Polite Kid

''A multicultural society is one that is inherently prone to conflict, not harmony. This is why we see a huge growth in government bureaucracies dedicated to resolving disputes along racial and cultural lines. These disputes can never be resolved permanently because the bureaucrats deny one of the major causes: race. This is why there is so much talk of the "multicultural" rather than the more precise "multiracial." Ever more changes and legislation are introduced to make the host society ever more congenial to racial minorities. This only creates more demands, and encourages the non-shooting war against whites, their civilization, and even the idea of the West. '' - Frank Ellis, Multiculturalism and Marxism
But is it still a 'non-shooting war'?
The news story of the four police officers killed in Oakland has been much discussed in the right-blogosphere, though crimes like this are under-reported in the old media. The CofCC has a piece on the black radical group which organized what amounted to a celebratory march in honor of the killer, Lovelle Mixon.
Uhuru/APSP is one of several extremely militant anti-white groups thriving in black communities across the United States. Uhuru openly celebrates violence against white police and authority figures. They also denounce Obama as a tool of the "white power establishment."
The group is based in St. Petersburg, Florida and actively holds rallies and demonstrations in about a dozen cities. The leader goes by the name "Chairman Omali Yeshitela." The group claims a kinship with ZANU, the political party of violent Zimbabwe dictator Mugabe. It also claims to be allied with "revolutionary forces" in South Africa and other nations. Uhuru calls itself the "American front of the international African liberation movement."
It's an old story that the mainstream media treat groups like this as harmless and as 'civil rights' or 'activist' groups when they cover them at all, whereas we know that a White counterpart, if such existed, would be shrilly denounced as a 'hate group' or worse, and would probably by now have been raided and mass arrests carried out. But we all know that the double standards exist, and that nonwhite radical extremist groups will be handled with kid gloves and/or treated with exaggerated respect by the powers that be.
Another distressing aspect of the event and the old media coverage of it is the tendency to make the killer just one of the victims. This kind of thing is standard these days, especially when the perpetrator is of a 'victim group'. But this trend is an affront to the actual victims and to their families and friends. It is the ultimate in moral obtuseness.
I caught a few minutes of O'Reilly earlier this evening, and in his usual fashion he declared that the vast majority of 'African-Americans' deplore crimes like those committed by Mixon and that the majority do not support the march in support of the killer/rapist. Of course O'Reilly had nothing to back up that assertion, and I see no evidence of it in real life. I have to wonder if O'Reilly mixes and mingles with the ''African-American community'' enough to know what the majority there thinks or feels. I suspect his experience consists mostly of mingling with the blacks who work in the media or in other related positions, people like Juan Williams, who usually adopt a more moderate tone.
Surely, though, we can look back some years to the O.J. verdict and see how most blacks reacted to Simpson's acquittal (no doubt with the aid of sympathetic black jurors). Or we can go back a little further and remember the L.A. riots after the Rodney King incident. How many 'African-American leaders' expressed shock or dismay or chagrin over what they saw during those days? None, that I can recall.
Similarly, with Katrina, how many 'African-Americans' stood up to deplore what occurred there in the aftermath of that natural disaster? From what I recall there was much race-baiting, and accusations of purposely delayed evacuations, actual claims of conspiracies (levees being blown up, and so on) and charges of 'racism' in general from the national leaders.
Few or no blacks denounced the hysteria and the race-baiting, except for an occasional lone voice.
O'Reilly is like most media figures in that he leans over backwards to insist that it's only a 'tiny percentage' of blacks who commit heinous crimes and an only slightly less tiny percentage who excuses or even celebrates the criminals. However he is going to have to come up with something to back up these assertions if he insists on making them. But we know he will never do that; he will never have to. Most people are eager to simply let those statements pass or even to blindly assent, without any evidence of their accuracy. And we know why this is: political correctness.
Inevitably even those who recognize the dishonesty in statements like O'Reilly's will acknowledge that, and then proceed to justify the PC 'white lies' by saying ''oh, well, he has to say that, if he wants to keep his job. He can't tell the truth."
Yet O'Reilly is the guy who calls his TV program the 'No-Spin Zone', the man who claims to be so blunt and honest in contrast to the mealy-mouthed spinmeisters elsewhere in the media. He trades on his no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is persona, and he is blunt enough when it comes to the safe topics, but when it comes to race, he is little better than any of the other PC-fied media minions.
So why does he make these silly PC statements about how 99 percent of blacks don't agree with the extremists, when the evidence to the contrary is everywhere? Why do many others do the same? We also see the same thing with those who insist that there are 'moderate Muslims' who are the peaceful majority, and only a minuscule number who actually support extremism and terrorism. Whenever the subject is the behavior of some minority group, there are the eager apologists who rush into the conversation to insist that ''but the majority are not like that! We can't blame all of them; it's just a few that cause problems. The majority are good people."
Perhaps it's some kind of psychological defense mechanism that makes people feel compelled to deny that there is a problem and that it does involve a great many people, not just a few troublemakers. Acknowledging that there is a problem and that it is more widespread than political correctness would admit would imply having to deal with the problem in some way, and many people prefer to avoid that.
And then there are those for whom PC is their quasi-religion; these people have to 'feel good about themselves' and these days, what better way to do that than to take a benevolent and all-tolerant attitude towards minorities who behave badly?
But these are people with their heads in the sand, believing that if they deny the problem, it will somehow evaporate on its own.
Maybe O'Reilly himself, who is so often accused of being 'racist' or 'fascist' is more sensitive to that criticism than he lets on. Despite his blustering tough-guy image, I think he cares very much about being seen as 'fair-minded' or unbigoted, even if it means denying obvious truths.
The media of late have gone all-out, as we've discussed here and elsewhere, to show us falsified images of blacks in positions of authority, wise, noble, kind, friendly, accomplished blacks, probably in an all-out effort to counter the crime stories or the evidence of our own senses from everyday life. The news channels and the media generally like to present us with blacks who belie the stereotypes and it has worked like a charm, apparently, for most people. However as I've always said, one exception, or the occasional aberration, does not disprove the rule.
Again, Frank Ellis said
A mode of opinion control softer than outright censorship is the current obsession with fictional role models. Today, the feminist and anti-racist theme is constantly worked into movies and television as examples of Bertoldt Brecht's principle that the Marxist artist must show the world not as it is but as it ought to be. This is why we have so many screen portrayals of wise black judges; street-wise, straight-shooting lady policemen; minority computer geniuses; and, of course, degenerate white men.''
But we still, if we are honest and realistic, have to look at the overall statistics and the realities, without the rose-colored glasses provided by the media propaganda.
Political correctness kills; when I first said that on a forum some years ago, I was angrily challenged for it, but every day in the news we get more examples of how it can be fatal. I have to wonder to what extent PC affects law enforcement policies when 'interacting' with people in the ghetto or the barrio. I have to wonder how many people's lives are put at risk by this foolish insistence on believing in PC fairytales.

Labels: Anti White Racism, Crime, Cultural Marxism, Hate Crime, Media Bias, Old Media, Political Correctness

Here's an article which asserts that without organized crime (which largely got started through the late-19th century wave of mass immigration), America would be a dull old place. So we ought to be grateful that the immigrant wave brought us such great cultural benefits as jazz, smutty movies (beginning with the 'nickelodeon), the gay movement, Las Vegas, and interracial clubs which made our country a 'better place.'
Lew Rockwell.com occasionally has articles which are of some worth. I don't agree with libertarians on many things, but I can see eye-to-eye with those who oppose and sound the alarm about a too-powerful central government, and about the decline in our civil liberties.
But this article which was apparently posted originally at HuffPo is one which illustrates the other side of libertarianism, which is nothing more than the adolescent hedonist argument framed in academic or pseudo-intellectual terms. The first libertarian I ever knew in real life was simply a druggie-hedonist who was still rebelling against his wealthy, conservative father and 'whatever else you got.'
Libertarians, being ideologues, are thus brothers to the liberals, who believe in fairy-tale constructs, utopian castles in the air, mythical lands where everyone is free from any external (or internal) restraint, and everybody is happy and harmonious.
The implication behind this particular article is that the original founding population of this country were a crowd of fuddy-duddies who did not want anybody to have any fun, and thus made this country a joyless, repressed place where (horrors!) there were vice laws and social mores that -- imagine! -- discouraged and occasionally punished antisocial and/or self-destructive acts.
So the false dichotomy is set up: which would you rather live in: a repressed, puritanical place where all pleasure is outlawed, or a wide-open lawless place in which libertinism is given free rein?
Most younger people would unhesitatingly choose the latter, the country with no restraints. Sadly, now even the older generations, who usually uphold the traditional, have fallen for the same influences. The fact is, though, that as I said, this is a false choice; it is not an either/or choice. No country existing now is perfectly libertarian (I doubt that such a place could exist) nor is any country as strict and oppressive as to curtail all vice and self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior. Such a place would, of course, be a police state -- unless the majority of the populace were devout people who exercised a great deal of self-restraint, and did not need to be coerced into behaving well. Even then, though, people are subject to the same temptations as any other human being, and it is this inherent weakeness that the libertines and those who profit from vice of whatever sort exploit.
At least the article verifies what I have generally believed about the unhappy effects of the promiscuous immigration policies of the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as the post-1965 wave of immigration. If you import people who have differing mores and ethics and behavioral standards, there will be a cultural clash and a disruption in morality as people are offered conflicting messages from different sources.
For years the media have been promoting sleaze and corruption, and the article not only notes the influence of certain cultures and ethnicities, but praises them for doing it, and calls it the 'betterment' of our country.
Pretty shameless.

