Bolt from the Blue
An Australian Federal judge’s decision to find columnist Andrew Bolt guilty of “breaching national race laws” has been hailed as a victory for tolerance yet is likely to result in the exact reverse. A few hours ago, Federal Court Justice Mordy Bromberg ruled that fair-skinned Aborigines were likely to have been “offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations” in columnist Andrew Bolt’s two articles “It’s so hip to be black” and “White fellas in the black”, published in 2009. Bolt argued that light-skinned aborigines were gaming the system by claiming to be black when they appeared to be white.
One aboriginal leader said, “I believe the result means that Australia will have a higher quality and more responsible media and that to some degree the persecution of Aboriginal people in the press will be lessened.” Bolt for his part, described the verdict as “a terrible day for free speech in this country.” He may appeal the decision to the full bench.
In practical political terms the judge’s decision is likely to be a political disaster for both the aboriginal cause and left-wing politics in Australia, not only because there is a considerable body of private opinion that believes Bolt spoke the truth, but because the precedent, if extended, would apply to a great many articles that Australian pundits have already written, are about to write or are thinking of authoring. A survey of the headlines suggests that even journalists who hate Bolt regard the verdict as a unnecessary and gratuitous restriction on freedom of speech. A lot of people are thinking: “I could have said that or written it. That could be me”.
The timing of the decision could not have been worse. The Australian Labor Party has never been so unpopular, and its causes — like Global Warming and Multiculturalism — are deeply resented by an increasing number of voters. Every poll shows Labor sinking in surveys to almost unprecedented depths.
From a public relations point of view Justice Bromberg’s decision is likely to be as publicly popular as Jesse Jackson winning a libel case against Mark Steyn for suggesting that he has played the race card in the past. Far from being a victory for “multiculturalism”, such a finding would be positively inflammatory. It would remind everyone just how out of control the regime of political correctness had become.
Psychologically, the basic problem is that the underdog ain’t.
The implicit justification of all “hate speech” laws is to protect the downtrodden; and to win public sympathy there must be an obvious mismatch between the alleged defamer and the object of persecution. Both those elements are absent here. On the contrary it looks like a case of PC establishment using the law to punish someone for stating what appears to be blatantly true. As a result, every day that the Bolt case runs will be another reminder to voters of why they hate Labor and all its works and pomps. Although the decision went against the Andrew Bolt, it is the Gillard government which will bear the curse.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.”
The ancient mariner was eventually freed from his albatross. But the Gillard government will wear it round their collars until an appeal removes it or a new election renders the issue moot.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
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Mr. Fernandez, I pause to salute a wordsmith with enough spine to insert “….works and pomps….” into a prophetic discussion of the pc personality disorder. Particularly enticing is the development of the sense of tramping Legions bearing the millstone inevitability of apocalypse for the pc nomenklatura. GBUSA
Sorta OT – I just bought the Kindle version of “Storming the Castle,” even though at first, I thought you were re-publishing material from BC.
But although many of the topics from the ebook were probably discussed here first, it has much more the flavor of a political tract, reminding me of “Common Sense” or “Why We Fight” in its’ tone.
Thanks Wretchard!
Hopefully many in Australia will be both sadder and wiser on hearing about this travesty of a case. I can only reiterate that political correctness is a disease of our body politic, our society, and that the left continues in this country to be professionally malignant and power-grabbing while the right whistles past the graveyard and hopes for a glorious resurrection one day.
The empirically verifiable fact that the left vastly outnumbers the right in our media, due in large part to the media-arts nexus, makes the battle harder, and as a consequence it must be harder and smarter fought. The last time we had a conservative run longer than any contemporary leftist run in the federal government was before notions of PC took over. That one ended in 1972. The Hawke-Keating run was 13 years (83-96), while the subsequent Howard-Costello one was 11 (96-2007). But still the left-leaning media said “it’s time” for a change, something they’d never say while the ALP is in power.
Coming as it does so soon after the threat of government control over the print media and journalists, the judgement in the Bolt case tolls a warning. It is also a reminder to conservatives to do a lot more cupboard cleaning when they do get into power, and make sure racial vilification laws (amongst others) do not allow activist judges and their human-rights oriented senior counsel learned friends to run our nation onto the patient fabian’s sharp rocks.
It’s all a lot of silly nonsense over nothing. There are no races. There is one human species. The Bible acknowledges only ethnicities. In the Sacred Scripture we read only of peoples and kindreds and tongues, not Whites and Blacks and Yellow Menaces and the Red Man. That there are different levels of pigment is a good thing, a ginger would not fare so well on the savanna in Kenya. Traits like color, or the epicanthic fold, are a vestige of the isolation of human settlements in ancient times. With the advent of air travel, and the lessening of social taboos against interracial marriage, one may confidently predict that the majority of the human population in 2500 AD will have olive skin and dark hair. Once you go brown, you never step down.
I live in Sydney and Wretchard is spot on in his analysis. The entire Aboriginal Grievance Industry is gaming the system. They contribute nothing to the common good but are always complaining that their dole payments aren’t enough. Labor and their good mates the Greens will cop it on this one as it’s one more reason to vote for the Coalition at the next election – as if the Carbon Tax, queue jumping boat people, the stuffed-up Resources Tax, and incompetent administration (BER, pink batts, etc) aren’t enough. Now it’s activist judges shutting up people who disagree with their agenda.
I read about Mark Steyn’s trials in Canada and thought that it can’t happen here. Guess I was wrong. Time to become politically engaged….
There are now more oxen to be gored than the authoritarians can control. For example there are competitive minorities. I meet interracial Australian couples all the time. Usually it is a white husband and a wife of Philippine or East Asian ancestry. Perhaps there is now a surplus of lovely lonely Caucasian ladies in the Antipodes? Reality is a multiple body problem and the control freaks can only manage a singular relationship. In America for reasons that have nothing to do with rationality most of the Asian voters were captured by the Democrats over the last 50 years. When people stop voting for FDR and Tammany Hall and start voting their own interests that will change. In Oz we can hope for a break between the Capitalist productive new Australians from East Asia and the rent seeking Aborigines and Middle Eastern immigrants.
What the Aussies need is a “flash mob”. Those in the media who agree with Bolt should all promptly come
out publicly in his defense. If there is a critical mass it will nullify this PC decision.
6. Blast from the past In America for reasons that have nothing to do with rationality most of the Asian voters were captured by the Democrats over the last 50 years.
Not irrationality on the part of the Asian voter, but on the part of the GOP, which has done everything it can to cleanse it’s ranks of everything but caucasian, evangelical protestant heterosexuals. A 1992 WA GOP platform plank calling for outlawing witchcraft and yoga classes? Many Americans of Asian extraction seek to better themselves at Uni, and meanwhile the Republicans are telling them the earth was created in 4,004 BC and humans walked the earth with dinosaurs.
More than anything, this reminds how much greater our freedoms are in America than in any other country in the world, EVEN the other English Speaking countries.
This is why our ancestors came here – this Freedom is what we have to defend. We’ve lost a lot, but we’re about to take it back.
Carthage must be destroyed!
Incrementalism won’t work. The Left nearly completely owns the levers of government – and through powerful unions and powerful momentum they won’t be relinquishing them soon. The Left nearly completely owns the halls of the Academy. They own almost every outlet of the media apparatus too, and they possess an outsized influence well beyond their numbers through their ownership of virtually every metropolis in Western civilization. They own most of the artists and fashion mechanisms.
These are powerful levers, weapons really, and the Left has gradually strangled it’s enemies with them. That is how their godhead Obama was installed in the White House. Is it realistic to suggest that with most of the soft and many of the hard mechanisms in the complete control, that the Left is somehow poised to now collapse?
