Who’s the Racist? Sam Tanenhaus, Meet Dr. Benjamin Carson
From my observation, nothing ever really changed in South Central — even after the various riots. The Democratic Party had set up a patronage system that almost made it impossible to see genuine improvement, instead elevating the likes of Maxine Waters to exploit her own people while keeping them dependent on the welfare system. The Great Society itself had done that too — set up a new form of servitude for the very people it pretended to help.
Later, when I took over PJ Media, I got to meet a lot of amazing black people who understood that — from Shelby Steele and AlfonZo Rachel to Joe Hicks (himself a former Black Panther). Sam Tanenhaus, of course, doesn’t get it. He continues the traditional, fuddy-duddy liberal line.
It’s easy to make fun of Tanenhaus. Matt Welch at Reason points out the racial make-up of The New Republic (you’ll never guess), and the ever-amusing Ace of Spades has his fun.
But again, it goes deeper. Ironically, as Tanenhaus’ article appears on the cover of TNR, perhaps causing sufficient controversy to ignite interest in that otherwise fading publication, a video has surfaced online of a speech by Dr. Benjamin Carson. Dr. Carson, an African-American professor from Johns Hopkins, had the temerity to say a few obvious things about our country in front of Barack Obama of all people.
If you haven’t seen his speech, do so immediately. It would be interesting to know how Sam Tanenhaus reacted, if he watched it. Of course who would want to listen to Carson? He’s merely a pediatric neurosurgeon (is anyone closer to God than that?), while Tanenhaus is an editor at the New York Times.
Good. Let that Tanenhaus goombah jump in a lake.
Ben Carson for years has been a hero in my family.
Dr. Ben Carson is a hero in your fanily, or to your family?
Remember, it’s not “racist” when left/liberal Democrats do it… growing up, we didn’t call it “liberal racism” for nothing.
Yes, liberal “racism” is alive and well in the Democratic Party. One example is the claim among liberal academics that “racism” defines the American experience. Never so visible as in the recent movie LINCOLN. I demonstrated its propaganda content here: http://clarespark.com/2013/02/09/lincoln-the-movie-as-propaganda/. The movie could not be more in sync with the Obama administration and its “anti-imperialism” and faux anti-racism.
Lincoln was in fact an imperialist and a war mongering one at that. The South (and the rest of the nation) became a mercantilist imperial holding of the financial-industrial complex of the North-East….with a hugely increased unconstitutional usurpation of power to the Federal Government (which was controlled by the North East and the Republican Party)…whom reorganized the South politically for their own continuation of power…and as an agricultural raw material imperial holding…the West became the raw material imperial holding. Classic mercantilist and imperialist economic and political structures.
EscapeVelocity,
You are entirely correct.
I might add that idolatry is categorized as a sin for good reasons. Lincoln has been made into an idol, and the result has been disastrous.
Better check under your bed for capitalists……
right… the north wanted the slaves freed so they could vote and increase the south’s political power… oh wait.. you say it was all a giant corporate crushing of da common folk and their owned humans..
Either you’re an occupy loving southerner wishing to rewrite history.. or you’re simply astoundingly deluded.. You don’t have to love the man.. but when the south raised armies and killed federal troops at Sumpter, war was the south’s decision, not Lincoln’s.
Way off target mark.
The Republican Party freed the slaves and helped organize them politically, and they voted for Republicans in the South, thus turning quite a few Southern Legislatures Republican. You obviously are quite historically ill informed about this time period in US history. This combined with the massive immigration to the North taking place increasing their political power relative to the South by population. This immigration predicated on the promise of free land in the new Western territories to entice them.
The Northern industrialists were exploiting immigrant labor (mass immigration of lower class Europeans), which didnt cost them a dime to buy, didnt require being fed, housed and clothed on the employers dime…and in fact could have their paychecks low as they were recouped by slum lording. Immigrant labor was cheaper. And in the end, they capitulated to the white Southerners with regards to Jim Crow and segregation, because what they were really interested in was cheap cotton and other agricultural products and raw materials….which gave rise to the dirt poor black share croppers. The North profited just as much from exploiting black free labor as slave labor….the cotton never got cheaper but the protective mercantilist system tariffs got higher.
PS – Many Federal armories and forts were taken peacefully before Sumter. Sumter wasnt under threat, and peace negotiations were underway (an envoy representing the US and Lincoln was on the way to talk) as Lincoln secretly sent resupply and reinforcements to Sumter, against his promises to not do so and the state of South Carolina offering to resupply them with foodstuffs. Lincoln knew what this would mean, and then he blamed it on the Confederates to drum up support for his war. Youve obviously been indoctrinated to believe hornswaggle, and then have the audacity to sneer at people that actually know what happened and have studied the matter extensively.
http://www.etymonline.com/cw/intro.htm
By the mid-1800s the North was boosting its population and aggressively asserting state power in the interest of its own industrial capitalism. The South was not. The two sections were diverging, and it was the North that had evolved a new culture since 1787, one that sought to control the national destiny.
Before the seats vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen were cold, the economic order of the United States had been turned on its head: the tariff had taken off on an upward trajectory that would leave even industrialists breathless. The nation’s resources were thrown open to private profit; and the whole banking and monetary system was revamped to suit investors and creditors. A tax scheme was created that weighed against the small consumers, the North’s factories (and even its army) were thrown open to immigrant contract labor, and the federal government was using the U.S. military to put down labor strikes. Congress and the President gave another 100 million acres to various railroads, free of charge.
After the war, Reconstruction had far more to do with reordering the South as a section and reducing it to the status of a financial-industrial colony than with black people. Fear, vengeance, love of union, and interest in civil rights may have played a part in Reconstruction, but it seems clear, especially after the 1876 election, that what the South suffered had much more to do with the establishment of permanent Republican party control, tariff protection, and rigging the nation’s financial arrangements to suit bankers, creditors, and New England industrialists.
In the 1870s, when the North debated within itself topics like the black vote and delaying the readmission of Southern states, the argument in favor was frankly presented as being good for the tariff and government bonds and New England “ideas of business, industry, money-making, spindles and looms.”
Midwestern farmers, the same men who swelled Sherman’s army that broke the South, bore the brunt of the new order and soon found themselves being herded into the same colonial status the South had resisted, in vain. By the time William Jennings Bryan and others rose up to defend them, in rhetoric reminiscent of John C. Calhoun, it was too late. The country had been turned over to foreclosing banks and greedy railroads so thoroughly that Missourians were ready by 1880 to make a hero of a murderous ex-Confederate named Jesse James.
After the war, state legislatures trying to protect their people against predatory trusts and capitalists were thwarted by the Supreme Court, which swept away state laws to regulate corporations (230 in 1886 alone), using the argument that corporations were “persons,” and thus protected by the due process clause of the 14th amendment. Between 1890 and 1910, of all the 14th amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court, 19 dealt with black people, and 228 with corporations.
That’s what America bought with four years of hell and 10 years of civil enslavement of the South. Even in New York City in the 1850s a respectable fortune was a few hundred thousand dollars. In the next generation, of “Robber Barons,” of big fortunes and big depressions, men like Rockefeller and Carnegie were able to amass countless millions. The culture that gave birth to Washington and Jefferson was branded as backwards and immoral. The sectional balance cherished in the vision of Madison and Hamilton was swept away in the name of greed.
Whatever else it was besides, the South had been the brake on these forces, which were pent up in New England and itching for dominance. The region’s distinct economy and social values blocked this “progress.” The South favored restricted central government, purely local financial agents, and a leisurely way of life. The South was pulling hard after 1850 to avoid becoming a backwards dependent of a North that was now opposed to everything about the South except its cotton and its money.