Labels: Crime, Culture Clash, Founding Stock Americans, Immigration, Libertinism

Did you watch the '100 Days' press conference? Neither did I, though I've looked at the transcript just to see what was said. But the following question and the ambiguous answer given has me puzzled. At one point, #44 says that waterboarding was torture, and that it 'violates our ideals and values' but then he says he is convinced it was the right thing to do. However I don't expect logic or consistency from him or his administration; it looks like he is trying to have it both ways, predictably:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.
It corrodes the character of a country.''
I have not blogged about this waterboarding/torture issue, because it is rather a thorny subject with which I haven't concerned myself very much. On the one hand, I find little sympathy for terror suspects but on the other hand, I cannot and could not bring myself to share the Rush Limbaugh attitude that, say, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were 'no worse than a fraternity hazing', just no big deal. I remember when that scandal first broke I was still somewhat of a mainstream conservative in many respects, but broke ranks with the dittoheads on the subject of the War on Terror or the Iraq War specifically.
So is waterboarding 'torture'? I don't know. I don't have a clear-cut answer. I do see a danger of simply reacting, as most Republicans do, in knee-jerk fashion to the rantings of the left. In other words, if the Democrats are agin' something, we have to be for it, and not only for it, but rabidly so. If they think waterboarding is torture, we have to say it's not only not torture, but in fact a good and virtuous thing. I reject knee-jerk politics or partisanship.
Overall, though, this issue is not high up on my list of priorities. But here is an interesting discussion from What's Wrong With the World, where Lydia writes about the changing views among conservatives on the ethics of 'torture' and capital punishment.
The End of a Consensus
This post is going to be full of sociological claims about which I am uncertain. It's okay if you disagree with me about them, so long as you do so nicely.
First claim: Thirty-five years ago, most conservatives were both very strongly in favor of the death penalty and strongly opposed to torture, where "torture" would have included waterboarding, if they had been asked about it.
Second claim: This is no longer true today. Now, conservatives who are strongly in favor of the death penalty tend to be the same ones who support at least some forms of torture, and conservatives who are opposed to those same forms of torture tend to be, at least, uneasy about the death penalty rather than strongly in favor of it.
Suppose these are both true. What caused the change?'
There is a paradox here. I would say she is right that a generation or so ago, most conservatives were pro-capital punishment yet they would not have approved of torture, or of some of the 'interrogation methods' that are apparently being used in recent years. She asks why views have shifted among conservatives. It does appear that more conservatives now have misgivings about the death penalty, but there is also a much more cavalier attitude about 'torture' in interrogation. I found the approval of torture by many conservatives to be surprising when it first became apparent a few years ago. I wondered at the time why this was so; I always, even when I was liberal, had a picture of conservatives as being more gentlemanly and civilized than many liberals. I suppose the generation of 'conservatives' who were dittoheads or listeners to talk radio generally tended to be less genteel than the old-time conservatives.
This isn't your father's conservatism.
But why has there been a change, as Lydia asks?
Further down, she says:
There is something to my mind bracing and healthy about a person who recognizes, sternly, uncompromisingly, and forcefully, the importance of the death penalty, who takes a manly position also on self-defense, who is nowhere close to pacifism, but who views torture with unmitigated disgust and rejection. Can anyone imagine John Wayne torturing anyone? But I can certainly imagine him solemnly sentencing a murderer to death. And what about the Marine hymn? "First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean."
Regardless of what John Wayne would have countenanced, or more accurately, what his movie characters would have done, would, say, Robert E. Lee have approved of torturing anyone? Stonewall Jackson? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington?
Yet all of these men would, as Lydia says of Wayne, would have no objection to the death penalty where appropriate.
We live in a strange and inconsistent age; some of the same people on the right who support the death penalty for certain criminals are too squeamish to send illegal invaders home, or to close our borders, because that would be cruel and inhumane.
As far as the death penalty, this subject has come up here before. I notice something strange about the comments on Lydia's post at WWWtW: almost no one references or cites the Bible on the subject of the death penalty. Someone quotes G.K. Chesterton as an authority; I admire Chesterton as much as the next, and a quote of his adorns my sidebar. But he is not my authority on ethics and morals. Another commenter references C.S. Lewis; I would say the same of him that I say about Chesterton. But shouldn't a Christian look to the Bible to know God's will on that subject? Surely the absence of Biblical references is surprising on a site which espouses a Christian worldview -- or perhaps more accurately a Catholic viewpoint.
I think the question of the Church's teachings on capital punishment is an interesting topic which should be explored, although I won't attempt that here, as I am not a Catholic and I don't feel qualified to explore that. It's a subject for those who are Catholic or who are more knowledgeable about Catholic theology or doctrine than I. I do know, simply, that the Catholic Church used to favor capital punishment for certain crimes like murder, though I don't know how or why that position was reversed.
Even less do I know why Protestants, in some cases, are abandoning Biblical teaching on the death penalty. I was talking about capital punishment with a very conservatively-brought-up Christian recently, when we were discussing various crimes. This person told me that she was not sure about capital punishment because the Bible says ''vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.'' I attempted to point out that this is in reference to personal matters, admonishing us not to take revenge on someone who has wronged us, just as with the 'turn the other cheek' admonition. But I fear it fell on deaf ears. She thinks capital punishment is revenge, and that it is a failure to show mercy and forgiveness. Again, I tried to point out that God is not only merciful but just and holy, not tolerating sin. She was unconvinced. And I know there are many more like her, who are now becoming more liberal and vacillating on issues like punishment in general. Many have been persuaded by years of exposure to the Oprah approach, and the emphasis on mental illness as the cause of crime, not human sin or evil. Punishment, according to that worldview, is backward; an enlightened society 'understands' and 'rehabilitates' its 'sick people'; it does not punish criminals. That is so 'medieval.'
Someone on the WWWtW thread opines that the tendency to favor harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects is driven by the tribal defense instinct; we feel under threat so we are willing to justify harsh measures to protect our own in wartime or other such extraordinary situations. I think that makes sense; perhaps it's why I am not inclined to feel sympathy for terror suspects or actual terrorists. I don't believe that the Islamic threat is a bogeyman created by the neocons or the media. On the other hand, neither do I see Islam as the primary threat, so I don't fit in with the mainstream right on this issue.
As for the capital punishment question, I think it will assume more importance as the ascendant far left tries its best to abolish capital punishment. They have been relentlessly working towards that goal for decades and they are sensing victory, so they will ratchet up their efforts to end it. And what with the liberalizing of many formerly conservative churches and denominations, I fear Christians will lose the will to defend the death penalty, and concede the moral battle to the left, probably feeling good about themselves as they do so. It's all part of the same phenomenon which causes the Christian 'conservatives' to reverse themselves on homosexuality, same-sex ''marriage'' or other such social issues. What's next?
Addendum
Here are some good defenses, from a Biblical point of view, of capital punishment. They do a very thorough job of examining many possible objections or questions from skeptics on the issue:
Stand to Reason: The Bible and Capital Punishment
by Gregory Koukl
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment and the Bible

Labels: Capital Punishment, Conservatism, Creeping Liberalism, Crime, Death Penalty, Justice System, Liberal Christianity, Traditional Morality

Remember the story last November of the Texas man, Joe Horn, who shot two illegal alien burglars in his yard?
Good news: he's been no-billed. Read it here:
Grand jury clears Joe Horn in controversial Pasadena shootings
... Horn's attorney, Tom Lambright, first heard the news in a phone call from 11 News.
"I'm sure Joe will be delighted," Lambright said. "I think the evidence showed that Joe was, in fact, within his legal rights to do what he did. He didn't want to do it, but he didn't have any other alternative."
Lambright said Horn still feels awful about the shooting and is not ready to comment publicly yet.
He said Horn is very grateful to the people who supported him and stood behind him.''
Of course the so-called 'community activists' see this as 'frightening.' For them, the ''right'' -- of certain groups of people, at least -- to trespass, burglarize, and escape with impunity is paramount, while the castle doctrine, allowing a man to defend home and property, frightens them.
The article concludes by telling us that police went to Horn's neighborhood 'as a precaution.' Precaution against what? 'Community activists' coming in to stir up more trouble?
Last December these same activists received a 'warm' welcome from Joe Horn's neighbors. Remember this video of that encounter? It was quite a shock at that time to see this kind of show of backbone. We have become so used to seeing the other side win every skirmish simply by default, because our side tends to be divided and/or apathetic. Once in a while we see glimpses of life on our side, and it is heartening.
I hope the people of Pasadena, Texas show the same resolute character they showed in the video should Mr. X and his friends return.