Even squandering our money with their galactic redistribution crimes won’t stop them. They have an answer for that too – it’s called revolutionary Marxism. The “failure of capitalism” will be their next battle cry in this war. But some on the right are chortling even as the last vestiges of our Western system is destroyed – they say “Now! finally! The mask is off! The Left has been revealed, and now they will fall when the people see the truth!” wrong! The Left is waging war, not working within our system to refine it. To the extent they are within our system, it is to destroy it. “Fundamentally transform it”… And their gains have never been greater, their influence has never been wider. Are they really ready to collapse forever? Somehow I don’t think so…
W. ”Psychologically, the basic problem is that the underdog ain’t.
The implicit justification of all “hate speech” laws is to protect the downtrodden; and to win public sympathy there must be an obvious mismatch between the alleged defamer and the object of persecution.”
in other words:
Obama proposes letting the jobless sue for discrimination:
”Louie Gohmert, a Republican representative from Texas, went further. He told the Times that the proposal would send the following message: “If you’re unemployed and you go to apply for a job, and you’re not hired for that job, see a lawyer. You may be able to file a claim because you got discriminated against because you were unemployed.”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/obama-proposes-letting-jobless-sue-discrimination-191042168.html
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SF
“The implicit justification of all “hate speech” laws is to protect the downtrodden…”
Hate speech laws are designed to impugn a very narrow group of individuals. They are to protect the majority from race and gender groups that have been in social and economic roles of power in the past and they are essentials tools in social justice which is the political arm of an institutional hate ideology. This is how we get the political opposition of the Tea Party to be considered racist. There is nothing racist about the Tea Party but calls of racism is a modern day form of ostracism that gets the government involved, like accusations of witchcraft summoning the church elders. It is a way to convict without habeas corpus like the Spanish inquisition because ingeniously it is based on the perception of the alleged victim who is free to impute any motive they care to. Hate crime laws serve hate, bigotry, and state violence against the individual by its very nature.
These laws imbue supposed genetically pure races with near unlimited privileges and, not surprisingly, these “special” individuals are showing up on police blotters in growing numbers as they flaunt their state backed power to molest, rape, and generally exhibit the power once attributed to the plantation owners that the law seeks to limit. In short, hate laws are laws that merely interchange the perpetrators and victims based on historic grievances and are a continuance of what they claim to limit by power of the state. Liberals love hate laws to threaten and reduce people they hate to second class citizens and the government is proud to enforce it. Apparently this wanton evil is not limited to the USA.
12 Annoy Mouse (just to follow up)
”These laws imbue supposed genetically pure races (replace with religious )with near unlimited privileges”
NO its not limited to the USA.
eg ”the number of women wearing the full Islamic veil in France (is) at around 2,000 women”
but banning it would:
”” forbids women in niqab from leaving their homes and going out in public. It’s a kind of life-sentence to prison,” he said Yann Gre from the Don’t Touch My Constitution association defending the two women. ”
so the process is on for…
”The women immediately vowed to appeal their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if the fines are confirmed by a higher court. ”
so your conclusion is of course à propos!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8781241/Burka-ban-French-women-fined-for-wearing-full-face-veil.html
SF
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Am I the only one suspicious of posts that say the left is winning and that it is all hopeless?
Teresita: There are no races. There is one human species.
That’s utter nonsense. There are races. I can see them with my own eyes.
That said, I find it funny that the Left often makes the same statement about “there are no races, race does not exist.” Yet it then works tirelessly to pass and enforce laws built entirely around something they say doesn’t exist. There is no end to their self-delusion.
Morton @ 10: The Left nearly completely owns the levers of government – and through powerful unions and powerful momentum they won’t be relinquishing them soon.
Too true. The stables can’t be cleaned, so they need to be burned down. The best solution is to cut entire departments, starting with Education, probably the most useless of all. One of George W’s major failings — among many — was that he didn’t clean house at CIA and State, even in the face of obvious enemies and traitors. These are the sorts of questions I would ask were I running a Republican debate. “What Federal departments will you shut down?” “What will you do about Leftist infiltration in CIA and State?”
Needless to say, as long as the Republicans are stupid enough to let the immoderate moderators of the MSM run the debates, we are never going to hear such questions.
Teresita@8: “Many Americans of Asian extraction seek to better themselves at Uni, and meanwhile the Republicans are telling them the earth was created in 4,004 BC and humans walked the earth with dinosaurs.”
Wow, you’ve really bought the MSM spin on Repubs hook, line, and sinker, haven’t you? R’s/conservatives are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, racist, sexist, wanna-go-back-to-Jim-Crow assholes. Just as the Dems would prefer you to think.
Wake up and smell the coffee. In the Repub field there is a black man, a woman and a Mormon. There are those here among us throwback BCers hoping against hope that a different woman enters the race. I doubt anybody here would give a crap what gender, color or ethnicity a candidate is (except I doubt Victor could be persuaded to vote for a Jew). Why do you think the media trumpets these things when they find them? BECAUSE IT’S NEWS. It’s an oddity. A dumb little bit of weirdness to fill a time slot. By definition, that means most conservatives are pretty mainline.
Darwin probably had it close to right. Dinos died 65 million years ago and man, or at least proto-man, has been around about 4 million years. 95+% of conservatives know these things. If you’re going to keep stabbing conservatives with stuff that isn’t true, how about stabbing liberals with stuff that IS verifiably true? Like the fact that it was their party that fought tooth and nail against equal rights for blacks, figuratively in the case of the civil rights movement and literally in the case of the civil war? That a huge majority of the membership of the KKK were Dems? That the Dems have been the ones pushing the spending that is throwing us all over a financial cliff?
Good lord.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In the eyes of Judge Bromberg, Mr. Bolt committed a thought crime and was guilty of harming the collective with his callous opinions. We are well along on the slippery slope. Can re-education camps be far behind? Perhaps they will put them up in the Outback. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Peterike @15 – yes. The destruction and subversion by the Left won’t end until the tentacles of their Giant Federal Octopus are severed. Not sure if Toadold is referring to me in his “suspicions”, but being told what you want to hear about the Left won’t turn the tide of their subversions. They must be fought – and the fight must not be about accommodation or incrementalism, but their destruction… Dream on if you think that isn’t the Left’s goal for YOU and the right. If Obama hasn’t made that clear, then you are blind. Right now, hundreds of billions of tax dollars flow into the Left’s coffers so they can continue to wage war against us. The Department of Education is a bastion of propaganda and the Leftist agenda. I own multiple homes in multiple states, and while visiting those homes in the last presidential election, I was deluged at each address with students on leave from school canvassing for Obama, and teachers doing the same, often on school time. That’s millions of foot soldiers paid on the public dime out indoctrinating and agitating for one side and one side only – the hard Left.
Politically it might not be time to announce the full sweep of the eliminations, but we must install a president who will work hard to dismantle the Federal Leviathan before it’s too late… Given our precarious finances, it may already be too late for our republic. The cancer has been allowed to spread for more than a century without a genuine response. McCarthy was destroyed by the commie enablers in the media, and Reagan enlarged government only slightly slower than his Leftist counterparts.
Adam Smith famously quipped “there’s a lot of ruin in a nation”. Jus because the red tide was temporarily slowed by periodic push back from the likes of the Red Hunt or Reagan doesn’t mean that the communist cancer didn’t continue to dissolve the sinews of this mighty nation. Look about you and see the wasteland. Trillions in wealth has been destroyed forever. Rights are disappearing in smoke. The notion has shifted from “unalienable” rights, to rights suffered by our betters on both the so-called Right and the Left.
The tremendous might and wealth of America has masked the near completeness of the victory of the Left against the Republic. Their victory of devastation is only now coming into view as the last vestiges of wealth are consumed as the bulkheads buckle and the smokestacks topple into the sea…
15. peterike There are races. I can see them with my own eyes.
