Category: Current Affairs

First They Came for My Chicken Sandwich . . .

Here. 

I have honestly never eaten a Chick-Fil-A sandwich.  So tomorrow I am going to try one.  This is in keeping with my maxim, 'No day without political incorrectness.'  Each day you must engage in one or more politically incorrect acts.  Some suggestions:

  • Smoke a cigar
  • Use standard English
  • Practice with a firearm
  • Read the Bible
  • Enunciate uncomfortable truths inconsistent with the liberal Weltanschauung
  • Read Maverick Philosopher
  • Think for yourself
  • Patronize Chick-Fil-A
  • Give your baby baby formula
  • Read the Constitution
  • Cancel your subscription to The New York Times
  • Find more examples of politically incorrect things to do

Photo ID: The ‘It Would Disproportionately Affect Hispanic Voters’ Argument

 Here (emphasis added) we find:

In March, the Justice Department denied the Lone Star State the necessary clearance for this new law, arguing that it would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters. Texas officials appealed.  To preserve the access of all citizens to the right to vote . . . the District Court should follow the Justice Department’s lead and strike down this highly suspect and unnecessary law.

What is interesting here is the role disproportionality plays in these leftist attempts at argument.  Let's see if we can uncover the 'logic' of these arguments.

Suppose people of Italian  extraction are disproportionately affected by anti-racketeering statutes.  Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not.  Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the ethnicity of the criminal. If it just so happens that people of Italian extraction are 'overrepresented' in the memberships of organized crime syndicates, then of course they will be 'disproportionately affected' by anti-racketeering laws.  So what?

It is very easy to multiply examples.  Who commits more rapes, men or women?  You know the answer.  Among men, in which age group will we find more rapists?  Will there be more rapists in the 15-45 age group or in the 45-75 age group?  You know the answer. Laws against rape will therefore disproportinately affect males aged 15-45.  Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not.  Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the age or sex of the criminal. 

Suppose that drunk drivers are predominantly Irish.  (Just suppose; I'm not saying it is true.)  Then laws against drunk driving would disproportionatey affect them.  Of course.  But that would be no reason to oppose such laws.  Is a law just only if it affects all groups equally or proportionately?  Of course not. 

Who is more likely to be a terrorist, a twenty-something  male Egyptian Muslim or a sixty-something Mormon matron?  Do you hesitate over this question?    The answer is clear, and you know what it is.  Are anti-terrorism laws therefore to be opposed on the ground that they disproportionately affect young Muslim males from middle eastern countries?

Should there be a quota system when it comes to rounding up terrorists?  "You can apprehend only as many Muslim terrorists as Buddhist terrorists."

Suppose child molesters are 'overrepresented' among Catholic priests.  Then laws against such molestation will disproportionarely affect them.  But so what?  It would be morally absurd to argue that such laws 'discriminate' against Catholic priests and should be struck down on the ground that Catholic priests  are disproportionately inclined to engage in child molestation.

Now we know that illegal aliens in Southwest states such as Texas  are predominantly, indeed overwhelmingly,  of Hispanic extraction.  So such aliens would be disproportionately affected by photo ID requirements.  But this is surely no argument against photo ID.  After all, they are not citizens and have no right to vote in the first place.

Now consider the Hispanic citizens of Texas. They have the right to vote.  And no decent person wants either to prevent them from exercising their right or to make it more difficult for them to vote than for other groups to vote.  Why would they be 'disproportionately affected' by a photo ID requirement?

Is it because Hispanics are less likely to have ID than members of other groups?  Or less likely to have the minimal skills necessary to acquire such ID?  It does, after all, take a tiny bit of effort.  You have to get yourself down to the DMV and fork over a nominal sum. 

I myself do not believe that Hispanics as a group are so bereft of life skills that they are incapable of acquiring photo ID.  But that apparently is what Dems believe when they think that a perfectly reasonable requirement would 'disproportinately affect' them.  What an insult to Hispanics!

So I ask once again: is there even one decent reason to oppose photo ID? 

Photo ID: Eric Holder’s Assault on Common Sense

I was shocked (shocked!) to hear over breakfast a while back that my friend Peter L. will vote for neither Obama nor Romney.  All my posts about how politics is a practical business, how it's always about the lesser of evils,and about how foolish it is to let the best become the enemy of the good have fallen on deaf ears.  But I won't give up on old Peter: he's worth saving from the remnant of his liberal folly.