Labels: Anti-White Racism, Castle Doctrine, Crime, Illegal Immigration, Second Amendment, Self-Defense

On a Free Republic thread about the deadly stampede by frenzied Walmart shoppers, post #8 asks why the media are using an incorrect picture to illustrate the story. The picture apparently being shown is (I believe) from a Target store, and it looks like a racially-mixed group of people, some White, some black, some of unidentifiable race. However, the correct picture of the site of the Walmart stampede shows a group which appears to be close to 100 percent black.
The poster asks why the media are using the wrong photo. Need we ask? It's all part of the media's campaign of deception and obfuscation in the name of political correctness.
The other incident of 'Black Friday' violence, which resulted in two people being shot dead in a Toys R Us store, is reported in the usual odd fashion of today's PC media; the race or ethnicity of the people involved is coyly avoided in the article. This lack of information usually leads me to conclude that the perpetrators were nonwhite. The media are never shy about telling us when a White person commits a crime.
Is it important to tell us the race or ethnicity of a criminal suspect? I say it is, especially when the suspect is still at large. But in countless cases I've seen reported on the TV news, a suspect will be described only by the type of clothing worn, and by sex. For instance, a 'male wearing dark-colored clothing' is a popular description of criminal suspects. If this person is at large, he is still a danger to others, and yet his arrest is made less likely by the lack of a clear description.
When this kind of thing first became accepted practice by the media, and presumably by law enforcement agencies, many skeptics denied that such a policy existed, saying that only paranoid 'bigots' would make an issue out of racially ID-ing suspects. But it's since been acknowledged by news media that they in fact avoid such racial identifiers out of a desire not to ''stigmatize members of ethnic communities unfairly."
So rather than ''stigmatize'' someone, heaven forbid, let's let criminals run free and possibly victimize other innocents. Innocent lives are not as important as the ''feelings'' or the ''self-esteem" of 'ethnic communities.'
As for these disturbing events among 'Black Friday' shoppers, if one can call stampeding mobs 'shoppers', what have we come to, that there can be so many people willing to regress to savage behavior in pursuit of ''stuff", such as big-screen plasma TVs and game systems?
Many other questions come to mind: why are people knocking down doors (literally, in the Wal-Mart incident) to obtain these high-ticket items? The very people involved are the people the media tell us are ''deprived'' in some way, unable to participate in America's prosperity. It looks to me as if they are doing better than many middle-income people, if they can afford these luxury items. And if the economy is so troubled, why do so many Americans seem to have so much disposable income? Are they living beyond their means, charging these items on maxed-out credit cards? I've often idly wondered this kind of thing. When I still lived in the Big Multicultural City, I often saw residents of a certain housing project. Supposedly these people were at the bottom of the economic totem pole, yet they had $200 shoes, gold chains, and designer label clothing. I saw virtually no one who looked poor or deprived. In my youth, there were people (Whites as well as other races) who looked truly poor, being inadequately clothed and shod. Now the 'poor' people seem quite middle-class. Even homeless people sometimes don't look completely down and out.
Still, we are told that we are in some kind of new 'Great Depression', or on the verge of such a crisis. Are we? You'd never know it by these berserk shoppers.
But the behavior of the Walmart shoppers is apparently causing many people to think 'naughty' politically incorrect thoughts, at least if we can judge by the comments at many of the newspaper web pages. The first link I provided above, from the New York Daily News, contained some rather over-the-top comments, at least by PC standards, and I would not be surprised if such comments are deleted, or if commenting is shut down, as usually happens when people go off the reservation and make ''bigoted'' comments. It's interesting to see that some people are speaking up and making connections that were unthinkable in some quarters until recently.
This article contains the usual psychobabble explanations for the savage behavior of the Walmart mob, and some commenters actually see through it.
The all-knowing 'experts' say that fear was behind the behavior:
A fear of being unable to afford gifts - given today's economic woes - may drive many consumers to shop competitively for bargains at dawn, say local psychologists and sociologists.
Many people abandon their normal behavior when caught up in the urge to snag discounted plasma HDTVs like those on sale Friday at Wal-Mart in Valley Stream.''
Leave it to psychologists to try to elicit sympathy for those who trampled a man to death.
Why on earth should anybody ''fear'' not being able to buy an HDTV? It makes sense to fear not being able to buy food, or not being able to provide shelter for ourselves or our families, or not being able to get crucial medical care. Those wants are grounds for fear and distress, or at least concern. But ''fear" of not being able to buy pricey luxury gifts or even 'presents' for oneself? That's just greed and lust. And it is not something we should empathize with.
The exasperating thing about those who are so avid to buy Chinese-made junk because it's cheaper is that we Americans in general are not a frugal people, and we are not a deprived people. I suppose if this country were like the old Soviet Union, in which people told of having to stand in line for hours to get a simple loaf of bread, the desperation to 'get stuff' might be somewhat understandable. But as of now, at least, these frenzied bargain-hunters, who will stay up all night to get in a line to buy TVs or game systems, are not needy or hungry or desperate. They don't ''need'' these things at all.
We are a spoiled, self-indulgent, acquisitive people when you come right down to it.
Our parents and grandparents in many cases knew real want, and they knew the value of a dollar. Most of us today have never known hunger (except when on a self-imposed diet) or want. There's no excuse for Americans to act like starving people fighting over a loaf of bread.
Not all of us individually are guilty of these things, but as a society, it's true of us.
It's tempting to blame these trends on the media, and advertising. They do play a huge part in creating lusts in people for these luxury items and what used to be called 'status symbols.' Or some blame Walmart for their irresponsibility in enticing people to these dog-eat-dog shopping frenzies, and for failing to hire sufficient security and other staff to deal with rampaging hordes of 'shoppers'. Some say we should not blame Walmart. I say there is blame to go around. People of good character would not be engaging in this kind of savage behavior in quest of a "cheap'' $800 TV, but retailers should realize they are courting disaster by catering to the worst instincts of some people. Most people might be able to behave in a civlized and restrained way at these sales. Others, unfortunately, are not, and retailers surely know their customers. Walmart stores in certain areas are notorious for the kind of underclass clientele they attract and cater to. True, many middle-class people are bargain-hunters but most know to stay away from such places because of the kinds of customers who throng such stores. For that reason (and because I like quality, non-Chinese made merchandise) I shun Walmart.
So Walmart was irresponsible, but ultimately the stampeding hordes are the guilty ones. No individual blame can be affixed in a situation like the Walmart one; a number of people apparently trampled the poor man who died; no one can say who was most responsible, but it appears that there was a general callousness and indifference to his life and safety on the part of all the crazed shoppers. So they bear a collective responsibility and guilt -- which I doubt will trouble any of them. Reports said they were resentful and angry at being asked to leave when the injured and dying man was being aided by the paramedics. Getting their loot was uppermost in their minds. This is sad, and appalling.
Was this just an isolated incident? Unfortunately, probably not. Was it a harbinger of what is to come? I hope not, but I fear it may be, as we descend into Third World status in this country.
Personally I am doing more online shopping or giving gift cards, rather than descend into the chaos of shopping malls at Christmastime.

