Tag Archives: culture

Misguided

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France’s soon-to-be-ex-President François Hollande is on the wrong track, and not just because of that soon-to-be part.  He’s now saying

My ultimate duty is to make sure that France is not won over by such a program [French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and her program], and that France does not bear such a heavy responsibility[.]

His ultimate duty, he says, is to prevent Le Pen’s election.

No.  Duty is to the safety and prosperity of the nation.  National level political goals should not be aimed at defeating a politician, a person.  Goals, to be durable after their achievement, need to be for something—policies good for the nation—not against something; that’s the fulfillment of duty.

The proper contests should concern ideas and policies, not personalities.  Winning the proper contest usually will carry along with it the defeat of a politician, but that must be a side effect of the larger struggle, not the purpose of it.

Contesting personalities leads, ultimately, to the defeat of those ideas remaining after the main body of them have been lost to the clashes of personality.  And that loss is far more long-lasting and far more dangerous to a nation than the momentary victory of an unsavory person.

Hollande’s mindset vis-à-vis Le Pen might be one factor in his failure as France’s President.

Chuck Schumer’s Coarse Misbehavior

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Does Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) condone the sexual abuse of children?

A snowshoe racer from India whose entry into the US to compete was made possible by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer was being held Friday in a New York jail on a sex charge.

It seems that after Indian snowshoe competitor, Tanveer Hussain, was denied a visa to come to the US to compete in the World Snowshoe Championship in upstate New York, Senators Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) intervened with the US embassy in India and got Hussain his entry visa.

Now Hussain is in jail, accused of molesting a 12-year-old girl, passionately kissing her and “touching her over her clothing in an ‘intimate area.'”

That’s pretty damning of Schumer’s morals and his fitness to continue as United States Senator.  Maybe he should resign.

Or not.  Does Schumer condone sexual abuse of children?  No, but by the logic he’s applying in his slander of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over a poorly phrased confirmation hearing question and a misunderstood (some might say cynically distorted) answer to that question, he does.

A Key Point

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…from George Friedman’s piece in RealClear World, Nationalism and Liberal Democracy.  Friedman was writing about a different, if related matter, the relationship between liberalism (in the classic sense) and nationalism.  The point I’m calling out bears on our own immigration debate.

A nation is a group of people who share history, culture, language, and other attributes. It is the existence of a common identity, a coherent sense of self and nationhood that make self-government possible, because it is that sense of self that permits self-government.

Notice that: shared history.  This is not the same thing as possessing the same history.  Assimilation is what bridges the gap; assimilation is what brings people with widely differing histories—as widely different as English from Germans from Russians from Chinese from Japanese from…—into the jurisdictional boundary of a polity to become part of the nation that exists there.  Assimilation is what lets those folks with and from those differing histories obtain a shared history, the common history of the nation to which they’ve come and of which so many of them wish to become a part.

Assimilation is critical to nationhood because

a random collection of people without a core set of shared values cannot form a coherent regime, because nothing would hold the regime together or prevent internal chaos.

Equal or Not?

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Are Americans equal under law, or are we to be divided and categorized even further in order to apply even more special treatments to Government-favored special groups?  The Census Bureau is opting for the latter.

In a report suggesting changes to 2020 Census forms, the bureau called for adding a new “Middle Eastern or North African” category designed to count those in the US who identify as one of about 19 nationalities, including Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Israeli. Currently such people declare themselves as “white” on the surveys.

And

The Census Bureau also called for creating a new scheme that counts Hispanics as a broad category in line with races like white and black. The agency noted that research showed nearly half of Hispanic respondents hadn’t identified within any of the current federal race categories.

Which only points up the foolishness of the divisions.  But here’s the nub of the Census Bureau’s move:

Such changes are significant because they shape how the US tracks demographic change and can influence federal funding.

Can’t treat special groups specially until Government creates the groups, don’t you know.

The VA…Continues

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Now it’s the Veterans Administration hospital in Durham, NC, that’s come to light.

Hanna and Stephen McMenamin posted photos of two aging veterans in the hospital’s waiting room who were in obvious pain and getting no help, for hours.  One man was having trouble staying in his wheel chair, and another wound up lying on the floor because he kept asking for a place to lie down and getting no response.  The second veteran finally got a response—to make him get back in his waiting room chair.

Medical Center Director DeAnne Seekins finally reacted, after the McMenamins posted their photos:

It is an honor to serve America’s heroes and actions that do not align with our core values will not be tolerated. We pride ourselves on providing the highest quality care to the Veterans we serve and being responsive to our patient’s needs. Veterans deserve nothing less.

Really? When are you going to start living up to these pretty words?  When was the last time you left your office and actually walked the floor to see how things were going?  You would have seen this.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.