When you vote for a president, you are not voting for just that one person.  You are voting for his entourage as well.  And for Obama that entourage is a sorry  lot including as it does Eric Holder who became Attorney General.  Remember the outrageous suit his Justice Department brought against Arizona re: S. B. 1070? (See my Arizona category for 1070 posts.)  Now the issues raised by S. B. 1070 are complex.  But the issue raised by photo ID laws is not.  It's a very simple issue and there ought not be any dispute about it whatsoever.  And yet our esteemed Atty Gen'l is going after states with photo ID laws making irresponsible accusations of 'disenfranchisement' and comparing the requirements to poll taxes.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, a manner to inspire confidence in the citizenry, and that only citizens who have registered to vote and have satisfied the minimal requirements of age, etc., are to be allowed into the voting booth. Given the possibility of fraud, it is therefore necessary to verify the identities of those who present themselves at the polling place. To do this, voters must be required to present a government-issued photo ID card, a driver's license being only one example of such. It is a reasonable requirement and any reasonable person should be able to see it as one.

Suppose you don't have a driver's license.  How hard is it to get a photo ID?  Not very hard.  In Arizona it costs only $12 and is available at any DMV office.  And it's good for 12 years.  That comes to a dollar a year.  That's a hell of a deal, especially when you consider all the other things you can do with that nifty photo ID such as open a bank account, cash checks, use credit cards, buy alcohol and tobacco products, apply for store credit, secure a library card, etc.  You can now start doing all the things that normal citizens do.  Ain't that grand? You can stop being a nonentity.  Remember what your Uncle Quine taught you, "No entity without identity." If you tell me you don't do any of those things, and don't have any desire to do them, then why are you so interested in voting?  You don't have a bank account, or cash checks, etc., but you have a burning desire to vote?

If you are 65 or older or a recipient of Social Security disability benefits you can get the ID for free.   So what's your excuse for not securing a photo ID?  If you  are that lazy, how informed will you be about the issues on which you have such a burning desire to vote?

Liberals feel that the photo ID requirement will 'disenfranchise' many blacks and other minorities.  This shows that we conservatives have a higher view of you minorities than do your 'keepers,' the Dems. 

Some people want to play the 'numbers game.' They claim that there have only been a few cases of voter fraud.  If you think that, then I refer you to the work of John Fund and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.  And please note that the number of convictions in courts of law for voter fraud is bound to be much much lower than the actual cases of voter fraud.  And if there are. contrary to fact, very few cases of voter fraud, then, by the same token, there are very few people who lack photo ID. 

But there is no need to play the numbers game at all.  It's matter of principle. Will we have a election system that is credible and worthy of respect or not? 

Those who oppose photo ID have no good reasons, but they have plenty of motives, and I fear that they are of the unsavory kind. 

Pessimistic Thoughts on this Fourth of July

Is there anything to celebrate this  Fourth of July?  Not much. Maybe there will be cause for celebration in November.  But I'm not sanguine about that either.  Our founding documents have become merely ornamental.  They  are interpreted to mean whatever those in power want them to mean.

The Commerce Clause is to be found in Section 8, Article I, of the U. S. Constitution.  It reads," The Congress shall have Power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Congress, then, has the constitutionally-based power to regulate interstate commerce.  But it seems to this concerned citizen — who is no constitutional scholar — that one cannot regulate what does not exist.  If there is some interstate commerce taking place between, say, California and Arizona, then congress by the above clause has the power to regulate it.  But if no commerce is taking place, then there is nothing to regulate.  Now if I choose not to purchase health insurance, then my not buying it is surely not a bit of commerce.  So there is nothing to regulate, and my non-buying does not fall under the Commerce Clause even if, by some argumentative stretch, the buying of health insurance involves interstate commerce. 

Or do you think something can be regulated into existence?  Can my buying of health insurance be regulated into existence?  The very notion is incoherent.

Ah, but "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes . . . ." (Section 8) and so all we have to do is call the Obamacare individual mandate a tax, and we get what we want.  After all, the PoMo Prez and his enablers  can use words to mean whatever they want depending on what promotes their agenda.

The underlying principle here is the lack of any principle limiting governmental expansion.  The essence of the totalitarian Left — and of course the Left is totalitarian by its very nature — is the lack of any limiting principle.  And so, if the individual mandate cannot be rammed through via specious reasoning from the Commerce Clause, then some other justification must be found, however specious and mendacious it may be.  Instead of evaluating for constitutionality a law that is presented for evaluation, one can simply rewrite the law, changing the mandate to a tax.

It is interesting to speculate as to what caused Chief Justice Roberts to cave to the Left.  My man Prager adduces the power of liberal intimidation.