Greed hid behind anti-slavery morality. Practical selfishness and pious abstraction merged beautifully. The Lord’s “terrible swift sword” that smote the South was made in some Connecticut mill whose owner piled up millions in the process. It is important to remember that outright anti-slavery work — as opposed to a sense of sectional rivalry and resentment — was limited to a very small class in the North. Prominent among that class were a great many leading capitalists.
In New York City during the war girls sewed umbrellas from 6 a.m. to midnight, earning $3 a week, from which their employers deducted the cost of needles and thread. Girls who made cotton shirts received 24 cents for a 12-hour day. One historian, after studying in intimate detail a cluster of Northern cotton factories, summed up the owners’ abolitionism like this:
“By making chattel slavery the uniquely immoral form of human exploitation, abolitionism undercut the mounting working-class complaints about wage-slavery and beatified the capitalist order. These abolitionists hated slavery not just for its inhumanity but also for impeding their vision of a capitalist society of free individuals whose labor could be freely exploited.”[1]
The Republican Party’s conviction that it has the God-given right to legislate the morality of all Americans runs right back to Civil War. The GOP has never quite forgotten it was the party that God anointed with victory. Henry Wilson, the dedicated abolitionist who headed the important Senate committee on military affairs during the war and was later vice president under Grant, declared the Republican Party had been “created by no man or set of men but brought into being by almighty God himself … and endowed by the creator with all political power and every office under Heaven.”
The Republicans committed themselves to being the “Party of Piety,” and gave us Anthony Comstock, the original national censor. The first act regulating U.S. mail content was passed in March 1865, spawned by complaints that boys in blue were getting obscene carte de visites and dirty novels. Congress made mailing such material a crime. One of Comstock’s most illustrious victims was Ezra Heywood, the veteran abolitionist who had mailed pamphlets that criticized marriage and advocated birth control. The old man (well into his 60s) served two years at hard labor.
Lysander Spooner was an influential and ardent abolitionist and a true American radical humanitarian in the mold of Thoreau. By 1867, he had come to understand that the war was a defeat for men like him. The North had fought for the principle that “men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support a government they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.”
Southerners saw this sooner. They saw the victory of Lincoln in 1860 as defeat after a long struggle, the final reduction to helplessness in the face of a majority determined to force its social and economic values on the whole nation.
Don’t forget the liberal anti-semitism. It was right out there during the OWS scene, visible and audible.
Dr. Carson’s speech is one of the best I’ve ever heard, certainly better than any President Obama has given. I didn’t notice any straw men or demagoguery, or phoniness.
Which, unfortunately, makes him totally unsuitable to be a politician in 2013 America.
When some light finally gets through the media wall(read Berlin wall)its only a matter of time.
A man of common sense and principle.
The President didn’t applaud certain sections.
The President’s entire adult life has thrived on the complete opposite of the speech Dr. Carson gave, and Obama knew it, and Carson knew it. Obama is the logical and most complete extension of political correctness we have yet had in America in such a high post.
Seize the day, pick up a book, teach yourself HTML, learn the piano – it’s not rocket science, but it may become so.
I watched this speech a few days ago: BRAVO, Dr. Carson!
The video stopped just as the clapping started. Obama? His chin was in the air and he had on his imperious, Mussolini look. He wasn’t clapping either. WHAT a loser. I wonder when his bubble’s going to burst.
It’ll never burst. When you can spend 2 decades in an anti-Semitic, anti-white racist cult and get elected as President, you’re teflon-coated.
Obama’s teflon is entirely the work on a democrat owned MSM, it’ll last only as long as they survive, using every show, report, entertainment venue to preach his holiness to the masses.. telling them.. “hey”… “be cool like the popular kids and vote for the hip black guy”..
That he’s a bumbling mom jean wearing egotistical little priss, they never mention.
FB, I fear you may be correct.
Perhaps he’ll decay from inside: it’s pretty dark and fetid in there.
Watch what happens in the SCOTUS on the 15th of Feb when the Orly Tait conference comes before the full SCOTUS. This has been a long time coming but it arrives and that is the game….
Obama may be in deep trouble this is on his BCert and his SS# with backup of 1.5 million documneted fraud votes in CA.
But it doesn’t matter. Popular media constantly paints Republicans as racists. Not just racist, but hating women.
History doesn’t matter, what Republicans think or do doesn’t matter, all that matters is that the media constantly delivers a certain message, from magazines (or magazine sites these days) to TV shows like The Daily Show and Colbert to dramas and so forth.
There are only two ways to counter this. One, is simply not watch such shows. But Republicans/conservatives are terrible at boycotting. Look at how much this site sucks up to HBO for instance.
The second is to start their own media. But that’s not possible because stuff like that costs a lot of money and big business is essentially 95% behind the Democrats. After all, more regulation, more laws, etc just help them at the expense of consumers and small business.
You can’t beat something with nothing.
The Dems are getting away with saying conservatives are on a “war on women”–because conservatives don’t have a consistent message about women’s issues. In politics, you need to hone your message–and then stay on that message. So what is our message?
Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review, has written article after article advocating that young women should remain “chaste”: They should stay virgins until they marry–even if they don’t marry till their mid-thirties. Birth control? They shouldn’t use it. Because Rick Santorum said that birth control “gives you license to do things in the sexual arena that are not how things are supposed to be.” By that, he meant enjoy sex for its own sake, rather than for procreation.
To Lopez and Santorum, sex is meaningless unless a baby results from it. Lopez has stated that, repeatedly.
Well, those ideas are never going to sell with today’s women. Even many Catholic women use birth control now. These days, I doubt that more than one percent of American women are still virgins past their 20th birthday.
It’s these traditional attitudes–drawn from Catholicism and Protestant fundamentalism–being advocated for all American women, that gave the Dems the opportunity to charge conservatives with a “war on women.”
It’s not a “war.” But it is a clear desire for a return to the 1950s, before the Pill–when women’s career planning was much more difficult because family planning was impossible without birth control.
A woman who is under the age of 50 has never known a time when the Pill was not widely available and widely used. Conservatives like Lopez and Santorum have either got to accept that it (and recreational sex) are here to stay–or else stop discrediting the conservative movement with such views.
You know, people who think there isn’t anything more important than genital pleasure don’t get taken seriously when the discussion is about the future of the country. Did you notice that Dr Carson didn’t ONCE mention how important genital pleasure is? He talked about education, freedom, poverty, taxation. But you just go ahead and dress up like a vagina, think with your vagina, vote according to your vagina’s directives; just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously today.
Oh dear, I should have pointed out that most importantly, he talked about the importance of faith (especially since it was the topic of the whole get-together). My bad. Sorry.
Do you need help with your pink zipper?
Well said, Jeannette. Some people have a bizarre obsession with sex and can’t seem to focus on anything else. They hear an inspiring, thoughtful speech by a brilliant neurosurgeon and all they can think is, ‘But will he give me free birth control pills?’ Perhaps therapy would be in order?
Cultural Marxism has no place in the GOP.
I don’t agree with Lopez and Santorum on these issues, but admit that their stances are morally and intellectually serious, and not to be dismissed lightly. If large chunks of the populace dismiss these arguments tout court, without even grappling with them, all the more shame to them. It’s fine to reject their views–I do–but I’ve no use for someone fatuous enough to find such views automatically “discrediting,” and neither should the GOP.
their arguments are pointless in a political setting. Does the GOP really wish to be the scold party, right after accusing Dems of setting up a nanny state? And that’s the point – Repubs talk a good game about limited govt but they can never walk the walk. They are every bit as likely as the most liberal of Dems to use the power of govt to coerce people into actions they deem appropriate.
The doctor focused on the big picture – a crushing debt, an impossible tax code, and the lack of a belief in very much of anything that is permeating society. Debt and taxes do not distinguish between red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal. Blaming Obama is disingenuous considering how many Repubs doing the squawking signed off on the spending of the Bush years.
Key to Carson’s speech was not mentioning party at all. Because these problems are bipartisan.
