Leftism and Political Correctness – Page 60

The ACLU on the Second Amendment

The following is verbatim from the ACLU website:

The Second Amendment provides: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

ACLU POSITION
Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

Two main points. First, the concluding sentence of the quotation, which I have bolded, is so preposterous as to take the breath away. Whether or not there is a right to keep and bear arms is plainly a civil liberties issue. I would have thought that this would require no argument. Apparently I was wrong: liberals of the ACLU stripe are so preternaturally stupid as to be blind to the obvious. You will see this if you understand what a civil liberty is. Here are some definitions:

one's freedom to exercise one's rights as guaranteed under the laws of the country

fundamental individual right protected by law and expressed as immunity from unwarranted governmental interference
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Civil liberties are freedoms that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which they reside. Civil liberties set limits for government so that it cannot abuse its power and interfere unduly with the lives of its citizens.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberty

Even if you think of the right to keep and bear arms as a collective right — a right an individual has in virtue of belonging to a militia– it is still a civil liberty by the first and third definitions.

But, and here is my second point, one cannot correctly infer that the right in question is a collective right from the wording of the Second Amendment. Carefully read the Second Amendment, quoted above, and note that the subordinate clause provides a reason, which is not the same as the only reason, for the right in question not to be infringed. One cannot therefore validly infer from the formulation of the Second Amendment that it refers only to a collective right. ""A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" gives one reason for the protection of gun rights. This is consistent with there being other reasons. Three other reasons come readily to mind. There is the need for the means of self-defense of oneself and one's family from the criminal element. There is the need for the means of defense against wild animals. (Would you backpack in grizzly country without any protection? You might end up bear scat like the benighted Timothy Treadwell.) And there is the need for the means of defense against a usurpatious government.

Political Correctness Watch

Yale University Press bans images of Muhammad in academic book. What wimps these liberals be! And there is no wimp like an academic wimp.

Cynthia Tucker: 45-65% Of Townhall Protesters Are Racists. 'Racist' is the all-purpose semantic bludgeon of choice among liberals. Disagree with a liberal on practically anything and you are a racist!

Is 'Socialist' Code for 'Nigger'? One of the most despicable characteristics of present-day liberals and leftists is their refusal to take anything a conservative says at face value. Warped by the hermeneutics of suspicion, the liberal/leftist cannot credit the plainest and sincerest asseverations of the conservative. So if the conservative points out the obvious fact that Obama's health care proposals are socialist in nature, then he must really be doing something else, namely, expressing his hatred of Obama. You see, libs and lefties do not want to discuss the issues, they want to win by intimidation, by slandering the people who disagree with them and calling them racists. This is why there can be no discussion with these people. You cannot have a discussion with someone who interprets your opposition to radical Islam as a phobia, or your opposition to socialism as racist.

The Conservative Disadvantage

We conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

We don't look to politics for meaning. Above all, we conservatives do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in meditation, or in such sorry substitutes as occultism. A conservative who denies that there is ‘pie in the sky’ will certainly not seek ‘pie in the future.’ He will not, like the leftist, look to a human future for redemption. He understands human nature, its real possibilities, and its real limits. He is impervious to utopian illusions. He will accept no ersatz soteriology.

Some Things I Look For in a Movie: A Rant

1. No mindless 'action.' No race and chase, crash and burn. I am not a robot, so I don't want to watch a movie made by robots about robots for robots.

2. No gratuitous sex, violence, and offensive language. I have no objection to sex, violence, and bad language as such. There is a time and place for each. I would have no problem, for example, with blowing a home invader to Kingdom Come where he is more likely to receive justice than here below from a criminal justice system lousy with tolerate-anything liberals. But sex, violence and bad language ought not be thrown in for no reason or just to titillate or offend in the manner of the adolescent (whatever his age) who thinks it cool to append the F-ing qualifier to every F-ing word. Example: the opening scenes of Titanic.

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Diversity and Divisiveness

Liberals emphasize the value of diversity, and with some justification. Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive market place of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.

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Cash For Clunkers

The lunkheads of the Left really outdid themselves when they dreamed up this new wealth redistribution scheme. An acquaintance of mine told me of his son who turned in a 1989 Ford pickup with over 200, 000 miles on the odometer, a vehicle worth $50 according to my friend, a former mechanic, and received $4,500 of taxpayers' money, not to mention a dealer rebate on the purchase of a new car. Nice deal, eh? Our ever-expanding socialist government brokers a transaction in which some of us get to steal from the rest of us. It is crazy both morally and economically. But the people will lap it up along with panem et circenses, 'free' health care, and what all else. They will lap it up until there is nothing more to lap up and the republic goes the way of ancient Rome. For more on this depressing topic, take a gander at Michael Barone's Cash for Clunkers: Not the First Time. Something similar was tried in my beautiful State of Arizona. I think of poor Barry Goldwater, rolling around in his grave.

