Tag Archives: 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.

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.

2nd Amendment

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Fox News is reporting that Magpul Industries, a maker of accessories for firearms—magazines, sights, grips, and the like—has told the Colorado statehouse that if a bill to restrict the size of ammunition magazines is passed, the company will relocate out of the state.

It’s a bold threat from a company that, by its founder’s admission, has distanced itself from politics.

This company deserves our support.  Perhaps it should have been more political throughout its existence (Plato’s and Pericles’ admonishments apply to our businesses as well as to ourselves), but in the present case, the company’s focus on its business makes its stand the more principled.

Naturally, Colorado’s democrats are unimpressed.  State Senator Jessie Ulibarri (D) said

When you have the means available to you at every single corner to commit a horrendous act, we will continue to see what we’ve seen, which is the status quo, where unfortunately gun violence and violence in general is prevalent in our communities[.]

Ulibarri should look in a mirror.  Those acts include the party power to ramming through ill-considered legislation that addresses the wrong problem while deprecating individual rights.

It’s an idiotic bill, too, aside from an immoral one.  As Magpul’s Founder and President, Richard Fitzpatrick, pointed out,

smaller magazines can be easily connected to each other—magazines can be hooked up to make a 60-round magazine, for example—and the company fears it would legally liable if people were to do that.

The idiocy goes further: Fox News says

Democrats have tried to ease Magpul’s fears, amending the bill to make clear that the company can still manufacture magazines of any size, as long as they’re sold only out-of-state, to the military or law enforcement.

As if that’ll keep the offending magazines out of the state.

Like I said, this company deserves our support.

Sessions on Progressive Obstructionism

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) in his closing remarks preparatory to casting his vote on the Jack Lew confirmation last Wednesday, had this to say on a related matter.

I would also like to place this [confirmation vote] in a wider context.

Today is the 1,400th day since Senate Democrats passed a budget.  Why has this gone on so long?  Because they decided it would be better to offer no solution, no plan to help struggling Americans, and instead to tear down anyone who dared to offer a plan to solve our nation’s economic problems.

This is the heart of the problem here in Washington right now.  We have one political party that sees the budget debate as exercise in political warfare, not problem-solving.

At the center of this strategy is the White House.

In his campaign for re-election, President Obama repeatedly said that he had a plan to “pay down our debt.”  He even ran a campaign ad saying: “I believe the only way to create an economy built to last, is to strengthen the middle class—asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way.  So we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing, and home-grown American energy, for good middle class jobs.”

But this is all totally false.

Again, this was the strategy: offer a plan that does nothing to alter our dangerous debt course while pretending the opposite.

Then, once you’ve done that, attack anyone who dares to reduce the size of the bureaucracy.  Attack anyone who suggests Washington is too powerful.  Attack, attack, attack—while never offering anything to help Americans who are struggling every day.

After the White House budget was submitted in 2011, President Obama spoke at George Washington University and, with Congressman Paul Ryan sitting in front of him, and said:

“One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives….  It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years….  But the way this plan achieves [that goal] would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history….  This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit.  And who are those 50 million Americans?  Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid.  Many are poor children.  Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome….  These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.”

Majority Leader Reid said of one Republican reform effort that it was “a mean-spirited bill that would cut the heart out of the recovery that we have in America today….  It goes after little children, poor little boys and girls….  We want them to learn to read.”

This is how the White House and Senate Democrat leaders approach the budget debate.  It’s the same strategy with the sequester.  And Republicans, candidly, have not done enough to stand up to these egregious slanders.  Voting against Jack Lew would be a vote against these dishonest tactics. Misrepresentation of fact.

The painful truth is, the White House strategy has been largely successful up until now.  President Obama and his Senate Majority have blocked fiscal reform and continued our path to fiscal disaster.

It is time that we pointed out that the establishment they are shielding from cuts—the big-government apparatus they are defending—is hurting people every day.  Their policies, their endless support of the bureaucracy, has created poverty and joblessness and dependency.  In cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago—governed almost exclusively by Democrats at every level—good, hardworking people are hurt every day by the policies of the Left.

  • In the city of Baltimore, one in three children live in poverty.  One in three Baltimore residents are on food stamps.
  • In Chicago, there were roughly 500 homicides in 2012.  Fifty-one percent of the city’s children live in a single-parent family.
  • In Detroit, almost one in three households had not a single person working at any time in the last 12 months.  The city’s violent crime rate is among the worst in the country.  More than half of all Detroit children live in poverty.