Labels: Consumer Society, Crime, Media Bias, Social Change, Societal Decay

I am sure most of you have seen the video of the vicious beating incident at a Baltimore McDonald's. It's been all over the Internet, though I would be surprised if the TV news channels would touch it because of the racial aspect.
I refrained from embedding it here, but you can see it at Vox Day's blog here, and read the discussion.
However the most jaw-dropping discussion of it for me, so far, has been this Free Republic thread.
It seems that much of the discussion there is not about the violence against a White by a number of blacks, but about whether or not the victim was a transvestite or transgendered male. I find it disgusting that some people over there on FR openly say that the beating was justified if the victim was a 'tranny'. I mean, I have no sympathy with the gay rights agenda, but nobody should be beaten that way, or have their injuries disregarded. In the video the Mickey D's ''employees'' stand around chattering and recording the beating on their cellphones, doing nothing to help the victim.. Male, female, or some third option, the beating is indefensible.
And here's the other thing that is staggering for me: do none of the White commenters feel any kinship or solidarity towards the victim? I guess the FR discussion illustrates what 'colorblind conservatism' does to your brain. Nobody seems to care that this is one of our folk being attacked and called a 'White B----' while those present stand around and watch and joke and carry on.
Once upon a time, White people had some sense of kinship and solidarity with their own. There's precious little of that among these 'conservatives'.
I invite you to watch the video -- if you don't have a very sensitive constitution, and to read the discussions - I am not sure which is more distressing.
Whether the victim was male or female, the beating was an outrage. These attacks (and there are many, lately) are against us all. And half of our people are so hopelessly indoctrinated that they are useless.

Labels: Anti White Racism, Crime, Diversity

The discussion of the rioting in France by 'youth' is continuing around the blogosphere, and here at What's Wrong With the World, as at other
blogs, the argument is being made by a few, rather insistently, that either the rioters are not 'Arab', being in many cases sub-Saharan Africans, of unknown religion, or that if they are Mohammedan, their religion has nothing to do with the violence. Why? Because they are not devout Moslems, but rather, dressed Western style, and following the ghetto culture common to Western urban underclasses.
I wonder why it is so important to some to assert that the riots have nothing to do with Islam? Are they eager to exonerate Islam from the charge that it promotes violence? Are they leftists seeking out 'Islamophobia', or neocons doing the same thing? Are they just nit-picky pedants who want to show how much more knowledgeable they are, in distinguishing sub-Saharan Africans from North Africans or whoever?
To me, the point that the rioters look to be sub-Saharan Africans for the most part is a pedantic one; the fact is, there are plenty of Moslems in Africa, and they are not confined to North Africa.
Secondly, suppose they are non-religious. Many of them do seem to be typical urban toughs who, as in seemingly all countries, emulate the worst aspects of MTV/hip-hop/Hollywood culture. Surely there are people who identify with that culture in all Western countries and in some non-Western countries -- yet it seems to be mostly those from the Islamic world, whether born there or in the West, who are prone to rioting and otherwise acting out violently. Why is that? Is the religion really just coincidental?
And just because they appear to follow an underclass urban 'youth' culture does not mean that their Islamic background is irrelevant to them or to their behavior. Islam is not just a matter of worship or ritual or religious observances. One need not be an outwardly devout practitioner of a faith to have been influenced by it if one grows up in a culture shaped by that religion. In America, most people are of Christian background; their ancestors practiced Christianity much more rigorously, no doubt, than today's generation does; we live in a secular, godless culture in the West. There are still people who live according to their faith, but the larger culture is godless and secular. Still, the residue of Christian influence in our culture is not fully obliterated. Many liberals who are as anti-Christian as they can be, even professing atheism or some other religion, have been shaped by Christian ethics and standards because our culture is at its core Christian, despite the secularizing trends. Leftists who, for example, become crusaders against animal cruelty, don't realize and probably wouldn't acknowledge the fact that Christianity is the ultimate source of their concern for animal welfare. Many of our charitable practices and our do-gooding projects are based in Christian morality, albeit they have been cut loose from their Christian roots.
So one need not be a practicing, believing Christian to be part of Christian culture, which still exists in an attenuated form in the West.
These 'youths', in some cases, are apparently French-born, though not of French blood. Their parents, or possibly grandparents or even great-grandparents were immigrants who, however, lived in enclaves with others from their home countries, practicing a culture and a way of life which is alien to the West, or old Christendom.
Just because the young people wear baggy gang-style clothing and listen to hip-hop does not mean that they are no longer Islamic; they have grown up in areas where their friends and relatives were members of the same Islamic-based culture, and they identify with their own people, not with the people of the country of their birth.
One can be Islamic in a cultural sense, and an ideological sense while not observing the minutiae of Islamic precepts. And these young people have also imbibed a leftist philosophy, a victimhood ethos, in which they feel entitled because they are outsiders, 'discriminated' against. Blend this with the basic us-vs.-them outlook of Islam, in which there is the Islamic world and the Infidel world, which is the realm of struggle, and you have a recipe for anger, disaffection, and in the right circumstances, violence.
After 9/11 when I really began in earnest to learn something about Islam and its aggressive ideology, I noticed that the jihadist viewpoint owes something to the leftists as well as to the Koran and the Hadiths. Franz Fanon, for example, was the first name which came to my mind. Fanon, who wrote the popular 70s book 'Wretched of the Earth', was widely read and very influential in the Arab world as well as in France, in earlier decades if not now.
In France, which educated and celebrated him, he's little read and rarely quoted. Even so, the spiritual climate he helped create remains, which is why his story shouldn't disappear. To forget him is to ignore one crucial foundation stone of the world we confront today. It was Fanon who brought into modern culture the idea that violence can heal the spiritually wounded.
Fanon, a psychiatrist, romanticized murder. He argued that violence was necessary to Third World peoples not just as a way to win their liberty but, even more, because it would cure the inferiority complex that had been created by the teachings of white men. Once liberated by violence, the formerly subject populations could help bring peace and socialism to everyone.
For the young in many parts of the world, he perfectly expressed the spirit of the times. He was the talk of revolutionary Paris in the 1950s, when the young Saloth Sar, not yet known as Pol Pot, lived there. Later, in America, the Weathermen and the Black Panthers loved to quote him. The book in which Fanon clearly articulated his theory, The Wretched of the Earth, went into six editions in Arabic. Today it's hardly necessary for revolutionaries to read him. His poison flows through the bloodstream of everyone who kills joyfully for an imaginary future.''
Fanon might be said to have been instrumental in the terrible violence of Algeria, which tore that country apart.
So of course there is a leftist element in the 'uprisings' in Europe (which are not confined to France). Flemming Rose, the publisher of the controversial 'Mohammed cartoons' which sparked worldwide rioting, writes about the role of the 'cult of victimology' in these violent outbreaks. And of course the 'cult of victimology' is at the heart of leftism.
So yes, there is a leftist element to the troubles in Europe and wherever Moslems and 'infidels' attempt to coexist, but if it is only leftist ideology, or only poverty and 'alienation' or 'racism' that causes these riots, why are they mostly confined to Moslem enclaves, and areas with large Moslem population? Surely Moslems are not the only poor people (if indeed they are necessarily poor, as their apologists usually claim) and not the only people under the influence of leftist delusions.
And it seems very much like hair-splitting to argue that because these rioters are not bearded and robed young men wearing traditional headdresses, they are not in any way motivated by Islam. Maybe these young men are half in the Western world, at least by their styles of dress and their behavior, but that does not mean they are Westernized in any real, deep sense. Surely, after so many examples of 'assimilated' Moslems in the West developing 'sudden jihad syndrome', or becoming involved in terror acts (the 7/7 bombers in the UK, for example) we don't believe that Islam is something so easily doffed and put aside.
An old proverb which gets a lot of use here on this blog is that 'blood is thicker than water', or occasionally, I say blood is thicker than culture. You can take the boy out of the Islamic world, but you can't take the Islamic world out of the boy -- a few defectors notwithstanding.
It's easy for young immigrants, or children of immigrants, to learn the language of the host country and to adopt the style of clothing and the music and the easy, careless personal morals popular among the urban youth everywhere in the West now. But it is not so easy to change one's habits of mind, the customs passed down from one generation to the next, or perhaps innate tendencies of one's ancestors. In some cases, it proves to be impossible. To believe that adopting outward forms like language, clothing, and music preferences transform the mind, spirit, and heart is absurd, but it is undeniably the kind of thing that liberals dearly love to believe.
Are the rioters then truly 'jihadists'? Are they acting under the specific instructions of some mad imam somewhere, who is pulling their strings? Probably not, but those things are not necessary to be able to say that Islam plays at least a part in the behavior we are seeing. And the fact that they come from a radically different and hostile culture certainly plays a huge part in their supposed alienation and anger and resentment. So at the very least, Islam plays an indirect part in what is happening. Islam is always a volatile ingredient to add to Western civilization.
But for those who somehow feel comforted, for whatever bizarre reason, by denying any role for Islam in these troubles, go right ahead and deny if it makes you feel better, safer, or more moral. But please don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by insisting that we deny it too.