Arizona Can’t Do It; Washington Won’t

Debra Saunders' article begins:

President Barack Obama hailed the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision Monday that struck down most of Arizona's 2010 immigration law. In a statement released by the White House, however, the president said that he remains "concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally."

All eight voting members of the Supreme Court upheld this provision, which requires that Arizona cops try to determine the immigration status of individuals who have been stopped for reasons not involving immigration.

Please note the difference between what the president is quoted as saying and what Saunders correctly reports the S.B. 1070 provision as requiring.  The law requires "that Arizona cops try to determine the immigration status of individuals who have been stopped for reasons not involving immigration." President Obama of course knows this.  So Obama lied in his statement when he said that "the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally."

Obama's egregious misrepresentation has been repeated time and again by leftists over the last two years.  See my 1 June 2010 post, The Misrepresentations of Arizona S. B. 1070 Continue.  Other of my 1070 posts are to be found in the Arizona category.

Why are leftists so mendacious?  Because in their scheme the glorious end justifies the scurrilous means.

Don't forget to read the rest of Saunders' article.

Obama’s Historical Howlers

Here.  The funniest is Obama's reference to the construction of the "Intercontinental Railroad" in the 19th century.  That would be something, a railroad that crossed oceans.  Think of all the pontoons that would be needed to float the tracks on. 

The article documents Obama and his gang's unconcern with truth — as if we needed more evidence of that.

Cabinets Gone Wild

Another outstanding column by Victor Davis Hanson.  Excerpt:

Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation. That may explain why he said nothing when the same group put out a dead-or-alive bounty poster on George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. Holder's department is suing the state of Arizona for passing a law to enforce the largely unenforced federal immigration law. Holder suggested that the Arizona law was racially inspired even as he admitted that he had never read it. Holder has praised the race-baiting Al Sharpton for his "partnership" and called the country "cowards" for not holding a national conversation on race on his terms. The attorney general has referred to African-Americans as "my people," and he has characterized congressional oversight of his office's failure to rein in the Fast and Furious scandal as racially motivated attacks on himself.

PC Conservative Andrew McCarthy’s Lame Response to John Derbyshire

It is well known by now that NRO has cut its ties with John Derbyshire ('Derb') over the latter's publication in another venue of The Talk: Nonblack Version.  Both Rich Lowry and Andrew McCarthy have commented on this severing of ties and both sets of comments are unbelievably lame.  Here is the substance (or rather 'substance') of McCarthy's response (numerals added):

[1] We believe in the equal dignity and presumption of equal decency toward every person — no matter what race, no matter what science tells us about comparative intelligence, and no matter what is to be gleaned from crime statistics. [2] It is important that research be done, that conclusions not be rigged, and that we are at liberty to speak frankly about what it tells us. [3] But that is not an argument for a priori conclusions about how individual persons ought to be treated in various situations — or for calculating fear or friendship based on race alone. [4] To hold or teach otherwise is to prescribe the disintegration of a pluralistic society, to undermine the aspiration of e pluribus unum.

Ad [1].  Well, don't we all (including Derb) believe in the equal dignity of human persons regardless of race, creed, national origin, sex, age?  Is McCarthy suggesting that Derb rejects this principle?   But of course equality of rights is not the same as empirical equality.  That people are not empirically equal is a factual claim in two senses of 'factual': it is a non-normative claim, and it is a true claim.  That people have equal rights is a normative claim. The non-normative and normative claims are logically independent.  One cannot infer empirical equality from normative equality.  More importantly, one cannot infer normative inequality from empirical inequality.  For example, human infants are pretty much helpless, but this fact does not detract from their equal right to life.  Women are on average shorter than men, and less muscular, but these facts do not detract from their status as persons, as rights-possessors.  90 year-olds tend to be more frail than 60 year-olds, but this fact does not entail that a 90 year-old is less of a person, has a lesser normative status, than a 60 year-old. 

Ad [2].  Who could disagree with this bromide?

Ad [3].  It is in his third sentence where McCarthy ascends into Cloud Cuckoo Land.  Suppose it is a fact that "Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery."  A fact is a fact.  There are no false facts, and there are no racist facts.  There are racial facts (facts about race), but a racial fact is not a racist fact.  Now suppose I encounter at night, in a bad part of town, an "individual person" in McCarthy's phrase whom I do not know, a person who is young, male, black, and dressed gangsta-style.  His dark glasses prevent me from seeing his eyes and judging his sobriety.  His deep pockets might conceal a pistol.  Would I be justified in using statistical common sense and avoiding said individual?  Of course.  The guy might be harmless, but I do not know that.  I do know that he fits the profile of an individual who could cause me some serious trouble.  Common sense dictates that I give him a wide berth just as I would with a drunken Hells (no apostrophe) Angel exiting a strip joint.  There are no black Hells Angels, by the way.

