Understatement of the Year so Far..

".. it probably wasn't the most sensitive thing," UC Irvine spokeswoman,Cathy Lawhon

From the file of "things that you never hear about from the MSM", Nate Jackson reports on the rather interesting choice of dinner fare at UC Irvine's 28th annual Martin Luther King Jr. symposium...

"A last-minute decision to serve fried chicken and waffles at a campus dining hall in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. was a regrettable choice and lacked sensitivity, UC Irvine officials acknowledged Wednesday...

The menu and a sign in the dining hall reading "MLK Holiday Special: Chicken and Waffles" were pulled together at the last minute by a chef and other cafeteria staff members, said UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon.

The culinary choices were made without any university oversight, Lawhon said.

UC Irvine student Ricardo Sparks, the 20-year-old co-chairman of the university's Black Student Union, lodged a formal complaint with the administration.

Sparks said the decision's insensitivity has outraged the student union and other ethnic student organizations on campus.

"It's just another in a long line of small events on our campus that aren't meant to be taken in a certain way, but are at least questionable in their cultural legitimacy," said John Murillo III, director of communications for the Black Student Union.

That the incident occurred during the symposium was especially disappointing, Murillo said.

"It takes all the radicalism and activism that we tried to do with the symposium and then [the cafeteria] serves chicken and waffles and takes away from all the stuff that we did," Murillo said.

Officials at UC Irvine agreed Wednesday that serving chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was not in "good taste."

I don't recall hearing about this on any of the major networks. Somebody try and tell me if such an incident that reinforces racist stereotypes had occured at Liberty University, Patrick Henry College or Brigham Young that it wouldn't be front page news in Second Coming boldface type and protests galore.

Injecting Reason Into the Abortion Issue

Columnist David Harsanyi raises some good points in today's article on the abortion debate...

"There were about 18,000 late-term abortions performed in this country last year, despite the increasingly rare medical need for such a procedure, despite the fetus's advanced neural development (including the ability to feel pain) and despite the baby's viability. Yet because this topic is encrusted with layers of cultural and political baggage, it goes on. The entire debate suffers from the same problem.

Though you probably didn't hear much about it, this week thousands of people marched for the pro-life cause in Washington and elsewhere. There were folks I generally don't hang with: Catholics for Life, Baptists for Life, Lutherans for Life -- no denomination left behind.

It had me wonder how many Americans avoid an honest look at the abortion issue because of the cultural dimensions of the debate. How many Americans instinctively turn to the pro-choice camp because pro-life proponents aggravate their secular sensibilities?

..Does life really begin on the say-so of a single person -- even the mother? Does her position or mental state change what a fetus is or is not? That kind of elastic calculation grinds against reason. Even our intuitive reaction to motherhood agrees. As Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who is an ob-gyn, once explained, "people ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing. They do not ask how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite."

Most people, not very ideological to begin with, are probably too squeamish to reach decisive conclusions on abortion. They balance their views somewhere in the middle as they weigh societal costs and realities. Most, though, oppose late-term abortion."

Besides religious people who oppose the barbarity of abortion, a number of atheists and secular humanists oppose killing the unborn as well so it's not entirely a religious argument. Unfortunately, the state of discourse on the topic usually degenerates to criticizing caricatures of pro-life people/reasons rather than examining the issues involved as a whole.



For example, one of the worst arguments raised by pro-abortionists are of the "B-b-b-but, do you want wimmin dying en masse in back alley coat hanger abortions instead? kind which are as remarkably stupid as they are historically ignorant and serve no purpose other than to obfuscate the discussion with irrational emotionalism rather than facts.

"I think there is nothing beyond this life—but life in and of itself is unique and special,"..In abortion, a human being ends up getting killed for no other reason than he or she wasn't planned or wanted. One should always err on the side of innocent human life." atheist Matt Wallace Link

EDIT: Don't miss Mark Tooley's interesting article either if this topic is of interest to you. Quote "Liberal Mainline Protestant support for abortion rights, and rejection of the historic ecumenical Christian stance against abortion, partly resulted from the sexual revolution of the 1960s, partly from prejudice against Roman Catholicism, partly from exaggerated ecological scenarios about over-population, and partly from an elitist preoccupation with suppressing ostensibly unmanageable growth in lower income and racial minority communities. Ironically, although Mainline Protestant elites were often in the forefront of backing the Civil Rights Movement, they were often simultaneously dehumanizing the unborn in ways that would especially afflict racial minorities."

Bush Was Right

In the wake of the mass release of Wikileaks documents, the MSM is suprisingly silent on one salient fact. James Zumwalt spells it out for us...