You can? Then how many races are there? Some people see three races: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. That makes people in India and Pakistan the same race as people in Scandanavia. And what about aborigines in Australia? They have Caucasian and Mongoloid DNA, but are as dark as Negroids. If you go by appearance, Jews are identical to Arabs. Some people call Obama “black” but he’s half “white”. Hispanic people are a mixture of Mongoloid and Caucasian.
The same thing happens with the colors of a rainbow, it all depends on who looks at it. Some see three colors, some see seven, some see more. But it’s really a continuum, you know. And arguing about where to set the dividing line is the biggest waste of time there is.
The real problem with race-hate crimes, IMHO, is their subjectivity. Am I the “correct” color/gender/sexual preference/ethnicity to qualify for inclusion in the protected class? If I have an Hispanic surname does that get me in? If I can produce a gene sequence showing a mutation that’s common among Chinese or Africans, do I get in? If I declare that I am questioning my sexuality, does that get me in?
Likewise, what constitutes the predicate injury for the crime to come about? Must I be killed or maimed, deprived of property? Is it enough that I had to sit at the back? What if I am given, arguably, a less-than-enthusiastic welcome at some watering hole or real estate brokerage? What if I read something that doesn’t name me but that makes me “feel bad?”
In other words, it’s a game board. By design.
So long as there’s money or fame or self-regard to be gained by playing the game, it will be played. Those who play it, play by very hard rules, absolutely ruthlessly and without shame, and indeed without self-knowledge. They are unstoppable.
Hence Mr. Bolt’s predicament. Nobody up to this point felt enough of an interest to stand up to the gamers. But by its nature the game runs to excess. If it was right to free the slaves, then it was right to let their descendants vote, then it was right to let them (and their descendants) get a lower bar into college and work “to make up for past wrongs,” then it was right to “privilege” them (in current cant) against dirty looks and nasty words.
There is no stopping point. Until we reach crisis. I think we’re just about there.
Oh, race and racism. Been there, done that.
MD – “That’s millions of foot soldiers paid on the public dime out indoctrinating and agitating for one side and one side only – the hard Left. ”
Labor unions have been communist bastions since the early 20th century. Teachers unions like public employee unions are militant wings of the Democrat party and are responsible for their core funding, organization and indoctrination. America has expended much blood and treasure to stave off communism* only to be overrun by it from within. Democrats hate the military because they are the last line of defense against union thuggery. But the military has been subsumed by Bolshevik methods that use feminism, racism, and homosexual agitation to tear open the workings of the professional military and to insert agents of change that are beholden to communism and are willing to assert fascist principles to effect their takeover of the state.
* The FBI and the CIA infiltrated labor unions to fight off the Soviet control throughout the Cold War. That effort has stopped and unions are now controlled by left-wing extremists without the benefit of US counter surveillance and counter intelligence. Now the enemies of the state have flip-flopped to the enemies of the former Soviet Union, namely constitutional conservatives. There will be blood and in all likelihood it will be yours. You have been determined to be genetically undesirable by the new master race. The fascists have so far failed to eliminate the second amendment in the US so it is absolutely vital to limit the first amendment. The thought of constitutional militias being able to communicate across the US cannot be allowed.
Where are the petards when you need them? Recently the Cherokees have begun to expel thousands of blacks from their ranks for parasitizing Federal largesse supposedly owed the Indians. I support living up to our treaties with the sovereign Indian nations, but it’s rich watching one group which has transformed itself into a parasitical grievance group as it gives the sharp elbow to another parasitical grievance group for parasitizing it’s parasitization. Isn’t that racist? Oh wait – it can’t be cuz niether group is white.
I believe the result means that Australia will have a higher quality and more responsible media and that to some degree the persecution of Aboriginal people in the press will be lessened
Are aborigines being “persecuted” in the press? I seriously doubt it. Australia has the same problem with “victimologists” clinging to an nachronistic and false assumption that race relations are the same as they were generations ago.
The aborigines have had a tough time in history, but their position has not been improved by being “kept on the reservation”. Besides, times have changed and not in the way the politically correct realize. There’s are growing numbers of successful non-Caucasian immigrants, principally people like the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and subcontinentals.
If you go into many an elite institution of higher learning you will be shocked to see it resembles a Chinese-Indian preparatory academy. And no aborigines. It is the same in other walks of life. “Hi Fong! Hi Rajeev! Hi Mike!” But no aborigines. PC is based on a very narrow, left-wing white world that is rapidly going out of existence.
If “white guilt” was responsible for the aboriginal predicament it is now at least partly responsible for its prolongation. Maybe the cycle will be broken when enough there are enough Fongs and Rajeevs to laugh the PC policies to scorn. Until then there’s a race card in every deck!
14. toadold
Am I the only one suspicious of posts that say the left is winning and that it is all hopeless?
I didn’t see MD’s posts as cries of hopelessness. He is telling us this: “You can’t really solve a problem until you understand what the problem really is.”
If the GOP takes both Houses of Congress and the WH next year, and I hope they do, this only means that a great battle in a long war has been won, but it does NOT mean triumph. The bureaucracy considers the GOP as occupiers, and will do their best to sabotage policy directives — we’ll have an insurgency on our hands. The insurgency will extend to multiple Wisconsins, and bigger and badder “falsh mobs” bent on real mayhem. The MSM, with the embarrassing Obama out of the way, will turn their full artillery on the “occupiers.”
If Ginsburg hangs in until 2013 before retiring, a Republican president can appoint a conservative Justice; but will he/she do that? We need another Thomas at best, or at least a Scalia or Alito or Roberts. Would a Romney appoint someone like that, or will we get another Souter?
And what are we to do with all those institutions taken in the Long March by the Left? The most practical near-term thing would be to both defund them and ignore them. But can we, without a huge pushback?
Unions only have power because law enforcement turns a blind eye to extortion, period. Refusing to work under certain conditions is fine but refusing to allow anyone else to do the job you refuse to do is holding a company or owner hostage, to say nothing of violating the other individual’s right to work. That HAS to change before we ever become an industrial powerhouse again. And who is holding up the opening of the plant in South Carolina? Liberalism is a criminal enterprise which will inevitably come to a bloody end.
“one may confidently predict that the majority of the human population in 2500 AD will have olive skin and dark hair.”
Why wait? I’m predicting that on October 01, 2011 the Majority of the 7 billion humans on earth will have olive skin and dark hair.
Those with a higher percentage of Neanderthal genes will hold the top of the social pyramid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj94Ts6EbFU&feature=related
Neathanderals ‘won’ by borking the African humans.
All a theory, of course.
Neanderthals were always outnumbered. By surrendering their status as a sub-group of hominoids, they spread their genome into the larger, faster breeding population. Or that’s the theory, at least. A theory developed by the cross between the Neanderthals and the Africans. Those hybrids dominate the planet and have for thousands of years. Skin color doesn’t matter.
This bodes ill for western civilization. Despite our superiority in almost every facet of modern life, Muslims can ‘win’ be outbreeding us. To match their breeding rates we have to surrender what make the west the west. To match the west’s social, cultural and technological excellence, Islam has to give up what makes them Muslims.
First side to blink becomes extinct.
The aborigines have had a tough time in history, but their position has not been improved by being “kept on the reservation”.
Another Aussie analogy to the American narrative. American Indians, as you allude, are largely in the same trap, but at least they have casinos, duty-free tobacco shops, and mineral rights fees that some of them can count on; what do abos have?
28. stoicheion: “Despite our superiority in almost every facet of modern life, Muslims can ‘win’ b(y) outbreeding us.”
I take consolation by remebering we kill more efficiently and ruthlessly when faced by extinction. We’ll be just fine in the end.
And I think it is high time to end Native American set-asides. Either they are part of this nation or they can leave. We won the war, suck it up. Evolve or perish.