Santorum from the beginning said his goal wasn’t to pass laws on morality, but top raise the issue, how that is intruding in your life is never explained by those who simply hate his message.
The latest generation literally is raised in internet porn, talk utter trash about everything, every third word the f bomb, and think of sex as a birthright to the point they whine like a three year old if they haven’t had any in a week..
and some say speaking of morality is bad..
sigh,..
When I had to explain in no uncertain terms to a 18 year old nephew, that telling girls he’s going to kick their a** for saying something he didn’t like, that MEN DON’T THREATEN WOMEN or HARM THEM IN ANY WAY.. and should always respect their gender..
he looked at me like I was speaking Martian.
“Hey she p***ed me off”.. as if the modern morality accepts this. It does.. Modern morality is a bad joke, and the masses of kids have been marinated in it.. so speaking out against it is hardly a grievous wrong.
I didn’t realize that the bully pulpit was only for raising issues that everybody was already thinking about, or already knew they had a stake in. Seems kind of pointless using it, if so.
And if Santorum’s even halfway right, then the implications of moral issues he raised don’t distinguish “between red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal,” either. Believing they do … it doesn’t get much more relativistic or tribal than that.
Finally: “They are every bit as likely as the most liberal of Dems to use the power of govt to coerce people into actions they deem appropriate”? That would be a damning criticism indeed … if Santorum were running for the Libertarian party’s nomination. But Republicans aren’t libertarians, and it’s no good to assume that they are or should be.
For decades, the Japanese government refused to legalize birth control pills. Eventually they relented, but my understanding is that doctors are loathe to prescribe.
Which leads to some additional points. First, it’s not crazy to be unhappy about the widespread availability of birth control. Apparently the Japanese, a democratic nation, thought the risk was too great, at least for a long period of time.
Second, this decision did not lead to massive overpopulation. Instead Japan went on a baby strike, which is now creating significant challenges.
Third, notwithstanding the low birth rate, there is essentially no out of wedlock birth in Japan.
Which proves what? Well, that no one has a monopoly on how to think about these matters. They are confusing. Complicated. But also very important.
The only reason any of what Lopez or Santorum has said in the past is at issue is because somehow, inexplicably, the Democrats have turned sex into something the government should be involved with. The “War on Woman” was that Republicans didn’t want to provide free birth control or wanted to restrict abortion, none of which should be handled by the Federal government on any level. Your apparent concern with sex shows you’re simply buying into the lie being told by the Left -that sex is a prominent issue that must be addressed. Did Romney run on restricting abortion or access to contraception? No, of course not – the Democrats, Obama and the Media (but I repeat myself) simply lied about all of it and fooled plenty of people (like yourself) into believing that conservatives are concerned about restricting people sexually. I don’t know if you’re a republican or a concern troll but instead of buying into the Left’s lies, you should push back, instead of pointing fingers at people in the Republican party that you think are guilty of this.
The other thing too – you and everyone else are free to ignore Santorum and Lopez’s positions on anything relating to morality. Unfortunantely, one of the many many poor qualities about the Left is they will not simply ignore a person who takes a position they don’t agree with – they believe that person should be destroyed and his or her voice silenced. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, says the Left, unless its dissent they don’t like.
The pill and recreational sex are here to stay — until this society disappears. Although any society is built on a group of people of common ethnicity, societies maintain and continue themselves by commonly-accepted rules, values, and customs. You can get in your car and head south at 55 mph in the right lane on a 2-lane road because you reasonably expect that anyone heading north on the same road will be driving on his right also. Why? The English and other people drive in the left lane. What does it matter? Well, of course, which lane doesn’t matter. But what does matter is that everybody accepts that we ‘all’ drive in the same lane. Chaos ensues when some folks decide that tradition is no reason to do anything. Ditto, the QWERTY keyboard. The fact is that every society restricts large areas of human behavior in the interest of facilitating the strength and continuity of the society. “Doing your own thing” in the Leftist/Libertarian sense is not only anti-social, but is abnormal human behavior. Humans are social animals, as Aristotle already knew B.C. For species Homo sapiens, being a square peg in a world of round holes is simply another birth defect, like harelip or clubfoot. If not fatal, at least detrimental to the individual. But, beyond a small percentage, square pegs are fatal to the society. Leftists are dedicated to ‘monkey-wrenching’ the machine (society), but for a social animal, life outside of a normally-functioning society is necessarily “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as in any Communist state. For Leftists who harp all day long about Nature and Natural, the embrace of contraception and abortion, short-circuiting reproduction itself, is amazing. Well, not having kids is a self-limiting behavior for sure. Non-reproducing populations are not going to be around for long — replaced by societies/peoples doing what comes naturally.
Don’t forget that societies that start to crumble because they start tearing themselves apart in this manner are also societies that start to cry out for ever more and ever stronger government in an attempt to compel order through force. The power mongers in DC are perfectly fine with this.
Balkanized lowest common denominator societies will not survive. Homogeneous societies may have down periods but can and do bounce back. Balkanized societies merely split up.
“Women’s issues” are the same as every other individual and groups issues, especially at the Federal level.
“Well, those ideas are never going to sell with today’s women.”
As if they ever did with men or were supposed to? Please don’t mistake this reaction as a means to excuse promiscuity, as this is, generally speaking, not a good idea. But can we dispense with the idea that sex is any less of an alluring thing to women than it is to men despite the fact that women are more inclined to associate sex with “love” than men? Just saying.
Meant to say sex was ever, in the entirety of the history of man, less alluring to women……
Actually we could muster the cash to start buying up media companies. However as with Glenn Beck and Current TV’s snubbing of his bid, their will be a cordon saint aire drawn around conservatives wishing to enter the “free market.”
Exactly. I wonder how many dollars are spent by leftists to keep conservatives away for every dollar a conservative group pays to have a place at the table. This would be great fodder for someone’s master’s degree thesis.
Couldn’t stop watching President Obama’s face,no smiles,uncomfortable or steaming, i couldn’t tell which.A strong contrast though to be sure between him and an Educated man with feet on the ground!
You’ve heard the phrase “location, location, location.” Every time I read a PC article like this one by Mr. Tannenhaus, I think “Orwell, Orwell, Orwell.”
It’s boring of me, I do it constantly, but among the most famous tropes in Western English culture, I can think of no more appropriate way to convey the delusional doublethink of the anti-racist, racist Democratic Party and its adherents.
Race, and reverse institutional racism based on history that is true in some respects and mythological in others, is the centerpiece of liberalism in America today. The bottom line is that it’s 2013 and liberals don’t get that. But it’s telling how they use old and decontextualized stories from America’s history as if they’re today’s headlines. That’s a sure clue to a person who has an empty argument. Presenting a purposefully incomplete picture of America’s past amounts to a lie, especially when it’s dragged screaming into the present as if someone’s spitting on Jackie Robinson.
Mr. Tannenhaus unsurprisingly displays his doublethink in the very first paragraph, and gives a rousing coda of vapid racism at the end. The doublethink lies in the fact that liberals huff and puff all day how one’s identity means nothing at the same time they proudly trot it out for review. It’s hard to get stupider than that. One can only wonder when the NHL will take it on the chin or why the Harlem Globetrotters need no diversity.
The idea that conservatives use images of an angry black man is a lie and a piece of projection from liberals and the black Left that never ends. Whites are presumed, on no evidence, to be afraid of black people, especially if blacks have any kind of power; “Fear of a Black Planet.”
Turn any liberal rhetoric about race on its head, and its the complete opposite of what liberals say is their passion, anti-racism. The Root, owned by the Washington Post and headed up by Henry Gates, Jr., can have articles titled, “Black Professionals: We’ve Got Obama’s Back,” next to ads for hotel chains and PBS.