Labels: Crime, Eurabia, Europe, France, Islam, Jihad, Leftism

The Boston Globe, in an op-ed piece, discusses some of the seamy side of holy Diversity.
The 'mainstream' media write about this issue a lot. And I suppose it's good that they do so, but it's bad that they often write about it in a rather less than honest way.
Generally, they do all they can to play down any racial aspects to these stories, although it's obvious to even the most dense reader that these horror stories involve 'diversity'.
''IN NEWARK, 20 young women and girls from West Africa were discovered working in hair-braiding salons for 14 hours a day with no pay. Their employer ruled over the victims, some as young as 10, with beatings, sexual assaults, and voodoo curses. Closer to home, five people were indicted in Quincy for operating brothels in rented apartments using immigrant women kept in a state of debt bondage with threats of deportation. In Danvers, a 13-year old runaway girl was offered to a group of men at a Motel 6 by a woman living at the hotel with her son.''
But as with all cases involving 'human smuggling', the illegals who enter the country this way are counted as victims and given special visas to stay in this country, ostensibly so they may testify against their 'victimizers.'
''Human trafficking is the fastest-growing illegal industry in the United States, second only to drugs. Federal authorities believe most trafficking rings are supplying forced labor � for domestic work, agriculture, manufacturing, hair and nail salons, and strip club dancing. But prostitution is close behind, and there can be a thin line between sweatshops and brothels.
Coerced prostitution is increasingly popular among criminal gangs because of its grim utility. An illegal gun or drug can only be sold once. But a girl�s body can be � and is � sold over and over again.''
The last two paragraphs quoted above play up the 'coerced' aspect of this situation. I have no doubt that there are such cases, where someone is forced into this kind of life, but I also believe that in cases of illegal immigrants, people may often agree to work for those who smuggle them into the country, in exchange for the latter's 'services.' But then the payment that is exacted may be something other than what was expected, or they may be forced to continue working indefinitely, under threat of being turned in to authorities. It seems entirely possible to me that many young women are aware of the 'work' they will be doing in this country, though maybe they are unaware of how little freedom they will be given.
I do find it a little surprising that the Globe op-ed questions the usual 'prostitution as victimless crime' attitude, as it is now viewed by many people, even by self-professed conservatives.
However, I think it is a way of life into which many young women enter with their eyes wide open. There are women who, lacking a moral grounding, see nothing immoral about it. I know a young woman who professes Christianity who tells me that some of her friends have become strippers and she sees nothing wrong with that; it's just a career choice where there is money to be made. Some young women see prostitution as just that, too, a way to earn a lucrative living.
So it may be possible that some of these enslaved young women were looking for 'economic opportunity' in this way.
And many of the people who are caught in raids on these kinds of activities are allowed to stay and may never have to return home.
But in a sense, isn't this whole picture what the illegal immigrant (and even legal immigrant) dream is about? Do whatever you have to do, legal or not, moral or not, to get to the streets paved with gold -- the ''better life'' we so often hear about?
Once upon a time, the 'American dream' meant something a lot more high-minded and honorable.

Labels: Crime, Diversity, Mass Immigration, Media Bias, Multiculturalism

First, the story being discussed here has been posted on a number of blogs and forums, and has occasioned a lot of discussion, most of it of the garden variety shock and outrage that accompanies -- and should accompany -- any discussion of such acts.
However, the linked discussion begins with a reasonable blog entry -- at least until I hit this sentence:
For that matter, while the possibility of the execution of an innocent man troubles me, I don't regard this consideration as very telling.''
Execution? Innocent man? I'm lost here, I confess.
First, there was no 'execution' in the legal sense. The man was stopped in the act of committing horrible violence on a child, violence which was real enough and serious enough to cause the child's death. He had to be stopped. As for his possibly being 'an innocent man' -- good grief; there were several witnesses to this thing, and it seems the police arrived on the violent scene in progress.
It would seem that there was little doubt about his 'innocence.' So I don't understand the blogger's mention of that as a possibility.
The discussion that follows degenerates into a 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' exercise in splitting hairs over capital punishment and whether it is or is not moral, or Christian, or fair, or whatever, and whether concern for 'potentially innocent' suspects should be given equal consideration alongside victims.
The exasperatingly pedantic tone of the discussion adds to the frustration it inspired in me.
Another thing: the discussion (and many of the news stories reporting the incident in question) made no mention of the name of the suspect. Just for the record, his name was Hispanic (Sergio Aguilar) and it may be he was illegal, but that is not the main point. His heritage and culture are not inconsequential, as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because culture plays a part in how we comport ourselves individually and in groups. And culture is linked with race. Certain groups are demonstrably more likely to commit violent crimes. That's something most oblivious 'I'm no racist' Americans need to understand; the fact that we are becoming a Hispanic country will not just mean more good Mexican restaurants. It will mean our country will come to resemble Mexico more and more, and this kind of thing is part of it.
But that's not the point of this post. I'm more troubled by the fact that even among conservatives, or 'conservatives', there seems to be a moral obtuseness that hints at how much liberal ideas have filtered into the conservative discourse. This fussing over whether the mad-dog individual beating the child was 'innocent', whether in a hair-splitting legalistic sense, or in an absolute moral sense, should not be taking place. At all. Especially not among conservatives.
30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, I cannot imagine those questions being raised and fretted over except among hyper-liberals.
Not so long ago, it was simply a given that should citizens or police come upon such an act happening, the attacker would need to be stopped, by whatever means worked, up to and including lethal force. The fretting about how someone could have stopped him without killing him is just decadent.
I suppose, in a way, this is a predictable side-effect of years of propaganda on the right about how ''all (human) life is sacred.'' Now, this line seems to have come into use as a weapon against the pro-abort crowd. However, the liberals, while not deeming unborn babies' lives to be sacred, certainly seem to think that all criminals (or suspects') lives are sacred. But was this idea of all human life being sacred a commonly-held idea in the old America? I honestly don't remember ever hearing it until after abortion became legalized.
Does the Bible say that 'all human life is sacred'? It certainly holds that all is created by God, and implies that all beings are created for a purpose. Since God is the Creator and giver of life, it isn't ours to decide arbitrarily to end a life, our own included, unless certain circumstances existed. The Bible commands capital punishment for murder. And here, the liberal will say, regarding the situation of the man beating the baby, that 'he hadn't been tried or convicted.' Yes, but under Biblical law, someone threatening innocent life is to be stopped from taking life, by force if need be.
The Bible always differentiates between shedding innocent blood and the blood of a criminal, or even someone in the act of harming another, who has not yet been 'tried and convicted'.
I have never been able to fathom the obtuseness of many liberals who cannot or will not see the difference between using lethal force to stop a dangerous attacker, or executing a killer, and taking an innocent life. It's as though most of our people in the West have become morally blinded.
Distinctions are important; how can we have reached the point where we seriously think that it may be morally wrong to kill a man committing such a heinous act? Can we no longer discern between killing someone for a valid reason, in extreme circumstances where a life is at stake, and wanton murder? Have we gotten too squeamish and too timid to deal with moral absolutes, and thus resort to shilly-shallying over life-and-death matters? I think we have, and I think this is manifest in many areas of our society these days. For example, our reluctance to defend our borders. Nobody wants to be unfair to these nice people who just come here to work and make a better living for themselves and their children. Like Mr. Aguilar, perhaps? Nobody wants to believe that among those nice, hard-working church-going, pious immigrants that there are some like Mr. Aguilar. We must always presume the best of everybody, the evidence notwithstanding.
We refuse to take tough stands and make hard choices. We would rather stand by and wring our hands and discuss fine moral points about the ethics of any possible action we might take to stop whatever evil we are up against. Sometimes, we just have to act and not stop to analyze and shilly-shally. (And by the way, that word comes from the phrase 'Shall I? Shall I?" The favorite phrase of the hesitant and the timid).
Sometimes we don't have the luxury of being timid and self-critical. Sometimes we have to 'act, act in the living present.'
But as for the question of killing a suspect, it's unfortunate, I think, that the English translation of the Ten Commandments uses the phrase 'thou shalt not kill' when the original phrase meant 'thou shalt not murder'. Hence the moral confusion of many about capital punishment. Every time some killer is executed and the bleeding-hearts gather around to protest and weep crocodile tears, the protesters carry signs saying 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.' And someone lectures us, saying that if we execute killers, we are 'no better than they are.' Such people are moral imbeciles.
As for the case of the man, Aguilar, murdering the child, I can only say that anybody who is not outraged and sickened by his actions does not deserve the label of 'civilized human being'. Anybody who wants to split hairs about whether or not he may have been 'innocent' has his priorities exactly backwards.

