Category Archives: culture

Freedom and Morality

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had a few words to say on this [emphasis added].

The Department of Agriculture proudly declares: “Each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.”  Our government is running food stamp promotions at foreign embassies.  One worker was given an award for overcoming “mountain pride” and getting more people to sign up.  Where I grew up in Alabama, all honest work, even the hardest, was honored.  And pride, self-respect, and a desire to be independent was valued, not a thing to be overcome.

And

People are being hurt every day by the Washington establishment the Democrats are determined to shield from accountability.  Government has never been bigger or more out of control.  They say there is no problem with waste, fraud, and abuse; they say the problem is you; they say you are not sending them enough money; they say they have wisely spent every penny.  So, you must just send them more.  And, if you don’t?  Well, they won’t stop spending, they’ll just borrow more.

Here is Sessions’ suggestion for an economically effective and morally sound budget outline:

Instead, we must act to create more jobs and better pay.  And we can do it without adding to the debt.  Here’s how:

  • Make welfare temporary and the welfare office an employment and job training office.

  • Unlock America’s vast energy resources to create millions of good-paying jobs.

  • Defend American workers from unfair foreign trade practices.

  • Reform the tax code to make America globally competitive, creating more jobs here.

  • Make government leaner, less wasteful so it produces greater results for the money you earned and sent here.

  • Enforce an immigration policy that protects legal US workers from unlawful competition.

  • Eliminate every burdensome federal rule or regulation that isn’t needed and that destroys jobs.

  • And, finally, we must balance the federal budget.

These are steps that reduce government, they allow Americans to regain responsibility for our own actions, regain our ability to work toward our own goals, and these steps leave more of our hard-earned money in our hands.  All of this enhances our—and our country’s—freedom and morality.

We saw with Wednesday’s Senate budget proposal the Democrats’…freedom and morality.

More Racism

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the New York City Districting Commission has resubmitted its redistricting plan for the 51 New York council districts following the 2010 census.

According to a news release, the plan creates 35 so-called minority districts in which “protected racial and language-minority groups” represent an overall majority of the total population of these districts.  By comparison, the 2003 districting plan had 30 such districts.

This is blatantly racist.  The Constitution—and the New York State constitution is no different in this regard—specifies one man, one vote.  From the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State….

From Article II, Section 1, of the New York State constitution:

Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.

There’s nothing in here that differentiates one American, or one New Yorker, from another.  We’re all Americans; in the present case we’re all New Yorkers.  Neither constitution admits of giving special voting privileges to some Americans over others, neither constitution contemplates the racism of “protected racial” or “protected language-minority”…groups.

Both constitutions—quite properly—insist that a man’s ability to vote is based not on the color of his skin or the thickness of his accent but on the status of his citizenship.

It’s time to stop racist gerrymandering.  All of us look alike in the eyes of God, before the law, and in our right to vote.

It’s Onerous to Become a Citizen?

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Dan Siciliano, a Stanford Law School professor, thinks so.

People think it’s automatic, short and easy.  [In reality] the pathway to citizenship is onerous.

Here are the requirements for becoming a citizen:

  • the immigrants must a $680 fee
  • pass an oral exam
  • present five years’ worth of tax returns
  • submit to a background check for things such as criminal convictions.
  • pass an interview with an immigration officer who tests their ability to speak, read and write English

Yeah, that’s onerous.  The fee serves as a (light) screen against the indigent.  Current immigration law makes it illegal to allow in those who will be burdens on our society, who can’t earn a living.  The five years of having paid income taxes provides current, empirical evidence of the immigrant’s ability to earn his own way and to contribute to his new community.

Any nation has the right to keep out other nations’ criminals—that’s what the background check does.

It’s a hard concept, but English is the language of the United States.  Not Spanish, or French, or Arabic, or Farsi, or….  Businesses are foolish to stand on ceremony and demand their customers speak only English.  But the preservation of American society and culture—that which made us a great nation—demands that political speech be done in English.

The Racism of the Supreme Court

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During oral arguments concerning Shelby County v. Holder, a case that asks whether the several states and lesser jurisdictions must, in accordance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, continue to submit their voting plans to Federal supervision and prior permission, came these shocking remarks:

Justice [Elena] Kagan: “Under any formula that Congress could devise, it would capture Alabama.”

Never mind that under any other formula that Congress could devise, it would not notice Alabama at all.  Formulae of this sort find what their developer want found—it’s the purpose of the formulae.  Kagan knows this.

Justice [Sonya] Sotomayor: “It’s a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn its place on the list.”

True enough.  It’s also a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn it way off the list.  Sotomayor knows this.

Justice [Stephen] Breyer: “Imagine a state has a plant disease, and in 1965 you can recognize the presence of that disease. … Now it’s evolved. … But we know one thing: The disease is still there in the state.”

Once a racist, always a racist.  Because we know.

These liberal…Justices…need to look in a mirror.

Cowed by Terrorism

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Apparently, terrorism works in Europe.  With Bulgaria having officially determined that Hezbollah was behind the terrorist bombing of an Israeli tour bus in Burgas on the Bulgarian Black Sea last summer, we’re getting some…interesting…responses in the rest of Europe.  These responses center on European continued hesitancy to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, as other nations outside of Europe (and one and a half within the EU (the UK is only willing to designate, euphemistically, the “military arm” of Hezbollah a terrorist organization) have done.  We’re getting, for instance, things like the following.

The European Union’s Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (!), says,

The terrorists who planned and carried out the Burgas attack must be brought to justice…the High Representative underlines the need for a reflection over the outcome of (Bulgaria’s) investigation.

She can’t say the word “Hezbollah,” and since it was only Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian (the bus driver) who died, there’s still time, and need, to “reflect” on the meaning of the murders.

EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, expanded on this reluctance:

There is no automatic listing just because you have been behind a terrorist attack…It’s not only the legal requirement that you have to take into consideration, it’s also a political assessment of the context and the timing.

It’s true enough that terrorist butchery has political overtones in the terrorists’ purposes, but responses to such murders have no politics at all involved—there are only morality and the duty of a government to protect its citizens.

Former French intelligence official Claude Moniquet adds

Calling it terrorist would limit France’s ties with Beirut and put French targets and personnel in Lebanon at risk of retaliation.  The Bulgarian report doesn’t alter this realpolitik. There were always plenty of smoking guns.

It’s important to avoid annoying terrorists, lest the latter turn their ire on us.  And there’s the standard offer of excuses for this carpet knightery.

Even the newspapers seem more interested in ducking and covering than in meaningful response.  Sylke Tempel, editor of the German magazine Internationale Politik, told the New York Times,

There’s the overall fear if we’re too noisy about this, Hezbollah might strike again, and it might not be Israeli tourists this time.

There it is again: don’t offend the terrorists; they might hurt us next.

All of this reminds me of Spain’s withdrawal from the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in direct response to a terror bombing of a Madrid railroad station.

Indeed, Europe’s reluctance to angrify Hezbollah is an old and venerable policy.  Spiegel International Online notes (the first link above),

For decades, European governments have preferred to avoid confrontation with Hezbollah as long as its terrorism was not directed at continental targets.  In spite of a 1983 Beirut bombing that killed 58 French peacekeepers and 241 American Marines, deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 (which Argentine prosecutors pinned on the group), and its military support for the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar Assad (whom the EU has repeatedly called upon to step down), Brussels has resisted naming Hezbollah a terrorist outfit.

The problem is that this timidity does not affect only Europe.  Like paying the kidnapper’s ransom, it puts the rest of us at risk, also.  It rewards the terrorists for their actions rather than contributing to their destruction.