Here. Another leftist outfit richly deserving of defunding. Cancel your membership, you sawbones!
I used to be a member of the A.P.A. But its leftist activism became too much to stomach. So I quit. Some reasons here. Never put money in the pockets of leftists. It is against your interests and against the common good.
The following statements in boldface are taken verbatim from Dennis Prager's Are You a Liberal? I comment briefly on each in turn. Mirabile dictu, it turns out I am not a liberal! I could make of each of these items a separate post. (And you hope I won't.) I don't want to hear anyone complain that I am not arguing my points. I argue plenty elsewhere on this site. In any case, that is not my present purpose.
NYT account here. "Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said the attack was probably carried out by a male suicide bomber, and that authorities were trying to identify him."
Was he a Confucian perhaps, a Buddhist, or a Christian? The Gray Lady provides no clue. Maybe he was a generic faith-based bomber. After all, everyone knows that all religions are equal and so equally likely to inspire terrorist acts.
The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude. Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon? Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness. However you say it, it is true. The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene.
Broad generalizations, these. They admit of exceptions, as goes without saying. He who is afflicted with Weilian malheur cannot think his way out of his misery. Don't get hung up on the exceptions. Meditate on the broad practical truth. On Thanksgiving, and every day.
Liberals will complain that I am 'preaching.' But that only reinforces my point: they complain and they think, strangely, that any form of exhortation just has to be hypocritical. Besides not knowing what hypocrisy is, they don't know how to appreciate what actually exists and provably works. Appreciation is conservative. Scratch a liberal and likely as not you'll find a nihilist, a denier of the value of what is, a hankerer after what is not, and in too many cases, what is impossible.
It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I mean that ironically, of course. The guy is a first-class moral defective. This stupid attack on the sweet and avuncular Dennis Prager as a "right-wing yakker" and "worst person in the world" is a clear example of his leftist scumbaggery.
There is a very simple distinction between equality of opportunity, equality of treatment, and the like, on the one hand, and equality of outcome or result, on the other. I am sure Olbermann can understand this distinction (whether he in fact does I don't know). So the problem with Olbermann is not stupidity but moral scumbaggery. He attacked Prager without attempting to understand what his position is. This is typical of the Left. They make no attempt at understanding conservative positions. They typically content themselves with SIXHIRB: the tarring of their opponents with such epithets as sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted.
This clip does a tolerably good job of explaining the distinction between formal and material equality. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Prager's views knows that he fully supports equality of opportunity, equality before the law, and the like as American values. His point is that equality of outcome is not an American value. And he is right. Olbermann, like that other moral cretin who was given the boot, Alan Grayson of Florida, who lost decisively to Daniel Webster, took the words of the person he was attacking out of context and twisted their meaning completely.
And Olbermann calls himself a journalist?
I just heard Dennis Prager use this PC expression. I should send that boy an e-mail the gist of which would be: "If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal. Language matters." It's an asinine expression like so many leftist coinages. I won't repeat my reasons.
'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it. Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage. But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encroachment. The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration . . . ."
Spencer Case, on his way home from Afghanistan, e-mails:
I recently wrote a column on Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the supposed Islamic moderate. It's been a long time since I've written a column that was really controversial, but this might break the dry spell. I hope you will share it with your readers not only for the sake of shameless self-promotion but also because your readers need to be warned about this guy. It says a lot about Islam that this guy is considered moderate! The link is here: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/afghanistan/
I urge you to read Mr. Case's column. This Nasr is obviously no moderate, and his views, at least as reported by Case, are plainly incompatible with Western values. That Nasr has tenure at an American university is yet another demonstration of the complicity of the Left with radical Islam. Excerpts:
Nasr states in many places and in no unclear terms that he opposes both secular law and “freedom of speech”—placed in scare quotes—which allows for criticism of religion. Most moderates in western countries, Nasr asserts, want the same.
“In the Islamic perspective,” he writes, “Divine Law is to be implemented to regulate society and the actions of its members rather than society dictating what laws should be… to speak of Shari’ah as being simply the laws of the seventh century fixed in time and not relevant today would be like telling Christians that the injunctions of Christ to love one’s neighbor and not commit adultery were simply the laws of the Palestine two thousand years ago and not relevant today, or telling Jews not to keep the Sabbath because this is simply an outmoded practice of three thousand years ago.”
And again: “Since God is the creator of all things, there is no legitimate domain of life to which His Will or His Laws (antecedently stated to mean Qur’anic Shari’ah) do not apply.”