Labels: Capital Punishment, Crime, Justice System, Traditional Morality

From today's news - (please see the video at the link)
It happened may of last year, just before 11 in the morning. It was an average day on metro bus number 3684 on route 18 that all changed near the corner of 15th Avenue West and West Armor Street when a man got on the bus.
He looks like a normal guy until he paid his fare. Then, out of nowhere, he punches the victim Jeannie Square in the face.
Witness said the man shouted "The sick must die" and let punches fly at a defenseless woman.
"His initial attack was just, I mean she didn't know what hit her and she was just, she got hit pretty good." Charles Capizano was sitting in the rear of the bus. He saw what happened and wasted no time to get to the front of the bus and stop the attack.
"This guy was attacking everyone in his sight. Threatening everyone in his sight saying "The sick must die. God told me the sick must die."
Recently the video of a young man in Paris being attacked by ''youths'' on a bus was all over the blogosphere. At the time, I posted a link to the video, and the ensuing discussion centered on why the young White man seemed unwilling to defend himself, and why the bus driver seemed indifferent to his plea for help.
Well, this video was shown on Lou Dobbs earlier, where I saw it. I will let you see it for yourself; the images tell the story. The perpetrator fits the usual profile, but the victim is an older White woman -- who is obviously blind.
What is it about public transportation that seems to make attacks like this so distressingly commonplace? The skeptic might say that these things don't happen that frequently, that the media create unfounded hysteria or fear of crime. However I would say that the opposite is true; such attacks happen frequently in large urban centers, and I think anyone who lives in such areas, or ever has lived in such areas (as I have) would agree. If anything, the attacks that happen on buses, subways, etc. are probably underreported, and many of the people who habitually commute on public transportation become extremely jaded and blase about such assaults, shrugging it off as just one more minor disadvantage of urban life.
I know that the Seattle/King County area certainly has its share of such incidents, and I know that many of the people who live there are hopelessly, irredeemably liberal and passive about such things -- yet, hearteningly, a number of passengers on the bus in this video come to the aid of the blind woman who was pummeled, and they subdue the assailant. I commend them for that; it's a good sign, truly, when even Seattle people have the gumption to risk their own safety to help a rather helpless woman.
So the news is not all bad here; the glass is half-full.
However the discouraging part about all this is that most people, especially in liberal areas, are unwilling to notice some of the more salient facts -- such as who the attacker was, and to 'profile' when necessary to avoid such incidents.
And holding liberal ideas about human nature absolutely, positively disarm people psychologically, leaving them to choose a foolishly open attitude towards people who are likely to be dangerous. Moreover, once an attack is committed, the foolish liberal not only fails to learn the obvious lessons, but then proceeds to coddle and make sanctimonious excuses for the attacker. After all, he himself is just a poor victim, not responsible for his ugly actions. Check the comments on the WIVB website; some preening liberal is talking about how the attacker is obviously ''sick'' and in need of help.
In this case, pleas were probably made for the perpetrator based on his race and for his suffering the 'legacy of slavery.'
All too often, judges share these liberal attitudes, and sentence criminals who commit violence to ''treatment.''
Notice in the article that this attack happened about a year ago, though most of us probably heard nothing about it at the time; I certainly didn't.
And what has happened to this ''obviously sick man'' since the videotaped attack on the blind woman? He was sentenced for ''treatment'' at a mental hospital, not jail. I'm sorry to say that I predict that, when released, he will still be violent and dangerous, and if treated by the usual psychiatric drugs, may indeed be more dangerous and unpredictable.
How many such crimes are perpetrated by people who should be locked up indefinitely, but are instead turned loose after being pronounced 'cured' or 'unlikely to offend again' by some harebrained psychologist? How many innocent people are harmed because of these kinds of pernicious ideas, masquerading as 'compassion'? Compassion is fine but where is the compassion for the innocent people? They are forgotten by the liberal bleeding hearts.
Seattle seems to be in the news frequently these days for incidents like this, and the notoriously light sentences the perpetrators receive. Eleven years is shockingly little punishment for murder, but then the killer is a ''victim'' himself, isn't he?
In this even more egregious case, three ''youths'' are given light sentences for killing a man.
Much as I would like to echo whoever it is (is it Michael Savage?) who said 'liberalism is a mental disorder', I won't say it, because ascribing every manner of stupidity and evil to 'mental illness' is very much what liberals do. No, they don't get a pass for being ''sick''; they are either ignorant or willfully blind, or plain old malicious and destructive.

Labels: Crime, Criminal Justice System, Liberalism, Political Correctness, Pop Psychology

Is worse better? We kicked that question around a week or two ago here on this blog, and I've been of the opinion that worsening conditions for white folks don't necessarily lead to a realistic attitude or a rejection of politically correct self-abasement.
We will soon see if worse is better here in my town. Some of my acquaintances are suddenly having their first experience with 'diversity' of any kind, really, and specifically of the Latino variety. Now I'm hearing tales from dismayed townspeople about trash-strewn yards, loud partying, lewd behavior (displayed to the entire shocked neighborhood), and verbal aggression by the immigrants. When I hear about these things, I have to resist strongly the urge to say 'I told you so.' I've been quietly informing people that this is what we may expect as our town Hispanifies.
What do my local friends answer, when I tell them the bad behavior is all too common? Well, it seems that the man who owns the house inhabited by the ill-behaved invaders is himself a fairly recent immigrant from south of the border --- ''but he's so nice!" everyone protests. This is always the problem: the naive whites, who want to think and speak only good things of everyone, will insist on clinging to the belief that the ones who are ''so nice" represent the vast majority, while the rowdies and the chaos-bringers are a few exceptions to the rule.
This is an across-the-board phenomenon when dealing with others, with minorities: the insistence, the desperation to find 'nice' members of the group and to focus on them alone, while wearing blinders in regard to bad behavior by many others.
How do we get past this? It's a real challenge.
Our media and our politically correct Marxist educators have successfully implanted in white people's minds the idea that any problems we encounter, from bad attitudes to violent crime among the minorities, is our fault, our problem, and that it's completely atypical. The 'real' minorities are the ones who are ''so nice'', like those on the ubiquitous TV commercials and in our movies and other entertainment. The real blacks are those nice lady judges and doctors and computer experts and teachers on TV and in movies; those who behave menacingly or belligerently, or who commit crimes against us or our neighbors are 'the exception'.
The 'real' Mexicans are those like the ''so nice'' landlord from Mexico --- who nonetheless allows a group of underclass illegal types to rent a house from him.
The problem is, that even with the exemplary minorities, they usually have friends or family members who are of the less exemplary kind, and they do little or nothing to discourage the bad behavior of their lawless kin and friends. I see a lot of whites desperate to find someone in the minority 'communities' that they can hold up as an example of how 'they are not all bad', and such whites will grasp at straws, hoping to find someone to deliver them from the horrible fate of believing in the negative stereotypes. Many are truly afraid of descending into 'racism', which they perceive either as a kind of mental illness or as moral depravity of the gravest kind. So they grasp at straws; any friendly, decent non-white is proof positive that minorities really are just like you and me, and that race is only skin deep. Many conservatives seem over-eager to find someone to fill the niche for them. For many politically-minded 'conservatives', the role is filled by people like Thomas Sowell, Condi Rice, Walter Williams. Or, for the counter-jihadists, it's people like Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, or the other 'good Moslems' or apostate Moslems. ('See? Many of them are on our side!)
Those who are trying to find 'friendly Latinos' have fewer public figures to hold up as examples of Latinos who are on our side.
How many pro-enforcement Mexican-American elected officials are there? There might be one or two somewhere, but none comes to mind. However, for most Americans looking for rescue from their 'racist' thoughts, they can look to, say, the guy who owns their favorite Mexican restaurant. And believe me, every neighborhood has a Mexican restaurant or two these days -- even my town. We have two of them, three, if you count the taco wagon. And everybody thinks the friendly immigrant owner and all the smiling waiters and busboys are proof that mass Mexican immigration is not so bad.
So on it goes. As long as there are two or three friendly faces, or good examples, many Americans will continue to live in a wishful thinking world where it's only the few who cause the problems, and the majority are really our friends -- regardless of the deterioration and the disruption and the chaos and crime they begin to see around them.
I can hope that the real world will intrude into my town just enough to educate my naive 'colorblind' Christian neighbors -- but how much educating, I wonder, will they require? Or will they never learn the lessons of reality? I hope that they will wake up before the whole town is turned into a replica of some border barrio.
Will reality prove more powerful than the stubborn will of many of my neighbors to remain 'open and inclusive'? Or will they continue to believe the fairytales, long after the town is gone to ruin?
Personally, my faith isn't strong enough to convince me that worse will soon turn to better.
I am left wondering how a nation of people who were once fairly hard-headed and savvy have now become such soft-headed, gullible dupes. What happened to us? Can it be reversed? And can it be reversed in time?