SpeakEasy – “… I think it is high time to end Native American set-asides.”
If the recent theories of immigration based on DNA are true, it suggests that the “Native Americans” slaughtered Caucasoid races when they came to the great homeland 10,000 years ago. If this is true then the Native Americans owe us a great deal in reparations. Maybe I have a small stake in a gaming casino.
SpeakEasy, It wasn’t a war,It was called manifest destiny by the whites, Chinese, various Euros, Mexican’s (yup mexicans have Euro blood also) and the others who came to America and were born here. Even the various Indian tribes helped out in the holocaust of their red brothers. It was ethnic cleansing and outright genocide not to mention trampling on a peoples religion.
Would you say the same about the six million European Jews etc. who were taken to the gas chambers?
The enslavement of Africans?
The treatment of the Irish or Italians?
Or are you simply picking on Red Indians.
Speakeasy #27 – “Unions only have power because law enforcement turns a blind eye to extortion, period. ”
By law enforcement, do you mean the fraternal brothers within the AFL-CIO chartered International Union of Police turn a blind eye to union thuggery??? Or do you mean attorneys general, who generally come from those major cities and Capitols where “labor” and the Democratic Machine are headquartered, turn a blind eye to union thuggery???
Evidently it is acceptable to potentially offend what some call the oreos:
http://www.black-and-right.com/2011/09/28/video-of-the-day-96/
But it is definitely not acceptable to potentially offend the reverse oreos!
We may need to suspend elections…after the next elections so that we can get these reparations and redistribution programs straitened out.
“I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”
Not for any political reason…just because it is so damn confusing as to who is supposed to be getting what preferential entitlement.
hep-T
I match your grievance mongering with my own. Name the genocidal horrors that have been perpetrated against the “Red Indians” over that last generation or two? How many unborn generations will be tarred by the fecal smear that you brush upon them? How far do you want to go back? The worlds has been a savage place and was on its way to equality until people like you, dripping with hatred demanded that those whose skin colors were the same as those who “settled” the new world be punished. That punishment has been going on, is group punishment, racial identity politics, finds its roots in the Democratic Party and Leftist Progressive camps and is a continuance of racist hate politics.
American settlers killed 6 million Jews? Still harbor hurt feelings over injury to the Irish? Weren’t they all killed in the great genocide? The Italians? Wow. Time for reparations for slavery? The civil war wasn’t enough for you? Still clamoring for blood? Haven’t had enough? What would you do? Tax the unborn or would it be more expedient to murder them all, or do you just tax and punish them as a new race of slaves for all of eternity?
28. stoicheion: This bodes ill for western civilization. Despite our superiority in almost every facet of modern life, Muslims can ‘win’ be outbreeding us.
You make the same mistake the oil “peakers” do, you wiggle one variable and hold all others static.
It is only Western Civilization that makes our current 7 billion people possible.
In Muslim countries, children are rewarded with AK-47s for winning Q’u'r’a'n recital contests. In Western countries, children compete for scholarships for universities so they can make breakthroughs in genetically-engineered food, or killing cancer cells with modified viruses. Take away our technology, impose sharia law globally, and population will fall to the level that can be supported by 600 AD know-how: 200 million. Then the playing field will be leveled, and the West can start all over again, hopefully without the suicidal predilection towards Political Correctness.
Standard operating procedure for an invading culture is to exterminate the indigenous people. As Annoy Mouse @ 31 mentioned: North America was subjected to multiple waves of migrant invaders prior to the arrival of the Europeans. With the exception of the native Hawaiians, I don’t think there is anywhere on the inhabited planet where one could point and say these are the original indigenous people. Even the Maoris of New Zealand are the descendants of a second wave of Polynesian migrants who conquered the original inhabitants. Now having said this, the ethics of “Right by Conquest” comes into focus. Do I have the right of title to a piece of land because I murdered the original inhabitants? From a Judeo-Christian perspective that doesn’t sound right (although as I write this, I’m reminded from the Old Testament that the ancient Jews were not shy about wiping out rival groups of people if the Jews wanted a particular piece of real estate). I’m uncomfortable with the conclusion that only the strong should be allowed to prevail. However I recognize that this is consistent with Darwinism and the basis behind biology. Perhaps this root discomfort draws a circle around the basic difference between people who accept socialism versus people who believe in a free market / limited government? I definitely do not believe in socialism but at the same time I don’t like this idea of the strong crushing the weak. Perhaps the root of this contradictory attitude is that socialism comes from the coercive power of government and ultimately socialism represents the worst form of the strong victimizing the weak?
“Either they are part of this nation or they can leave.”
First: Suggesting that Native Americans somehow “leave” is just like the Arabs telling Jews, born and bred in Israel, that they need to get out. Worse, actually, since the memory of man doesn’t run to a time when they weren’t right here. Second, Native Americans are legally part of their OWN nations, which exist as quasi-wards of the Federal Govm’t. Don’t blame them for this setup, this is how WE (speaking of the US Govm’t and it’s representatives in the 19th century) wanted it. We were the ones who designed this whole system, after all, since at the time we didn’t want them voting in any elections. (since modified, but that’s how it began)
And the various Nations are somewhat sovereign, but not really: they are allowed their own police forces, for example, but not their own military, their finances are overseen and managed by the Feds, and while they are independant of State Law they are subservient to Federal Law. Again, our choice, not theirs. The States, in the beginning, never wanted to have to deal with them.
At least we did give them control of their own land and minerals – except that we didn’t. The BIA collected mineral royalties for 80 years and basically squandered it all through “bad bookkeeping”. (read: blatant theft by all those involved) Don’t take my word for it, this was the conclusion of a Federal Judge at the end of a legal case that stretched years and years and years. The BIA’s final defense: they had kept most of the royalty records (80 years worth, at the time!) in shoeboxes and it wasn’t their fault they had somehow mislaid most of them. Seriously, that was the testimony in open court. We’re talking billions of dollars the just “disapeared”, and supposedly nobody knows how. (cue scene of John Belushi, palms up, looking surprised)
We’ve got a long history of ripping up treaties anytime we think they don’t suit us anymore; I think it’s time that we learn to live with the choices we made, even if it *does* allow Indian Casino’s and the like. I can’t blame them for finally learning how to game the rules that we made them live by. It’s not that I’m pro-pc, or have any personal connection to the Red Indians/Native Americans. It’s just that on my own, I’ve looked into the dealings between our Fed Govm’t and the various Indian Nations, and over a long period of time stretching almost to the present it really has been more miserably rotten than most people can possibly believe.
Black fella, white fella, brown fella, yella
Are all the same under the law
Except when the Left says the black’s Cinderella
And there’s a line that we must draw
The Left still proclaims that our speech is still free
Except when it’s hateful of course
The Left says that hateful is what offends me
And worse when you don’t show remorse
And you should be grateful that we run the show
We keep you from doing a wrong
For we of the Left are your betters you know
And that’s just the name of that song
I was fully prepared to join the chorus against hate legislation until I read the liked article. In this country, one may be able to publish a column on light-skinned blacks (for example) gaming the system, but people would question the motive for doing so, and I doubt one could mention them individually, with photos, as gaming the system and expect no consequences whatsoever. Because they are, in fact, black people, using criteria more stringent than public opinion on their skin color. My Italian sister-in-law has very dark skin; if she applied for a privilege reserved for blacks, that would be a problem. If she was awarded that privilege, that’s another problem. A light-skinned black person receiving a benefit designated for black people should be no problem at all.
So here is Bolt naming specific people of Aboriginal descent, who have qualified for posts reserved for Aborigines even though one (for example) “looks Swiss,” thus suggesting the recipients are somehow at fault for doing so. They are not, by birth or by policy. By directing his opinions in such a personal way, Bolt went looking for trouble. He got it. Case closed.