"Five years after Joe Wilson’s op-ed claimed no yellowcake was sold to Iraq — the ease with which Saddam could have snapped his fingers and reinstituted his nuclear program became apparent. In July 2008, in an operation kept secret at the time, 37 military air cargo flights shipped more than 500 metric tons of yellowcake — found in Iraq — out of the country for further transport and remediation to Canada.

The U.S. government is committed to efforts to make the world a safer place by seeking the removal of WMD threats. One would think a press undermining that effort at the time under the guise of freedom of the press would feel an obligation to accurately report the success of such a governmental effort. This should especially be the case after those same media contributed to the false perception Saddam possessed no WMD capability and, therefore, never really posed a serious threat.

As evidenced by the WikiLeaks disclosures, apparently no such obligation is felt."

Of course no such obligation exists. The existance of any such obligation by the press is as non-existant as the sincerity of the vast majority of anti-war protestors at the time who were merely seeking to make Bush look bad. If you doubt that at all, simply point me towards the huge numbers of protests and protestors that are chanting in public since a CIC with the letter 'D' after his name took the helm. (Click here for archived supporting link)

A History of the Violent Left

A recent discussion concerning why the Left is inherently more violent than the Right failed to produce a single coherent thought or rambling from anyone that could name a single, conservative group or movement that was inherently violent in nature. Columnist Kelly O'Connell expounds on this idea while providing examples of the largely ignored history of violence on the part of Leftists in his recent article. First he explains why Leftists are so much more violent in nature...

"What is fashionably called “liberalism‚” today is not what the term originally meant 150 years ago, when it was used to describe the philosophy of freedom. The Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment all influenced the creation of original liberal theory. For example, the Founding Fathers were all political liberals and the writing of the Declaration and Constitution were the high points of the ideas of political liberalism. But at the turn of last century, socialists began referring to themselves as “liberals‚” and they poisoned the term from its original meaning, allowing leftists to exclusively adopt the term.

Socialist theory began in earnest in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Communism, Marxism, and anarchism all come from the same socialist root. Marx claimed his theory’s first stage was socialism, where all capitalist production is controlled by the state. Then comes communism, where private property is abolished by an all-powerful government. Finally, this phase is supplanted by anarchy. “Anarchism is the political belief that society should have no government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all its members.‚” And violence was extolled by many socialist writers to help achieve their goals."

But what are some of the values/ideas closely held by conservatives that make them, generally speaking, much less prone to violence? O'Connell cites Amy Sturgis in explaining why yesterday's Classical Liberals are today's conservatives....

"1.An ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society;


2.The support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system;


3.The desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals’ rights from others and from its own expansion; and


4.The universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.


Real Conservatism is not a violent movement, even though it does espouse a strong military for defensive purposes. But it does so for defensive purposes. Further, while Conservatism supports the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, this is also done for self-defense. To say that a person who supports gun rights is therefore violent would be like saying a surgeon’s goal is to hurt people because he uses knives on them.

Overall, American Conservatism is fixated on our democratic constitutional republic, believing only by following a well-established Rule of Law can we all be safe. Further, freedoms also results from keeping government small and its powers trimmed so that citizens might maximize their own rights. Property is considered sacrosanct, which is the foundation of our capitalist system. So, needless to say, murdering politicians is not a Conservative value."

Last week we looked at Lee Harvey Oswald who assasinated President John F. Kennedy. The history of leftist assasins in this country (US) is often not mentioned in the terms of two other examples. First, Leon Frank Czolgosz who murdered President William McKinley (above) who was said to have been heavily influenced by "famed anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman." Czolgosz was quoted as saying, "I don’t believe in the Republican form of government and I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them."


Another example is that of Charles Guiteau, assassin of President James A. Garfield. According to O'Connell, "Guiteau was infatuated with John Humphrey Noyes teachings on Utopian socialism, and produced his own work plagiarized from Noye’s book. Noyes founded the infamous Oneida community, which Guiteau joined. This commune abolished traditional weddings for group marriage. In fact, it was Noyes who coined the term “Free Love."

O'Connell wraps it up neatly for us in his closing arguments...

"The reason leftists are willing to murder in the name of politics is because they normally do not believe in God, a hereafter, or even any classic definition of morality. So whatever is done, as long as it serves Marxism, it is good.