If Romney had anything like that on his campaign website, he’d have never heard the end of it from the Left. With nothing like that at all, Romney was portrayed as twice the racist the writers at The Root actually are. And it’s not just The Root. This hypocritical bill-of-goods is sold wholesale by the Left across a wide range of American mainstream cultural institutions.
What is a middle aged white guy full of “rage” or from “frighteningly white” Carmel, CA today, was a greedy Jew from a too Jewish neighborhood or a lazy black from a too black neighborhood yesterday.
Liberals don’t get that. They don’t get that because, devoid of binding principles and interested only in the particulars, namely skin and gender, they are the true children of Orwell’s dystopian nightmare. And I do mean nightmare. The racist, anti-racists.
Wonaful, wonaful, wonaful.
The irony with Sam Tanenhaus is that he wrote a great, sympathetic biography of Whittaker Chambers back in 1997.
Chambers was and forever will be one of the left’s bete noirs for exposing Alger Hiss and testifying over the underground Communist network in the U.S. in the 1930s and 40s. More importantly, he’s also one of the main examples of a man on the left who as time went on, opened his eyes to what the left was all about and understood that what they say and what they really want to do are two different things.
It’s disappointing to me that someone like Tanenhaus, or to a lesser extent people like Joe Klein and Howard Fineman, who seemed to be relatively sane liberals 15 years ago, just absolutely went off the deep end in the wake of Bush-Gore in 2000 and the aftermath of 9/11. They’ve become so ideologically locked into to the idea of writing politics as if it’s sports, where (for example) my team’s the Red Sox and I hate the Yankees and everything they or their players do is automatically evil because they’re the Yankees. It’s politics treated with no nuance whatsoever, and with a total unwillingness to ever get out of your boilerplate comfort zone that will satisfy your peer group, but is in the end intellectually vapid.
Ahem! Well, there’s lots here, not just a fine column and the wonderful Benjamin Carson.
The phrase ‘center right’ badly needs dusting and polishing, for it still defines the best and brightest in the land, quite often those who abandoned the left after a very personal Damascus moment. Yes, there’s lots of overlap and room for difference in the center right, as there should be in any healthy society, but the shared values are healthy, enduring and, now, the last best hope of the nation. Gee, things are really that dire, are we actually falling apart like in that Yeats poem? Yup, believe so.
Perhaps we can we thin the ranks a bit, to help clear the decks for more than rear-guard action. Maybe one or two of the conspicuously righteous around here will explain who benefits from far-right Republican whack-jobs and election losers who bellow YOU ARE A BABY MURDERER I WILL PRAY FOR YOU!!! Or who see ‘neo-cons’ and ‘Rinos’ — the most vapid words of our time, incapable of credible definition — as the demon seed of the anti-Christ.
That would surely help, but the big elephant remains: the GOP itself is fresh out of ideas or any sense of honorable purpose, its grandees reduced now to lining their nest with the cash of crony capitalists and influence peddlers who emphatically don’ t care or even know about you, your family or your horse. Or about much of anything outside the mirror, including your country. Hagel makes HIllary sound like Demosthenes, which will be a tip-off.
Since the guys in charge aren’t up to the job, the road ahead ought to be clear. If you remain puzzled, then may God help you because nobody else will. And Maxine Waters and her sisters — including CA white trash in the mold of Boxer and Feinstein — will yank your chain far into the future. That’s torment as close to hell on earth as you can get. And you will deserve it.
Yes, we get it. You object to being reminded that a large number of people consider abortion murder.
Do you have any other emotional issues you’d like us to help you with?
We can all agree though that aborting the young does terminate the life of a unique person with human DNA unlike anyone else that but for the termination might have lived 70 years or longer. Hitler did not think throwing Jews into gas chambers was legally murder. Stalin did not think starving millions of Kulaks to death to steal their food was murder. Jefferson Davis did not think working black people to death for no money was murder. So what is your point. I don’t get it. Governments cannot be relied upon to define murder accurately. Ever. Only God can so the sole Entity who created us all Equal and immune from being destroyed by our co-family members, so I don’t know what you are intending to say. Nor do you I would wager.
Please spare us your “only God” arguments. RC was responding to #7 for his mocking of those who consider abortion “murder”. That was his “point”, what he “was trying to say”. He is entitled to his beliefs, as you are to yours. Maybe you would rather call abortion infanticide, or fetus-cide. But if one believes it’s murder, to them it’s murder.
Bueke you are a bigot, because of this nothig you say can be valid. Stop and consider what you said for a moment. Jefferson Davis and no other slave holder ever worked a slave to death. Why would you kill your labor? Can you realize just how stupid that is? You are an anti-Southern bigot, just about the only acceptable form of bigotry now. The slaves were given room and board and were in many cases better treated than norteast millworkers. Visit the South sometime, you might learn something.
I’m just wondering why God would help me if I lent approval to destroying that which HE called the “fruit of thy womb” under the euphemism of reproductive rights?
” while Tanenhaus is an editor at the New York Times.”
you got typo?
Democrats buy their allegiances,Republicans provide jobs.Business drives the economy and unions are the breaks,and illegal invaders steal cash from the wallets of American workers.Isn’t it that simple?
There are two kinds of liberal plebes. Open minded ones, like Roger or David Mamet, will often become conservatives as they see through the liberal lies. The majority are closed minded, and will die dupes. Liberalism is nothing but a con game. Proof: Name one conservative that became a liberal.
Sadly, I can: David Brock. Yeah, I know, no great loss there.
Most Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices of the last 30 years: O’Connor, Souter, Roberts, Stephens, Kennedy.
What a sad list that is. Imagine how different things would be with real conservatives appointed to the court.
Although the good doctor’s subspecialty is pediatric neurosurgery he was also good enough to operate on my mother-in-law to her benefit. She was infatuated with him. I am too.
While the case for reparations for slavery is vanishingly weak and founders on government immunity, a much stronger case can be made for reparations from the Democratic party for the destruction wrought on blacks by the party’s – as distinct from the government’s – efforts. If some black conservatives sued them for that, it might open a few eyes.
I really don’t know much about Mr.Tanenhaus, and admit after reading your article my gut tells me my understanding of him is still lacking.
However, I feel very differently about Dr. Carson.
When he spoke about his mother saying to Ben at a young age “I never saw anyone get on welfare and get off of it,” I was stuck with the simple truth and consonance of that statement.
When Benjamin described his mother as a domestic, who observed in wealthy homes that the TV rarely was on; instead the children’s minds were turned on; reading, writing, learning. Which caused Mrs. Carson to act in the best interest of her children.
“I had my kids turn our TV off and told them to read, think, ponder, observe like the rich people, and one day people will be watching you on TV.”
Needless to say, Dr. Carson’s speech struck a chord with me.
He was mothered by a woman, who, when she wasn’t out working three jobs to stay off welfare, was filling her children’s every waking hour with wisdom. Guidance. Life lessons if you will.
“There’s our next President of the United States” I said to myself as I watched him speak to a President’s clenched teeth and closed mind.
I apologize if this is not what your column is about, Mr. Simon, but that’s what I took away from Benjamin Carson’s appearance at a prayer breakfast meeting two days ago.
Obviously not only the intellectual superior of our President, but born of a belief system which can be sourced to the core of this nation’s most basic beliefs in education and self improvement and positive paternal influence. My mind traced those qualities of intellectual growth process to Abraham Lincoln reading under candlelight.
Listen to Obama, who I believe to be a racist in the mold of Adolph Hitler.
Then listen to Dr. Carson, and I think it’s apparent that NY Times editors on the whole and our present small c communist leader, by every measure, are defective in thought and deed.
Their rise to prominence possibly reveals a flaw in our political system, not to mention the biased, bigoted, intolerant hiring practices of the New York Times.
Dr. Carson’s rise to professional respect and intellectual brilliance reveals the best that America can produce. Family values versus family absence. Family guidance rather than family indulgence in hate, distrust, grudge holding and overt racism.
