Dakota Beacon

Twenty-year-old Naser Abdo joined the U.S. Army more than a year ago.  Now that it’s time to be sent to Afghanistan, however, he’s having second thoughts.  He is refusing deployment, claiming conscientious-objector status.

Has Pfc. Abdo suddenly developed an aversion to all war?  Hardly.  Here are his reasons, as reported by WSMV Nashville:

he said he now believes Islamic standards would prohibit his service in the U.S. Army in any war.

According to documents provided to The Associated Press, Abdo cited Islamic scholars and verses from the Quran as reasons for his decision to ask for separation from the Army.

"I realized through further reflection that God did not give legitimacy to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq or any war the U.S. Army would conceivably participate in," he wrote.

. . . "This is not about proving a point; it's about maintaining true to my Islamic faith and maintaining true to the American values," said Abdo.

Now, I would have a bit of a problem with any soldier who, after enlisting in the military, using resources during the course of his training and collecting a salary, suddenly has pangs of conscience when it’s time to do the job for which he voluntarily signed up.  But, as Fort Campbell (where Abdo has been assigned) representatives have said, they “recognize that even in our all-volunteer force, a soldier’s moral, ethical and religious beliefs are subject to change over time.”  Thus, if Abdo had become an across-the-board pacifist, I might be able to manage a smidgeon of sympathy.  (I would, however, still expect him to be required to pay back every cent the army expended during the course of his training.)  But a change to a mindset that “would prohibit his service in the U.S. Army in any war” is a different matter altogether.  And, although it’s hardly necessary, let’s place this in further perspective.

Since Muslims have been known to war against and kill one another, it doesn’t seem that the problem is simply a matter of fighting other Muslims.  Rather, it appears it’s a matter of fighting Muslims on behalf of America, our little corner of Dar al-Harb.  It seems that Abdo is taking the typical Islamist position that he won’t participate in a war waged by infidel America — only one declared by Allah.

This is a treasonous attitude, as Abdo has served notice that his allegiance doesn’t lie with our nation.  And we have to wonder, if he believed that Allah declared a war against the U.S., would he become a domestic terrorist? 

Common sense dictates that Abdo should not be deployed to a war zone, as someone harboring his beliefs would be a danger to fellow soldiers, if only because he cannot be relied upon to execute his duties.  But he doesn’t qualify for conscientious-objector status, either.  Note that the Department of Defense (DOD) instruction on conscientious objection states that to qualify for the status an individual must sincerely object “to participation as a combatant in war in any form.”  The DOD then elaborates:

3.5. War In Any Form. The clause "war in any form" should be interpreted in the following manner:

3.5.1. An individual who desires to choose the war in which he or she will participate is not a Conscientious Objector under the law. The individual's objection must be to all wars rather than a specific war.

Obviously, Abdo doesn’t object to “war in any form” — just the American form.  As for the unstated “American values” he mentioned, I hope we resurrect the almost lost American value of accountability in his case.  This would mean forcing him to repay the Army its investment in him and giving him a nice long stretch in a very American prison.

                                                         Contact Selwyn Duke  

Now that Barack Obama has decided to be for the Ground Zero mosque before being implicitly against it (perhaps), discussion about his faith has once again reached a fever pitch.  To many, his stance proves he’s a Muslim, with a recent poll showing that almost 20 percent of Americans hold that opinion; to others, it just reflects a desire to be faithful to the Constitution (now, that would be change).  The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced.  Obama is not religiously Muslim.  Culturally, though . . . well, that’s a different matter altogether.

In reality, calling Obama a “Muslim” gives him too much credit.  As G.K. Chesterton once said, “We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.”  The truth, however, is that few people have thought thoroughly and to a definite end.  And Obama is no exception.  He hasn’t even thought matters through enough to understand the folly of statism. Even more to the point, he is a moral relativist, a position the antithesis of any absolutist faith.  Inherent in Islam is that belief that Allah, not man, has authored right and wrong and that, consequently, it isn’t a matter of opinion.  Thus, Obama cannot truly believe in Islam — or in Christianity or Judaism, for that matter (he could perhaps be a Buddhist, but Buddhism isn’t truly a faith but a way of life).

Oh, and since some will ask, how do I know Obama is a relativist?  It’s simple: Virtually all leftists are, as the denial of moral reality that is relativism lies at the heart of liberalism.

Speaking of relativists, this matter of Obama’s “faith” much reminds me of Adolf Hitler and paganism. Like Obama, Hitler sometimes feigned a belief in Christianity, but in reality he held the religion in contempt.  He believed it was “the greatest trick the Jews ever played on Western civilization” and lamented that it was not a warrior creed like Islam or the ancient Germanic paganism with which the Nazis wanted to replace Christianity (I wrote about this here).  Yet, while Hitler’s second in command, Heinrich Himmler, certainly believed in the ancient pagan myths — going so far as to launch expeditions to the Far East to prove them, à la Raiders of the Lost Ark — it’s silly to think that the leader himself viewed them as anything but a utilitarian device.  He wasn’t quite that romantic.

But what about culturally?  For sure, Hitler preferred seeing Swastikas and runes (respectively, pagan symbols and letters) to crosses and crèches, rebuilt Germanic pagan temples to churches.  That was where his passions lay.  (If some are upset at a comparison between Hitler and Obama, know that I’d never call the president a National Socialist.  He’s an international socialist.  Also, Hitler was patriotic.)

Obama also has passions, and there is no question as to where they lie.  As journalist Todd Fitchette wrote in “The un-faith of Obama”:

he continues to openly praise Islam; he bows to Muslim leaders; he claims that the Muslim call to prayer is “the most beautiful sound in the world;” he regularly quotes from the Koran and cites it for directing his life . . . .

In the past year alone he made a big deal out of hosting a celebratory dinner to open the month of Ramadan — held in the state dining room; he refused to attend the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts (an avowed Christian organization), and, refused to attend the National Day of Prayer because he claimed to do so would be offensive to non-Christians.

Then there is that king of Freudian slips, when Obama matter-of-factly said to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, “You’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith,” and didn’t seem headed for a correction until Stephanopoulos interjected.  (Note: This doesn’t contradict my assertion that Obama has no real faith.  Nancy Pelosi has spoken of her Catholic faith, but, also being a relativist, it can be nothing more than part of her cultural tapestry.)

And are Obama’s passions surprising?  He spent some of his formative years in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, where he was registered as a Muslim in both schools he attended and sometimes prayed on Fridays in a mosque.  Moreover, there is another factor, one most people don’t consider.

As many know, there once was a great boxer named Cassius Clay.  He converted to Islam in 1964, seemingly bothered that Jesus was portrayed as “a white with blond hair and blue eyes,” as he put it, and took the name “Muhammad Ali.”  Of course, the irony of this is that, despite being intensely aware of his slave roots, he rejected the name of an abolitionist (Clay) and took the name of a slave owner (Muhammad).  It also perhaps eluded him that Christians were the first ones to outlaw slavery while Muslims give black Africans rope and chains to this day.

But I mention this because Ali’s path is a common one in the black community; it is why we’ve long had the Black Muslims and why Islamic names are so common among American blacks.  Many blacks have bought the bill of goods that Christianity is the white man’s religion, the faith of oppressors.  And they embrace Islam as part of a rejection of “white” society.

Obviously, being part of this milieu could only have reinforced Obama’s affinity for things Muslim and antipathy for things authentically Christian — of which Western Civilization is one.  And if Americans hadn’t been brainwashed with political correctness, they would have understood this.  With foreign and domestic Muslim influence, attendance at a Black Liberation Theology, pseudo-Christian church and alliances with ex-terrorists and declared communists, Obama perfectly fits the profile of an America hater.  The wolf never really wore sheep’s clothing; it’s just that Americans had wool pulled over their eyes.

As for Obama’s eyes, they cannot look heavenward when they’re so busy looking down on little people who “cling to guns and religion.”  I sense that Obama is a certain kind of person, one much like Hitler — who wanted to create a new German pagan religion with himself at its center — in a particular sense.  This type of person essentially says the following to God, “The Universe just isn’t big enough for the two of us.”  And his little world certainly isn’t, filled to all corners as it is with his bloated, power-hungry ego.  This, by the way, has been acknowledged by more honest secularists.  For example, Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19^th-century poster boy for atheism who is rumored to have been a philosopher (in reality, he is someone who helped discredit the field), once said through his version of Zarathustra, “If there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God?  Therefore there can be no gods.”  I have a feeling that Obama cannot endure it to be no god.

It is, again, unwise to give Obama too much credit.  Good faith is defined as “an act of the will informed by the intellect,” and any kind of faith requires submission to something higher than yourself.  Obama is neither that intellectual nor that humble.  But all humans have passions, and his aren’t hard to discern.  He is anti-American, anti-western, anti-Christian (the traditional variety), anti-white and anti-life.  He is more comfortable dining with Bill Ayres than the Queen of England, more internationalist than nationalist, and perhaps more at home in Dar al-Islam than Dar al-Harb.  He has lived abroad and traveled much, but he is a lover of nations like a Casanova is a lover of women: He has known many but loves, and is faithful to, none — not even the one to which he should be married.  He is a cultural traitor, and, as Cicero said about traitors two-thousand years ago, “A murderer is less to be feared.”  

To quote Chesterton again, he once said, “There was a time when men weren’t very sure of themselves, but they were very sure of what the truth was.  Now men are very sure of themselves but not at all sure of what the truth is.”  The latter describes Obama.  If he does have faith, it is in himself.  And that is a faith terribly misplaced.

                                                         Contact Selwyn Duke   

This article originally appeared at The American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/the_truth_about_obamas_muslim.html

Judge Vaughn Walker's legal ruling striking down California's Proposition 8 certainly was no triumph of intellectualism. But while it's easy to thus dismiss it, what's usually forgotten is that reasoning such as his flies only in a certain cultural milieu -- a milieu that, in part, has been shaped by conservatives. Let's examine the matter. 

Walker's lack of intellectualism is profound. Among other things, he said that opposition to faux marriage was ultimately based on "moral disapproval." While this is a rhetorically compelling argument in an age where "morality" has become a dirty word, it is also nonsense. This is not because he is wrong in his understanding of marriage's more cerebral defenders; it is because he is wrong in his understanding of law. For the fact is that all credible legal proscriptions and prescriptions are a matter of "moral disapproval." Don't believe me? I'll explain.

A law is by definition the imposition of a value (and a valid law is the imposition of a moral principle). This is because a law states that there is something you must or must not do, ostensibly because the action is a moral imperative, is morally wrong, or is a corollary thereof. If this is not the case, with what credibility do you legislate in the given area? After all, why prohibit something if it doesn't prevent some wrong? Why force citizens to do something if it doesn't effect some good? You'll never see a powerful movement lobbying to criminalize chocolate ice cream or broccoli.

To provide a concrete example, what is the possible justification for speed laws? It isn't simply "me no like speedy." Rather, there is the idea that it is wrong to endanger others or yourself, and, in the latter case, it could be based on the idea that it's wrong to engage in reckless actions that could cause you to become a burden on society. Of course, some or all of these arguments may be valid or not, but the point is this: If a law is not underpinned by a valid moral principle, it is not a just law. Without morality, laws can be based on nothing but air.

This brings me to a problem with a certain conservative argument. We have heard many, while bristling at Walker's ruling, complain that "one judge has wiped away the votes of seven million people with the stroke of the pen." Like Judge Walker's "moral disapproval" nonsense, such talk certainly is rhetorically effective. And if it is used simply for the purposes of rhetoric, it may be fine. But the reality is that if the Proposition 8 vote had been swung a few percentage points the other way, the measure wouldn't have passed, and the left could be citing the will of the people to buttress its cause.

But right and wrong aren't determined by popular will. Nor should the latter have a bearing on judges' rulings, as they are supposed to be governed by the Constitution. Thus, the problem with Walker's ruling is not that it is anti-majoritarian; it's that it is unconstitutional and dumb.

