Tag Archives: morality

A School District Apologizing

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…for expecting a child to show respect for our country and its symbols of patriotism.

A Southern California school district will apologize to an 11-year-old atheist who says his teacher questioned him because he didn’t stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.

[The student] says he kept his seat during the morning pledge at Monte Vista Middle School in San Jacinto earlier this month because the words “under God” in it violate his beliefs.

He could have stood with his hand over his heart and remained silent. He could have stood and recited the pledge, remaining silent while the phrase was being spoken by his fellows.

The binding nature of the pledge is questionable with children of this age; they’re unable to make decisions on their own, both legally and nearly always from a practical/maturation perspective. But that’s why they’re in school—to learn. Besides, the simple rehearsal of the pledge would have had its own value.

The Pledge of Allegiance, after all, is about much more than just a phrase about God, a phrase whose role in the Pledge merely is an acknowledgment of our national heritage. The Pledge is all about patriotism and fidelity to our country and the liberty for all which our country defends. A liberty which includes the freedom to worship, or not to worship, as each of us pleases.

Here was an opportunity to teach the child something about respect, something about our country, something about patriotism.

Instead, San Jacinto’s school district is going to teach a lesson of an entirely different sort.

This is shameful.

Racism in Eric Holder’s “Justice”

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In Federal District Judge Thomas Schroeder’s Middle District of North Carolina court, where he heard a DoJ beef against that state’s voter ID law last July, US Attorney General Eric Holder’s witness, Charles Stewart, a political scientist, testified bluntly about the inability of America’s blacks to follow the voter registration process, especially when compared with their white counterparts. This…inability…is, supposedly, a result of North Carolina’s elimination of same day registration in that law [emphasis added].

…people who register to vote the closer and closer one gets to Election Day tend to be less sophisticated voters, tend to be less educated voters, tend to be voters who are less attuned to public affairs. That also tells me from the literature of political science that there are likely to be people who will end up not registering and not voting. People who correspond to those factors tend to be African Americans, and, therefore, that’s another vehicle through which African Americans would be disproportionately affected by this law.

And that’s because [emphasis added]

it’s less likely to imagine that these voters would—can figure out or would avail themselves of other forms of registering and voting.

Because, according to this witness, this Holder-selected witness, blacks are just too dumb to keep up. Because, according to this witness, this Holder-selected witness, blacks just aren’t as cultured or learned as their white counterparts. Or their Hispanic counterparts. Or their Asian counterparts. Or their Middle-eastern counterparts.

Here’s* President Woodrow Wilson in a similar vein to black journalist William Monroe Trotter.

[S]egregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.

Holder and his fellows plainly think blacks still need special protections.

That’s disgusting.

The full testimony can be accessed here; Stewart’s testimony is near the end.

 

*Quoted by Mary Beth Norton, Carol Sheriff, David M. Katzman, David W. Blight, Howard P. Chudacoff in A People And A Nation: A History of the United States, Since 1865

Trust

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I’m going to poke my nose into European affairs, again.

The backdrop is the French budget crisis. The backdrop to that is this. In one of the EU’s responses to their part in the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, the EU passed the Stability and Growth Pact, which authorized the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (though the Commission has its own president, the body acts like a President-by-Committee) to require EU member nations to submit their national budgets to Commission approval. If the Commission disapproved the budget and the nation in question refused to make Commission-directed corrections, the Commission could levy very serious fines on that nation.

Among the rules of the Pact is that a national deficit cannot exceed 3% of its GDP: cuts to spending and/or increases in taxes could be required by the Commission to bring the nation’s deficit in line. Various smaller nations in the EU already have been subject to budget disapproval and Commission-required corrections or fines. Belgium, for instance, faced a fine of some €800 million in 2011 ($1,131 million dollars in 2011) until it made corrections. Greece and Italy also have been hit with Commission budget mandated corrections, and they have complied.

Enter France. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has indicated flatly that France will not play by the EU rules to which it is signatory.

I will not permit people to discuss France in this context. France is a big country. We won’t [comply with Commission budget reform requirements].