Ethnic preferences based upon past wrongs are a throwback to an earlier time which is alien to what we think of as modern values. The notion that the children should be guilty for the crimes committed by their fathers and mothers is repulsive. How many people would advocate punishing a three year old child because its father was convicted of DWI? Murder? Anything at all? Anyone out there? But that is what it is based upon.
Although masked as something else, this is just what things like affirmative action truly are: deservedly extinct notions that have been resurrected. Slavery in the US ended a long time ago. Everyone who was a slave is dead. Everyone who was a slave owner is dead. If you have a feud with the dead take it up with them, not with the living. Those currently alive are blameless for any historical wrongs unless they directly participated in them. Period.
But things like this are just tactics, plain and simple. The important thing is the current Societal Narrative. And the purpose of the Narrative is to establish the winners, losers, and social pecking order by definition rather than contest, analysis, or merit.
But not all Narratives are equal. Some are more fragile than others, and this is determined by the distance of the Narrative from actual experience(a/k/a reality). And the harshness of the penalties exacted by the prime beneficiaries of the current Narrative against those who question it are directly proportional to the fragility of the Narrative.
Whenever the ruling class needs to prosecute heretics, whether you want to call them heretics or people who commit “hate speech,” it indicates that there are indeed cracks in the structure of the Narrative.
wws, you make a good point for the fact that American Indians have been the victims of bad governance. For the record I am for Indian casinos and voted for them. They were set up with the situation and it seemed fair that they benefit by it. No issues there. What I am talking about though is how for back do you want to go to dig up grievances and how far in the future do you want to go to make amends for them. I didn’t wipe out any Indians and as far as I know, none of my Scandinavian forebears did either. Jesus Christ died for my sins. Who died for the Indians and when will the debt be considered paid in full? What do I owe Ward Churchill? Why are generations of children indoctrinated with these grievances while being simultaneously lectured on the racist old white men of our founding? They are being taught that they are of evil genes and should not reproduce because they are tainted with the original sin. Shall we settle this in blood once and for all or if Christ forgave us will you?
I have an impulse to apply for one of the many UK state benefits that in practice, if not in theory, are preferentially given to blacks, stating my racial origin as African. (I’m something like 90% Scottish extraction, BTW, and know of no recent African blacks in my ancestry.)
And when the answers I give to the questions are called into question, state something that’s nothing more or less than the truth; that I am indeed of African extraction. As is everybody else.
So here is Bolt naming specific people of Aboriginal descent, who have qualified for posts reserved for Aborigines even though one (for example) “looks Swiss,” thus suggesting the recipients are somehow at fault for doing so. They are not, by birth or by policy. By directing his opinions in such a personal way, Bolt went looking for trouble. He got it. Case closed.
Remarks made on this site might be directed against me in a personal way, but even if I could prove it, (and I am not white as if that meant anything) that would still not justify a conviction against the person who made them nor bringing charges against them. As long as no threats were uttered and obscenities were avoided, those remarks would be in the nature of opinion and protected.
Yesterday’s post described how a Shi’a in Lebanon was arrested for giving offense because the flipflops he sold contained a Halloween motif with a graveyard cross somewhere in the background; how a Pakistani woman is now sentenced to death for making a remark about Mohammed to a group of women who were drinking water from a well; how a couple in California are being fined for having a bible study class in their home. We remember how Mark Steyn was hauled before the Canadian “Human Rights” tribunal for expressing an opinion about Islam or how Geert Wilders was accused of “hate speech”.
The Bolt conviction is more of the same. These things are happening because ordinary behavior — things which 90% of the population would not even notice — is being criminalized under so-called racial tolerance laws. That is politically unsustainable. The fundamental problem with Andrew Bolt’s conviction is that you cannot make an offense out of expressing an opinion likely to be heard in a large percentage of Australian homes.
These laws have become something of a Gessler’s Hat. People will readily duck under helicopter rotor blades or a low lintel. People will generally do anything required for a good reason. But some spirit of rebellion naturally arises when they are asked to do something arbitrary under pain of punishment, like bow to the Landburger’s hat. Because people are not so stupid as to unaware of why the obeisance is required. It is required not by necessity, but to display submission. Bolt may have gone looking for trouble, but so did William Tell when he refused to incline his head to the hat on the pole.
At that point it stops being about the hat and starts being about something else. During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines the single greatest provocation to the population (although the Japanese authorities were not aware of it) was the requirement to bow to the sentry. In Japanese culture a bow may have been mere politeness. But to the Filipino man the required bow was a mortal insult.
How many guerillas were recruited by this gratuituous offense, I do not know. But it was a considerable number. Years after the war the Japanese sentry box remained the staple of radio dramas. “Kura! kura! Bow to Imperial Japan. Bakero! Ha-ha-ha!” The IJA probably raised thousands of mortal enemies against itself by this simple avoidable action. So to the Left I would say, keep up the hate speech codes. Keep saying to all those who disagree: you had this legal penalty coming. Kura-kura. Bakero. Ha-ha-ha!
The left has long had a penchant for legislating for their notions of what constitutes good behaviour, but at the same time white-anting the old ways of instilling disciplined behaviour. Their legacy is uncontrolled opening hours, the resulting drink-fuelled violence between midnight and dawn, children supported in running away from home, parental authority undermined, marriage undermined, cohesion across society undermined by the demonisation of assimilation and the elevation of multiculturalism.
Poltical correctness is de rigeur in all our educational institutions, our politics, our media, our “entertainment”. Christianity has been under attack while other religions (some of which are not proper religions at all but controlling cults) must be given PC respect. Minorities with potentially violent behaviours are given a free pass, indigenous people are marginalized in a kind of living museum where the exhibits are falling apart before our eyes. Some aboriginals are now called “toxic coconuts” by the green/left and the victim industry for daring to cooperate with mining companies. Border protection is a political football, and the undermining of that is dressed up by the left as compassion for “vulnerable people”.
Both Australia and the US are houses divided along stark demarcation lines, and no good can come of it.
No matter how many ways people express this, the court finding in no way attacks free speech.
The finding very clearly articulate that Bolt was expressing opinions NOT laden with facts. This has been an ongoing practice of Mr Bolt, who also demonstrates a deceiptful practice of articulating free speech concerns when relating to himself, yet demonstrably not supporting the free speech of others who, in particular, do not share his ideological perspective. That would be disengenuous hypocrisy. So then all ye defenders of free speech, is that actually what free speech is about, you know, dishonesty, double standards, vilification and silencing those who oppose you? Really?
Please note as well, Mr Bolt was able to walk out of the court after being found guilty and immediately be afforded a Mainstream Media platform to air his views on… Attack on free speech or oxymoron?
Those who may be interested in the contemporaneous Filipino view of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines might want to look up “Jappy Days”, a comic book produced by Liborio Gatbonton in 1946. Its cover is — you guessed it — a slant-eyed, buck-toothed, toothbrush mustached Japanese soldier.
The Lopez museum has a digital archive (just search for “Liborio Gatbonton”) of some of these cartoons which include the famous “Japanese Marine” stereotype with numerous watches on his wrist, together with many send-ups of the habits of the occupying forces. The Japanese occupiers were depicted — and seen by the Filipinos — as simian, crude and brutal. In contrast, all things American were seen as advanced, humane and of high quality.
It almost seemed as though the more the IJA pressed the population to laugh at their recent American past, the more they cleaved to it. It will shock many “Western readers” to realize see how under the pressure of occupation so much of Filipino culture became a celebration of their Christianity and Americanization. A pack of Camel cigarettes became the talismanic connection to a deeper kind of allegiance. It represented God, country, the flag and above all, everything the Imperial Japanese Army was not.