Since the constitutional factor is obvious, let's delve into the dumb part. Harking back to the foundation of law, if "moral disapproval" is off the table, on what legitimate basis can we refuse to recognize any conception of "marriage"? If right and wrong cannot be a guide -- or if we live in a relativistic universe in which there is no wrong -- then how can you, with credibility, prohibit polygamy or Billy from marrying his billy goat? 

So while many people today believe, in grand relativist fashion, that morality is some arbitrary thing, they have it exactly backwards. Morality is "The Rules," and, just as with a football referee who ignores his game's rules and makes calls based on what feels right, it is when you ignore The Rules that you become arbitrary. Your rationale, boiled down, is then nothing more than "me no likey," nothing more than might makes right. For, to state the obvious, the recognition of morality is the only thing that moors us to reality -- moral reality.

And this is where the 7,000,000-vote argument finds common ground with Judge Walker's judicial activism. Both perspectives ignore morality and reduce the debate to one of who will wield the might that makes right, of who will be that renegade football referee. It is either the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of a black-robed minority, and who advocates which depends on how each group lines up on a given issue.

(Note: This isn't to say that 7,000,000-vote-argument advocates aren't more morality-oriented than Judge Walker's set. After all, many conservatives would point out that they  cite the majority only because it supported a constitutional and moral position. Nevertheless, when taken at face value, the majoritarian argument is not logically sound.)

So what should be the logical basis for an argument against faux marriage?

Simply that it doesn't exist.

And you cannot have a right to that which doesn't exist.

This is not slick-lawyer sleight-of-hand -- this is what exposes it. For this issue is about changing definitions, not changing rights. After all, like all people, those experiencing same-sex attraction have always had a right to marry and have done so since time immemorial. It's just that marriage was always understood -- correctly -- to be the union of a man and woman. Thus, whoever did get married tied the knot with a member of the opposite sex.

But when we accept that a same-sex union can be marriage -- a standard with no credible basis whatsoever in history (which renders the votes of the ultimate majority) or morality -- the discussion about rights naturally follows. After all, if such a union is marriage and people have a right to marry, how can they be denied recourse to it?

Speaking of majoritarian folly, this brings us to another way most of us have undermined ourselves. While many say the Walker set has redefined marriage, this is nonsense that gives non-thinkers too much credit. They have not redefined it.

They have undefined it.

That is to say, they do not steadfastly, unabashedly, and definitively say, "Marriage is the union between any two adults and nothing else, and here is the moral basis for this conclusion." No, they would then be drawing a line just like the traditionalists, wouldn't they? They would be guilty of the kind of "bigotry," "exclusiveness," and "narrowness" of which they accuse their opponents. Relativists can't have that, so they offer no definition. All they do is imply that the traditional definition is incorrect.

And this is another hole in the Walker set's argument. After all, while they scoff at the claim that legalizing faux marriage paves the way for polygamy and everything else, an "undefinition" excludes nothing. Sure, they can oppose such things, but only as the renegade football referee saying "me no likey."

The reality is that if they cannot definitively say what marriage is, how can they be sure they know what it is not? And this is why their criticism of traditionalists deserves no respect: If they cannot say what defines a "right" marriage, they cannot credibly say the traditional definition is the wrong one. 

Yet they don't have to because, while they can reliably define nothing, we allow them to define the terms of the debate. Know this: Every time you use the term "gay marriage," "homosexual marriage," or even "traditional marriage" (the Lexicon of the Left), you undermine yourself. If one of the first two, it is because you are explicitly acknowledging an imaginary institution's existence. If the last one, you are implying it. For what is the other side of the coin of "traditional marriage"? And if the American psyche is imbued with the idea that "marriages" between same-sex individuals exist and that marriage is a right, well, you can forget the legal and political battles. If you lose the cultural one, everything else follows. It's just a matter of time.

This is why "conservatives" must stop being conservative and start being bold. They must start thinking outside the box. Otherwise, we may win some battles in courts and ballot boxes -- we may carry the approaching November day -- but we'll be sure to lose the war and the way.

                                                      Contact Selwyn Duke

This article originally appeared at The American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/lack_of_intellectualism_is_los.html

There is such a thing as a conditioned response.  Here’s an example: Leftists call conservatives “racists.”  Conservatives cower and stutter some defense.  Leftists call conservatives “racists” some more.  Conservatives cower some more.  Question: How do you think you break this pattern?

We’ve seen this again with the recent vitriol spewed by NAACP head Ben Jealous (a fitting last name).  Speaking at the NAACP convention in Kansas City, Jealous accused the Tea Party of, take a guess . . . cue the “Jeopardy!” music . . .  “racism.”  Just as predictably, many conservatives are running around trying to convince everyone that, by gum, they really are swell guys.  No, really.  I’m not a racist.  I don’t beat my wife.  I don’t kick my dog.  I eat my organic vegetables and drive a Prius.   

Look, why don’t we just save everyone the trouble?  Every time a conservative renders an opinion, we can just play a recording with a little weaselly voice screeching, “You’re a wacist!  You’re a wacist!” (Barney Frank style) followed by a music video featuring The Cowering Conservative — I mean, 1950s-style, duck-and-cover footage with the tune and all.  

And such conservatives abound.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, conservative brethren, I love ya’, man.  But, frankly, too many of you are saps.  You really don’t get it.  People who advocated welfare reform in the 1990s were accused of being “racist.”  If you’re for border control, you’re “racist.”  If you criticize Obama, you’re “racist.”  If you oppose quotas, you’re “racist.”  If you say that, be it nature or nurture, there are differences among groups, you’re “racist.”  If you want English to be the national language, you’re “racist.”  The word has become meaningless, only used to stifle and stigmatize opposition.  And if calling you a heretic worked in that regard, the left would do that.  And if calling you a Fig Newton worked, they would do that. 

Nevertheless, the ploy prevents sap conservatives from speaking — and even conceiving of — certain truths.  They won’t say that so-called racial profiling is just part of proper profiling, they pay lip service to the relativistic idea that all cultures are morally equal, they refuse to call bigoted blacks such as Obama and Eric Holder out on their bigotry, they tolerate double standards with respect to hate-crime-law application and racial jokes, and they let whites persecuted for making innocent comments twist in the wind.  They won’t speak unfashionable truths for fear of becoming unfashionable people.  Well, all I can say is that if the Truth can be “racist,” then hello, I’m a “racist.”  Pleased to meet you.  

And this gets at a deeper point.  On the O’Reilly Factor recently, Bill O’Reilly was discussing the Jealous situation with Professor Marc Lamont Hill.  You know, Hill is the fellow with a Cracker-Jack-box Ph.D. who looks like a high-school kid heading to the prom.  Anyway, the good professor, in so many words, put forth the leftist definition stating that only whites can be “racist” because being so requires one to have “institutional power.”  OK, whatever.  I accept the definition.  Really, I do.

I just reject the word.

What I mean is, I’ve long warned against using the Lexicon of the Left.  “Racism” is a term as stupid as “ageism,” only, we’re inured to it.  We forget that “ism” refers to a doctrine, system or theory.  Thus, of course “racism” will denote doctrine, and is it any surprise that the doctrine is dumb?  Leftist doctrine is usually dumb.  But what’s even dumber is that we actually embrace the left’s doctrinal terms.  This is why I prefer using what simply refers to attitude — “bigotry” — as in Barack Obama is a bigot, Eric Holder is a bigot and Ben Jealous is a bigot.  As for “racism,” it was originated by the left.  So leave it to them.  They can define it.  They can whine it.  And if they ask me, I’ll tell them where they can stick it.

The point is that you can’t prove you’re not a “racist” to the left, because they’ll just define “racist” as being whatever you are.  In fact, sap conservatives, understand something: You’re not going to “prove” anything to the NAACP.  You’re not going to prove anything to the mainstream media.  You’re not going to prove anything to any dyed-in-the-fool liberal.  They are enemies.  And enemies aren’t interested in proof; they’re interested in propaganda.

So cultivate the right warrior attitude.  Look at it like this: If you were engaging in a cold war against the Nazis in 1938, would you bend over backwards to “prove” to them that their propaganda about you was invalid?  Of course not!  They know it’s invalid — that’s the nature of evil’s propaganda.  And it’s designed to invalidate you.  And you don’t respond to enemies with defensiveness and measured responses.

You propagandize against them.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to lie.  Note that while “propaganda” generally has a negative connotation today, it doesn’t denote dishonesty.  It is simply, informs The Free Dictionary, “the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc., to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc.”  And to damage leftists’ cause, all we need do is tell the truth about them.

So what this does mean is that you have to stop being “conservative” and start being bold.  The only consistent political definition of a “conservative” — the only ones that holds across time and place — is “one who desires to maintain the status quo.”  Well, maintenance men are seldom warriors.  Conservatives too often take a conservative approach, being cautious while their enemies are callous.  They too often bring a rhetorical knife to a rhetorical gunfight.  They too often act like losers — and lose. 

I am not saying that we should stop making reasoned arguments, but those are for the reasonable (those who can be swayed).  They are wholly inappropriate for unreasonable charges from dishonorable children.  They deserve your boot.  You spit in their eye.  For enemies bent on your destruction don’t want compromise; they won’t yield to reason.  They are to be fought and, God willing, defeated.

This means that when a Congressman Joe Wilson shouts “You lie!” at Barack Obama, you respond, “Representative Wilson was wrong.  Obama lies a lot.”  It means that when the left bristles at a satirical letter to Lincoln, you understand that bold, fresh pieces of insanity will always hate satire.  And, personally, do I really care that some Tea Party folks juxtaposed Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler on a billboard?  Not really.  I’m just not that concerned about Mr. Hitler’s reputation.    

And what of civility?  Be wary.  When the left is civil — or calls for civility — it’s usually a ruse.  It’s simply the tactic that best helps them achieve their aims at the moment.  Here’s how it works: Leftists lie through their teeth, and then, when you respond with righteous indignation, they pout like little girls, saying, “You’re mean!  You’re intolerant!  What happened to civility! [Translation: You called our lies lies!  How dare you!]”  Understand that the effect here is to stop sap conservatives from calling lies lies, thus allowing the left to use its greatest weapon with impunity.  Also understand that the worst form of impoliteness is insincerity in discourse.

And understand something else: Leftists are cowards.  They are creatures of the pack, finding their strength only in numbers.  After all, what do you think being politically correct is all about?  It means doing what’s fashionable in our time, what makes you popular.  A man who believes in Truth, such as Thomas More, will die for his principles, alone, twisting in the wind.  A liberal goes the way the wind blows and will die for nothing.  Stand up to leftists en masse, and they’ll fold like a tent. 

So free yourself.  Laugh at the “racism” shtick.  Make it a badge of honor.  Call leftists what they are: cowards, bigots, liars, demagogues, and, worst of all by far, enemies of Truth.  Fight fire with fire.  Remember, millions of good Americans are sick and tired of political correctness and will stand with you.  So just say to our leftist legal aliens: If you like name-calling and you want to fight, OK.  I’m a racist, sexist homophobe, and I’m in your face.  What’s it to ya’?

                                                     Contact Selwyn Duke       

This article originally appear at The American Thinker

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/hello_im_a_racist_pleased_to_m.html

While the Obama administration has chosen the southern side in the Mexican-Arizonan border war, most Americans stand with their countrymen.  They are troubled by the strain illegals place on services, the drugs and thugs moving north and blue-collar job prospects moving south.  Then there is another factor: the political and cultural one.  

It’s well known that, should amnesty be granted to the 12 to 30 million illegals living among us, Barack Obama and his fellow travelers would capture virtually all their votes.  Moreover, given the illegals’ allegiance to their homelands and today’s multiculturalist message, it’s clear that, even if they do learn English, “assimilation” won’t be high on their vocabulary list.  Thus, amnesty not only would radically transform the political landscape, it would constitute a cultural tsunami.  Even pundit Bill O’Reilly recognizes this, saying a couple of years ago (I’m paraphrasing), “If all the illegal aliens are granted amnesty, America will change culturally almost overnight.”  But is the focus on illegal migration excessive?