We dare not leave the man with the racist, traitorous, narcissistic personality disorder who revels in his power and position leading this nation unchecked. The sick, racist contagion he’s unleashed on our citizenry cannot be allowed to go untreated.
There’s no denying it.
The disease that infects this nation can be traced to the White House, and the Doctor Carson, possessed of extraordinary values, ideals, training and knowledge, has the capacity to destroy it.
I dearly hope my clarion call to Dr. Carson is heard throughout the land. I pray its answered.
yes, as i listened to this brilliant man, dr carson,it came to mind these two men on stage,obama and dr carson, had single mothers.
one mother was a hard worker that nurtured her son with love, respect and devotion, the other man was handed over to his grandmother, and his mother left for wherever.
one man went on to offer our country and world with brilliance and healing and tolerance and optimism and an appreciation of our GOD!
the other man went on to achieve the highest office in our land spewing his hate and disdain and creates chaos and divisiveness and we don’t know his allegiance to our GOD!
interesting,the paths that these two mothers chose and how their offspring turned out!
i’m sure obama was seething because he felt like a small man around such a great man as dr carson!
Which is therefore why Obama will do his best to get his cronies to destroy said doctor. It is just this type of person who he must eliminate for he counters the ideology of welfare and being able to give from the trough of public funding.
The contrast is obvious. What is not so obvious is the fury such contrast evokes inside such a hateful man-child as Obama. While Carson was speaking, in oh-so-well-thought-out terms, Obama was seething inside and the only thought he was having was, “So you think you’re better than me? Well I’ll show you” and yes, his new hobby is to find ways to plow Carson under.
He will be visited by federal agencies, the newspeople will investigate him more thoroughly than a dog investigates a visitor to your home. Yes, the same media wunderkinder who have no intellectual curiosity about Obama himself will investigate Carson to destruction, even make things up so as to make sure Obama is never threatened by him again, since Carson’s words of truth were perceived by the proletariat as a threat.
We are in dangerous times and I will be keeping an eye on what they do to the man as a measure of just how dangerous they are.
Remember, the man who made the video about moo-hammed who Hitlery, Obama and Rice referenced last fall as the cause of the attack in Benghazi….is still in jail.
Don’t forget the takedown of Herman Cain.
Please watch at 37 seconds into the video, is Obama, knowing Dr. Carson is a conservative, flips the finger, just like he did to Hillary by pretending to scratch his face or nose.
Except that he used his index finger in this case. Nonetheless, nice try but don’t despair, his demeanor very well betrayed his resentment, denial & boredom. To sum it up, he is still a hopeless, vapid dickhead.
The Democrats, claiming to be “anti-racist,” are utterly race-obsessed, and their First Black President, elected by people who hoped and believed he would go beyond the race obsession and finally lay it to rest, injects race into everything.
The Democrats also claim to be the “party of science,” and deride conservatives for being “anti-scientific”—yet they endorse the anti-scientific fiction of “transgenderism,” which decrees that contrary to the physical evidence of the body and the scientific evidence of DNA, one can be a member of the opposite sex based solely on one’s feelings.
Accordingly, I hereby decree that–based upon one’s feelings, it is possible to be transracial—all that is necessary to be black, or brown, or yellow, or white is to feel that one is, and to really, really believe it. No hormone shots, creams, or lotions necessary—maybe a stack of Motown or Duke Ellington records, or some sides by the Ray Coniff singers. Or people could give a listen to this song, and just get over themselves.
I’m a different race every day of the week but Wednesday when I’m a carbon-bonded lunch pail with a molecular cross-section that looks like a leaf lost by aliens in the Oort cloud.
And I’ve changed the name of Wednesday to difauudfu.
Marry my daughter. Or my son. Or my mother. Or all three of them. Would love to have you in the family.
I sent Dr. Carson’s speech to my retired uncle who is an otherwise smart guy. He was a tech seargent in the USAF and then later taught Spanish at the UNC.
Standard yellow dog Democrat reaction. “At least Obamacare is a plan, Carson has no plan, perhaps Carson’s system would work for the rich” blah, blah, blah.
No one is ever going to change his mind, and I know hundreds like him. Obama could rape a nun on the White House lawn at noon and my uncle would still defend the guy. As conservative thinkers we have to catch kids while they are still educatable. The left runs the schools, and they are turning out good little lock-step soldiers. There is where our attention needs to be focused.
First, if your uncle’s rank was only Tech (Technical) Sergeant (TSgt/E-6) when he retired, he was either not very intelligent or had disciplinary problems.
Second, the overwhelming majority of active duty military are republicans, so he probably had very few friends.
“The Great Society itself had done that too — set up a new form of servitude for the very people it pretended to help.”
Yeah, gotten all those seniors dependent on Medicare when they should just get sick and die.
Because, obviously, before Medicare, no one EVER lived to old age.
Well said, Mr. Simon. I saw this speech several days ago, and it was perhaps the best constructed and delivered I’ve ever seen. Obviously Dr. Carson thought this through – starting with what Political Correctness does to society and to debate, and then disagreeing with President Obama on several issues. As per the NY Times and their opinions, you are correct in considering the source. Again, Well Done.
I saw this speech several days ago, and it was perhaps the best constructed and delivered I’ve ever seen.
Hear hear. Unlike Obama’s overhyped ‘oratory’, it was a masterpiece of cogent ideas expressed in clear, unlabored terms. He tells it as it is.
No wonder that the MSM has made certain that he’s never been discussed where the public might notice, though his life story and achievements and sheer humanity certainly outstrip anything contributed by a mere community organizer.
I had never heard of Dr. Carson previous to his recent speech. I am glad I now know of him. I watched the movie about him this weekend with my children. What an inspiring man and a great role model for my children. His mother is an inspiration to me as a mother. The world would certainly be a better place with more Ben Carson’s in it. We certainly have enough lawyers and journalists who think they know it all.
“Because of what the Democratic Party did to black people,” he replied.
Exactly. This is not a hard case to make, beginning with the Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s critiques. It’s a case that those who oppose the policies of Democrats and their party ought to articulate: It’s the policies, stupid!
For one thing, since its inception as the Democratic-Republican party – the party of Jefferson – racialism has been at the core of the Democratic party policies in every era – and that would include the era of the “sainted” Roosevelt; forever using race as a tool for attaining and sustaining power.
Pretty good speech and I was aware of Dr. Carson’s life story – an admirable man with an incredible life’s story. The real hero is the Carson mom. However, I am always leery of immediately nominating good words from a rehearsed speech as Presidential material, as I recall there once was an admired man named Colin Powell that the nation fell in love with, before it revealed Powell more politician than wise statesman.
The parables were obviously averse to what our current President would prescribe for the nation. I give kudos to Dr. Carson for his honesty and attempting to think outside the box. Double kudos for the nod to political correctness run amok.
But what I really took from the speech was the how uncomfortable Dear Leader Obama looked throughout; how President Obama flashes that toothy grin and tilts the head downward and right staring momentarily at the floor when presented with questions contrary to his position. In the superficial environment that we all now find ourselves, pretentiousness and false humility to disarm is apparently quite effective. It also appeals to the superficially sophisticated of which Sam Tanenhaus is one, positioning himself as visionary statesman on par with those that fought Jim Crow. If more blacks were perceptive, they would be offended at the suggestion.
When I see or hear “Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people”, I already understand the disingenuous nature of the premise – 99 times out of a hundred written by a progressive white. Tanenhaus is a useful idiot for grievance and zealotry, far more problem that prophet.
I no longer subscribe to the still unspecific unifying theory will allow us to move forward as a nation. I would call that a pipe dream as you have two mutually exclusive adversarial positions that are frankly irreconcilable and diametrically opposed.
Obama and Carson breathe the same oxygen, but clearly they metabolize it differently. Remarkable to see the contrast between them, each one the child of a single mother, one presumed educated, the other presumed intellectually deficient. And wouldn’t you know it it’s the illiterate black mother who raised her son right!