According to P.H. Vigor’s A Guide To Marxism, since religion cannot deliver any sense of morality, it is up to humanism to create standards. But, as Virgor notes,

"Moreover, in any discussion involving ethics or morality, the fundamental point for a Marxist is that there is no such thing as an absolute Right and Wrong. Right and Wrong are relative for a Marxist: a thing which is wrong at one time, and in one set of circumstances, will be right in another…It is therefore simply not possible to settle an argument with them by reference to ethical principles—by saying, for instance, that the consequence of a particular policy would be murder, and you cannot commit murder. From a Marxist standpoint, you can—in certain circumstances"

The point here cannot be made too vigorously. There is no moral center found in socialism, Marxism, anarchism, or communism, as we discover in the Bible’s Ten Commandments. There is therefore no such thing as absolute wrong or right action to a true leftist. So,where resistance to Marxism is encountered, a sincere leftist always has the option of picking up a weapon to further his “liberalism.” In fact, virtually every Marxist revolution has involved murderous attacks to gain power.. And this is why leftists will always be infinitely more dangerous than Conservatives."

Some Thoughts on the Musings of a Maryland Crustacean

Leo V. over at the blog The Maryland Crustacean offer up his thoughts on the formation of his personal political ideology in his most recent entry, Tilting Towards Libertarianism, the full text of which you can read here. I will offer up some of my thoughts on his commentary below. For example, MDC wrote..

"As a teenager and as a young adult, I pegged myself on the left side of the political spectrum. I called myself a liberal, which is of course a misnomer. Those who call themselves liberal today typically look to the government as the promoter and guarantor of the general welfare. In their view, the government is somehow to achieve this noble end through regulation, control and even ownership of economic activity; by redistributing wealth; or by incentivizing desired human behavior through regulation or the tax code. I prefer to label this ideology for what it is: statism."

In my early teens when I first began to form my thoughts on politics, I too leaned liberal/democrat. Looking back on those days, I believe the main reason for this was the (back then) near monopoly of media outlets by such democrat-friendly and outright liberal pundits featured on the main television channels that I watched. I must admit that they did a tremendous sell job in protraying themselves as the party that really cares and actually has compassionate feelings on the social and political issues of the day. Only through the help of some conservatives that I came into contact with in my late teens and the emergence of conservative talk-radio in this country did I actually begin to come out of my fog and realize that there actually WAS another side to the discussion. a side that argued from a standpoint of real outcomes in the real world and not overly-simplistic, emotion based argumentation.

"..my “liberal” friends often present me with the shallow argument of “How can you be a Christian and not believe in helping the poor? Doesn’t Jesus tell you to sell your possessions and give to the poor? Didn’t the believers in the first church hold all their possessions in common, as recorded in Acts 4:32-35?" That argument is so easy to refute it is laughable, especially when it is coming from a liberal who otherwise has little use for religion in general or Christianity in particular. First of all, I do believe in helping the poor. Christian charity and helping “the least of these” is commendable, especially when it is not done under compulsion, for “God loves a cheerful giver”. On the other hand, liberals, socialists and other sundry leftists, who otherwise correctly insist on the separation of church and state, have no qualms about using the power of the state to help the poor by confiscating other people’s money. Christian charity ceases to be charity when it is imposed by the state. If my liberal friends are interested in helping their fellow man, they can reach into their own pockets, as I will endeavor to voluntarily reach into mine."

While the Bible tells us that we should be donating about ten percent of our income, the real figure among Christians is closer to three or three and a half percent. Thusly, the Kingdom of God is operating here on this plane of existance with roughly 1/3rd of what it's actual budget should be. Could you imagine if people the world over actually started to donate 10% of what they make and the amount of hunger and suffering that would be alleviated?

I would only add that it seems that if recipients took help from Christian charities, then certain destructive lifestyles and practices would be discouraged by the giver of said aid and probably be a condition of receiving it. The government, it would seem, is less effective in discouraging certain behaviors. 'If it feels good, then why not do it in the road?' and all that. After all, 'there's an election coming up and we don't want to tick people off' and yadda-yadda-yadda.

On the Kennedy Inaugeration and Arizona

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as president 50 years ago this week. Columnist Jeffrey Lord points out an important reminder of how revisionist historians on the Left view someone who tried to actually lower taxes and wasn't afraid to label Communism for the nightmare that it truly is...

"..30-year old Joseph Kennedy III -- gave a speech to the Massachusetts legislature celebrating JFK's "City on a Hill" speech delivered days before he left for his swearing-in as president. Mr. Kennedy, a prosecutor on Cape Cod and viewed by some as the next Kennedy in politics, had the courage to take on the American left for its rhetoric while predictably doing the same with the American right. But sadly, like his uncle RFK, Jr., he repeated something that is a flat-out untruth: that John F. Kennedy was killed because, as the Boston Globe pretended, "of President Kennedy's opposition to racial discrimination and violence." To say that JFK was killed "for what he represented" is to gloss over a very hard fact.

John F. Kennedy was murdered. By a Marxist. A leftist. Someone who so admired both the Communist Soviet Union and Communist Cuba -- the nations JFK was calling slave states and had threatened with nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- that he tried to defect to both. Failing, he murdered John F. Kennedy. After almost killing the right-wing retired General Edwin Walker with a just-missed shot through Walker's Dallas living room window.