What do I mean?  Well, how about this proposal: What if instead of granting amnesty in one fell swoop, we did so incrementally, say, to 20 percent of illegals a year for the next 5 years?  That would still have the same ill effects, you say?  OK, how about one million illegals a year until the job is done?  I can hear it now: “Whoa, Duke, all you’re proposing is to trade a knife through the heart for a death by a thousand cuts.  A bad idea implemented more slowly is still a bad idea.  And illegal means illegal.”  But, wait, if Congress passed an amnesty plan, it wouldn’t be illegal.

And neither would the individuals thus made citizens.

Now I can hear some thunder, “Are you nuts?!  This simply makes it a death by a thousand legal cuts!  A bad idea implemented legally is still a bad idea!”  Well, guess what.

I agree with you.

You see, a death by a thousand legal cuts is not actually my position.  Rather, if you’re the average conservative American, it’s yours.  And what I put forth wasn’t actually a proposal.  Rather, it was a reality.  It’s called legal immigration. 

Something often accompanying the disclaimer, “Look, I support legal immigration, but . . .” is “I realize most of the folks coming here are good, hard-working people . . . .”  Now, while I’d point out that it only takes 51 percent to qualify as “most,” this statement is correct in the following sense: Most of those arriving legally are, using moderns’ typical yardstick, good, hard-working people.  And illegals are much the same as those arriving legally.  Another way of saying this is that those arriving legally are much the same as illegals.  And that is the point.  They usually come for economic advancement, not to become American.  They often expect to have their cultural peculiarities accommodated, as opposed to doing what the Romans do.  Their allegiance often lies elsewhere.  And the vast majority vote for leftists.

Let’s look at the facts.  For most of American history, we admitted an average of approximately 250,000 immigrants a year.  After the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 (Ted Kennedy’s baby), however, this figure rose fourfold, to approximately one million a year.  The result: The rate of immigration started to exceed the rate of assimilation.

But it wasn’t just the numbers that changed; it was also the nature.  Eighty-five percent of our legal immigrants now hail from the Third World and Asia, from non-Western cultures.  And many immigrants, such as Islamists, cling to and advance beliefs that are incompatible with — and destructive to — our culture. 

The problem with this is that it isn’t geography that makes a nation, but people.  Replace Americans with Mexicans or Muslims and you no longer have America — you have Mexico North or Iran West.  Thus, if you believe Western culture is an evil force and aim to destroy it, our current immigration scheme perfectly suits your agenda. 

And the proof is in the pudding.  Approximately 80 percent of new legal immigrants, once naturalized, vote as our culture-rending leftists do (for leftist Democrats).  For a specific example, consider that first-time Hispanic voters cast ballots for Bill Clinton by a ratio of 15 to 1.

Of course, some say this will change when the new arrivals become Americanized, but this is an ostrich pipe dream.  For one thing, they aren’t being Americanized, America is being balkanized.  Second, what does it mean to be Americanized?  There are millions of leftists who deliver a message many new immigrants are very sympathetic to: Socialism — or “statism,” if you prefer — is as American as apple pie.

Also remember that a person’s ideology is much like his religion: It involves deep-seated beliefs that the individual lives and breathes.  Ideology often gives people’s lives meaning; they advocate for it, they sometimes die for it, and, even more frequently, they kill for it.

And our culture is dying because of it.  “People get the government they deserve,” as Thomas Jefferson said, because, one way or another, government tends to reflect the people.  This brings us to an important question: Do you want the kind of socialism — or statism, if you prefer — that generally prevails from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn?  Well, understand that immigrants will vote for the same kind of candidates they supported in their native lands, and this won’t magically change because they set foot on American terra firma.  Of course, you could try the following appeal: “Ignore the folks offering you handouts and ethnic studies!  Embrace our heroes and history, our love of small government and personal responsibility.”  Good luck with that, amigos. 

Then there is another factor, one I treated in May of this year, writing:

In a relatively recent phenomenon, approximately 50 percent of legal immigrants have been coming from Mexico. And about 67 percent of American Hispanics have origins in that nation; this amounts to, including illegals, a population of approximately 20 to 30 million — about 20 percent of Mexico's population. What are the consequences of such an unbalanced immigration policy? University of Edinburgh professor Stephen Tierney explains them very well in his book Multiculturalism and the Canadian Constitution, writing:

In a situation in which immigrants are divided into many different groups originating in distant countries, there is no feasible prospect of any particular immigrant group's challenging the hegemony of the national language [press one for English, folks?] and institutions. These groups may form an alliance among themselves to fight for better treatment and accommodations, but such an alliance can only be developed within the language and institutions of the host society and, hence, is integrative. In situations in which a single dominant immigrant group originates in a neighbouring country, the dynamics may be very different. The Arabs in Spain, and Mexicans in the United States, do not need allies among other immigrant groups. One could imagine claims for Arabic or Spanish to be declared a second official language, at least in regions where they are concentrated, and these immigrants could seek support from their neighbouring home country for such claims — in effect, establishing a kind of transnational extension of their original homeland in their new neighbouring country of residence.

In other words, we are allowing the transplantation of a foreign nation into the body of our nation.  Thus, if, like the Mexican government, La Raza and MEChA, you wish to conquer the American southwest in the name of Mexico, our current immigration scheme perfectly suits your agenda.

If our agenda is the preservation of the republic, however, we need to honestly consider the immigration question.  This means realizing that it includes two seldom-addressed aspects: One is whether we should continue to allow immigration.  The second is, what kind of immigration would be beneficial? 

As to the latter, remember that a nation has a “cultural ecosystem,” which enjoys a state of equilibrium.  It is much as with our actual ecosystem: Some non-native elements, such as horses and soybeans, blend in seamlessly.  Others, such as Asian carp, zebra mussels, and nutria can cause severe problems.  This is not because they’re bad by nature, but because they’re incompatible with the system.  Of course, a new equilibrium can eventually be established — you just have to wait for certain native species to be killed off.    

All of the aforementioned brings us to an important point: Illegal migration isn’t the problem.

It’s an exacerbation of the problem. 

And if we’re going to support our current legal-immigration scheme, why get so worked up over illegal migration?  We are already supporting a legal cultural death by a thousand cuts; we are already supporting the importation of nearly a million socialist-leaning voters every year.  All amnesty does is expedite the process.

The norm in man’s history has been to keep unassimilable foreign elements out of one’s land, not invite them in.  Of course, another norm of man has been the will to survive.  I’m not sure that’s an instinct we still possess. 

                                                          Contact Selwyn Duke

This article first appeared at The American Thinker:    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/immigration_reconsidered.html

While I’m no fan of the Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis, I think it may be applicable to Barack Obama.  After all, the man seems to suffer from a case of it that mainlining Ritalin wouldn’t remedy.

Just consider Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright.  Despite calling the prejudiced preacher a friend, mentor and uncle, despite sitting in Wrong’s church for 20 years, despite being married and having his daughters baptized by him, Obama says he was completely unaware of the bigot’s anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Western and anti-Christian views.  And, just so we can appreciate the severity of Obama’s affliction, Wrong has quite conveniently provided a reminder of what those unforgettable views are.  The scene was a five-day seminar at the Chicago Theological Seminary where, for a mere $1000 if taken for college credit and $300 if not, you could be enlightened by Wrong on matters of race, brotherhood and Zionism and kibitz with him during lunch breaks.  Reporting on the wisdom he imparted, the New York Post wrote:

“You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk,” he [Wrong] said. “And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble.”

He cited the writings of Bill Jones -- author of the book "Is God a White Racist?" -- as proof that white people cannot be trusted. "Bill said, 'They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They'll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin', cause you not a brother to them.' "

Wright referred to Italians as "Mamma Luigi" and "pizzeria." He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks "not by benign neglect but by malignant intent."

Wrong also said, “We probably have more African-Americans who've been brainwashed than we have South Africans who've been brainwashed” and “All your commentaries are written by oppressors.”

As for Wrong’s oppression, whatever its nature, it’s quite a pleasant one.  A few months ago he relocated to a new, opulent, million-dollar home that boasts its own cul-de-sac and proximity to a golf course. 

And then there is the oppression of mental deficiencies.  What I mean is, since Wrong doesn’t seem like a shy, retiring type who hides deeply held views from his inner circle, I can only conclude that Obama’s ADD kicked in again.  Obama never assimilated the aforementioned wisdom from his longtime pastor.  He never heard Wrong bellow “The US of KKK-A!” or “G**d**n America!”  Instead, Obama said about his friend, “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms.”  “Heard?”  Or is it more like “in one ear and out the other”?  Whatever.  Perhaps, when Wrong’s lips were moving, Obama was thinking about golf or basketball or singing “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round” in his mind while bobbing his head side-to-side.

Of course, we must show compassion for the handicapped, and this is another area where Wrong is found wanting.  In an apparent reference to Obama, the “reverend” said that black leaders were guilty of “cuttin’ and duckin’” at the mention of Louis Farrakhan’s name.  But can he be so sure?  Maybe Obama never really “heard” anything Farrakhan said.

Given this deficiency, though, we have to wonder what, if anything, Obama has learned or is capable of learning.  Will he come to understand that bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing to humanity for America’s alleged sins (which, presumably, he has heard about) doesn’t engender respect in this streetwise world?  Can he figure out that if even thoroughly statist European leaders reject his global stimulus plan, spending your way to oblivion isn’t prudent economics?  Can he grasp that if an oil gusher was spewing oil into the ocean yesterday, and the hole hasn’t been plugged, that it will spew oil into the ocean today?  Can he learn that, if foreign companies with expertise in oil clean-up wish to help in the Gulf, it probably isn’t a good idea to decline their services based on a protectionist 1920 law?  Can he fathom that if our border was porous yesterday, and hasn’t been sealed, that it will be porous today?  Can he learn that illegal means illegal, that amnesty for criminals yields more criminality, and that when “undocumented” weapons of mass destruction come across our southern back door we’ll end up with a very well-documented 9/11-squared?  Can he learn — anything — or does the brain shut down with the teleprompter and start to alpha-theta-wave flatline?

So perhaps Obama isn’t just our first “black” president but also our first ADD president.  At least, that’s what the idea that he could carry on a deep, 20-year relationship with Wrong and not know of the man’s vile views — and not share them to some degree — suggests.  Of course, there is another possibility:

Barack Obama is a liar.

Barack Obama is a radical, a demagogue and a clear and present danger to these United States.

Perhaps the Americans who voted for  Obama need to consider that he not only is one of Wrong’s fellow travelers (the title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, came from one of Wrong’s sermons) but, just as damnably, only “threw him under the bus” when Wrong became a political liability; that Obama apologizes because he — and his wife, who said that she never had been proud of America as an adult — are consumed with the typical left-wing hatred of the U.S.; that he spends trillions we don’t have because he’s an out-of-touch fool or, worse still, wants to collapse the free-market system; that he instituted an unconstitutional health-care plan because the nationalization of healthcare is a tenet of communism; that he allows the Gulf’s ecosystem to be damaged in deference to unions or, worse still, because he wants to provide impetus for his cap-and-tax scheme; and that he wants our nation flooded with unassimilable foreigners because he knows that such people, once naturalized, will vote for him and his fellow leftists to the tune of 90 percent.

In 2008, Barack Obama (I’ll clean this figure of speech up a bit) spit down Americans’ backs and told them it was rainin’, and 53 percent of us believed him.  Many of us still do.  But it’s time to grow up and wise up — because our time is almost up.  That deluge of national destruction running down your back is not some unexplainable natural phenomenon.  It is the effluent that naturally flows when you elect Marxists, malcontents and miscreants to office.