A snapshot of the time we live in: Empowered fools enraged in their frontal attack on wisdom after having leveraged the gullibility of those who have been trained not to think. I am grateful to Dr. Carson, his intellect and his courage, for so masterfully illuminating the evil of our time.
The tea party embodies the immune system of a bless society under attack. A new heroic brand emerges, like Ben Carson and Ben Shapiro, showing us the way out of the morass. Hurrah!
Please Mr. Simon: do NOT give the new NR any echo. It has been a pure propaganda piece for extreme liberalfascism since Hughes bought it. Even the new logo is neo-Stalin typography.
Might want to alert the GOP that Hughes’ husband is going to run for the House, in case the NY GOP is still blind.
Yeah, my freind Noga likes to hang out there. Since Marty Peretz left, it’s been all downhill.
Sam Tanenhaus is an ignoramus. He knows no history. It was the Republican Party – under Abraham Lincoln, which abolished slavery. (January 1, 2013, was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1, 1863). The Republican Party supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Democratic Party – namely, the southern Democrats – supported racial segregation.
ST is only missing a couple of letters in his initials to fully describe his leftist race-baiting scam.
You know, I have to laugh at the pasty, white, effete, demagogues who constantly pick at racial scabs and then beat their sanctimonious breasts apologizing for “others” non-existent racism.
The racism of modern America is the head-patting by leftists who believe that a whole flock of sheeple need a “good master” in the Big House to pat their heads and give them a crust of bread.
In this poorly written fiction, the “protagonists” need a foil. So, anyone who doesn’t run a plantation of low expectations and high self-aggrandizement is Simon Legree.
Bullspit. And, pronounce that any way you would like.
Sam the Sham and his fellow Pharaohs, including Obama…NEED to have a fictional foil. And a phony tale to tell in order to keep the plantation filled with “oppressed” who will vote for backsliding, dependency and “the revolution”.
They will tell any slander, create any lie, commit any treason, hurt people and country by any means necessary. This is treason in its purest form. And evil.
Sorry, I do not give a pass to those who foment hatred of our country and between our countrymen.
And Dr. Carson said to stop being politically correct and to tell the simple truth. Then, let’s do so. Evil is evil and treason is treason and traitorism is traitorism. Let us stop mincing around about it. I’m center right and have almost identical politics to Roger. But, I despise small c communism and love my country and my honorable countrymen. Let’s allow no more slander against us to go unpunished and no more treason to go unopposed and unidentified. Let Dr. Carson’s words be FULLY understood. It’s time to stand up and be counted.
I enjoyed Dr. Carson’s speech, and I particularly noted President Obama’s reaction (or lack thereof). It was pretty obvious, he was not amused. Kudos to Dr. Carson for having the courage to speak up, I hope he’ll continue to, and that more and more plain speaking like his will surface.
In Sam Tanenhaus’ crowd, hurling accusations of racism at the other is part of a style set, a kind of de rigueur axiom.
They have no idea whether or not it is true, whether or not they mean it, but they repeat it over and over so as to keep up their credentials with the “in group”.
Sad, really.
It will be interesting to see if any of these leftist losers has the balls to cast some of their conventional aspersions at Dr. Carson, the kind of vulgar words and characterizations they use for black individuals who’ve stepped off the ideological reservation, ways they characterize people like Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice.
It’s more than liberal racism, they are also feudalists, which expands the evil of racism beyond race to virtually all of humanity.
Racism and Marxism (aka progressivism and many other ism’s) and feudalism are birds of feather. Under it all, they are simply tools that justify and enable mentally ill tyrants to dominate and steal from other human beings.
Feudalism was a particular social organization responding to the conditions of the time. It was quite successful, and was gradually displaced by larger-scale hierarchies, kingdoms, and finally, nation-states. Marxism is a bogus philosophy masking the drive to destroy existing societies. Gramsci pulled the curtain aside, and honestly described Cultural Marxism for what it was. Leftism is a big-tent for all of society’s ‘despised others’ (just review ‘the base’ of the Democratic Party). Being rejected by society, their response is to band together and destroy that society. This is the gulf that separates Leftism from every other human enterprise — its goal is to destroy human society. No other human group shares that goal; Leftism is unique in human history.
like I said, they are all cons designed to accumulate 99.9% of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority who are mentally ill, because anybody who can’t rest without dominating other people is insane.
Of course the different isms approach the pursuit from different angles according to what schemes can be foisted on the public in any particular day and age, but the purpose of all of them is the same and they are all scams.
Tanenhaus was on CNBC this morning and it was disgusting. To her credit, the Hispanic anchor identified herself as a conservative and said something to the effect that “she wanted to take a shower” after talking to him because he was so prejudiced. Amazing how these creepy white men get to write all of this nonsense about Republicans and seem to have credibility in the eyes of some.
If Dr. Carson were to run for office, he would get the vote of the tea party.
If Dr. Carson were to run for office, blacks would not vote for him, calling him a sell out, an oreo and an Uncle Tom.
Go figure.
Therefore, the Tea Party is racist. /snark
Liberals will never attempt to understand the conservative mindset if you always put things in religious terms. Modern liberals are anti-religious. They shut their ears off as soon as you say the word “God”.
That is, if they ever turned their ears on in the first place (for example, Piers Morgan’s ears clearly don’t work…always asking, never listening).
I know alot of people who are vehemently opposed to Obamacare. I do not know one person who is opposed to Obamacare because Obama is black or because it was a program shoved through the government by a black man.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera gave an excellent retort to a Tanenhaus lecture delivered live on SQUAWK BOX on CNBC this a.m. She is an elegant self-described minority woman who said she felt she “needed a shower” after listening to said Tanenhaus.
She felt she “had been accused of racism”. I am not doing her reply justice. See if you can google it. She was really offended by him. The anchors called him on a lot of his assertions, but like all liberals the inconvenient facts were the ones that did not matter in the least to him.
Interestingly, Michelle Obama applauded several times during the Carson speech while her husband sat by and did nothing.
It was easy to tell that Obama was not comfortable at all with this man’s stellar speech. It must have worn him out to boot, as one notes around the 18-min mark that Obama is fighting the urge to fall asleep. Noteworthy too was how Obama was reacting when Carson was discussing healthcare: head bowed, not looking at the speaker. Reminded me of how he carried himself during the first debate with Romney last year.
Jonah Goldberg did a good job in 2007 with his book “Illiberal Fascism”, placing – with much quotation – Progressivism into the same toxic puppy basket with its siblings Italian Fascism and Marxism-Leninism and (the conceptual runt of the litter) Naziism; they all spring from the same era and impulse.
As for the obsession with sex, now a major structural element in the Democrats’ approach: it seems to me to appeal both to a) the witless Boomery and youthy fascination with sexual pleasure and activity and b) the radical-feminist need to ‘weaponize’ it in their sustained (and queasily Sapphic) war on males, patriarchy, (Gramscian) dominance and oppression and hegemony, and their overall assault on Western (and almost any historical human) civilization (which leads me to think that soon nobody is going to want to be the last one to die – or live – for that putatively ‘Bad Idea’ called Western Civilization).
As to (a), there is good reason why the Catholic Church still considers ‘sex’ to be like nuclear power: great stuff if used properly and yet capable of hugely bad consequences if not used properly; and thus that Church’s assorted sets of regs and rules to try to keep folks from setting off nuclear mini-explosions all the time and everywhere, and to do it as a recreational option.
As to (b), ‘men’ can so easily be cartoonized as walking sex-offenses waiting to happen, sure to happen, and probably have-already-happened. Which also makes all women past, present, and future-potential ‘victims’ – with all the bennies Dems have showered on that so very vivid and eternal Status and Identity. Thus the government – especially in its police power – was invited in over the doorstep of every citizen’s “hearth”, into the homes and even bedrooms of every hearth in the country. In pursuit of which the Dems have created a political Fright Night for real.
