Category Archives: culture

What Was He Thinking?

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Attorney General Eric Holder said this at the annual NAACP convention on Tuesday:

There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if—and the “if” is important—no safe retreat is available.   But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat.

Say what!?  What age-old requirement?  Whence this?  Has he never read John Locke?  Does he think Locke wrong?  If so, based on what?

Has he never read US law?  Does he think US law is wrong?  Oh, wait….

What logic of his underlies this outlandish claim?

If we retreat when we have the means to resist, all we do is reward the criminal for his crime.  Our right to our lives and our property create in us no obligation at all to retreat, or to cede them to another solely on the basis that another wants them more than do we.

On the other hand, if “we” have a duty to retreat when threatened, surely “we” includes that threatener: he has a duty to retreat if we threaten him.

Racist Persecution Persists

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Now the racist persecution begins because of a politically incorrect verdict in a Florida trial.

Former Obama adviser Van Jones declared that “racism won” in the trial of George Zimmerman.

And

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse fired off an incendiary stream of tweets late Saturday night suggesting that racism and politics prompted the jury to acquit George Zimmerman of all charges.

And

[From an NAACP petition] Attorney General Eric Holder [t]he Department of Justice has closely monitored the State of Florida’s prosecution of the case against George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin murder since it began.  Today, with the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it is time for the Department of Justice to act.

Presidents and a “Nation of Laws”

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President Barack Obama says, in the wake of the Zimmerman acquittal, that “we are a nation of laws.”  He says this against a backdrop of having chosen to selectively enforce (i.e., not enforce at all) immigration law is it applies to certain groups of illegal aliens, of having chosen to selectively enforce (i.e., not enforce at all) critical portions of his Obamacare law, having chosen not to pursue legal cases against those pleading out to voter intimidation, and so on.  In truth, he’s not alone in this—most American Presidents have chosen not to enforce this or that law, or this or that portion of a law.  This is done because a given President thinks it’s a bad law, it’s bad public policy to enforce it at this time, it’s bad politics to enforce it at this time, it’s….

This selective enforcement comes despite what Art II, Section 3, says about the President’s duty vis-à-vis Federal law:

…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….

There isn’t a caveat here, nor any wiggle room: the President must enforce Federal law.  Period.

What’s a President to do, then, when confronted with a law he (lately) believes illegitimate, or no longer useful, or…?  One way is found in the way some unions (especially police and traffic controllers) occasionally object to a bad contract or bad contract clause: strict, no exceptions enforcement of traffic law or aircraft separation in the two cases suggested.

Especially when confronted with a recalcitrant Congress, what better way to point up the absurdity of a bad law than to strictly enforce it?  Civil disobedience points up such absurdities through the protestors’ deliberate, noisy disobedience of a law and suffering the consequences, with those consequences emphasizing the absurdities.  Presidents have no option for civil disobedience; however, they can achieve the same emphasis, as police and air traffic controllers have demonstrated, by moving in the opposite direction.

What’s Up

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…with this?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ms. Salecl, at the fast food chain Subway we have to make half a dozen decisions before we can finally enjoy our sandwich.  Is that what you mean when you speak in your lectures about the “tyranny of choice?”

Salecl: I try to avoid places like Subway, and if I end up there I always order the same thing.  When I speak about the “tyranny of choice,” I mean an ideology that originates in the era of post-industrial capitalism.  It began with the American Dream—the idea of the self-made man, who works his way up from rags to riches.  By and by, this career concept developed into a universal life philosophy.  Today we believe we should be able to choose everything: the way we live, the way we look, even when it comes to the coffee we buy, we constantly need to weigh our decision.  That is extremely unhealthy.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why?

Salecl: Because we constantly feel stressed, overwhelmed and guilty.  Because, according to this ideology, it’s our own fault if we’re unhappy.  It means we made a bad decision.

Say, what?  Whose fault is it, then?  Who made the bad decision for us sheep?  Government?  A neighbor, sticking a gun in our ear?

She went on in this interview:

Salecl: …I don’t criticize political or electoral freedom, but capitalism’s perversion of the concept: the illusion that I hold the power over my own life.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But I do have that power.  I can decide for myself what I want, even if the thought stresses me out.

Salecl: Not at all.  A friend, who’s a psychologist, told me about a patient once: a woman who was well educated, had a good job, a house, and a loving husband.  “I did everything right in my life,” said the woman.  “But I’m still not happy.”  She never did what she herself wanted, but what she believed society expected from her.

And whose fault was that?  Oh, wait….

She repeated her theme in a TED presentation:

In our post-industrial capitalist age, says Salecl, choice, freedom and self have been elevated into an ideal—the ideal.  But the flip side are increased feelings of anxiety, guilt, and inadequacy at facing the possibility of not “making it”—that is, not reaching the ideal.  What’s strange, says Salecl, is that increasingly people turn this anxiety inward, indulging in self-critique, rather than social critique.  Ultimately this has made us unable to move toward social change; our abundance of choices has made us politically passive.

Leave it to a Liberal, politically passive and entirely dependent on a Know Better Government to tell him what to do, to be so confused by the choices available to him that he’s uncomfortable with them.  And then to project that weakness onto everyone around him.

Silent No More

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Rafael Cruz had some thoughts.  You know Mr Cruz: Senator Ted Cruz’ (R, TX) Cuban-born father.  Here’s some of what he had to say, via The Daily Caller.

[A]s a teenager I found myself involved in a revolution.  I remember during that time, a young charismatic leader rose up talking about “hope and change.”  His name was Fidel Castro.

That same man who had been talking before about hope and change, now was talking about how the rich are evil, about how they oppress the people, and about the need to redistribute the wealth.  He began attacking the press, curtail freedom of the press, attacking religion, confiscating property.  Then he began instituting socialized medicine, and imposing wage-and-price controls.  Basically reducing everybody’s salary to a least common denominator.
…
I think the most ominous words I’ve ever heard was in the last two State of the Union addresses, when our president said, “If Congress does not act, I will act unilaterally.”  Not much different than that old bearded friend that I left behind in Cuba.  Government by decree, by executive order, just like a dictator—like Fidel Castro.
…
When I faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to come to.  If we lose our freedoms here, where are we going to go?  There is no place to go.
…
I feel so offended when our president goes around the world apologizing for America and negating our American exceptionalism.  But the truth is, this country is exceptional and unique in the world….  And you know, when we see the intrusion on our liberties; when we see—whether it is looking at our emails, or listening to our telephone calls—or we see the IRS targeting tea party groups—freedom-loving groups—for their political ideology, I say we can remain silent no more.  Silent no more.

What he said.