                                                        Contact Selwyn Duke      

When people discuss the overall effects of the Internet, they will weigh the good and the bad.  On one side, they may mention how the Web, along with talk radio, has broken the stranglehold over public opinion the mainstream media once enjoyed; on the other, they may cite the pernicious effects of pornography, cyber-bullying or the loss of privacy.  Whatever the analysis and verdict, though, it never truly captures how tangled a Web we have woven.  This is because seldom recognized is a simple and profound fact: The Internet is one of the most powerful forces ever unleashed by mankind.

                                                   The (Mis-)Information Bomb

We have numerous sayings alluding to the power of ideas, such as “Knowledge is power,” “The pen is mightier than the sword” and “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”  And with modern forms of communication, such as radio and television — and now the Internet — ideas can be transmitted at a rate unfathomable for most of man’s existence.  

This makes civilization very unstable.  Think about it: For most of history, the only relatively quick way to change a society was through military conquest, such as when Islam’s hordes turned North Africa Muslim within a century’s time.  Yet, using that as an example, what would have been the Moors’ prospects for success had they been forced to rely on a few proselytizing Imams and handwritten Korans to spread their message? 

But with the modern ability to disseminate information at the touch of a button, the amount of peaceful social change that might have taken 300 years to effect in the Middle Ages may be realized in only a decade today.  So now a lie can get all the way around the world before the Truth even knows the liar has logged on.

This phenomenon of rapid, haphazard change also widens generation gaps, as each generation grows up in a more radically different moral and social environment.  And I should add that, contrary to popular belief, a generation gap isn’t inevitable.  It only develops when the spirit of the age is constantly changing and, as a consequence, the young and old end up worshiping different ones.  If, however, a culture safeguards tradition and insulates itself from competing ideas (a big “if,” I know), everyone will occupy the same page.  For example, I really cannot imagine that any ancient Aztec youth ever said, “No, dad, I don’t want to sacrifice a virgin to Quetzalcoatl today!  And I don’t believe in gods!”

Now, there are those who like to deny the negative effects of these media.  For example, point out that gratuitous sex and violence on television have a corruptive effect, and excuses will fly.  We may hear, “It’s OK because it didn’t cause me any problems,” which is much like saying that “Being a long-time smoker hasn’t hurt me” because you can’t see your blackened lungs and aren’t dead yet.  Or we may hear, “It’s the values taught by the parents that matter,” which is much like saying it’s of no consequence if strangers feed your children foxglove and arsenic as long as you make sure they have a good diet at home.

In reality, these are rationalizations, only trotted out when the onus is placed on something we hold dear.  During moments of clarity, however, even the most ardent cultural apologist knows that entertainment influences thinking.  If this isn’t so, why was there a hue and cry to get “Amos & Andy” and other shows containing old stereotypes off the air? 

Obviously, the examples people set for others matter, and this doesn’t cease being the case simply because the behavior is observed via a screen as opposed to in person.  So while we can argue about the magnitude of modern entertainment’s effect, or about whether it’s on balance good or bad, that it has an effect simply isn’t disputable.   

                                                      Beyond the Kinsey Reports

When people think of the Internet’s dark side, they invariably imagine pornography.  And with smut available to even to 10-year-old fingers just a mouse-click away, its effect is profound.  Yet, as with so many things, it isn’t the obvious that has the most devastating impact.  It’s what remains mostly unmentioned.

Anyone who has posted to an Internet message board knows how quickly interactions can sour.  This is because the coldness and anonymity of the medium removes inhibitions and the incentive to be polite.  That is to say, it’s relatively hard to look into someone’s eyes and be condescending, dismissive or downright nasty, and not just because you have to worry about a punch in the mouth.  But it happens as a matter of course when he is reduced to a screen name and bits and bytes, because he is then disassociated from his humanity.

This brings us to the most important point in this piece: This anonymity breeds not just nastiness but also vulgarity and lewdness.  Yet even this understates the problem, as, in reality, it destroys every wall of propriety that should exist among the family of man.

For example, go into many Internet chatrooms and you will see new acquaintances making sexual comments to one another that, were they to have met in person, would never have passed their lips.  And, even if they were both the Marquis de Sade reincarnated, they certainly wouldn’t make them within earshot of a large group of strangers or in front of children.  Yet all in a chatroom, old or young, see these comments, these things formerly reserved to drunken midnight exchanges in seedy nightclubs. 

The same is true of profanity.  Not long ago, even rough-hewn dock workers guarded their tongues around children (and, a bit longer ago, around women).  On the Internet, however, posters will routinely pepper discussion threads with four-letter words.  And while some children see this, few adults care, partially because no one sees the children.  Their humanity and what remains of their innocence are hidden behind Web handles.

This brings me to a tiresome cop-out.  Many dismiss these concerns by saying, “Hey, kids have heard all these words, anyway.”  Yes, and children may know about murder and torture as well, but this doesn’t justify inundating them with snuff films, does it?  The reality is that such reasoning can be used to justify anything which is why it justifies nothing.  Of course children will, to an extent, be aware of evil, of bad behavior.  But this is far different from the effect of normalizing it.  And when adults use profanity routinely and cavalierly, normalization is precisely what occurs.

This effect of the Internet goes far beyond profanity; it is nothing less than a revolution in the normalization of vice.  It’s much like the fraudulent Kinsey Reports’ effect on sexuality.  Many have pointed out that when these volumes were released and purported to show that deviant sexual behaviors were actually far more common than previously thought, it helped jump-start the sexual revolution.  “After all,” thought many, “if so many people are doing these things, why can’t I give freer rein to my deeper, darker impulses?”  Remember that “Everyone does it” is a very alluring excuse.

The Internet is the Kinsey Reports to the 10^th power.  It is a realm in which dark urges and thoughts, formerly kept in the closet of the mind, are now displayed by millions for the world to see.  And brotherhoods of evil can easily form, where deviants who otherwise would feel isolated and (rightly) abnormal can find refuge in an online community of sexual soulless-mates.  As a friend of mine put it, “Let’s say you’re a guy who likes five-year-old boys; well, now you can go on the Internet and find 10,000 other guys who like five-year-old boys.”

Yet even this doesn’t tell the whole story, as this isn’t just about emboldening perverts and justifying perversion.  It is about making both far more common. 

Many today like to behave as if sexuality is set in stone at birth, but this is ideologically driven silliness.  In reality, human beings can be tempted to sin, indulge, and then develop habits.  And, as with the effects of television, we all understand the reality of this phenomenon when we’re not busy trying to justify cherished sins.  For example, when the matter is tobacco or alcohol, people will insist that manufacturers not target children with cigarette or alcohol advertising.  They don’t assume it’s all meaningless because, heck, kids will just act in accordance with their natures anyway.

So it is with all vices — including sexual ones.  In the wrong environment, people may develop perversions they otherwise wouldn’t.  And, as many civilizations have proven (the ancient Spartans had institutionalized pederasty in their military camps) cultures can create the wrong environment.  The sexuality of man — both of the individual and the group — can be influenced . . . and twisted.

This is why C. S. Lewis said, “Sex is not messed up because it was put in the closet; it was put in the closet because it was messed up.”

The Internet throws the closet of man open in a way it has never been — and never should be.

And it’s no exaggeration to say that the demons released are destroying civilization.  As British philosopher Edmund Burke warned, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their fetters.”  The young today are immersed in a virtual world in which coarseness, nastiness, decadence, perversion, superficiality, egoism and nihilism are the norm.  They are instilled with moral relativism’s only guide, “If it feels good, do it,” and then their feelings are twisted in the worst possible way, through vile entertainment, so that what feels good is cultural poison.  The result is that we are breeding barbarians wholly incapable of sustaining a healthy constitutional republic. 

If you have any doubt of this, I’ll conclude with a rhetorical question: For whom do decadent people virtually always vote?  Ah, it is indeed a tangled Web we weave. 

                                                          Contact Selwyn Duke

This work first appeared at The American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/online_society_offline_civiliz.html

If you thought that “one man, one vote” reflected the full flowering of representative democracy, think again.  In the village of Port Chester, N.Y., just a few towns north of my locality in Westchester County, there is a new system.  It’s “one man, six votes” — brought to us courtesy of the U.S. Department of Injustice and a lunkhead of a federal judge named Stephen Robinson.

Here’s the story: In 2006, the Injustice Department alleged that Port Chester’s election system was “unfair.”  The problem?  While the village is almost half Hispanic, no Hispanic had ever been elected as a trustee. 

Now, how this hapless village got on the feds’ radar screen, I have no idea.  Were Hispanics intimidated into avoiding the polls?  Were there literacy tests?  Poll taxes?  No, this story will not inspire a movie by the name of Port Chester Burning.  Instead, it seems the problem Uncle Scam had was that the town’s slim white majority — which turns out to vote in greater numbers than their Latino neighbors (Hispanics also account for only about 20 percent of Port Chester’s voting-age population) — along with whatever Hispanics join them, have thus far chosen to elect only white candidates.  That pesky majority rule can be a real bummer, can’t it?

So the Injustice Department — using our tax money — dragged Port Chester into court, which, presumably, cost the village tax money in litigation costs (ain’t being a civil-rights lawyer grand?).  It’s enough to make you wonder if the Injustice Department has too much time and money on its hands, except that it doesn’t seem to have time to tackle real voter intimidation.  Remember that this is the bureaucracy that refused to pursue the case against the Black Panthers who tried to scare white voters away from a polling place in Philadelphia.

This brings us to Federal Judge Stephen Robinson.  He ruled — get the Digitalis — that the village’s practice of having conventional at-large elections violated the Voting Rights Act.  Now, let me put this in the simplest terms possible.  The Voting Rights Act’s purpose was to ensure that everyone would have the opportunity to vote.  Yet this “judge” decreed that “one man, one vote,” and the attendant majority rule, violate the act if they don’t yield a politically correct result.

And the kicker is Robinson’s remedy: He approved a plan to give every resident six votes, which they can apportion among the six trustees to be elected any way they wish.  It’s a scheme known as “cumulative voting.”  No, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.  Heck, I’m not even so sure we’re in America.

What’s the thinking?  I suppose the idea is that many Hispanics will exhibit great ethnic patriotism and give all their votes to one Hispanic candidate, whereas whites don’t vote as a block to the extent other groups do.  Perhaps we’re seeing an example of leftists nobly shouldering the Liberal White Man’s Burden.

Judge Robinson also ruled that Port Chester must allow residents to show up on any one of five days to cast ballots, a system called “in-person early voting.”

So first the left gave us quotas in schools and businesses, and now we have them in elections.  I wonder, if there is a locality in which whites are only 20 percent of the voting-age population, with a black majority that has never elected a white candidate, will the feds roll into town and work the same voodoo?  What if it’s an area that’s almost 50 percent female but that has never voted a woman into office?  Maybe we should just cut to the chase and mandate that public officials must reflect the demographic composition of their constituencies.

You could also say that this is the next step in the evolution of get-out-the-vote drives.  It used to be that such endeavors were merely geared toward motivating the ignorant and apathetic to cast ballots, as we know that such people will make thoroughly stellar voting decisions if we can only somehow cajole them into the polling place.  But this is so much simpler: Get out the vote by multiplying it.  We don’t need dead people in Chicago anymore — we have deadheads in the Injustice Department. 

Really, this scheme visited upon Port Chester is just another example of liberal bigotry. The leftist social engineers are again dividing people into groups, tacitly claiming that a person of one race cannot adequately represent a person of another, and changing the melting pot into a cauldron of ethnic tension.

So on Tuesday, June 15^th, there was an election in a village in New York.  In preparation, the locality had six forums in English and six in Spanish to explain a new, federally mandated scheme to the voters.  It created various ways of publicizing the election — with tote bags, lawn signs and tee shirts stating “Your voice, your vote, your village”; and reminders in the form of TV spots, brochures and handouts given to schoolchildren, in both English and Spanish — all of which had to be approved by the Department of  Injustice.  It also hired a “non-profit” election research and reform group called FairVote to provide consultation services (our tax money at work — again).  And, when it came time to cast the votes, “federal observers” were on site . . . watching. 