Dems and the Left wont stay out of peoples bedrooms, yet it is Republicans and Conservatives that are accused of that. Just as racism and racist policy is promoted by the Left and Democrats, but Conservatives and Republicans are branded racists.
The speech was excellent.
As Carson, VDH and others who discuss education have noted, the thought process and the standards of intellectual achievement have been dumbed down. I would add that they are not merely dumbed down, but deliberately poisoned.
The textbooks that America produces, not only domestically, but globally, are now filled with leftist trash. This is why families need to counter such harmful material with good books in the home, and by training them to recognize bias.
Here is one such sample (this book is also sold to schools in other developed countries such as Canada or Australia:
http://books.google.ca/books/about/History_of_a_Free_Nation.html?id=dWk8KgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
I perused through this textbook, curious at what my younger cousin would be studying as a junior in high school in his American history class. The title of the book is quite ironic, as it took about 5 minutes to realize that it is clearly an anti-freedom, white colonist bashing piece of propaganda, though they try to hide their bias by including key original documents such as the Declaration of Independence. They present the colonists as greedy, aggressive, imperialists, and even say that King George was not at fault during the revolutionary war, and that the white settlers were very eager to exploit the natives. Washington is mentioned as “one who spoke as though all was lost” during the war. It sympathized with the British soldiers during the Boston massacre. The book focused a fair bit on women too (preparing the robot student population for gender studies). I have nothing against students learning more about women, and/or social elements of society throughout history, but taken as a whole with the rest of the agenda, it was clearly an anti-white, anti-capitalist, feminist anti-American book. Truly America will be lost if this is what the education system teaches. I was disgusted as I closed the book, but at least had some hope that my cousin recognized some of the bias therein. We had a good discussion about it. If America has any chance to survive, start calling people like Obama what they are – people living off American largesse, who are actively destroying the principles that made America great. And get the trash out of the classroom and raise a stink in schools.
Not much was mentioned from the left regarding this, UNTIL the right took notice and it began to gain momentum…then the left had to fire up it’s mob to attack to the messenger. Same ol’ same ol’, every time.
“Not much was mentioned from the left regarding this …”
“This”, being Carson’s speech.
How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis!
Today, we are constantly being told, the United States faces a health care crisis. Medical costs are too high, and health insurance is out of reach of the poor. The cause of this crisis is never made very clear, but the cure is obvious to nearly everybody: government must step in to solve the problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBFoC1gkExI&feature=g-all-f
The best you can hope for is a systematic collapse where liberalism becomes a bubble that finally bursts due to over PC attitudes and recklessness spending. We can’t win now. We can’t. They control everything and most importantly the youth which we don’t fight for anymore. They already are talking Hillary up and you know the guilty left would love to now have the first woman president under their belt (granted she’s a better politician then Obama). It’s funny how we probably will never see another Black Democrat president ever again. They got their little guilty ego boost out of the way now whoever runs after Obama is going to have a tough time since they will have to run on actual substance this time! Style always played a big part of any candidates campaign but the Democrats simply have no problem getting someone elected as long as they aren’t old and white. Hillary is next. Then they will push a gay man. Then maybe a transgendered person. I wish I was being sarcastic but this is their logic. Not that I don’t think any of these demographics could run the country well because they certainly can but to the left the fact that they are “different” will be more then enough to get them elected and that thought process is dangerous. We should elect people based on their merits. The left doesn’t do this anymore.
Democrats of old were slaveholders. Democrats of new are now overseers of urban ghetto plantations, especially in cities like Chicago and Detroit. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, self-made man and adviser to Abe Lincoln, would ask ghetto dwellers today, “What have you done with your freedom?”
Against the Ghetto Plantation
AmericanThinker.com
Feb. 10, 2013
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/against_the_ghetto_plantation.html
I recommend Ann Coulter’s _Mugged_. She’s not a punctilious academic scrivener, but does a moderately good job of citing sources and backing up what she writes.
This is the seminal policy and political point of our time. First, policy-wise, the expanding welfare state and its concomitant victimhood have destroyed two generations of African-Americans; at the precise moment in our nation’s history when the playing field became legally clear, when a majority of white Americans recognized and acknowledged and deemed unacceptable the second class treatment of their black fellow citizens, the ‘right thinkers’ instituted a well-meaning philosophy that has robbed from what is, or was, — at least arguably — our most self-reliant faction that very self reliance which had enabled them to overcome suppression, violence and serfdom. Indeed, in addition to enslaving black people, it has turned a portion of them into cauldrons of hate, leading to greater racial division. This is terrible enough, but compounding the error is a complete refusal to examine the evidence and change course. Detroit, DC, Chicago, Memphis, Baltimore, etc, crumble; schools fail, prisons fill, families disintegrate, and the progressives continue their winter march to Moscow with their constituents as pack animals. (How can anyone who thinks NOT become cynical?!) Second, politically, peel off 25% of African-American voters and the Democratic Party poses about as much threat as a Harold Stassen presidential run. Ah, the beginning notes of IMAGINE waft on the air and dance through my head.
Those generations have effectively been destroyed. Politicians have always pandered to voted, but its gotten out of hand, and part of that is the political fracturing that’s taken place in America, our new ethnic and gender-based Tower of Babel, where the greater good is more or less buried.
Notice Dr. Carson said “special interest groups,” not financial lobbyists. He quite rightly lumped the two together. It’s right because special citizen’s interest groups can be quite as destructive as corporate lobbyists. It doesn’t matter if blacks have purposely, something I don’t believe, or accidentally, been “kept on the plantation,” so to speak, the effect is the same. And that effect is that black folks, by voting for skin-based self interest based on myths, are effectively taking part in their own cultural suicide.
Compton, for example, is being taken over by Hispanics. Perhaps blacks will understand they shouldn’t vote for immigrant-happy Dems, when there are no more blacks in Compton. Were I black, I’d think about switching my vote before black literacy levels fall to Egyptian standards, and while those standards still involve English.
a’ight, ya’ll’s.
There seems to be major whingeing about controlling the levers of mass media. We live in a tech- and cloud- computing world, right now, in the last three years.
For books: kindle, nook, Kobo, apple. There are blogs dedicated to getting your stuff polished and published. Dean Wesley Smith gives the most basic tutorials. Kristine Katherine Rusch writes about contracts and the whole industry. JAKonrath writes “get’r'done” inspirational pieces. He just hit one million downloads, and all his bitterness is dissolved into one big Sandra Bullock wins the beauty pageant speech. He’s smart, he’s copyable.
For magazines on e-readers: Issuu. It’s $20/month. They are cheerful and helpful and scalable. For free, they’ll advertise on their own.
Blogs: okay, the usual suspects. Blogger, WordPress, yahoo, etc. A privately owned one through GoDaddy is inexpensive. This gives you more control. There are others, of course.
For screenplays: Scrivener. books, articles, phD papers, too. It’s 30 days free, then $40. It has discussion boards. it has ways to convert mss to different e-book formats.
Word, microsoft. amazingly powerful, yet annoying, yet amazingly powerful.
mac: refer to vodkapundit.
distribution: NATPE, if you want to spend.Go in with friends. Have friends. Cross-promote.
Netflix has queues. Redbox wants content. The guy who owns Hobby Lobby finances films. The guy who owns Regal Cinema finances films.
You might not have the film they want- but that lets you know money is on the table. Fast food is the largest source of millionaires in American history. You don’t think a McDonald’s franchisee doesn’t want to be a film hero?
Before studio blockbusters- producers would have a few film reels, and a set of promo- posters, and they’d drive from town to town, shilling for the movie. You don’t think “exclusive” doesn’t have cache? You don’t think congregational magazines don’t want to win awards for new media and criticism, and an Esquire- level story about a producer driving around shilling faith films? You might learn who your audience really is, selling face to face.