The White House Beer Summit

So what's on tap? If Officer Crowley shows up with a sixpack of Negra Modelo, will he be accused of racism by Professor Gates? After all 'negra' might remind someone of 'nigger.' Not long ago the use of the word 'niggardly' cost a man his job because it reminded some fools of 'nigger.' I am not making this up. I wish it were only a bad joke. But it is not, and it shows the depths of liberal-left lunacy. But if Crowley were to contribute a sixpack of Coors, then he would no doubt be a Nazi: the patriarch of the Coors clan rejoiced under the first name, 'Adolph.' And that might remind some fool of Adolf Hiter. In the Leftist Playbook, Hitler is evil incarnate, but Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are not to be mentioned.

Actually, mixing Negra Modelo with Coors might be just the solution. You'd have your dark and your light blended together, 'integrated' if you will. And therefore dark. Just like Obama: half black, half white, and therefore black. You see, in 'racist America,' where no black person has a chance — unless he is an Affirmative Action hire at Harvard University, or President, or Secretary of State — when a person is both black and white, then he is black. The first black president? Black + White = Black? Lefty logic for you.

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is That My Fault?

Suppose a white person uses the phrase 'black hole' in the presence of a black person either in its literal cosmological meaning or in some objectively inoffensive metaphorical sense, and the black person takes offense and complains that the phrase is 'racially insensitive.' Actual case here. Compare that with a case in which a white person uses 'nigger' in the presence of a black person.

I have just marked out two ends of a semantic spectrum. 'Black hole' used either literally or in some not-too-loose analogy to the literal meaning — as in 'black hole' used to refer to a windowless office — cannot be taken by any rational person as a racial slur. For 'black' in 'black hole' has nothing to do with race. But 'nigger' used by a white person is a racial slur.

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Ten Questions for Supporters of ‘ObamaCare’

The following piece by Dennis Prager is required reading. It's so good I herewith reproduce the entire article. The threat to liberty posed by the Obama administration is unprecedented. Do your bit to oppose it and stand up for what is right, assuming you actually care about yourself and your country.

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A Right to Health Care?

Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?

Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. You could call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotive services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?

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An ‘Epidemic’ of Drunk Driving?

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal. A while back I heard an otherwise intelligent C-Span presenter speak more than once of "an epidemic of drunk driving." But an epidemic, by definition, is an outbreak of a contagious disease in excess of what might normally be expected. To describe drunk driving as an epidemic, therefore, is to imply that it is a disease, which is precisely what it is not. Drunk driving is a freely chosen act. Use of 'epidemic' in connection with drunk driving aids and abets the cockeyed liberal view of the world according to which well-nigh every type of negative behavior is a disease.

Words mean things. Language matters. Don't talk like a liberal unless you are one.

Are You a Liberal? Take This Test

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 and my other sites. In any case, that is not my present purpose.

How many of the following do you believe? The more you believe the more liberal you are.

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On Profiling

Do all liberals lack common sense? No, but many of them do. If you are a liberal and oppose criminal profiling, then I say you lack common sense.

It is obvious that only certain kinds of people commit certain kinds of crimes. Suppose a rape has occurred at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Two males are moving away from the crime scene. One, the slower moving of the two, is a Jewish gentleman, 80 years of age, with a chess set under one arm and a copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed under the other. The other fellow, a vigorous twenty year old, is running from the scene.

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Is Greed the Engine of Capitalism?

The Financial Times reports on a piece of silliness from the Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday condemned the “grave deviations and failures” of capitalism exposed by the financial crisis and issued a strong call for a “true world political authority” to oversee a return to ethics in the global economy.

One mistake the good Pontiff is making is to confuse capitalism and capitalists. One who cannot see the difference may fallaciously conclude that the greed of some capitalists is rooted in capitalism. Here is a post from a while back that counters the notion:

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The Medical-Industrial Complex, Part II

Part I is here.

The liberal-leftist animus against corporations is undoubtedly excessive, as is their pollyannish trust in Big Government solutions to every problem under the sun; but this should not blind us to corporate irresponsibility especially when the corporate types work hand-in-hand with liberals to 'medicalize' the ordinary difficulties of life.

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