This should not happen.  These are the consequences of leftist policies.  We are fighting to create jobs, to create rising wages, to create opportunity, to help more people earn a good living and care for themselves financially.  We are trying to lift people out of poverty, to strengthen family and community.  And we are trying to protect the good and decent people of this country from a debt crisis.

What he said.

Score One for the Other Part of the 1st Amendment

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The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog describes a victory for religious freedom.  In a case about which I first wrote just after its inception, a gang known as Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the village of Warren, MI, for having the temerity to put up a Christmas display without permitting FFRF to put up a sign next to it announcing that religion is “myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

First, Mayor James Fouts told them to take a hike, followed by their suit:

If you requested permission to put up a sandwich board saying that there is no Santa Claus, you would be met with the same response.  Santa Claus lives in the minds and hearts of many millions of children.  The belief of God and religion lives in the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people and is as much a part of the fabric of America, as the belief in democracy and freedom….

Your non-religion is not a recognized religion.  Please don’t hide behind the cloak of non-religion as an excuse to abuse other recognized religions.

Then a Michigan district court told these folks to take a hike.

Then the 6th Circuit told this…crowd…to take a hike.  On the matter of Warren’s alleged favoring of the religious over the secular, they had this:

That is not true even on its own terms.  All but one of the objects in the holiday display are nonreligious.  Ribbons, ornaments, reindeer, a lighted tree, wreaths, snowmen, a mailbox for Santa, elves, wrapped gift boxes, nutcrackers, poinsettias, candy canes, a “Winter Welcome” sign—all of them, all that is but the nativity scene—are secular…

A city does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause by including a creche in a holiday display that contains secular and religious symbols.

On the matter of the “Winter Welcome” greeting in particular, the 6th expanded with this [emphasis added]:

When one neighbor greets another in mid-December with “Happy Holidays,” it is the rare person who hears “Happy Holy Days.”  What was once the most religious of invocations has become one of the most faith-neutral, even secular.  One indeed can fairly wonder who has co-opted whom over time with these displays and words.  But that is a matter for another day.

On the gang’s bellyache that Fouts’ letter was itself some sort of cynical violation, the 6th had this:

These are not the words of someone trying to establish any one religion or religion in general; they are the words of someone trying to explain the common sense risks of disparaging faith-based and secular symbols, whether a creche or a Santa, alike….

It may be true that the Mayor misapprehended the Religion Clauses when he implied that atheists receive no protection from them by saying that the Foundation’s “non-religion” was “not a recognized religion.”  In this respect, the Mayor, apparently untrained as a lawyer, may not have missed his calling….  But this defense of his actions, premised on a misreading of precedent, does not transform his actions or the City’s display into an establishment.

On the gang’s crying about their free speech rights, here’s the 6th, again:

[Warren] could choose to add a Santa.  And it could choose to deny a sign saying, “There is no Santa.”  It could choose to incorporate a message about Ramadan.  And it could choose to deny a message disparaging any one religion or religion in general.  Just as Congress’s creation of a National Day of Prayer on the first Thursday of May does not compel the legislature to recognize a National Day of Non-Prayer each year, so too the City of Warren could opt to have a holiday display without a Winter Solstice sign.  Such holiday displays are quintessentially government speech….

And the Foundation, like everyone else, is free to urge the City to add or remove symbols from the display each year or to try to elect new officials to run the City—the customary answer to permissible government speech and the customary answer to policies with which citizens disagree.

FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor responded to her loss without any sense of irony:

Apparently we are a Christian nation, and cities may prefer religion over non-religion[.]

On the first, well, duh.  On the second, she needs to ask her lawyer to read the 6th‘s opinion to her.  It’s not what they said.  Her lawyer can find that opinion can be found here.

Thus we see the benefit of not taking the easy way out—the coward’s way out—and acceding to the demands of such anti-freedom fighters as these as soon as the latter threaten.

These lose—as all bullies lose—when faced with forthright and just opposition.

Facing down bullies is expensive, certainly.  However that expense pales beside the expense of meekly surrendering freedoms for the demanding.  Once you pay the Danegelt, you never get rid of the Dane.