Walmart sells $5 films. You might not get the coveted $12.94, but can you make a profit at $5, and build an audience for your next film? The Coen Brothers made cheap films for years, to become the respected auteurs they are today.
Radio? Pandora, and any other streaming site. Make professional content, get up-loaded.
Short vids: youtube.
Comedy: Jeff Foxworthy took the vaudeville format, and used it for southerners. He’s rich. Deservedly rich. It wasn’t laying around on the sidewalk- he built it. You think you’re funny? Or your friends? U2 started with the producer, and the teenage band driving around in a crappy hatch-back, trying to sell records.
Film editing: Mac has stuff-
For special effects: there are books, for one. For two- how special? Can you dup a video-game? Can you use kinect? or several kinects? Can you borrow public access tv editing bays?
books and ereaders: the devices have different markets. Nooks are suburban women with kids. Kindles are more tech-oriented. Ipads are all over the place. CreateSpace can print out books, as can Kinko’s, if you talk to corporate development. Kinko’s prints blue-prints, if you wanted to sell plans for simple family homes, bomb shelters, modest clothing, cos-play gear, etc. Right now, the question is: cell-phone or landline. You might not afford landline, but you can distribute on cell-phones, more or less- that’s self-published ebooks, self-published clothing patterns, and so on.
cable tv needs content. so does regular tv, but cable seems to be the farm leagues, these days.
culture is not a rear-guard action. culture is creation.
Thanks ari.
I did not see the speech as a slam on Obama as much as a slam on the whole system. Did you not note that he said the eagle can fly because it has a left wing and a right wing. Interesting. If the right listened closely, he called for equality in taxation. In his example of tithing he calls for everyone to pay 10%. The average middle class family pays far more than Romney’s 14%. As I recall, Obama called for an increase on the wealthy to get the rates of the wealthy more in line with the rates of the middle class. Carson seems to be calling for a decrease on everyone else’s taxes to match the rate of the wealthy. It seems to me that there was plenty of blame being thrown at the righted well as the left. And for the record, I am a liberal who would consider voting for a Republican like Carson because he gets it. I may not agree with his stance on several issues, but I look at him a nd see a man of character. He puts compassion for others first and that is what I think is missing in our country today.
That’s not true, unless you’re going to define middle class as $200K and under. If you take the typical family of four making $50,000 per year, the typical payes no where near 14% of their check to federal income tax.
Now if you wish to throw in the most regressive of all taxes, FICA, then I’ve got ears.
The comments emblazoned here in the color of Tom Paine bold possess an intensity that heretofore I admit I’ve been missing.
In my humble opinion, your prose are a thousand percent more powerfully and thoughtfully delivered than all the columns that appear in the supposed ten leading conservative political websites.
I applaud you all.
cfbleachers, one of our most dependable colleagues of cogent thought, authors a piece that rings of Patrick Henry’s unforgettably persuasive words unleashed at the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775 in St. John’s Church, Richmond, Virginia.
To me, the times we live in are as congruent as two exact pentagons similar in every dimension; Times in dire need of action equally congruent.
I almost expected the good sir cf to end with the last three sentences of that famous Henry piece of spontaneous oratory, (teleprompterless as a Lincoln/Douglas debate) which begins with the words, “Is life so dear or peace so sweet…
Is it not time gentleman and gentlewomen to remove the pox on our nation with the haste of a Mr. Revere mounting his steed on April 7, 1775 and riding off into the moonless night of the Massachusetts countryside. Is a question mark really needed?
“The surest way for evil to prevail is for brave men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke, 1770.
I’m not real fond of Freud, but projection does seem to be really common on the left. I have had numerous discussions/arguments with leftists who seem to be projecting their anger and even rage onto the right – constantly asserting that we’re the angry ones. They do the same thing with a lot of other issues – throwing out claims about the right that are unsupported by evidence, but which seem to reveal underlying attitudes of those who make them.
Liberalism is a mental illness.
Well said, Jeannette. Some people have a bizarre obsession with sex and can’t seem to focus on anything else.
Like Rick Santorum and Kathryn Lopez.
That the Left is so obsessed with sex, seeing it everywhere, is merely a mirror image of the religious conservative’s obsession with it. I serves to underscore their deeper commonalities.
For those of us outside that trap, sex is a private matter, a matter of individual choice, and **not** the concern of anyone uninvolved… least of all those busybodies acting in the name of such imaginary entities as “God” or “society”.
So the AIDS epidemic costs our society nothing, hey? Want to try again about ‘sex’ being nobody’s business but our own?
How many billions were spent on a preventable disease on account of ‘casual sex’ through the 80s and 90s? How much is spent treating a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases now, including a few that have become completely antibiotic resistant?
What’s the cost of an untreatable pandemic to you? Free?
Oh, I don’t know, Tex. Conservatives are always talking about sex, too. Every time you turn around, there’s a conservative saying “Why the heck can’t Sandra Fluke’s One Percenter fiance’ pay for her contraceptives since he’s the one having sex with her?” “Why do we have to kill babies just so’s liberals can have sex without its consequences?” “Why do I have to know whether or not two male roommates are having sex, and why does that matter when we’re handing out tax breaks?” “Why do liberal women think with their vaginas instead of their brains?” “Why do they call sex with condoms ‘safe sex’ when it’s actually ‘slightly less dangerous sex’?” And of course, “Why does every liberal throw a complete screechy tantrum like no two-year-old can match, every time a conservative fails to be sufficiently obsessed with whether or not liberals peepees are happy?” Mmmm I guess that last one didn’t actually use the S Word, nevermind.
Seerak actually has two obsessions with the ‘S’ word. If he’s not castigating us about our busybody Sexual hangups and a belief in God, he’s on to us about Society being an imaginary entity. See what you can learn from a Leftist?
Obviously, there’s another kind of ‘S’ word Seerak ought to obsess about, though. And I’m Surprised it’s not on its radar, because Spending is a Leftist obsession. It’s called Healthcare $$$.
Tanenhaus’ article is a “maintenance lie”, a regularly scheduled rehash of Leftist mythology and cant. It is not intended to argue its case to dissenters; it is intended only to reiterate it to the faithful.
saw him on C-SPAN several years ago. what an amazing man.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/201779-1
from october 2007
WHO BOOKED CARSON FOR THE PRAYER BREAKFAST?
Boy, that person must’ve been sweating — and praying — during the whole speech.
Just as I’m getting to the point of deflation and an inconsolable attitude, something like this comes along to strengthen my resolve…..
Dr. Carson was the “big brain” in the room that day, not the poser Preezy Fissbump. The contrasts between the two men could not be more striking. Ironic that the best men to represent American values are of African descent, Carson and Allen West.
Texas might encourage violating Obamacare with tax breaks Published: 30 January, 2013
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-health-care-contraception-015/
Food Stamp Rolls in America Now Surpass the Population of Spain February 11, 2013 By Elizabeth Harrington
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/food-stamp-rolls-america-now-surpass-population-spain
understand you nailed it in the first few lines. libs NEED the conservatives to be ‘racist and white. has nothing to do with actual racism but their power base. Thats why i try not to call them liberals but refer to them as ‘statist’ as true liberals want to be free of govt control, not legislate their way into govt servatude. its an agenda thats self fufilling based on the results they want, not the results that are, just like any dictatorial govt existing today.
eg. Lib- conservatives are racist, they dont like black people and dont have black members.
Conserv: – but we have many members of many different backgrounds especially black latino etc.And we judge on content of character not color of skin.
lib – Thats why you are racist because you dont judge on color and dont think the minorties deserve special treatment due to all the evil America has done for them. And condervative blacks/minorities are not ‘real’ minorities
conserv – why?
lib – because they are conservative. *close loop*