So once again the compassionate, inclusive left is Balkanizing us.  I just wonder what their quota prescription will be when it comes time to partition the nation. 

When the Times Square bombing suspect was first reported to be a “white male,” I shook my head.  I knew that, despite Mayor Bloomberg’s asinine musings about how the perpetrator was probably “homegrown” and perhaps someone upset about the healthcare bill, this was nonsense.  “It’s about as likely as a story about Bill Clinton becoming a monk,” I thought. 

Of course, this was no great insight.  Given that 99 percent of the terrorists bedeviling us today are non-white Muslims, it was just common sense — otherwise known as profiling.

The critics of Arizona’s new immigration law complain that it will lead to “racial profiling.”  In response, the law’s defenders point out that the legislation specifically forbids the practice.

Both groups are wrong.

They accept two false suppositions.  The first is that the practice in question is immoral.

The second is that “racial profiling” actually exists.

Generally speaking, it does not — that is, not in the sense of a phenomenon widespread enough to warrant continual media attention.  In reality, there are only two kinds of profiling: good profiling and bad profiling.  Let’s discuss the difference.

Profiling is simply a method by which law enforcement can determine the probability that an individual has committed a crime or has criminal intent.  Now, when making this assessment, many different factors are considered.  Some have to do with age, sex, dress, behavior, the car being driven, whether or not a person is “out of place” (e.g., a well-dressed fellow in a BMW cruising a drug-plagued neighborhood), and, yes, some have to do with race.  But whatever the criteria, good profiling chooses them in accordance with sound criminological science.  And as soon as we subordinate that standard to anything, such as political or social concerns, we have rendered it bad profiling.

We also render it unfair.  That is, contrary to the notion that using racial factors in profiling is discriminatory, in the negative sense of the word, it is actually the refusal to consider them that is so. 

I’ll explain.  I’m a member of one of the most profiled groups in the country: males.  Law enforcement views us much more suspiciously than females because we commit an inordinate amount of crime.  And we aren’t the only ones, as youths also attract a jaundiced eye for the same reason.  Now, if considering race when profiling is “racism,” isn’t considering sex and age “sexism” and “ageism”?  

The truth is that none of these things are any kind of ism.  And is it just to discriminate among higher-crime-incidence groups — scrutinizing some more closely but not others — based on whether they are in or out of favor politically and socially? 

This is where the capital-D discrimination lies.  If you’re male or a teen, you’re fair game.  But, for instance, when the matter is Muslims, the double standards fly.  When seeking to identify terrorists, the people who have no problem placing the probing eye on males warn that Muslims mustn’t receive extra scrutiny.  But why?  As far as the terrorist threat facing the West goes, “Muslim” is a more consistent part of the terrorist profile than is “male,” as there have been more female suicide bombers than non-Muslim ones.

Some may say we must be especially sensitive with regard to race (yes, I realize “Islamic” isn’t a race), but this is silly for two reasons.  First, it is a hang-up; it is suicidal to sacrifice blood on the altar of political correctness.  Second, there is no blanket refusal to consider racial factors when profiling.  For example, part of the profile for serial killers and methamphetamine dealers is “Caucasian.”

Likewise, given that more than 90 percent of the illegals in Arizona hail from Mexico and Latin America, isn’t “Hispanic” part of the relevant profile here?  Mind you, the operative word is “part.”  To say “This person appears to be of Mexican descent, so he must be illegal” is no different than assuming that every white person deals meth — it would be bad profiling.  But just as a meth dealer will usually exhibit characteristics that distinguish him from Morris the accountant, an illegal alien is usually distinguishable from an acculturated Hispanic American.

And what if you’re a citizen who doesn’t exhibit the differences or one who can’t distinguish them?  If the former, now you know why assimilation matters.  And what of the latter?  Then you aren’t qualified to profile professionally.

Nevertheless, society needs those who are.  As Dr. Walter Williams once wrote:

What about using race or ethnicity as proxies for some unobserved characteristic?  Some racial and ethnic groups have a higher incidence of mortality from various diseases than the national average.  In 1998, mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases were approximately 30 percent higher among black adults than among white adults.  Cervical cancer rates were almost five times higher among Vietnamese women in the United States than among white women.  The Pima Indians of Arizona have the highest known diabetes rates in the world.  Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as white men.

My, those “racist” diseases.  Of course, race’s and ethnicity’s value as proxies isn’t limited to physical disease but extends to so many things.  Just ask Jesse Jackson.  In 1993 he said, “There is nothing more painful to me . . . than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”   

The reality is that we all profile.  For example, everyone (not just ol’ Jena Jesse) has heard about something called a “suspicious-looking character.”  Also, having been raised in New York City, I’ve often heard people be identified as “looking like tourists.”  Now, what do you think these things mean?  We are able to thus categorize people only because we’re all natural-born sociologists and psychologists; we all possess some understanding of man’s behavior, of what is normal in a given situation, and can use this knowledge to help assess others’ status and intent.  Who wouldn’t be wary of someone with a buzz cut who sports a Swastika tattoo on his forehead?  Who can’t identify an angry countenance as just that? 

Of course, these are obvious examples, and the more subtle the behavior and signs, the more discerning the observer must be to note and draw correct conclusions from them.  Regardless, this ability is good — and wholly necessary for survival.  It is no different from how we profile animals and would pet the sheep but not the wolf; it allows us to avoid danger, both to our person and the kind that could result in being wronged.  And when it’s applied by the police, we call it “profiling.”  Yet it is nothing but the application of common sense within the sphere of law enforcement.  Nevertheless, Jena Jesse and others would disallow good profiling and insist that the police check their common sense at the station-house door.

After Dr. Williams discusses how the prevalence of certain diseases correlates with race, he asks, “Would one condemn a medical practitioner for advising greater screening and monitoring of black males for cardiovascular disease and prostate cancer, or greater screening and monitoring for cervical cancer among Vietnamese American females, and the same for diabetes among Pima Indians?”

Unfortunately, when the matter is the social disease of crime, we not only condemn such a practice, we fire the good diagnosticians.  For example, in an older article about former attorney general John Ashcroft’s investigation of 13 cities for “racial profiling” (thank you, George Bush), ABC reports on efforts to eradicate the practice and writes, “police officials who defended profiling have been removed from their posts.”  Translation: Our security has been placed in the hands of PC lackeys.

Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t say good profiling is the magic bullet for Arizona’s illegal alien problem.  In point of fact, I presented more effective solutions in my piece “Immigration: Solutions, Not Excuses.”  My point is a larger one: Whether the crime is violating borders, bodies or buildings, whether it’s committed in Arizona or Anytown USA, good profiling is not just part of law enforcement. 

It’s the heart law enforcement.

What do you think the legal standard of “reasonable suspicion” is?  What should the police be suspicious of?  Only males, teens, and whites in certain situations? 

The bigots are not those who support good profiling, which scrutinizes all groups in accordance with sound criminological science.  It is the Times Square bombing-analyst hopers (such as Contessa Brewer) who play pin the tale on the honkey, doing their best imitation of the three blind, deaf and mute monkeys.

America, we need to end our hang-up with race — before it ends us.

                                                       Contact Selwyn Duke    

Recently, columnist Charles Krauthammer expressed support for amnesty for illegals, while Newt Gingrich advocated a path to what he called “legality.” The two men stipulated that border control must come first, but, still, what makes these two conservatives such weak sisters on this issue?  Perhaps part of the answer was provided by Dick Morris, who said that immigration is a losing issue for Republicans.

Morris is no pillar of principle, but he knows political trends.  What’s his reasoning?  Over the short term, a hard-line immigration stance benefits many politicians; as for the long term, however, there’s something called demographic change.

Hispanics are the most rapidly growing group in the nation.  In fact, if current immigration and birthrate trends continue, they will become America’s largest ethnic group during the next century. Fifteen percent of the population already, they’re poised to become twenty-nine percent by 2050.

This is relevant because, while many rationalize away the reality, a majority of Hispanics oppose tighter border control. For example, one survey showed that 81 percent of Latinos in Arizona oppose their state’s new immigration law, with 70 percent registering strong disapproval.

Because of this, many have warned Republicans against “alienating” this burgeoning voting bloc. For instance, Simon Rosenberg, the head of a group that studies such matters, said, “If the Republicans don't make their peace with Hispanic voters, they're not going to win presidential elections anymore. The math just isn't there.” 

Unfortunately, the common sense just isn’t there, either. That is, while Republicans recognize this electoral reality, they don’t seem to ask (honestly) what’s necessary to avoid this alienation. Because if they did, they’d realize that the new immigrants’ affinity for liberalism goes far beyond a love for porous borders.

Question: If we imported millions of Scandinavians — who have created the most liberal governments on Earth — would we expect them to magically change their ideology upon seeing American terra firma?  If not, why would we expect otherwise with south-of-the-border socialists?  If they choose Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales types below the Rio Grande, why wouldn’t they above it?  Geography doesn’t change ideology.

Despite this, many Republicans claim they can “reach out” to Hispanic voters and woo them.  This is fantasy.  Today’s immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic, vote Democrat approximately 70 to 80 percent of the time (Bush did better, but, surprise, surprise, he favored amnesty for illegals), and this won’t change.  Oh, there is one way woo them: Adopt Democrat policies across-the-board (you can remain pro-life and against faux marriage) — favoring socialist measures and big government. 

This is, of course, why leftist politicians love unfettered immigration so much: They are importing their voters — socialist voters.

Now, some claim that, since socialism is quintessentially un-American, time, prosperity and acculturation will purge it from new populations.  This is also fantasy.  Would you expect this with the Scandinavians?  As for prosperity, upper classes were more likely to vote for Barack Obama than lower ones.  And acculturation?  The pressure today is not to assimilate but, owing to multiculturalism, to cling to your ethnicity.

The symptoms of this abound.  We have seen new arrivals protest in the streets wielding signs stating “Gringo Go Home” and the shocking video of California teacher Ron Gochez calling for a Mexican communist revolt in the U.S.  Then there was the recent incident in which a girl was told that her drawing of an American Flag was offensive, and another where students were punished for wearing American-flag clothing.  And both of these travesties were the handiwork of a teacher or administrator who reflects the anti-Americanism now permeating the establishment.

It also, sadly, reflects many on the ground.  For instance, commenting on the second incident, student Annicia Nunez, opined, “I think they [the flag-clothing wearers] should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day.  We don't deserve to be get [sic] disrespected like that.  We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July.”  Like many, this girl draws an equivalence between American and foreign holidays.  Don’t ask if she considers herself American.  The only question is if she views herself as Mexican or shows some deference to hyphenation.

And we have become a hyphened nation, less capable than ever of assimilating immigrants.  Yet we now have more than ever to assimilate.  While we admitted only around 250,000 immigrants annually during most of our history, that number has ballooned to approximately 1 million (85 percent of whom hail from the Third World and Asia).  To paraphrase columnist Frosty Wooldridge, the rate of immigration long ago exceeded the rate of assimilation.

Then there is an even more troubling factor: the consequences of taking in so many immigrants from just one country.    

In a relatively recent phenomenon, approximately 50 percent of legal immigrants have been coming from Mexico.  And about 67 percent of American Hispanics have origins in that nation; this amounts to, including illegals, a population of approximately 20 to 30 million — about 20 percent of Mexico’s population.  What are the consequences of such an unbalanced immigration policy?  University of Edinburgh professor Stephen Tierney explains them very well in his book Multiculturalism and the Canadian Constitution, writing:

In a situation in which immigrants are divided into many different groups originating in distant countries, there is no feasible prospect of any particular immigrant group’s challenging the hegemony of the national language [press one for English, folks?] and institutions.  These groups may form an alliance among themselves to fight for better treatment and accommodations, but such an alliance can only be developed within the language and institutions of the host society and, hence, is integrative.  In situations in which a single dominant immigrant group originates in a neighbouring country, the dynamics may be very different.  The Arabs in Spain, and Mexicans in the United States, do not need allies among other immigrant groups.  One could imagine claims for Arabic or Spanish to be declared a second official language, at least in regions where they are concentrated, and these immigrants could seek support from their neighbouring home country for such claims — in effect, establishing a kind of transnational extension of their original homeland in their new neighbouring country of residence.