That is why attempts by our new politically correct overlords to force the celebration of gay marriages in churches, compel clergymen to act at variance with their traditions and in general to bow to Gessler’s hat may have an effect they do not even realize. A faith, even one you would not otherwise believe in, thrives in persecution. These PC speech codes will one day be remembered exactly for what they are. Not mandates to tolerance — an oxymoron if ever there was one — but compulsions to submission. Never. Never. Never.
What animates me is not that people disagree, that old wounds are fixated upon and celebrated as souvenirs of war, or that injustices do not have hard edges in time at the end of the Roman epoch but reach seamlessly into the antiquity of human history, nor that Muslims have historic and irreconcilable hatred towards the Jews, not that, it is mans nature to relish supposed insults. But it is the embodiment of these personal bigotry’s by an authority higher than God’s forgiveness we call government to take up the cudgel and to uphold these hatreds by threat of the use of force, by the destruction of wealth that a lawsuit defending against an office that prints trillions of dollars and whom owns the process for which the individual is to extricate themselves is a hell Dante would know well.
It is human to hate those whose ancestor wronged your ancestors because these are individual shortcomings. But to codify this muscular bigotry into the business of the state is fascism, and we have seen how that turns out.
ah, annoy mouse, you bring up a character who epitomizes the perversity and problems in the system – Ward Churchill.
Here’s the key to understanding that sad clown – as he got looked at more and more, it was revealed that Ward Churchill’s actual Native American ancestry was…. 0.0%!!! Yes, he was 100% northern European! Which means that his act as some put upon “Indian” was a complete and total fraud – he was no more “Indian” than Al Jolsen was “black” when he painted his face with shoe polish. Al least Jolson had some musical talent – Churchill had NOTHING but a fraudulent academic career based on bluffing other left wing academics who were even stupider and more gullible than he was!
Here’s the key to understanding the academic grievance system that Churchill exploited so well: It turns out that what it is is just whites stealing from other whites, dressing up as Indians and dragging the Indians names through the mud in the bargain.
Over and over, the core of this racial benefit system turns out to be fraud and theft – on that I agree with you completely! And in order to fix it, we have got to acknowledge that this rotten, corrupt, fraud-ridden system is the one that WE built and WE imposed on everyone!
As the famous quote goes, “We have met the enemy – and HE is US!”
If I hear anyone from Australia, or Canada (which has similar laws), claim that their countries enjoy freedom of speech, I will have to work hard to keep myself from bursting into uncontrollable laughter.
Of course I suppose its no worse than the Speech Police on many U.S. college campuses.
Ward Churchill is a sad case of a guy who saw the gravy train and jumped on. It worked for a while until he got a bit too aggressive and was exposed as a fake in both his “scholarship” and his ancestry. There are other passengers whose tickets are no better than his. For example the “Pigford” litigation gave black farmers several $BN to compensate them for being denied federal loans. The class of claimants kept growing and now includes about 5 times as many black farmers as actually exist. But nobody wants to check too closely, it’s just taxpayer money and the scrutineer may get screwed with a visit by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.
As for Indian casinos: yeah, we have that here in Connecticut. If your blood pressure is low, fix it by reading Jeff Benedict’s “Without Reservation” that describes the shenanigans leading to the casinos. I mention them here because the “tribes” consist of whoever gets voted in by the current members. Blood is not the (whole) story: LA gang members with no line of descent or historical connection to the Pequots and other tribes, are now cashing their dividend checks.
Last point on the reparations/spoils system…casinos can be seen as a tertiary (service) industry or as a primary (extraction) industry. I favor the latter interpretation, but either way they do not create much of a virtuous cycle in the economy. Local communities get no tax revenues from the casinos but have to pay to keep up the roads burdened by casino traffic. Ditto, they have to build schools for the kids of casino workers (most are non-tribal) but don’t get the taxes to pay for that. Crime and medical issues generated by the casinos are again a burden on the towns.
And best of all, the casinos are going broke. They thought they were entitled and they kept building. Now their paper is coming due and they don’t have the cash or the rating to cover. So now the lawyers are learning first-hand what it means to try to negotiate with a wastrel sovereign.
Overall, I am not impressed by the “benefits” of systems that differentiate among groups like this. Those on the short end resent them; those on the other end are protected (for a time) from reality. Ultimately it breaks down again, and it usually isn’t pretty.
Teresita 8,
If Asians Blacks and Gays or for that matter Black Gay Asians want to be left alone to live their lives in peace the best way to do that would be for them to support the accumulation of private property that empowers individuals and small communities as well as the rule of law and a government focused on protecting individuals and their property. To me that sounds like Republicanism. Minorities who buy into the culture of hate and competitive victimology become chumps who are used by the Democrats to weaken the protections that they need. Real threats to persons and property need to be acted on by a government strong enough and focused enough to act but controlled and restrained enough not to intrude and smoother. People must have the Right to Be Wrong. That includes badly dressed bible thumpers.
44. Wretchard
Yesterday’s post described how a Shi’a in Lebanon was arrested for giving offense because the flipflops he sold contained a Halloween motif with a graveyard cross somewhere in the background; how a Pakistani woman is now sentenced to death for making a remark about Mohammed to a group of women who were drinking water from a well; how a couple in California are being fined for having a bible study class in their home. We remember how Mark Steyn was hauled before the Canadian “Human Rights” tribunal for expressing an opinion about Islam or how Geert Wilders was accused of “hate speech”.
The Bolt conviction is more of the same. These things are happening because ordinary behavior — things which 90% of the population would not even notice — is being criminalized under so-called racial tolerance laws. That is politically unsustainable. The fundamental problem with Andrew Bolt’s conviction is that you cannot make an offense out of expressing an opinion likely to be heard in a large percentage of Australian homes.
I respectfully disagree that the Bolt case is the same. At issue is that Bolt’s world is purely black and white: if you don’t look black, then you’re white and therefore cannot be an Aborigine. And further: calling people out by name, detailing their racial components and saying they claimed ‘Aboriginal’ only to further their careers. To me, that method, that thought process, personalization, polarization, argument from moral authority etc. is most indicative of a Lefty, as is hiding behind the shield of free speech after the fact, and I just cannot support it at all. Australians have a situation much like our American Indian one, which suggests to me that, yes, that same opinion might be expressed in many Australian homes, but it is likely to be countered with argument from within the same homes. They are good people; they will sort it out.
I was struck by the signs of enroaching criminalization in the post yesterday. Then amused by the Labour minister defending the integrity of the British media in False Flags, as I thought the integrity went missing years ago and hardly any of the British have noticed. The UK hate speech statutes seem to me much harsher and comprehensive than Australia’s, and it does seem to me specifically aimed at keeping native sentiment toward a certain growing immigrant population in check. I have no trouble opposing these vague laws in the US, or anywhere else that isn’t actively suicidal.
PC speech codes are an attempt to restrict freedom of speech but these can be ignored. Once you turn PC speech codes into laws then there is trouble. For the speech controllers it isn’t about controlling speech – it’s all about control.
I might even accept Alec Baldwin as a resident in Canada if only you guys would take our human rights councils and the enabling law in exchange. We’d give you the whole speech package at no charge – free speech you might say.
This post and the comments recall the idiotic assertion of the LEFT that “every time we [Americans] kill a Muslim terrorist, all we’re doing is recruiting more terrorists!”
They don’t seem to grasp this works both ways.
In fact, every time Muslim terrorists behead, explode, burn, stone, hang, shoot, or otherwise murder and mutilate to honor their Prophet and their Allah, all they’re doing is convincing Americans we have no choice but to do our utmost to neutralize those who murder their own co-religionists and every culture with whom they share a border.
Same thing with PC Speech codes.
Oppression creates a steely response.
