Category Archives: culture

Be Like Europe, Progressives Say

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Here’s another example of the Europe the Left demands we emulate.

Vincent, the 42-year-old man’s name is, had a terrible accident 11 years ago that left him a brain-damaged quadriplegic.  He’s been in a French hospital, in Reims, ever since, variously rated as “semi-conscious” and “in a vegetative state.”  Yet, he eats, sleeps, and responds to his mother’s conversation.

The French medical system is not the central, government-as-single-payer “medical” system that is the ideal of our own Left, but the French government does decide on euthanasia. That government has made the decision that Vincent is no longer worth the trouble of helping to live.  His feeding tube is to be removed, and he’s to be killed by starvation.

And when his mother told him of the French Court of Cassation’s (the French supreme court for civil cases, which this one is; there is no appeal) decision that he was to die, he cried.

The officials of this European government don’t even have the courage to kill the man outright with their own hands. They’re happy simply to stand on the sidelines, give the order, and let him die the agonizing death of starvation.  He doesn’t even get to eat cake.

Yay, Progressives.

And now he’s dead. I wrote the above last Wednesday when Vincent was alive. The French government ordered his killing, French doctors hospital pulled his feeding and hydration tubes the next day, and Vincent has died.

Isn’t government involvement in health care grand.

“Diverse Community”

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The City Council of St Louis Park, MN, a Minneapolis suburb and in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (D, MN) district, has objected to our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance to the point of voting to stop their practice of reciting it prior to Council meetings.

The mayor objected, and so did 100 protestors present for the vote—when was the last time 100 protestors assembled for a city council meeting?  Despite that, the Council’s vote was unanimous: 5-0.

The amendment to the council’s rules was characterized as an effort to serve a more “diverse community….”

More diverse.  Except for those who don’t think in the correct manner about the right things.  Except for those who love and respect our national flag.

There isn’t any more diverse community than the United States.  Or it used to be that way, before the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party political arm started excluding those whom they hold in disfavor.

Cynicism

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Hong Kong Chief Executive and People’s Republic of China Senior Employee Carrie Lam claims that her Extradition to the PRC Bill is “dead.”

However, the subheadline says it all:

We hope people will not read a different meaning just because we are using a different word

She continues, after all, to refuse to explicitly withdraw her bill.  “Trust me.”

The people of Hong Kong are right to be…skeptical.  Lam really does need to go, as do most of her subordinates down through several layers of her hierarchy, but PRC President Xi Jinping is unlikely to permit it.

Forced Busing

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Lance Morrow wrote about forced busing in a “back to the future” piece in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s the larger, more important thing about that early forced busing, of which Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate was so proud and about which Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden was so helpless to comment on.

Forced busing, as bandied about today, is all about using children as tools to achieve a political goal. As in other milieus, we see an example of the Left not seeing people, here children, as human beings, but only as machines for achieving the Left’s goal.

Beyond that, this dehumanization of children masks the true purpose, however clumsily done, of forced busing. It was not that black children could learn only by being next to white children. It was to end the travesty of “separate but equal,” which actually led to unequal—lesser—allocation of teaching resources and teachers to black schools, which deprived black children of the opportunity to learn at all.

Starbucks Fail

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A Starbucks in Tempe, AZ, had one of its baristas ask five police officers who were having a pre-shift coffee either go sit somewhere else or leave altogether because one customer felt “threatened” over their being where the customer could see them.

In the hoo-raw ensuing, Starbucks spokesman Reggie Borges said

We have a deep respect for the Tempe Police and their service to the community.

That’s plainly not true. If Starbucks really cared, if it had any actual respect for the police—much less a shred of self-respect—it would have had a better-trained crew of baristas who wouldn’t knee-jerk insult cops over a snowflake’s made-up beef.

A day after the story broke, Rossann Williams, Executive Vice President and President, US Retail for Starbucks said this:

On behalf of Starbucks, I want to sincerely apologize to you all for the experience that six of your officers had in our store on July 4. When those officers entered the store and a customer raised a concern over their presence, they should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the utmost respect by our partners (employees). Instead they were made to feel unwelcome and disrespected, which is completely unacceptable.

These are empty words, whether sincerely offered or just marketing damage control. What’s necessary is actual, visible changed behavior over a sustained period of time.

It’s also sad that no one else spoke up and told this barista to seat the cops with him.

Aside from the simple courtesy of such a gesture, it might also be the case that other patrons wouldn’t feel safe without the cops around. Especially with someone possessed of so little respect for law and order so close by.