The French Finance Minister has echoed his boss.

[W]e won’t cut more anywhere, and we also won’t raise taxes.

The Germans, though, despite being economically powerful enough—because it’s still economically sound—to get France to comply, is apparently too timid to do so. Chancellor Angela Merkel has dragged out an old chestnut of hers: “contractual agreements.” These are

written agreements between the European Commission and a Eurozone country that commit that member state to undertake specific savings measures or clearly delineated structural reforms. Under the original plan, the country could then obtain financial aid from a special fund in return. For France, the reward would be a further suspension of the deficit rules.

However. With France saying it’s going to welsh on one contract that it’s signed—that Stability and Growth Pact—how could it be trusted to honor another contract it might sign, a “contractual agreement?”

Manfred Weber, who leads the European People’s Party (think of them as all of Europe’s various Christian Democrats) in European Parliament emphasized the problem.

Europe is at a crossroads. The European Commission’s credibility is at stake with its review of the French and also the Italian budgets. France’s budget has to be rejected. President Hollande needs to make improvements.

There are two questions here. Is the EU’s word worth anything? Can they be trusted to carry out their own mandates? That question won’t be answered until the end of the month, when the Commission will attempt to give its final answer regarding the French budget.

The other question is whether the French word has any value, whether it’s possible to rely on any contract France or a French entity might sign. That question seems clearly answered.

Politicizing Ebola

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And right before a major election, too.

On Oct 12, the Agenda Project Action Fund released a political ad called “Republican Cuts Kill,” which according to the group, has been scheduled to air in Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, and South Dakota—all states with high-stakes Senate elections in November. The ad juxtaposes pictures of dead bodies and body bags in West Africa with Republican lawmakers like Sens Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul.

“Like rabid dogs in a butcher shop, Republicans have indiscriminately shredded everything in their path, including critical programs that could have dealt with the Ebola crisis before it reached our country,” said ad producer [Agenda Project Action Fund] Erica Payne[.]

Never mind some facts.

In both 2013 and 2014, it was Congress that boosted the funding after the administration had proposed scaled-back budgets.

[W]hen the 2014 budget was passed in January, the CDC’s budget rose to $6.9 billion, $567 million more than it received in 2013 and more than the agency anticipated, as the president only requested $6.6 billion.

…double the budget the CDC was getting in 2000 ($3.4 billion)[.]

And

With NIH, the numbers have edged up from $28.5 billion in 2006 to $30.14 billion in 2014….

And

…this administration [has been] pushing the CDC to spend time and resources on bike lanes and farmers markets instead of prioritizing national security and the health of Americans[.]

Projects like origami condoms, to the tune of $2.4 million, a part of nearly $40 million of CDC funding that The Washington Free Beacon reports could have been…better used.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine.

And not a single Democrat has corrected this distortion, not a single Democrat has distanced himself from this distortion. Their silence demonstrates their condoning this politicization.

Elections are soon.

Leading from Behind

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…and continuing the Obama administration meme of letting the “international community” dictate our foreign policy—and now our domestic policy, also.

A quarantine against travel from the Ebola-infected nations of western Africa to the United States, ideally as part of an international effort but plainly not dependent on it, is critical to mitigating the risk to the United States of the Ebola epidemic spreading to here. I’ve answered the CDC chief’s objections to a travel ban here and here. Others more knowledgeable than me also are calling for such a travel ban.

Here, though, is what Obama’s State Department—medical experts all—claim in all seriousness:

“We are not imposing any sort of ban,” a State Department official told FoxNews.com. “We need to allow for this to be a global response and make sure that there is proper care and training throughout the region.

Because, it’s not perfect, therefore mustn’t do it at all. Because, safety in numbers, especially if those numbers give cover for avoiding responsibility for error. Because, it might show initiative. Because, leading from the front is arrogant.

The most likely global response from this foolishness is an Ebola pandemic.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to accept responsibility and the personal risk that entails.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to be out front, with or without the “international community.”

It just isn’t the Democrat way actually to lead.