Labels: Crime, Diversity, Ethnic Division, Illegal Immigration, Mass Immigration, Multiculturalism

We all know that much of Europe is under the same cultural and demographic assault as we are. This case, which is reminiscent of the Tony Martin case in the UK some years back, shows that there is still in France a kernel of belief in the basic right of self-defense.
For those who don't recall the Tony Martin case in Britain, Tony Martin, in attempting to defend himself after repeated home invasions, shot two trespassers in his home. He served prison time for doing what most of us here in America take for granted, simply defending his own life and property, in his own home.
Another case along these lines was the Joe Horn incident in Pasadena, Texas, a couple of years ago, about which I wrote on this blog. Texas of course has the 'castle doctrine' which allows homeowners to defend themselves with deadly force when called for. The grand jury refused to indict Mr. Horn, who was luckier than the hapless Mr. Martin in the UK and, apparently, than René Galinier in France, the septuagenarian who was arrested for shooting burglars.
Although a group called the Ligue du Midi ('League of the South') is campaigning to free Mr. Galinier, things don't look good for him, according to zazie's comments on the discussion thread at Gallia Watch.
My sympathies go out to this man, who is of a generation which was brought up under the old traditions, in which self-defense was understood to be a right of free people. Men like Mr. Galinier and Tony Martin in the UK are unfortunate casualties of this 'new order' of things in which we, the rightful peoples of the Western countries, are asked to 'go gently into that good night,' to lie down and passively surrender when confronted with a threat to our existence. These men just haven't learned, I suppose, that the old rules have been rendered null and void, and the new rule is that it is 'racist' to defend your property and your very life, if those who are trying to take them from you are members of some 'victim' group. Mr. Galinier's burglars were Roma gypsies, apparently, as were Mr. Martin's. Joe Horn's confrontation was with two illegal Latin Americans in the act of burglary.
I can only hope that cases like this will wake up the 'silent majority' in Europe, the people who still remember the sane old days, in which men were men and still had the right to defend themselves without fear of prosecution -- or is it persecution? -- by the ideologues in charge of most Western governments now.
Tiberge at Gallia Watch posts the logo of the Ligue du Midi, with the French motto translated as 'Masters in our house.' Something for us to think about.
"The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; . . . the weak will become prey."
-Thomas Paine, "Thoughts on Defensive War", Pennsylvania Magazine, July 1775

Labels: Crime, Europe, France, Injustice, Judicial System, Political Correctness, Self-Defense

I've mentioned the Paleo-Future blog before; its theme is past generations' depictions of 'the future', their 'future' being our present. It's interesting and sometimes amusing or ironic to read how past generations envisioned the world of the present day. Occasionally the visions displayed a prescience that was impressive, but more often than not, the predictions seem to have erred on the side of overoptimism. The fifties and early sixties particularly seem to have been an era in which there was an unshakable confidence in the ability of 'science' and technology to solve virtually any problem, and an implicit faith in the idea that people of 'the future' would somehow be wiser, better adjusted, and more enlightened. Actually many people still accept the premise behind that belief, which is the somewhat absurd and unfounded notion that every generation is a step upward from the previous generation.
This recent post on Paleo-Future is about Rejuvenated downtowns.
If you click on the link and look at the illustration, you will see the typical late-50s vision of what the 'city of tomorrow' would look like. From the text of a syndicated newspaper column called 'Closer Than We Think!':
...Traffic-choked downtown sections will be rejuvenated and transformed into airy, wide pedestrian malls when the designs of city planners are adopted in a none-too-distant future.
Large-scale plans and programs are springing up all over the country. One example is fashionable Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, being studied today for conversion into a traffic-free shopping promenade. Another is utilitarian Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit. There are many more in between.
Traffic will be parked in adjoining areas. Store fronts will be modernized and beautified. New lighting at night and newly planted trees, shrubs and flowers will give these malls an exciting air. The aim is to regain for downtowns their former status as urban headquarters.''
It hasn't exactly played out that way, has it? Our urban cores are deteriorating, or decayed beyond hope in some cities.
The idea that car-free pedestrian malls were the wave of the future has proven false, as we see that many such experiments have been dismantled. 'Pedestrian malls' have usually been associated with the decline of the central business district of a town or city.
This New York Times article from 13 years ago describes how downtown pedestrian malls have been unsuccessful and are being removed as shoppers prefer enclosed malls. One rationale given for why enclosed suburban malls were superior was that there was less crime. But there has been an increase in crime at many malls in upscale suburban areas, thanks (apparently) to mass transit being extended there from inner cities.
The politically correct journalists and many commenters decry any complaints about public transit bringing in petty criminals or gang members from less desirable areas, but the connection seems unquestionable; whenever public transit extends service to upscale malls in suburban areas, crime increases. So suburban malls, even in nice, upscale communities, are now being 'urbanized', shall we say.
The pleasant future predicted by so many 'seers' of the mid-20th century was predicated on the assumption that America would stay what it was then, a mostly homogeneous country with middle-class, conservative values. Few anticipated the massive demographic shifts that would occur as the after-effects of the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act.
It isn't polite or politically correct to mention it, but people make the place; change the population and you change the place. The more different the people who come to displace the existing population, the greater the changes to the place.
And surprise, surprise: people from Third-World cultures bring Third World conditions and standards.
Why it has become taboo to mention or even to notice this most obvious of points is baffling. Actually, it isn't really; we have to pretend not to notice such things lest we hurt the feelings of the new population of the country, who are not to be criticized, only to be flattered.
So the future that the starry-eyed believers in 'progress' envisioned was not to be. But what caused the destruction of that dream, other than the obvious demographic changes, which were purposely engineered by our duplicitous rulers? There were multiple factors at work, and it's hard to disentangle them, or to recognize cause and effect in some cases.
Another factor in the story of urban decay and the dying of our cities as centers of civilization is the rise of the car culture during the post-WWII era. It was then that many young families abandoned the cities and existing towns to move to new suburban developments which represented a real change in the way people lived. The change was not all for the better, although at the time it seemed, for many young couples, to be a dream come true to own a new home in the suburbs, even if the new homes were all cookie-cutter in design, and even if the new suburbs offered little in the way of community, compared with the established towns.
Some of us on the right tend to react against criticisms of the car culture and the move to the suburbs, because this is a favorite hobby horse of the left. for example, the writer Jane Holtz Kay, from a review of her book:
[I]t is a false form of consciousness that fails to assess women's enslavement to the motor vehicle in the auto-dependent households and society it has helped install" . "False form of consciousness"? "Enslavement"? These are fighting words. Kay then goes on to enumerate other victims, the "mobility disenfranchised"--children, the poor, the elderly--people who live without cars in a car-dependent society.
Kay blames the automobile for virtually all of society's ills, from a withering political consciousness, to the deterioration of the family, to a junk food diet. She recognizes the zeal of her argument: "It may sound ludicrous to blame the car for fewer oven-baked potatoes and more fatty french fries, less grandma's chicken soup, and more franchised chicken nuggets, but the junk food diet--and the environmental toll from its trash also stems from the wrappings of the highway-based franchise. The car is scarcely the sole villain in the growth of Kentucky Fried Chicken but it is an accomplice".
It's ironic that some of the liberal critics seem to deplore the loss of the same things many conservatives lament: family and community ties, more wholesome ways of eating and living. It's a shame that they seem to blame all the evils of the 20th century on capitalism and traditional Americans, rather than recognizing that liberal policies helped to create the problems they lament. It was big liberal government that set out to ensure that all Americans had 'affordable housing', in the suburbs which was a nice idea especially for returning veterans, but it's still government meddling and practicing social engineering.
How much, I wonder, has the car culture contributed to the crises we discuss on this blog?
With the talk of 'peak oil' and the looming economic crisis, will the car-oriented lifestyle, with suburban sprawl, still be viable? Will our ever-increasing population, thanks mostly to mass, uncontrolled immigration allow for this lifestyle to continue?
As our population threatens to reach half a billion by mid-century, (and that may be an underestimate), it seems absurd to assume that our present way of life can continue without drastic changes.
For the liberals, the answer seems to be to build more densely in the suburbs and the cities, and turning more to mass public transit -- which to many of us seems an imperfect solution at best, and nightmarish at worst.
In many places, public transit is unsafe, unsanitary, and not pleasant or easy to use. And no amount of government subsidies can fix these problems if the people using the system are the source of the problems. I've used public transit in a number of large cities and medium-sized cities, and to paraphrase something Jay Leno said once, buses and trains in many places are 'rolling bad neighborhoods.'
And as we continue on our reckless path to bring more 'diversity' and more warm bodies to our country, the social frictions will certainly increase rather than decrease.
Why the leftists cannot see the danger of mass immigration while they decry overpopulation and overdevelopment is unfathomable.
One more thought that occurs is: if only. If only our country had not had to spend untold amounts of money on 'social programs', on accommodating the dysfunctional elements in our society, if only we did not have to spend astronomical sums to provide for immigrants and their many attendant expenses -- who knows what our society might have been. Maybe the visions of the optimists of the 1950s would have come to pass. But they could not have known what awaited them in the 1960s and beyond.
I bless them for their childlike faith in human technology and wisdom, but it's easy sometimes to want to curse them for their blindness as to the real future that lay in wait for them -- and for us.
But I believe in honoring our fathers and mothers, and it's also well to remember that our progeny may well hold us to account for what we failed to see and failed to act on while there was time. That's where our focus should be.
And perhaps we need to try to recover some of the ideas and attitudes and values that made our society work so well, once upon a time.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that empires seldom seem to retain sufficient cultural self-awareness to prevent them from overreaching and overgrasping�Any culture that jettisons the values that have given it competence, adaptability, and identity becomes weak and hollow. A culture can avoid that hazard only by tenaciously retaining the underlying values responsible for the cultures nature and success." - Jane Jacobs, Dark Ages Ahead