Note that parts of the U.S. are already so heavily Mexican that their residents perceive no need to assimilate.  Also note that these immigrants have in fact received support from Mexico, as its government has interfered in our domestic affairs and demanded they be accommodated.

Professor Tierney goes on to write, “This fear [of cultural genocide] is often compounded in situations where the immigrant group has historic claims against the receiving country . . . .  For example, in the Mexican-United States case . . . .” 

In this case . . . what?  There is just such a claim.  Sure, it’s specious, but good luck convincing the Reconquistas of this.  As pundit Dr. Jack Wheeler points out here, Mexico’s rulers engender hatred toward the U.S. by, among other things, placing an enormous map depicting Greater Mexico — which includes much of our land — near the entrance of Mexico City’s Museum of National History.  Wheeler writes, “Every class of students on a field trip from their school to the museum is made to sit down and gaze up at the huge map, while the teacher explains how so much of Los Estados Unidos was stolen from Mexico and really belongs to them.”  The rationale is that all the land treaties the U.S. made with European powers, such as the Louisiana Purchase, were illegal and that the regions thus obtained rightfully belong to Mexico.  States Wheeler, “Every Mexican national legally or illegally in the US is told by the Mexican government his or her allegiance is to Mexico — not America.”

Wheeler also claims that Mexico owes its independence to us, as we helped defeat its French overlords.  But belaboring the point is fruitless, as reason plays less of a role in people’s decisions and behavior than many of us like to think.  You won’t reason a person out of ethnic and national patriotism — and citizenship tests certainly won’t purge it from them.  Possession is nine-tenths of the law, like it or not.  The question is, who will possess the American lands in question — and what will American culture be possessed of — a generation or two hence?

So not all immigration is created equal, and Mexican immigration is unique.  For it is not just the migration of individuals — it is the transplantation of a foreign nation into the body of our nation.  

This is just one reason (recently naturalized Times Square bomber types are another) I’ve long advocated at least a moratorium on all immigration.  The people make the country and government, not the other way around. 

Thus, a debate about immigration policy is nothing less than a discussion about what kind of nation we wish to be.  Will it be Mexico North?  Iran West?  Right now we’re looking more like the Balkans. 

In fact, with a socialist voting bloc that threatens to give us a Hugo Chavez North sometime in the future — that is, unless current trends can be reversed — the realizing of Mexican nationalists’ Aztlan dream may not be lamentable.  A partitioning of the U.S. may offer the only hope of enjoying a land where the American dream lives on.

Don’t like the sound of that?  Then you’d better start reversing those trends and initiate that immigration discussion fast — in approximately 20 years ago.  Because it’s later than you think — about cinco to midnight for America.

                                                        Contact Selwyn Duke

Contradiction is no stranger to the mainstream media, and it is on full display in their treatment of Catholic-priest sexual abuse story.  Normally, the media take pains to point out that transgressors should not be used to typify the group with which they’re associated.  For instance, when terrorism is covered, we’re told that the jihadists of the world constitute just a small group of “extremists” and do not represent Islam.  That is, when the media can’t manage to identify such people only as “youths” and must actually address the issue in the first place.  Yet, with the Church matter, they have no problem blaming the Church as a whole, tarnishing the reputations of the institution, Catholics in general and all priests through gratuitous, slanted coverage.  

But there is one group in this story that not only isn’t painted with a broad brush, it’s whited out: homosexuals.  Claim that the abuse was homosexual in nature and you’ll hear accusations of intolerance, bigotry and backwardness.  “Don’t be ignorant,” say the apologists, “Haven’t you heard about psychology and the ‘determination’ that homosexuality and pedophilia are completely different things?”  Well, I will ask if they’ve heard about word definitions.

If these critics are so enamored of specificity and categorical rectitude, they should know that the abuse in question is not pedophilia.  This is because pedophilia refers to sexual relations with pre-pubescent children, and virtually all the victims in the Church scandal were adolescents.  Thus, it is correctly classified as ephebophilia, attraction to older adolescents; or hebephilia, attraction to pubescent children.  If you’re going to embrace psycho-babble, babble correctly.

This is no minor point.  It is the height of silliness to scream about incorrect labeling and feign intellectualism and then yourself apply a word wholly inappropriate to the transgression.  Of course, though, such contradiction is understandable.  Those guilty often don’t know the facts about the abuse and/or don’t know esoteric labels such as hebephilia and ephebophilia (which, of course, belies any claim of intellectualism).  Yet there can be another motivation: If you aim to demonize a target, nothing quite packs the rhetorical punch of “pedophilia.”  And people thus driven cannot plead ignorance — they are liars.

As for me, I’m a simple sort, a man with little use for newly-minted psychological terminology.  And I’ll provide my perspective: Regardless of a boy’s stage of development, he is undeniably male — the same sex as the priest abusers.  And most of the abusers targeted only members of the same sex.  Now, what do you call same-sex attraction?

For those scratching their heads, I’ll expand on the point.  When late homosexual congressman Gerry Studds had an affair with an adolescent male page, did anyone say it wasn’t a homosexual relationship?  If it wasn’t, then his good constituents in Massachusetts must have overlooked his “pedophilia,” as they re-elected him six more times before his retirement.

Of course, some may point out that the kid Studds got Spartan with was 17, and the age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16.  OK, this is a good starting point.  It then follows that the priests who had affairs with boys of legal age are homosexual.  But this leaves us with an interesting question: What if a man has relations with a boy one day less than legal age?  What about two days less?  A week?  A month?  At what point does the man cease being a homosexual and suddenly become an “ephebophile” who, for some strange reason and in a thoroughly non-homosexual way, only targets male adolescents?                        

Now let’s take it further.  When singer Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13-year-old girl and director Roman Polanski forced himself on one, did anybody say the fellows weren’t heterosexual?  When men are arrested for statutory rape after having relations with 15, 16 and 17-year-old girls, do we say they are not?  When men marry teenage girls — common for most of history and in many parts of the world today — do we view it as examples of that contradiction in terms, non-heterosexual marriage?  And in all the reportage of the cases involving female teachers who have affairs with 13 and 14-year old boys, did anyone stamp his foot and proclaim, “Do not call these women heterosexual, you soft-science Luddite!  Psychologists tell us otherwise!”?  Not only did no one do so, we didn’t even discuss the matter.  This is because the obvious doesn’t warrant discussion — that is, until there is a strong reason for denying the obvious.

Getting back to the defense of Islam I mentioned earlier, truth be known, it makes more sense than saying that men who target teen boys aren’t homosexual.  After all, some might mention that Islam, like all religions, must espouse certain dogma; thus, if terrorism were contrary to Islamic dogma, terrorists could not truly be Muslim — despite their claims of piety.  Yet one could even more credibly use this argument to claim that the Church transgressors are not really priests.  What I mean is, unlike Islam, Catholicism has a teaching body, the Pope and Magisterium, that defines Catholic doctrine; therefore, unlike in Islam, it isn’t a matter of which cleric you choose to believe.  And, to say the least, the transgressing priests did great violence to Catholic teaching, thereby rendering themselves something less than priests in spirit.  Yet facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that the abusers were ordained as priests in the Catholic Church, and no one seems to have trouble accepting that reality.  We do not hear anyone say, “No!  They aren’t priests!  The definition of a priest involves being celibate, and these men were anything but.”  Well, there is another fact here: They not only are/were priests, they also happen to be (or have been, in the cases of the deceased and defrocked) homosexual priests.  And to say otherwise is to be guilty of selective specificity.  Just as critics recoil at the supposed intellectual sloppiness of labeling the abusers homosexuals but will then most sloppily call them pedophiles, they will identify them as “Catholic” and as “priests” but not as homosexual.  Why is this?  Is it just a coincidence that every example here of selective specificity, sloppiness and hypocrisy serves to either protect the reputation of homosexuals or damage that of the Church?

There reason is not hard to discern.  While the abuse in question is a problem of homosexuality, homosexuality is never a problem for our abusive media.  The truth is that if the Church were actually a homosexual organization, with positions aligned with leftism, there could have been twice the abuse and there would have been .2 percent the coverage.  As with the cases of the Duke University academic who adopted two black boys and habitually molested them and Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old boy who was tortured and murdered by two homosexuals in Arkansas, it would be buried faster than a mafia snitch in New Jersey. 

This is why I have said before that the coverage of the Church scandal has nothing to do with concern about youth — it has nothing to do with Truth.  It is simply a hammer with which the media can attack religion, something they hate more than the worst child molester.

Pushing back the frontiers of oxymoronic moronity, the left has added to “non-heterosexual marriage” and introduced the concept of non-homosexual same-sex relations.  It’s the kind of lunacy you disgorge when trying to cloak a truth hiding in plain sight.

Unfortunately, something that is not an oxymoron, but a redundancy, is “deceitful mainstream media.”  And just imagine, these are the same people who accuse the Church of and condemn her for “covering up” a damning reality.

                                                          Contact Selwyn Duke

Initially published at The American Thinker - http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/media_blinders_on_the_church_a.html

With the passage of ObamaCare coming on the heels of government takeover of industries and taxpayer-funded bailouts of the irresponsible, many are wondering how we can turn the socialist tide.  They see Uncle Sam expanding, their rights and economic prospects shrinking and their voices ignored.  For these people, November cannot come soon enough.

But November is not the ultimate solution. In the political universe, seven months is an eternity, and we cannot know precisely how public sentiment will evolve.  Besides, the chances of Republicans retaking both Houses are slim and, even if they do, there’s no guarantee they’ll rise to the occasion.  Some will be Scott Brown types — not the sort to give us tradition we can believe in.

A better solution lies on the local and state levels.  Fifteen states are currently suing the federal government over ObamaCare, and then there is the Tenth Amendment Movement, involving at least 35 states that are asserting their sovereignty over powers granted them by that amendment.  These are good starts, but . . . .

Question: What if the Supreme Court, in obvious violation of the Constitution, upholds ObamaCare?  Do we simply obey unflinchingly and wait for the next federal usurpation?

Certainly, there is every reason to believe the Black Robes will thus rule, as enabling the Leviathan’s tyranny has become their practice.  Of course, many legal “scholars” will provide oh-so intellectual justifications for the incessant expansion of federal power as they lawyer away our rights.  But let’s look at what James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist, No. 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce . . . .

When was the last time we had a government reflecting these limits?  The truth is that Uncle Sam violates the Constitution ever more brazenly with the passage of time, adding to its power and subtracting from our rights.  And it won’t stop unless someone stops it. 

And it is time we stopped it.  The states should send a message: Black Robes, if you won’t do your job, we will do it for you.  No state resident shall be compelled to buy health insurance, and we will not cooperate in the enforcement of such a mandate.  Furthermore, no federal agents may enter our territories for the purposes of such enforcement.  And if they do, they will be arrested.

On top of this immediate concern, states should resolve that the same will apply to all other unconstitutional mandates — regardless of how established and longstanding they may be.

Period.

Now, many people — good people — will object to this prescription.  “How can you defy the courts?” they will ask.  “We must respect the rule of law.”  But what is the law?  The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.  And when a government violates it, it loses its legitimacy, right to exist and legal authority. 

Will we just accept an oligarchic judiciary and abide by its dictates no matter how onerous?  Will we accept social engineers-cum-lawyers’ “interpretations” of plain language regardless of how contrary to the text they may be?  What will we believe, them or our own eyes?  If the former, we are not governed by the rule of law.  We are governed by the rule of lawyers.  

