gladney was the man who was smacked around by SEIU thugs at a Tea Party rally in St. Louis. The activist old media doesn’t know Gladney’s story because he’s a conservative minority Tea Party participant and they don’t want that story. I met Gladney at a Tea Party rally in Las Vegas and found him to be a fine man with a fascinating story. I bought a couple flags from him that I proudly hang in my office. The activist old media might want to ask him what this movement is about – warning – be prepared, he will give you the right answer, but it will not be the answer you want to hear. I know, I asked him.

With that, let me tell you what the Tea Party movement wants. I will make it simple and straightforward and easy for all to understand — I will put it in all CAPS and type slowly:

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT WANTS AMERICA TO RETURN TO CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES.

There it is. I said it, one simple sentence.

The Democrats and its activist old media want to find “leaders” for the Tea Party movement. They feel that the only worthwhile political movement must have direction from a man (or woman—but mainly men). They saw the movements led by Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and feel that there must be a dynamic personality for people to follow in order for it to be significant. That same game plan was followed in the 2008 presidential election: find a dynamic leader who fits with the values of larger, more intrusive government, and follow him.

They also want a “leader” of the Tea Party movement so that they can destroy that person. ...

Read it here. The political classes and their media lackeys have been desperately trying to discredit the Tea Party movement. Key to that strategy is identifying and destroying its leaders. Once those leaders are identified, will anyone be surprised if SWAT teams of "investigative reporters" are deployed to rummage though their trash in hopes of finding some salacious detail around which to wrap a campaign of disinformation and deceit to destroy that person and his or her family? If you doubt that will be the old time media approach, just ask Sarah Palin.

The key to the Tea Party's resiliency will be its ability to remain distributed, hydra-like -- cut off one head and two will take its place. Centralization in this case will likely be a death sentence to the movement, because centralization is susceptible to an effective decapitation strategy. Distributed organizational structures, with elements capable of autonomous action towards their strategic objectives, have an innate resiliency to this type of attack.

Boom time for government employees

From Rich Lowry, writing in the NY Post:

For most Americans, the Great Recession has been an occasion to hold on for dear life. For public employees, it's been an occasion to let the good times roll.

The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. At the beginning of the downturn, the Transportation Department had one person making $170,000 or more a year; now it has 1,690 making more than that. [emphasis added]

The New York Times reports that state and local governments have added a net 110,000 jobs since the start of the recession, while the private sector's lost 6.9 million. The gap between total compensation of public and private workers has only widened during the downturn, according to USA Today. In 2008, benefits for public employees grew at a rate three times that of private employees.

Public employees have developed an inverse relationship to the rest of the economy -- as it shrinks, shedding jobs and cutting salaries, they draw on a never-ending taxpayer bounty. It used to be said that the Great Depression wasn't so bad, if you had a job. The Great Recession has practically been a boom, if you have a government job.

Public employees can thank the union label. In 2009, for the first time ever, a majority of union members worked in the public sector. Unionism has been in a long, secular decline in the private sector (down to 7.2 percent of all workers), but increasing in government (up to 37.4 percent of all workers). ...

Read the rest here. One in five FedGov employees makes over $100,000. Your tax dollars hard at work. Or not.

Retirements push Social Security to brink

From USA Today, on the looming Social Security crisis:

WASHINGTON — Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability.

The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated.

"Things are a little bit worse than had been expected," says Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration. "Clearly, we're going to be negative for a year or two."

Since 1984, Social Security has raked in more in payroll taxes than it has paid in benefits, accumulating a $2.5 trillion trust fund. But because the government uses the trust fund to pay for other programs, tax increases, spending cuts or new borrowing will be required to make up the difference between taxes collected and benefits owed.

Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017. ...

Read the rest here. If Social Security was barely cash flow positive in 2009, and likely cash flow negative this year or next, just think what shape it will be in when the wave of Baby Boomers start retiring in a few years. Given that the only thing in the Social Security "trust fund" is a bunch of IOUs from the federal government (said FedGov having gleefully spent the actual money), anyone who thinks existing benefit levels are sustainable or will be honored is delusional.

Taleb says 'every human' should short U.S. Treasuries

From Bloomberg:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” said “every single human being” should bet U.S. Treasury bonds will decline, citing the policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the Obama administration.

It’s “a no brainer” to sell short Treasuries, Taleb, a principal at Universa Investments LP in Santa Monica, California, said at a conference in Moscow today. “Every single human being should have that trade.”

Taleb said investors should bet on a rise in long-term U.S. Treasury yields, which move inversely to prices, as long as Bernanke and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are in office, without being more specific. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, also said at the conference that the U.S. dollar will weaken against Asian and “commodity” currencies such as the Brazilian real over the next two or three years.

The Fed and U.S. agencies have lent, spent or guaranteed $9.66 trillion to lift the economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bernanke, who in December 2008 slashed the central bank’s target rate for overnight loans between banks to virtually zero, flooded the economy with more than $1 trillion in the largest monetary expansion in U.S. history.

In a short sale, an investor borrows a security and sells it, expecting to profit from a decline by repurchasing it later at a lower price.

“Dynamite in the Hands of Children”

President Barack Obama has increased the U.S. marketable debt to a record $7.27 trillion as he tries to sustain the recovery from last year’s recession. The Obama administration projects the U.S. budget deficit will rise to a record $1.6 trillion in the 2011 fiscal year.

“Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children,” Taleb said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “They can get out of control very quickly.” ...

Article here.