The problem with Nasr's view as reported by Case should be obvious. It is plainly incompatible with our Western liberal values — values whose defense, paradoxically enough, is being carried out by contemporary conservatives, the Left having abdicated due to its inherent political correctness.
ONLY IF we know that God exists AND ONLY IF we know his will with respect to us and our well-being would it be plausible to argue that something like Shari'ah is justified. But those two necessary conditions have not been met and most likely never will. Only an uncritical fundamentalist who absolutizes what is relative and conditioned, namely, the scripture of a religion inferior to Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, a scripture which, even if in part divinely inspired, is mainly a human product, could possibly think that we have in that scripture rules of behavior that should be imposed on everyone.
Read the whole of Spencer's column. And then make sure you vote next Tuesday, bearing in mind that the Democrat Party is the party of the Left and that the Left does not have the will or the integrity to stand up to radical Islam.
Here. Excerpt, emphasis added:
A three-judge panel of the court, in a 2-1 decision, said the proof-of-citizenship requirement conflicted with the intent of the federal law aiming to increase voter registration by streamlining the process with a single form and removing state- imposed obstacles to registration.
The federal law requires applicants to “attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury” without requiring documentary proof, the panel said.
Copping a riff from Michelle Malkin, you could call this the Left's "No illegal alien left behind" program. But the day of reckoning approacheth, in less than a week.
This just over the transom in response to a post from yesterday.
Your terminology is technically correct, but what is incorrect with the statement "Muslim extremists attacked us on 911"?
One does not have to be ‘politically correct’ to have a desire not to invite misunderstanding of a statement (that it equals: " Muslims-as-a-group attacked us" ) or to desire to avoid a perceived implication that there is something about the ‘essence’ of ‘Islam’ that is responsible for 911.
Nothing is wrong with 'Muslim extremists attacked us on 9/11.' But there is also nothing wrong with O'Reilly's statement, "Muslims attacked us on 9/11." After all, the first entails the second. No one maintains that every Muslim attacked us on 9/11 or that Muslims as a group attacked us on that day.
My correspondent is missing the point, which is that inappropriate offense was taken by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg when they stomped off the set in protest. That inappropriate offense taken at an objectively inoffensive remark is what shows that political correctness is at work.
This is just one more example among hundreds. Remember the man who was fired from his job for using the perfectly innocuous English word 'niggardly'? And then there was the case of some fool taking umbrage at the use of 'black hole.' See Of Black Holes and Political Correctness and Of Black Holes and Black Hos.
And then there was the recent case of Dr. Laura who pointed out the obvious truth that some blacks apply 'nigger' to other blacks. This got her in trouble, but it ought not have. After all, what she said is true! And let's recall that she had a reason for bringing up this truth: her remark was not unmotivated or inspired by nastiness.
Please note that I am talking about the word 'nigger,' not using it. This is the use-mention distinction familiar to (analytic) philosophers. Is Boston disyllabic? Obviously not: no city consists of syllables, let alone two syllables. Is 'Boston' disyllabic? Yes indeed. Confusing words and their referents is the mark of a primitive mind. In the following sentence
'Nigger' has nothing semantically or etymologically to do with 'niggardly'
I am mentioning both words but using neither. "But what if someone is offended by your mere mention of 'nigger'?" Too bad. That's his problem. He is in need of therapy not refutation.
The above statement by Bill O'Reilly caused some fat liberal ladies to stomp off in protest. You know the story. But what's to be offended at? Consider
1. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were Muslims.
True or false? True. Truth is truth; if you are offended by it the problem is yours alone. There is such a thing as taking inappropriate offense. One cannot reasonably take offense at someone's stating what is a plain truth. Since there is nothing objectively offensive about (1), then the following stylistic variant of (1) is equally inoffensive:
2. Muslim people attacked us on 9/11.
Plainly, (1) is true and inoffensive if and only if (2) is. But (2) is just another way of saying
3. Muslims attacked us on 9/11.
So (3) like its companions in synonymy is equally true and inoffensive.
Political correctness is a very great evil and you must, assuming you are a decent, clear-thinking person, do your bit to combat it. That it is a great evil is indicated by the Juan Williams flap. The man was fired by National Public Radio for merely reporting on a mental state he often finds himself in when boarding an airplane. You should find his firing both shocking and outrageous. It ought to anger you enough to take action.
So do your bit. It won't cost you much effort. Write a letter of protest. Speak out. Blog. VOTE!
A must-read from the pen of Mark Steyn. And please do follow the internal links.