And let us understand fully the moral and legal validity of my counsel.  The Constitution is the contract the American people have with one another, and enumerated in it are the rights and responsibilities of all those party to it.  But it has one serious flaw.

It only works if you actually abide by it.

Now, what if one of the parties, being more powerful, continually violates the contract for the purposes of advantaging itself?  Do you seek redress through the courts?  Sure.  What if, however, this party has the power to appoint judges sympathetic to its tyrannical aims?  What if these judges, with a wink and a nod and legalistic mumbo-jumbo, aid and abet the party in its breach of contract?  Do you just say, “Oh, well, that’s what the contract means now because they said so”?  Or do you recognize a simple fact?

To wit: Through its habitual violation of the terms of the contract, the federal government has rendered it null and void.    

Null and void.  It is silly to think that states have an obligation to follow the law when the Leviathan violates it at will.  It is to fight abiding by Queensberry rules while your opponent makes up his own rules.  That is, if you can even characterize it as fighting and not genuflection.

I know my prescription is bold enough to scare many into believing all the more in November, but be under no illusions.  The idea that we’re going to put the Leviathan in its proper place at the national ballot box is a pipe dream.  The problem of extra-constitutional federal governance is not a new phenomenon; it is approximately 100 years old and so deeply ingrained that the central government views many violations of the Constitution as federal rights. Besides, the Founding Fathers gave us a balance of power between Washington and the states for a reason: Governments don’t willingly relinquish or limit their own power. Thus, it is naïve to think that “asking” the Leviathan to recede into its cage will bring anything but contemptuous laughter. For how long will we say “pretty please”?  For how long will we play by the rules while the Leviathan plays with the rules?  It’s time to stop asking and start telling.      

Moreover, those of us who care about resurrecting tradition are in the minority.  The 11 most populous states boast more than half our population and enough electoral votes to elect the president, and they are a decidedly liberal bunch.  Obama won nine of them — most by wide margins — losing only Texas and Georgia.  Four of them, California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey — which alone have a quarter of the U.S.’ population — are firmly entrenched in the statist camp; three of them, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, have one foot in that grave; and two of them, Florida and North Carolina, are teetering on the edge.  And all of them, along with the rest of the West, are trending left.

It is time for the few remaining pockets of traditionalism to take control of their culture and destiny.  If not now, when?  Will the resurrection of manly virtue ever wait for the next usurpation?  Will we wait until the Black Robes find a justification for hate-speech laws?  Do we sit idly by while cultural traitors manufacture socialist votes by granting amnesty to 13-20 million illegals, people with no allegiance to our nation?  Will we just watch them build a statist electoral phalanx that will support the redistribution of wealth and further constitutional trespass?  I say no.  States should send a message to the Leviathan: If you don’t do your job, we’ll do it for you.  They should make clear that they will not recognize the citizenship of any individual who broke into our nation and was then given a get-out-of-jail-free-if-you-vote-for-me card.

Period.

What’s that you say?  Immigration is a federal role?

Null and void.

And if asked about the constitutionality of the matter, I would just quote a very powerful woman second in line to the presidency: “Are you serious?!  Are you serious?!

Yes, I am serious.  It’s time to stop acting like an abused wife who’d rather take beating after beating after beating than leave the tyrant.       

The sun will not come out in November.  It rises with the vigilant, shines on the stout-hearted, and sets only when a nation’s courage sleeps.

We’ve all heard the story.  Hundreds of young sexual-abuse victims long afraid to come forward for fear of embarrassment and scorn, abusers escaping prosecution and quietly moving to different jurisdictions, authorities covering up the crimes to avoid scandal and litigation.  It’s a saga of grave, grave sin.

Of course, you would assume I’m talking about the Catholic Church sexual-abuse scandal.

And you would be wrong.

I’m describing the situation in America’s schools, something that, although mirroring the problems dogging the Church, is strangely ignored.

Let’s examine the similarities using statistics from the United States.  According to the John Jay Report, 10,667 people made allegations of child sexual abuse (not all were substantiated) committed by priests between 1950 and 2002; according to an AP investigation, at least 1,801 educators committed sexual misconduct involving minors between 2001 and 2005.  So the per annum tally is:

Number of people making allegations against priests — 205

Criminal educators — 360

Now, since it’s logical to assume that numerous individuals made accusations against the same priests, the number of clerical transgressors is no doubt less than 205.  Yet, even if we use the 205 figure, the number of offenders appears to be approximately 76 percent greater among educators.  But that doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story.

While it’s obvious that a certain percentage of cases must have gone unreported in both education and the Church, the latter has been subjected to intense media scrutiny while the former has remained off the radar screen.  Thus, it’s reasonable to assume that the percentage is higher in education.  As to this, the AP tells us about a Congress-mandated study placing the number of students sexually abused by an education worker at some point between kindergarten and 12^th grade at 4.5 million.  Furthermore, the AP found that most of this sexual abuse is never reported and that even when it does come to light, often no action is taken.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that the number of teachers nationwide is greater than that of priests, so a raw-numbers analysis may be deceptive.  So let’s examine the rate.  Wapedia reports the following: “A Perspective on Clergy Sexual Abuse by Dr. Thomas Plante of Stanford University and Santa Clara University states that ‘available research suggests that approximately 2 to 5% of priests have had a sexual experience with a minor’ which ‘is lower than the general adult male population that is best estimated to be closer to 8%.’”

Now let’s look within the numbers, at the nature of the abuse and abusers.  While we hear a lot of media reports about sultry female teachers seducing young teenage boys, the reality is that almost 9 out of 10 school offenders are male.  It’s also true that in the cases of both the Church and the schools the abuse is, by definition, not pedophilia, as the abused were mainly adolescents, not pre-pubescent children.

Here critics may point out that there is a difference: The abuse among priests is mainly homosexual in nature.  This is true, but I can’t imagine it would bother the secular left very much.  After all, this is the set that for years has maintained that there is a moral equivalence between heterosexual and homosexual behavior and that saying otherwise is bigotry.  Unless they’re now changing their tune . . . .     

Another similarity is the cover-up by school officials, who, as stated earlier, were motivated by the same priorities as the most remiss bishop: a desire to avoid embarrassment, scandal and punitive court judgments.  As an example, the AP presents the story of Gary Lindsey, an Iowa teacher who was fired from his first job for sexual misconduct but then allowed to work elsewhere for about 30 more years.  During these decades he transgressed against other students, dodging the hangman every time with the complicity of school administration.  And his is no isolated case.  In fact, the practice of transferring sexual predators is so common it has become known as “passing the trash” and the abusers have been dubbed “mobile molesters.”

Despite this, we currently have trash being passed daily — it’s called media reportage.  Why don’t we hear stories about people who believe the schools should be defunded or that parents should stop sending their children to them (similar things are said about the Church)?  Why has the Vatican been placed in the unenviable position of having to defend itself with the “Look, others have the same problems” argument? Why does Rome have to take up the cudgels for itself and point out that its woes just reflect the wider society?  It’s because the media aren’t doing their job.

That is, what their job should be.  What some within the mainstream media see it as being — attacking traditionalist institutions — they’re doing very well. 

The Church receives such disproportionate scrutiny for the same reason why the media will happily smear Pope Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer when he was possibly WWII’s greatest hero and why they paint the Crusades as imperialistic wars when they were but a defense against Muslim aggression: the media views the Church as an enemy.  They despise its teachings on abortion, the all-male priesthood, and, in particular, sexuality.  You see, if the schools taught such things, they too would surely be in the crosshairs.  But their embrace of all the left’s favorite isms grants them great immunity.   

Now, this might be where I’m supposed to issue the obligatory statement about how we’re all appalled by the sex crimes in question.

But it’s not really true.

And what comes to mind is late Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds.  In 1983 it was revealed that he had had sexual relations with a 17-year-old male page, which, as ephebophilia (attraction to older adolescents), is precisely that of which many transgressing priests are guilty.  And what was his punishment?

The liberals in his district re-elected him six more times until his retirement in 1996.

By the way, some may point out that Studds’ behavior was legal, as the age of consent in Washington, D.C., was 16.  Of these people I would ask: Are you equally charitable with priests who had “legal” relationships with teenage boys?

Then there is serial sex criminal Alfred Kinsey, the bug researcher-cum-human sexuality “expert” who ran a pedophile ring disguised as a research team.  If you read the piece I wrote about him (trust me, this one is worth the time), you’ll find that his research included things such as encouraging pedophiles to continue committing crimes so that he could collect more “data.”  Yet there has never been a hue and cry for a pound of flesh from the Kinsey Institute; the University of Indiana in Bloomington, where the deviant plied his trade; or Paul Gebhard, a still-living Kinsey co-author and partner in crime.  On the contrary, the left not only defends Kinsey, it even lauded him in a whitewashed 2004 film.                   

So do the Church’s critics really care about sexual abuse?  Some do, for sure.  But there’s no doubt that many of those using the issue to attack the Church do not.  And “using” is the key word.  If they truly cared about sexual abuse of youth, they would take pains to emphasize that it isn’t limited to the priesthood.  Oh, I’m not saying they would necessarily do this to defend the Church; they would do it to truly expose the problem.  Instead, they’re simply interested in exposing the Church — to ridicule — and to this end use these abuse victims as a convenient vehicle through which to attack a hated adversary.  This is typical of the left, which makes a practice of using people as human shields, props and political hammers.

Of course, crimes against innocence are abhorrent, and those committing them should be rooted out wherever and whoever they may be.  Likewise, those who knowingly and negligently facilitate their abuse must be punished harshly, and the incompetent should lose their positions.  But this just states the obvious.  If we really want to move toward a more sexually sane society — get at the root causes, as it were — we must delve more deeply. 

We can argue about facts and figures.  We can debate whether sexual trespass is worse in schools or in churches, and many will, no doubt, try to make the case that the secular world is a safer place.  But of this there is no doubt: The social phenomena making us a more libertine and morally unmoored civilization are the handiwork of the left.

It was not the Church that sexualized society with Kinseyesque sex miseducation and prurient messages everywhere, in movies, shows, music and on the Internet.  That was leftist academia, Hollywood and their brothers in porn.  It was not the Church that expanded the First Amendment to include protection of obscene imagery.  That was leftist judges.  It was not the Church that spread moral relativism and its corollary, “If it feels good, do it,” an idea that can find pedophilia no worse than peanut butter.  That was leftist philosophers and the millions who wanted freedom to sin.  It was not the Church that, reducing man to mere beast, found a basis for his behavior in the animal kingdom.  That was leftist anthropologists and their acolytes.  And it was not the Church that first subordinated punishment to “rehabilitation” and subscribed to slap-on-the-wrist pseudo-justice.  That was leftist psychology.  Of course, insofar as the Church has allowed itself to become infected with the spirit of the age, it is culpable.  But know that it is the infected, not the infection.

As for the cure, the Church has done much in recent times to root out sexual abuse — far more than the schools.  Even closer to the point, its teachings provide necessary guide rails for man’s sexuality.  Yet critics call this age-old wisdom “antiquated.”  The left obviously prefers to take its lead from the Kinsey Distorts, Hugh Hefner and Hollywood.  But if the pleasure principle is going to be our master, we shouldn’t wonder why we’re taking our children on a field trip through Caligula’s court.  

This article was originally published at The American Thinker website

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/the_scandal_driving_the_church_1.html

There was, of course, nothing unpredictable about Sunday’s health-care vote.  It was fairly obvious that the Chicago mobsters would, using the Escobarian silver-or-lead tactic, scare up the votes needed to pass Obama’s baby.  It was plain that “pro-life” Democrats such as Bart Stupak would, after the requisite posturing, find the rationalization they needed to cast aside a position that was never really a principle.  That it came in the form of an executive order with the credibility of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is of little consequence.  It was also predictable that the Monday after would bring talk about the extinguishment of liberty and the republic, and heads hanging so low that good Americans could look up and see their shoelaces. 