The tax man looking for a few good shotguns

The FedGov tax men really want you to pay your "fair share". Or else:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC #24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division. The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen inch barrel, modified choke, Wilson Combat Ghost Ring rear sight and XS4 Contour Bead front sight, Knoxx Reduced Recoil Adjustable Stock, and Speedfeed ribbed black forend, are designated as the only shotguns authorized for IRS duty based on compatibility with IRS existing shotgun inventory, certified armorer and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.

Submit quotes including 11% Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax (FAET) and shipping to Washington DC. ...

Secession and Football Fundamentals

From Russell D. Longcore comes this essay:

We are only two weeks away from the Super Bowl. After watching the Minnesota Vikings make mistake after mistake in Sunday’s Championship game, and give away the game to the New Orleans Saints*, I think back to my high school football experiences.

After an embarrassing loss like the Vikings had, our coach would have told us, “Boys, we’re going back to the basics and re-learn the fundamentals of football.”

The fundamentals of football are:

• blocking and tackling
• holding the football tightly and not fumbling the ball
• keep doing your job until the whistle blows
• score more points than the other team
• work as a team, not as individuals
• winning gets you more girls than losing

What could this lesson possibly have to do with state secession, you may ask?

The Secession War of 1776 pitted the English colonies against motherland England and King George. The Declaration of Independence declared the colonies as sovereign nations…as sovereign as England herself.

Soon after the colonial victory, the states ratified the Constitution, which instituted a very strict few duties for the new Federal Government that the states created, and retained all other power to the states and to the People.

Those are the fundamentals of the game.

Over time, the Federal team began doing things for which it had no power or authority. The People’s team began fumbling the ball…and the Federal team always recovered the fumble. The People’s team gave up yardage (sovereignty) on every series of downs. And the referees…the courts…kept throwing flags against the People’s team and hitting them with the penalties.

The game has ceased to be fun to play. The refs have left the field to the Fed team, and now the Feds play however they want. The Fed team makes up its own rules, and the game doesn’t even resemble the fundamentals. And insult above all insults, the Fed team tells the People that they have to keep playing and cannot leave the field.

The whole concept of state secession is to return to the fundamentals. No state would ever consider seceding unless the Federal Government that it helped to create was doing things it ought not do. The fundamentals require that the Federal Government operate within its Constitutional restrictions.

Nullification will not be able to be effective, since there is no American state with a Militia in place to enforce any nullification challenged by the Feds.

Then, you must factor in the reality that the US Constitution has no authority to bind any two persons in any way, and that no legal status exists between the People and the Federal Government. Read Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason.”

So, it is time for the People’s team to walk off the field and stop playing this no-win game. But to do so, seceding states had better revitalize their Militias first.

By the way…free men get more chicks than slaves. Lighten up, Francis!

Secession is the Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?

*Even though I was rooting for the old guy, Brett Favre (a Mississippi boy), the Saints are a Southern team, and the South is where my heart is. Geaux Saints!

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2010, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

As Mr. Longcore notes, better make sure your state has a robust Militia before you try this, boys and girls.

Truths we dare not speak

Victor Davis Hanson takes on the politically taboo topics of illegal immigration, affirmative action, and the like:

Affirmative Action

The concept was noble, but now antiquated and mostly absurd. It requires the logic of the Old Confederacy to determine racial purity among the intermarried citizenry. Jet-black Punjabis get no preferences. Light-skinned Mexican-Americans of the fourth-generation claim privilege. Poor whites from Tulare don’t rank. The children of black dentists do. I see very little logic here.

Asians? We both claim them as minorities, and yet we discriminate against them at the University of California admissions process on the basis of their own superior achievement. (Apparently, the deplorable record of discrimination against Asians is now deemed irrelevant due to the community’s own success. Ponder the ramifications of that for a bit: should Asians have been struggling at UC, they would be considered suffering from the legacy of oppression; since they are excelling, they need to be quietly discriminated against).

As far as I can tell, here is the logic of this Byzantine system: Affirmative action in the 21st century has no logical basis in skin color, actual discrimination, poverty, class, or need. It is predicated on two archaic thoughts: previously discriminated against American minorities shall be defined as only Hispanic, Blacks, and Asians, and thus their children shall receive privilege for decades. BUT that new discrimination will not apply if such minorities on their own have prospered and are successful. (Why that would be so in some cases is again a taboo question.)

So, Japanese-Americans, whose parents were put in camps, don’t quite qualify any more for compensation seemingly because they are successful and are thus “over-represented” in the racial spoils system. But Chilean immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.

If one is of mixed race, nomenclature trumps all. Bob Wilson, the son of a Mexican-American mother, is liable to get nothing, Roberto Martinez will get quite a lot, if the son of a Mexican-American (or any Spanish-speaking) father. A Barry Soetoro is of mere pedestrian mixed ancestry; Barack Obama is not merely black, but exotically so.

In short, the system is corrupt. In our society of intermarriage, immigration and mixed ancestry, we cannot any longer determine who is and who is not a certified “minority” (cf. the con of mostly white candidates claiming some sort of Native American ancestry). ...

Read it here. I disagree with Prof. Hanson that affirmative action was ever "noble", although it is indeed absurd. What's noble about discriminating against people based on the color of their skin? Because that's what affirmative action is: legalized racism. Not only is affirmative action not noble, it's not even a good idea, because affirmative action engenders hostility against its beneficiaries from those who did not benefit, e.g., whites. In addition, affirmative action stigmatizes its beneficiaries with the nagging notion that their achievements and success were not based solely on their own merit. With affirmative action, everyone loses in the end.

On Obama, the Left, and Alinsky

Today's video - Scott Wheeler moderates a discussion with David Horowitz and Pat Cadell on Obama, the Left, and the role of Saul Alinsky:

I pledge ...

From Young Americans for Liberty, comes this video:




[Via Mish]