Tag Archives: freedom

Timidity

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A group of perpetually-offended atheists, agnostics and freethinkers are threatening to sue a small Wisconsin town because of two welcome signs.

Here’s an example of the signs, which have been up 50 years or more:

The churches extend the welcome, not the town’s government in the name of any church or all of them.

Of what are these folks so terrified?  There’s nothing stopping them from putting up their own welcome sign: “Atheists of Oconomowoc Welcome You.”  If the town’s government objected to that, only then might there be an actual beef.

Or: these folks are just terrified of how foolish they’ll look in an open contest of ideas, so they’re suing in the hope of using that to extort acquiescence.

I trust the town of Oconomowoc will show themselves made of sterner stuff than these snowflakes and welcome them into court—and then refuse to settle the matter.

A Party’s True Character

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A Party’s True Character

The Progressive-Democratic Party leader of the time, President Woodrow Wilson, said of segregation, “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”  The Progressive-Democratic Party also is the party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party that made national minimum wage laws for the explicit purpose of keeping blacks on the plantation—literally—instead of migrating north and competing for jobs by being willing to work for less than white union members were.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party of racist and sexist affirmative action programs.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party of the welfare cage that keeps our poor, of any stripe, trapped in poverty and dependent on government handouts.

Jason Riley in The Wall Street Journal has some insights on the current nature of the matter.

[Now] race-consciousness is once again ascendant, not only among “alt-right” types, but more tellingly among self-styled progressives and left-wing institutions that once worked so hard to combat Jim Crow policies. The liberals who are cheering the recent removal of Confederate monuments to racial separatism also indulge the separatist rhetoric of groups like Black Lives Matter. Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s calls for colorblind policies seem as dated as concerns about interracial hookups.

And

College campuses offer near-daily examples of this liberal devolution on racial matters. The most prominent recent episode involves Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, who has come under fire from students and fellow faculty members for criticizing the school’s “Day of Absence” protest, which involved whites quitting campus for the day.

And

Sadly, these antics have become commonplace in recent years. Students at the University of Wisconsin have demanded free tuition and housing for blacks. At the University of Michigan, a student group that previously complained about the lack of racial “diversity” and “inclusion” at the school has since requested a safe space on campus reserved for students of color to gather. At the University of Missouri, only students of color were invited to participate in a “die-in” protesting the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

And

Last year, at the urging of the school’s black student union, California State University, Los Angeles began offering segregated housing for black students. The University of Connecticut, the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Berkeley are among the colleges that have similar arrangements in place.

And

This year, Harvard held its first-ever commencement ceremony for black graduate students. The New York Times reported that racially segregated end-of-year ceremonies like the one held at Harvard have become more mainstream, more openly embraced by universities and more common than ever before.

The Progressive students of the campuses and those institutions’ management are demanding exactly what that Progressive icon, Woodrow Wilson, promised them: the “protection” of segregation.  This is what the Party’s Big Government-mandated dependency has wrought.

On Whose Side Are These Guys?

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There is a move afoot in Congress to “overhaul” Dodd-Frank, at least to the point of adjusting the threshold size that banks would need to exceed in order to become subject to strict rules on “the capital, mergers, and other business” in which Government will permit these otherwise private enterprises to engage.  Under the present threshold of $50 billion or more in assets, some 37 financial institutions are subject to such Government diktat.

The trick will be reaching a compromise on what should come next.

Republicans tend to favor either setting a threshold of between $250 billion and $500 billion, or basing the designation on a bank’s riskiness rather than on its size. That new range would leave around a dozen or as few as a half-dozen banks facing stricter regulation.

No, there must be no compromise. Strict elimination of Dodd-Frank should come next.

Worse, raising the threshold would, indeed, shrink the number of institutions subject to Government regulation. That, though, would make it easier for Government to expand to completion its control over these institutions.

That’s the stuff of corporate fascism: Government control over what a putatively private enterprise will be allowed to produce and how much of it that enterprise will be allowed.  It’s dismaying that Republicans would propose such an affront to free enterprise and limited government.

Tepid Sanctions

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The G-7 showed real courage in agreeing to maintain existing sanctions against Russia over its invasion and occupation of Ukraine.

Sure.

The nations agreed at a summit Saturday to maintain sanctions on Russia for its interference in Ukraine until the conditions of a peace process negotiated in Minsk, Belarus are fulfilled.

It’s too bad they didn’t strengthen the sanctions and set them to be predicated on fulfilling the conditions of the Budapest Memorandum.

Memorial Day Celebrations

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I first posted this in 2012.  It bears repeating.

Enjoy this holiday.  Take the time to kick back, relax from the hard work you’ve been doing, and just goof off for a bit.

While you’re doing that, though, do something else, also.  Invite that veteran in your neighborhood, who came back from his service wounded or maimed, and his or her family, to your celebration.  Invite the family in your neighborhood whose veteran was killed in his or her service to your celebration.  They need the break and the relaxation and the support, also.  And they’ve earned your respect and remembrance.

To which I add this, excerpted from Alex Horton’s remarks on the significance of the day to him and his:

I hope civilians find more solace in Memorial Day than I do.  Many seem to forget why it exists in the first place, and spend the time looking for good sales or drinking beers on the back porch.  It’s a long weekend, not a period of personal reflection.  At the same time, many incorrectly thank Vets or active duty folks for their service.  While appreciated, it’s misdirected.  That’s what Veterans Day is for.  Instead, they should take some time and remember the spirit of the country and the dedication of those men and women who chose to pick up arms.  They never came home to be thanked, and only their memory remains.

 

h/t Spirit of Enterprise