The thing about race — what makes it so specially unfair — is that it is wholly superficial. You cannot rub it off. Gandhi was thrown off a first class train in South Africa, despite having a first class ticket because of his race. Jose Rizal was fundamentally shot because you couldn’t be a doctor, linguist and polymath in the Spanish colony of the Philippines if you were an indio. It was bad form and gave the rest uppity ideas.
None of the people who complained against Andrew Bolt would have been thrown off the train with Gandhi. None of them would have been shot along with Jose Rizal. It’s a difference I’ll return to later.
Race is how other people define you, the ones with the ropes or the grants — they may be the same thing, if you think on it. Until recently it was not something you had any choice about. You can argue that once people have a say in the matter then other problems may have supervened, but they were no longer about race, though the words continued to be used.
Many of the people who swore out the complaint against Andrew Bolt had blond hair. One of them actually said for the benefit of the camera, “I am as white as Andrew Bolt.” They would certainly be treated as white in equatorial Africa. And certainly treated as white in Detroit. You can just imagine one of them telling a black stick-up artist: “Now look here. Despite my blond hair and blue eyes, I assure you that I’m really black.” How do you think that will play? Almost certainly he would be told, “sure you are. Now just hand over the wallet, whitey.” Is that speaking truth to power? Or is that racism?
It’s unfair and may not reflect a person’s inner aspiration, such as it is. But that is how race is; that is exactly why Martin Luther King talked about the impossibility of a man’s character overcoming the color of his skin. Race isn’t optional. You cannot expunge it through character. You cannot change it by education. It is not altered by adopting a new passport. When race becomes a matter of self-definition, when it becomes like a suit of clothes, something you can put on or take off at will, it stops being what it used to be and necessarily becomes in part a matter of choice.
What is little considered is whether a person who can put on his race like a shirt can give offense to a man who cannot. It’s not inconceivable that is offensive. Back in the 19th century the British reserved a special contempt for lesser breeds who tried to “pass as white”.
What would a man who was coal dark think of someone with nordic features who called himself black? Who has thought to ask? Why should he not take as much offense as those Britons who reviled persons attempting to “pass as white”?
Should the optionally black man at some level not be suspected of the unoptionally black as an impostor? After all, there is some doubt as to whether a man with north European features can ever really know what it means to be “black”. Can they really know what it’s like when others give an involuntary jump when they see you behind them in an alley; or hesitate just that half second before offering service; or ask to see your passport when going into a foreign hotel?
Race isn’t fair. By and large basing things on race and race perception leads to irrational results. Except that in our modern enlightened societies we not only pass new racial laws, we’re obsessed by them. We will never be rid of race in this politically correct world. It turns up everywhere, even in places where it never existed before and in more and more places all the time.
It may be argued that Andrew Bolt is a bully and wrote in bad taste. But that is nothing to the point. Even if it were true, it is not the state’s business to decide taste, nor should it be their place to decide on the criminality of speech unless there is a clear and present danger of harm if they do not, as when yelling “fire” in a crowded theater? But where was the clear and present danger in this case? What redress could the complainants not have achieved by public debate, by calling out Andrew Bolt that they had to attain by resorting to the police power of the state? The litmus test of every state intervention into speech should be whether there is a compelling public interest to do so, not whether someone may take offense.
Finally I would like to offer an empirical prediction. The more a group focuses on its racial identity the more handicapped it becomes in actuality. If you want to know why the Chinese in Australia have become so successful the primary reason is that they simply ignored the pitiful baits laid out by of the liberal white man. They saw it for the trap that it was and rightfully gave it short shrift. Not only did they not want to be bought; they did not want to be bought so cheap.
If they had bitten into it they’d still be doing dishes and running the laundry. Fortunately, they ignored that claptrap completely and concentrated on making something of themselves and earning money. And you can see the results for yourself. Buying into the racial preference game is a certain recipe for disaster. Centering your whole life around fulfilling some preconception of racial behavior is the surest way to waste it. Nobody on the left will believe this, but then again I’m not sure any of them care.
Politicians want to predetermine the facts.
Rent Seeker – “I am aboriginal.”
Andrew Bolt – “No, obviously you are not.”
Rent Seeker – “You owe me money.”
Andrew Bolt – “No, I do not and prove you are not a liar.”
Judge – “Forbidden questions. We get to create the truth.”
Whether it is minority status, global warming, or the attractiveness of Michelle Obama the Left wants to decide the answers by political fiat. That is why they put the bait out and Axelrod’s shop periodically stimulates the “birthers” to discredit opposition. They want to stop people from questioning no matter what the question is.
W/56: That is one impressive statement of decency and common sense. I am using one of my precious allotment of thread entries (only 1 left now) to say, simply, I agree completely and thank you again for your generosity and eloquence.
“We’ve got a long history of ripping up treaties anytime we think they don’t suit us anymore”
As it should be. Treaties are negotiated to advance a national interest. When that interest changes, the treaty should be dropped/abrogated. Having a treaty just to have a treaty is In5an3. State Department types see treaties as their rice bowel.
If I was POTUS, I would replace the State Department with cell phones. If I had a beef with some other country, I would pick up the cell phone and give them a chance to return to the path of righteousness. If they didn’t, I turn them into Glowinthedarkistan.
The planet Earth is evolving into a single state. The question is will that state be dedicated to human rights or a state the control all, dedicated only to itself. A dozen 200 kiloton weapons will ensure human rights prevail. That is NOT PC, but Political Correctness is itself an indirect attack on human rights.
W@56
Well said. What you say about race applies to other identities, in particular social class identities and class warfare. To steal your sentence ” The more a group focuses on its social class identity the more handicapped it becomes in actuality.” In fact, the same sentence applies to all identity politics. Just substitute a selected group identity name into the sentence.
The principle is that any identity that is external to an individual provides the comfort of belonging, but simultaneously places limits on individual internal identity. As you point out, race is the worst because you can throw off almost every other external identity except for race, and race always receives a judgement independent from all other identities. We all constantly judge other people using a dozen different yardsticks – some external like clothes or speech – some internal like kindness, intelligence and courage. Someone who plays up their own racial identity simply forces others to give more weight to the racial yardstick and less weight to the other yardsticks. By doing so, they themselves invite racial bias which, naturally, they resent and which makes them feel victimized which in turn limits them as an individual and obscures their internal identity. Self sabotage – not advisable.
The idea is to allow individual internal identities to overcome external group identities. We humans have trouble with that.
56. Wretchard
It is not my place or my intention to force a debate on a private blog, so this will be the last post and it’s purely for purposes of explaining a POV.
In veterans’ housing, when I was young, we had a Filipino next-door neighbor who had married an American soldier. I’d go over to play with her children, and she’d make us tea and fried rice. She was the most exotic thing I’d ever seen, then, dark and beautiful. At some point she may have blond people in her own family, who would without a doubt be of Philippine ancestry, and they might have tea and fried rice, too, so are they also Filipino? It’s only biology and environment involved until someone else imposes conditions. The question to me is, not why fair people would want to “pass”, but why is one imposing conditions so they will not? Are those reasons fair?
Sorting the people of the world into black and white boxes is completely artificial construct, and always has been. Only segregationists do this; they can be Left, Right, black, white, or purple. If Australia prohibited classification by race tomorrow, there would still be members of an indigenous and diverse group of people with a common history, like the in the US there are still Cherokee, Navajo, Iroquois, and so forth – “race” does not define them. If Japan still occupied the Philippines, there would still be Filipinos; if the Germans had prevailed in WWII there would still be Polish people, with a Polish language; if the Arabs succeed in pushing Israel into the sea (which they won’t) there will still be a Jewish State. There is no place for skin tone in any of this.