Does that mean that I don't consider the black man or the biker to have rights equal to mine?  No. It means that  I understand that we are not mere rights-possessors or Kantian noumenal agents, but also possessors of animal bodies and socially formed (and mal-formed) psyches and that these latter facts induce empirical inequalities of various sorts.

Am I drawing an a priori  conclusion when I avoid the black guy?  Of course not.  My reasoning is a posteriori and inductive.  I am reasoning from certain perceived facts: race (not skin color!), behavior, dress, location, time of day, etc. to a conclusion that is rendered  probable (not certain) by these facts.  And note that in a situation like this one does not consider "race alone" in McCarthy's phrase.  If I considered "race alone" then there would be no difference between the dude I have just described and Condoleeza Rice.

Is my inductive reasoning and consequent avoidance behavior morally censurable?  Of course not.  After all, I have a moral duty to attend to my own welfare.  (See Kant on duties to oneself.)  If anything, my reasoning and behavior are morally obligatory.  And I am quite sure that Andrew McCarthy would reason and behave in the same way in the same circumstances.

Ad [4].  What McCarthy is saying here is nonsense and beneath commentary.  But I will point out the tension between calling for a "pluralistic society" while invoking the phrase e pluribus unum, "out of many, one."  One wonders how long before McCarthy cries for more "diversity." 

The Pee Cee conservative is an interesting breed of cat.  We shall have to study him more carefully.

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law Irrelevant to Trayvon Martin Case

This is one of the points made by Mona Charen in her excellent column, If Obama Had a Son:

We are now engaged in another fruitless shouting match about whether young black men are being hunted on the streets of America and whether "stand your ground" laws are dangerous. But as the estimable Ann Coulter has pointed out, Florida's "stand your ground" law was irrelevant to the Martin case. Whichever version of events that night you believe: A) that Zimmerman followed and shot Martin in cold blood; or B) that Zimmerman shot Martin in the midst of a fight; the law, which does not require a person who fears for his life to retreat before using deadly force, is not implicated.

Here is what the laws says:

  • It establishes that law-abiding residents and visitors may legally presume the threat of bodily harm or death from anyone who breaks into a residence or occupied vehicle and may use defensive force, including deadly force, against the intruder.

  • In any other place where a person “has a right to be,” that person has “no duty to retreat” if attacked and may “meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

  • In either case, a person using any force permitted by the law is immune from criminal prosecution or civil action and cannot be arrested unless a law enforcement agency determines there is probable cause that the force used was unlawful.

  • If a civil action is brought and the court finds the defendant to be immune based on the parameters of the law, the defendant will be awarded all costs of defense.

    • On scenario (A), the law does not apply because Zimmerman on that scenario is not defending himself.  On scenario (B), the law does not apply because Zimmerman is not able to retreat.  (Charen does not make this clear, but this was basically Coulter's point.)  If someone is on top of you pounding you then you don't have the option to either retreat or not retreat.

    But of course much depends on what exactly happened.  In any case, the law is eminently reasonable whether or not it applies to the Trayvon Martin case.

    And note the law is not a gun law despite what lying liberals will tell you.  You can stand your ground with your fists, a baseball bat, a knife, a can of Easy-Off oven cleaner . . . .

    Words Banned From Tests in NYC Schools

    Feel-good liberalism at its best worst:

    Divorce. Dinosaurs, Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television. These are a few of the 50-plus words and references the New York City Department of Education is hoping to ban from the city’s standardized tests.

    My astute readers do not need to have it explained to them what is wrong with this.  But it is one more example of the triumph of feelings-based Unsinn over thought and sense on the Left and another reason why you should never vote  for a Democrat.

    Of course, there are a few Dems who are not completely unhinged .  But unless you know who they are, it is best to be on the safe side and vote for Republicans and Libertarians.

    Are We Coming Apart?

    Robert Samuelson comments on Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 and finds some grounds for a measure of optimism. Conclusion:

    America's distinctive beliefs and values are fading, says Murray. Maybe. But our history is that the bedrock values — the belief in freedom, faith in the individual, self-reliance, a moralism rooted in religion — endure against all odds. They've survived depressions, waves of immigration, wars and political scandals.

    There is such a thing as the American character and, though not immutable, it is durable. In 2011, only 36 percent of Americans believed that "success in life is determined by outside forces," reports the Pew Global Attitudes survey. In France and Germany, the responses were 57 and 72 percent, respectively. America is different, even exceptional, and it is likely to stay that way.