Labels: Crime, Demographics, Diversity, Mass Immigration, Overpopulation, Social Change, Social Engineering, Societal Decay

The recent story about a Chinese student beheading another Chinese student at Virginia Tech conjures up memories of the murder spree by Korean immigrant Cho Seung-Hui a couple of years ago.
And even more so, the incident from last year in which an unsuspecting young man, asleep on a Greyhound Bus in Canada, was beheaded by a Chinese immigrant. That incident was quickly forgotten, it seems, despite its shocking nature.
At the above link, some female with a hyphenated name makes this comment:
''An unfathomable act, unless this person had lived through horrific scenes as *everyday* happening in his formative years.''
As if such savage acts were excusable for any reason.
Then there's the wake shooting in Kansas, of all places, which Brenda Walker at VDare writes about.
One still tends to think of places like Kansas as heartland areas, having few immigrants. Of course I know this is not true; no place is allowed to be unscathed by 'diversity' these days, and if the illegals have not swamped a place (yet), the helpful State Department and some refugee resettlement profiteers will ensure that you get your 'diversity', like it or not. So now Wichita, Kansas has some kind of Laotian colony.
Apparently there are a lot of Laotians living in Wichita, 5044 according to the 2000 Census. We wouldn�t know about this additional diversity if it weren�t for a recent shoot-up at a wake, the sort of crime you don�t see every day.''
There are a number of issues that come up in connection with these stories, the obvious one being the question of our insane immigration policies, in which the people least like ourselves, the people most likely to be incompatible with us are given preference by our immigration authorities.
And in the first two stories, involving Virginia Tech, another issue is the liberal admissions policies, which seem to favor foreign students or nonwhites in general over native-born students. In addition there's the issue of the gun ban on campus. I mean, did the ban prevent a psychopath from carrying out his shooting spree? No, just as pro-Second Amendment advocates always say, gun bans only disarm the good guys, the ones who tend to obey the rules and the law. Gun bans don't work for the bad guys. Liberals have yet to notice that the bad guys, by definition, are not deterred by rules and laws, which they simply flout. And even if you insist, like the bleeding hearts, that killers are just misunderstood or 'mentally ill', then their mental 'illness' renders them irrational and unlikely to obey gun bans and other such rules.
Do these colleges vet the prospective foreign students? It used to be that the application process was fairly thorough in obtaining information on a prospective student's character. I suspect that the current mania for ''diversity'' and the preference for foreign students (because they pay much higher tuition -- excepting illegals of course) trumps any concern for the character and background of students.
The liberal 'discipline' policies, or lack thereof, do not help matters, either. Cho Seung-Hui had behavior and attitude problems, and raised some red flags, but because of the effeminate policies in dealing with such problems, nothing was done.
Another case of an immigrant Asian involved in a shooting spree was this one.
Oddly the young man, though Taiwanese, was said to have 'racist, sexist and homophobic' attitudes. So I suppose he is not likely to arouse the sympathies of the usual apologists who excuse violence by nonwhites as caused by the 'racist treatment' they receive from Whites.
Then, going back some years, there was this case which left 13 people dead in a 'Chinatown' gambling club.
The existence of Chinese organized crime is well-known, although some people these days, perhaps people who have never lived in a city with a large Chinese population, seem oblivious to its existence.
But the other question that is raised by all these stories is the issue of Asians as somehow being the 'model minority', the minority group which causes no problems, the group which is law-abiding, productive, hard-working, and above all, intelligent. In fact, most White Americans tend to credit Asians as a group with having the highest intelligence overall.
My response to that is: which Asians?
All Asians are not the same, by any means. But all have benefited by being conflated, at least among many Americans, with Japanese-descended Americans, who do have a low crime rate and who seem to have far fewer social pathologies, as well as being a highly-intelligent group who are achievers in many fields.
I haven't even mentioned Indian immigrants or Pakistanis, the groups which in the UK are often referred to by the term 'Asian', because in American colloquial usage, 'Asian' generally means East Asian, as in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. But again, even those South Asian groups have their problems, such as their custom of 'honor killing' in certain communities. Their ways and our ways cannot mesh; either they will have to conform to our morality and our standards of behavior, which may not be possible even if they were willing, or we will be compelled by our diversity-mad government to accommodate to them, which is most likely.
On sites like AmRen, there are people who persistently say that Asian immigrants are not a problem, and that we can happily coexist with them because they are 'hardworking' and law-abiding as well as smart -- and ultimately assimilable. I say, which Asians?
I keep wondering why so many 'race realists' cling to their illusions about Asians. I tend to think that, again, it's a conscious or unconscious effort to grasp at some kind of fig leaf, to cover what they fear is their own vulnerability to being called 'racist.' So the thinking seems to be ''if I like some minority group, and if I can praise them, then I can't really be accused of racism, can I?'' So they pick a favorite minority group. For some, it's Hispanics, but for most, it seems to be Asians, as they appear the least aggressive -- until we start to notice stories like those I've linked to here.
Japan indeed does have a low crime rate but we can't assume that what is true there is true in other Asian countries. And Japan contributes very few immigrants to our country these days, so the Japanese are not exactly relevant to the issues at hand, except insofar as other Asian peoples have benefited from the 'model minority' image of earlier Japanese immigrants to our country.
As to the more immediate question of what will happen in the wake of the latest murder at a university, probably nothing helpful will come of it; we will see the usual liberal emotional responses, such as tearful candlelight vigils and a lot of weepy talk about the 'need to reach out' to foreign students and to 'cultivate tolerance' and 'understanding' and the need for more 'counseling' for all, and more awareness of 'mental health'.
Then, of course, there will be calls for more banning of weapons, and calls for more security measures, which will mean more inconveniences for normal people but which will not make the campus any safer.
But nothing will be done by our useless, feckless government about limiting student visas or curtailing our out-of-control immigration policies. And the lectures from all involved about 'racism', 'embracing diversity' and 'inclusion' will be stepped up, as if that were an answer to anything.

Labels: Campus Violence, Crime, Diversity, Do-Gooderism, Immigration, Liberalism, Political Correctness, Societal Decay