Why punish Andrew Bolt? Because he was demonstrably wrong, in theory and probably in fact, and that wrongness lent credence to the idea that certain individuals, members of a certain group, were personally insulted and humiliated. This is subject to penalties in many countries. Why ridicule him? Because he exemplifies the notion that people need to fit themselves into the black or white boxes properly, or else they don’t exist. That is arrogance. And maybe also an agenda. Whatever it is, it reeks.
After the European colonial tide retreated from Asia it left behind a detritus of poor white people who knew almost nothing but the vernacular. They worked as tradesmen, laborers and day-workers. And for those of them who were both white, female and attractive there was nothing before them but a life of humiliation and sexual exploitation.
You could see them being followed around by street kids chanting, mestizong bangus, madaling maubuos. That translated meant “white fish are delicious to eat”. One such lady said to me in Tagalog, “why do they do this to me? Why is it that the last thing any of my boyfriends says to me is: ‘you’re white trash and I pulled you out of the gutter’?”
Why did they do this to her? Because they were mean. Because they took secret and shameful advantage of the fact they were a race with an upper hand over another. And the lady couldn’t escape because the white color of her skin was unchangeable. So people followed her around shouting “whitey” the same way others follow around blacks calling them “n****r”. It’s the same dog with a different collar.
These boxes are pernicious.
People who play the race game by definition set up these boxes and talk about who is in and who is out. And they do so explicitly for the sake of obtaining and parceling out power. To whom? Well to their fellows of course; and who precisely that constitutes is the whole business model of the race game. That is the source of their power. This Bolt case is all about race or it is about nothing. You cannot invoke the race act and then turn around and say it is not about skin tone after all. You can’t say it is about race except when it is not.
If Andrew Bolt were demonstrably wrong then is it necessary to get a federal judge to rule in this case? Why is Bolt’s error not so ridiculous that he isn’t laughed at in open society? Is it because to a man from Mars the whole affair would seem like a case of white people getting a white judge to order the white police to force everyone to call them black? See how freedom of speech is served?
Heaven forbid it should actually be that. And I am sure there very good legal reasons which when properly understood are the basis of the decision. But the optics are terrible.
This is 4 of 4, just feel the need to respond to Tee/61, who seems sincerely puzzled but whose puzzlement I doubt I can dispel. Well, here goes.
Tee, you rightly point out the myriad distinctions that can be drawn among us. For example, I have freckles and wear glasses. This entitles me to form the League of Freckled Myopes and determine who shall be a member. And based upon the prizes for being included, or the punishments visited upon those excluded, I may decide that special equipment and procedures will be used to determine how MANY freckles, how MUCH myopia, will satisfy. In the case at hand, apparently some people claimed membership in a group even though they didn’t “look” like other members. Why? So they could score some points off others. Notice that the advantages of groupiness are taken from those outside the group. Privilege, reparations, quotas, special lanes and fawnng media, etc. All these come at someone else’s expense.
Tee, as always, the secret is to ollow the money and power. Cui bono? The only reason these groups matter is that they enable somebody to screw somebody else in a conveniently “objective” unthinking manner and feel good about it. They’re evil through and through, and those who cling to them are at best deeply pathetic. Andrew Bolt’s offense seems to be that he pointed out this embarrassing fact. It is remarkable that such rudeness provokes a decision that does enormous damage to everyone: to the esteem in which the legal system should be held, to the “victims” who now will never be told how silly and self-pitying they are, to the entire citizenry who must govern their tongues “in case,” and who will deeply resent being told how to think and what they may say. This will not end well.
I will leave it there. W has done a far better job of explicating the mess.
Teresita
I With the advent of air travel, and the lessening of social taboos against interracial marriage, one may confidently predict that the majority of the human population in 2500 AD will have olive skin and dark hair. Once you go brown, you never step down.
……….
Likely, there will be sections of space zones which will be chinese, japanese korean,indian european/russian– and american. After 2250 most of the population growth will be in space. many ethnic groups will go their own way.
If past is prologue, then last 500 years with the settling of the new world is a good model for what will happen in the next 500.
@Aussie Concerned about the Facts
No, Andrew Bolt was not merely expressing opinions, but also facts about public policy that self-serving individuals were abusing for personal gain.
Are you saying that it’s okay to game the system and bad for a journalist to expose that activity? I say that it’s Bolt’s job to expose corruption.
And he has, to a degree, been muzzled.
Concerned Aussie is merely a troll, a bearer of false flags, a germ. There is no excuse for the use of bad law by a clique of activists, assisted by pro bono lawyers, and the cake iced by a judgement that begs for an appeal. Nobody should have a right to pretend to be offended and get special treatment just because they are a member of a PC minority.
I’m offended by many things I see written and hear said – such as the thing said about Bess Price by Behrendt, and the use of the term Toxic Coconut about aboriginals who cooperate with miners for the benefit of their local tribes.
I’m offended by the use of the term Invaders by aboriginals every Australia Day – they must adapt to history, not sit in a dismal camp and play the victim card for generations.But that is where the left wants them, as pawns, like the ME wants the Palestinians.
The complainants gamed the system and won, but the system was made rotten by a Michael Lavarch law, and guess who he’s married to?
It was in the late ’80s I think, when I flew into Jolo as part of the staff supporting the negotiations with the Moro National Liberation Front to negotiate a ceasefire in Mindanao. In the seat beside me was a Belgian; a European at any rate, from the Medicins Sans Frontiere. He expressed his intention to leave the perimeter of the town and inspect the outlying municipalities.
I told him he would be kidnapped before the day was out. He insisted that he had a Humanitarian Status and was therefore a protected person.
The basic fact, which I tried to impress upon him without result, was that he was a white man. He was a white man in Jolo; a white man whatever he did. Because that’s how race works.
He might have carried card from the Pope himself or sheaf of rulings from the International Court of Justice declaring him to be a non-white man. None of that would make a lick of difference. But he didn’t seem to get the point. He was too smart, too educated for that.
Things happened just exactly as I predicted. I was at a meeting that afternoon when word came in that the European had been kidnapped. Was there something wrong with his papers? Well he might have been kidnapped even if he had a ruling from the Australian Federal Court, though some may not believe it.
The incident of course did not end there. Some poor devil had to go out and negotiate his release. You know, walk into a den of murderers to work out the Belgian’s release. And for what? Even when money is paid for his release the consequences still piled on. The ransom money is almost always used by the rebels to buy more guns which are then used to kidnap locals, including schoolchildren, some of whom are never seen again.
You know what, the Belgian should have believed me when I said, “you’re a white man in Jolo”.
None of this was the intent of the Belgian. He seemed like a nice guy. But that is nothing to the point.
Life is too short to do anything other than cherish those who make every effort to reflect God’s image in them – to the best of their ability, with the talents they’ve been given, in spite of life’s challenges and circumstances that are beyond their control. I suspect I know who in this case can look themselves in the mirror every morning with a clear conscience. And I suspect I know what the average Australian thinks of this “justice” that has been done in their name (has anyone polled the question?). In the States we find that the bureaucracies that are most protective of their turf are the worst performers in all measures. While I was in New Mexico ages ago I was involved in some tutoring efforts with Indio families and the stories they would tell about the BIA were just awful and heart-rending. And a few leading blacks in the U.S. when asked “what should the government do to help you?” now answer “Please just leave us alone.”
Am I the only one that thinks that Herman Cain looks like TR? And that his life story (like Justice Thomas’) is a wonderful role model for all children? I can just imagine him saying (given cause) – “This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.”
Wrt capricious stigma we’re blessed that bastardy isn’t the life curse it once was – nor do we suffer the class and caste burdens of south asia – or depredations of women in some faiths – issues far more impactful than pigmentation – or those who adopted me and raised me in their culture. Children are often cruel to anyone who tolerates the pecking order, adults less so, but.. victim-hood is a choice if not just a state of mind for the free.