Looking back decades later it is no small point that the unraveling of the modern American Left can be traced to the day JFK's left-wing killer was let off the hook by the aborning liberal media of the day -- which tried instantly to put the blame on the American and Dallas right. Anywhere but where it squarely belonged -- at the feet of a determined Marxist who in fact was acting in the violent traditions of his decidedly leftist political faith.

John F. Kennedy's murder, the third time a president of the United States had been shot to death by a leftist -- and not counting the two leftist attempts to kill FDR and Truman -- was an eye-opening example in the day and right now of what can only be called left-on-left violence. The seating of Democrats and Republicans together at the next State of the Union Address will not -- cannot -- cure this.

In fact, JFK's assassination turned out to be the curtain raiser on a cascade of left-on-left violence through the 1960's and beyond. The once seemingly stable Big Government American left represented by JFK and before him FDR and Harry Truman slid into a cesspool of violence and violent rhetoric typified today by the Matthews remarks on Rush Limbaugh or the Robert Kennedy Jr. smear of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Fox News. And of course, Matthews again, attempting to link Mark Levin to the Tucson violence. A bizarre, scurrilous slur which has drawn a $100,000 challenge from Levin to Matthews to prove it in court."

Gabrielle Giffords was not targeted due to Right-wing talking points any more than JFK was. To state that Kennedy was assasinated due to his "opposition to racial discrimination" is especially laughable when any historian worth his weight in sheepskin would tell you that Kennedy himself stated "Can't you get your Goddamned friends off those buses? Stop them" to advisor Harris Wofford in reference to the so-called Freedom Riders who, at the time, were detracting attention from Kennedy's upcoming summit with Kruschev. Jonah Goldberg puts it best when he writes...

"A mere three and a half hours before Kennedy died, he was boasting to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce that he had increased defense spending on a massive scale, including a 600 percent increase on counterinsurgency special forces in South Vietnam. The previous March, Kennedy had asked Congress to spend fifty cents of every federal dollar on defense.

The Kennedy myth also veers sharply from reality when it comes to the issue of race. The flattering legend is that Kennedy was an un-alloyed champion of civil rights. Supposedly, had he lived, the racial turmoil of the 1960's could have been avoided. The truth is far more prosaic. Yes, Kennedy pushed for civil rights legislation, and he deserves credit for it. But he was hardly breaking with the past. In the supposedly reactionary 1950's, Republicans had carried most of the burden of fulfilling the American promise of equality to blacks. Eisenhower had pushed through two civil rights measures over strong opposition to southern Democrats, and in particular Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who fought hard to dilute the legislation. Again Kennedy was on the right side of history, but his efforts were mostly reactive"

Baby Doc back in Haiti

Hot off the presses. Cellphones are crackling from Miami to Montreal over today's unexpected news....

"PARIS -- Haitian former president Jean-Claude Duvalier (above), ousted from power by a popular revolt in the 1980s, unexpectedly returned to Haiti Sunday, a diplomatic source in Paris said, Agence France-Presse is reporting.

"He is on board an Air France flight'' going to Port-au-Prince, the diplomat who requested anonymity told AFP.

The plane was schedule to land in the Haitian capital around 5:30 p.m., EST, the newspaper said.

The 59-year-old ex-dictator, known as "Baby Doc", has been living in exile in France for nearly 25 years.

Duvalier's unexpected return comes while Haiti is marking the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people, and as the Caribbean island nation is mired in a political impasse following disputed elections. Link to full article.

Preliminary reports are, in fact, joyous coming from the ex-pat Haitian community. Seriously. I almost dread going to the Haitian barbershop that I have been going to every week for the last 10 years due to the amount of politically charged rhetoric that will be eminating from the Haitian community in that neighborhood. Everybody has an opinion and they most certainly tell me what it is.



The fundamental question raised here is, at what price, stability? Many Haitians living abroad now refer to the days of the repressive Duvalier regime (of both Papa and Baby Doc) with a certain sense of nostalgia and although they freely admit that while there wasn't freedom of political expression then, 'at least there was electricity'.



I once read where columnist Andres Oppenheimer referred to Haiti as 'the West's only failed nation state' and I think he was right. I recall that when I was there 3 years ago that the UN seemed to be making a noble effort there but in the end, it will have to be the Haitian people who need to step up and make things happen. But a paralysis of the central government which has been plagued by non-stop bickering and in-fighting leaves central authority there practically non-existant.



So I ask again, at what price stability? Is a much reduced crime rate and access to electricity worth you keeping your mouth shut concerning political matters ? What are your thoughts?