Yet there is a somewhat larger view a person can take here.  It is one that distinguishes between symptoms — even very severe ones — and the underlying disease.

Some have asked a very predictable question: “Where were you the day the republic died?”  But there is a better one: Where were you when you first knew our republic was dying?  As for me, I can’t tell you exactly where, only when.  I believe it was the early 1980s.  And I was still a teenager.

Our moral decay — or, as some would say, progressivism — which yields political decay, was not predictable a generation or two ago.  It was in progress.  And this was obvious.  Big government programs — the great exception to the rule that it’s easier to destroy than create — are spawned but hardly ever slain.  Laws, regulations and mandates — which by definition are the removal of freedoms and imposition of values — are instituted but hardly ever rescinded, resulting in the true progressivism of our times: the progressive loss of liberty.  And do we only now have our Tea Parties and complain about the “loss of constitutional government”?  For decades our national contract has been trampled, from the separation-of-church-and-state ruling to misapplications of the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause.  But people only start to notice when their ox finally gets gored.

Even more telling symptoms of this moral decay are the cultural shifts.  Sexual mores are ever loosened, never tightened; childrearing becomes continually more permissive, education more dumbed-down, entertainment more decadent, and the media more frivolous.  This is inevitable in a morally relativistic civilization, by the way.  After all, a corollary of the idea that there is no Truth is that there is no morality, and, hence, no moral boundaries.  And, without them, the only thing left to guide our moral decisions is emotion. Thus do we hear “If it feels good, do it.”  The problem is that passion is a siren; follow your heart and you’ll follow it straight to Hell.

Now, we generally identify this phenomenon with euphemisms such as liberalism, leftist ideology, socialism, or cultural Marxism (yes, even that’s too kind), but it is something else entirely: A philosophy of vice.  It is evil.

This isn’t hard to understand.  Vice-ridden people are greedy, covetous, envious and slothful, so they want the fruits of others’ labors; they are lustful pleasure seekers and dismissive of life, so they want abortion on demand; they are irresponsible and animalistic, so they will accept the collar in exchange for promises of security; they are wrathful and uncharitable, so playing the race and class-warfare cards can easily make them scapegoat their fellow man.  Divorced from Truth, they are emotion-driven and thus easy prey for demagogues.  And the “left,” craving power, wants vice-ridden people.

So Obamacare was entirely predictable, even decades ago.  Oh, I couldn’t have told you it would pass the House on Sunday, March 21, 2010 by a margin of 219-212.  But, given our decay, socialized medicine was inevitable.  And, unless something upsets the rotten apple cart, so are amnesty for illegals, faux marriage, hate-speech laws and . . . well, civilizational death is the limit.  Don’t believe me?  Know that each generation is more liberal — that is, more vice-ridden — than the preceding one, as we venture further on the road more traveled.  Polls show, for instance, that while a majority still opposes faux marriage, young people do not.  They will change as they age, you say?  You dream.  A few will, but the pattern is unmistakable: One generation put homosexual characters on TV and laughed at them, the next (today’s majority) accepted civil unions, and now the new wave thinks faux marriage is a “right.”  And should this pattern continue, we will next have polygamy, and one day, even, pedophilia, which some are already joking about (e.g., the “Pedobear” Internet meme).

If talk of sexuality makes you nervous, another example is our departure from constitutional governance.  Many scream about the unconstitutionality of Obamacare, but the next generation will be inured to it just as we’ve become inured to Social Security, the “greatest generation’s” comfortable constitutional trespass.  Hey, if it feels constitutional, do it.

So what is the solution?  Is it political?  Will we talk about the next Reagan when even the first couldn’t halt moral decay?  The “Reagan Revolution” was incorrectly named; it was only the Reagan Impedance.  And will we talk only about the next election when that also is, at best, an impedance?  No, we cannot understand the solution till we grasp the problem: the people.  The citizenry has been, for almost a hundred years now, degraded morally — or, as some call it, pulled toward the left.

This has been effected in two ways, one of which is through the importation of socialist voters.  Eighty-five percent of today’s immigrants come from the Third World and Asia, and the vast majority vote for leftists once naturalized.  Is this a surprise?  They support socialists in their native lands (e.g., Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Robert Mugabe), and stepping on American terra firma doesn’t magically transform one’s ideology. 

To illustrate the tangible effects of this, I’ll mention just two things.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that since new immigrants generally oppose enforcement of immigration law, their population’s constant growth guarantees eventual amnesty for illegals.  It also, of course, ensures the eventual death of our traditions and the attendant descent into uber-statism.  And if you would dispute this, just ask, why would these folks care about American culture and history?  Do you care about promoting others’ culture and history, such as, let’s say, that of the Mayans?  These new arrivals are not American.  And we become less so all the time.  We are being colonized.

This is where some will say it just takes time for acculturation, that immigrants always become “American.”  But how is this realistic when we don’t even agree anymore on what it means to be American?  Assimilation is impossible unless there is something to assimilate into; it’s not likely unless that something is appealing.  And what do we offer?  Reality TV?  An amorphous, whatever-works-for-you cultural blob of we know not what?  What works for these folks is to retain their own culture.    

This brings us to the crux of the problem and the second way in which the people have been transformed: through academia, the media and entertainment.  The destroyers of civilization — or, as some say, the left — long ago seized control of these all-important agents of change.  Through these vehicles they make all that created Western civilization seem wholly unappealing and toxic, thus ensuring that the native born will become anti-American and that the alien will, at best, remain un-American.  After all, why preserve or adopt something seen as the bane of man?

It is this, the lack of moral health care, that is our problem.  To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the teaching in the schools today is the ideology of tomorrow.  As for our “entertainment” and media, Hitler’s filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, only could dream of such power to twist minds.  Antonio Gramsci’s “War of Position,” which places leftist ideologues in positions of influence in the West for the purposes of undermining its culture, is long over.  And, as Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, once the process of “demoralization” is complete, you are “stuck with ‘them,’” meaning, the degraded and deluded.  You cannot change their minds because, divorced from Truth and hence immune to reason, that isn’t what you have to do.  You have to change their hearts. 

The political merely reflects the moral, and political campaigns don’t shape morality; rather, they are referenda on how it has already been shaped.  And he who controls the media, entertainment, academia and immigration policy molds the American mind. 

Republicans may win the next election; there is even the off-chance they may repeal Obamacare or that the courts may overturn it.  But these would just be movements toward the right on a ship steadily drifting left.  As for how to take control of the helm, the solution isn’t hard to figure out — just hard to accept and effect.   And all I’ll say for now is this: After years of the Gramscian corruption of America, only a third of the population would do what’s necessary to protect our culture — even if armed with the correct information. 

I have given you the dots.  All you have to do is connect them.  

                                                       Contact Selwyn Duke     

This article originally appeared at The American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/our_problem_is_a_lack_of_healt.html

Stupid is as Hollywood does . . . and does and does and does.  And the latest example is Forrest Hanks, who has just managed to graduate — in the Tinseltown U. way of thinking — from moron to imbecile. 

During a recent interview with Time magazine, Forrest (a.k.a. Tom Hanks) was discussing his new HBO WWII series The Pacific and, boy, did he ever deliver some gems.  What was the gist of it?

We Americans were out to kill the Japanese because, well, you know, we’re just so irredeemably “racist.”

Written by a Dan Winters, the Time piece opens with this line, “To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation.”  I’m sure.  After all, in his day, school curricula wanted for the kind of intellectual stimulation provided by things such as the demonization of Christianity, the West and America.  But never fear, Forrest is here, the man Winters calls “American history’s highest-profile professor,” who brings a “nuanced view of the past into the homes and lives of countless millions.” 

What might this nuance be?  Well, among other things, Forrest told Winters, “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?”

Uh, no, Forrest, actually, it doesn’t.  In fact, it doesn’t even sound like what went on back then.

The fact is that both the Japanese and the Islamists have been different from us since before they were Japanese and Islamists and we were “us.”  Yet this never inspired us to try to annihilate them.  And, as to why we did involve ourselves in the relevant conflicts, while I’m certainly not America’s highest-profile history professor, I seem to remember the dates of December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 as being somewhat significant.  I’ll also note that WWII saw us allied with the very different Chinese and Filipinos and fighting against the more consanguineous Germans (the German bloodline is the most common in the U.S.).   

This isn’t to say that one can’t question the wisdom of conflicts such as our Mideast campaigns.  I myself have pointed out the folly of trying to democratize cultures that are so — Forrest will love this — different from ours.  But to claim that we’re locking horns with Muslims because we consider them alien is stupid beyond words. 

But stupid is as Hanks does.  Something else he pulled out of his box of chocolates — the idea that we tried to “annihilate” the Japanese or that we are attempting the same with Muslims — is also profoundly silly.  When the Land of the Rising Sun finally fell in 1945, we were, in fact, remarkably merciful.  We didn’t sack and raze Tokyo or extract steep reparations.  On the contrary, we respected Japanese culture, allowing its people to retain their beloved emperor.  We also helped the nation get back on its feet and helped pave the way for the economic powerhouse status it would enjoy in the 1980s.  As for Iraq and Afghanistan, surgical strikes and lawyer-disgorged rules of engagement hardly constitute an attempt at annihilation.          

In fact, forget about Forrest being a professor, he fails even as a student.  Case in point: His lamenting the characterization of the Japanese as “yellow, slant-eyed dogs.”  Does anyone really think the use of such epithets makes us unique?  If so, know that the Japanese referred to us as “hairy white apes.”  It’s part of the common wartime propaganda technique of demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy for the purposes of galvanizing public support for a total war effort. 

It is also true that prejudice is the rule for man, not the exception.  For instance, read the Bible, and it’s plain that the different peoples — Jews, Samaritans, etc. — harbored some very unflattering ideas about one another.  The Muslims are well-known for characterizing Jews as pigs and apes.  During the Ruandan genocide of 1994, the Hutus would refer to the Tutsis as “cockroaches.”  And then there are the Hollywood types such as Forrest.  They’re so prejudiced against America that they think America is uniquely prejudiced.

And theirs is a true prejudice.  Understand that the word doesn’t refer to holding negative opinions about other individuals or groups; it refers to holding such opinions when they have no basis in reality, when you cling to them in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

This brings us to what really is a “nuanced” view.  In reality, the United States is the most tolerant nation on Earth.  We’re so darn tolerant, in fact, that we even countenance evil, such as the noxious cultural effluent that continually flows from Hollywood movies and mouths. 

We’re also more likely to find exotic cultures intriguing than detestable.  As to this, I think of the stereotypical portrayals of other peoples found in older cartoons, such as an Arabian in traditional garb wielding a scimitar.  While today CDs of such cartoons include disclaimers about the insensitivity and stereotypes found within, none of us children viewed such things with contempt.  On the contrary, we would have much rather met the Arabian than the policeman portrayed or visited his land than Chicago.  Of course, we would have been sorely disappointed if we had.  But this was only because the reality could never have measured up to a neat, fascinating portrayal that could make a nine-year-old mind fill with wonder.         

Having said this, we certainly can carry on a debate about wartime propaganda and ask if G.K. Chesterton was right when he said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”  We also can and should bemoan prejudice.  But we should understand that we’re not bemoaning American nature.  We’re bemoaning man’s nature.

Returning to Forrest’s conception of nuance, he also told Winters, “Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in The Pacific.  But we also wanted to have people say, ‘We didn't know our troops did that to Japanese people.’”  Ah, Hollywood wrapping itself in the flag again — which flag I have no idea.

Let’s talk a bit about who did what to whom.  Unlike us, Japan’s treatment of prisoners more reflected pagan convention than Geneva Convention. In fact, a staggering 40 percent of American POWs in Japanese hands died (versus 37 percent in Korea and 15 percent in Vietnam). 

The most infamous example of such brutality was The Bataan Death March in the Philippines, where 75,000 Allied soldiers were taken prisoner.  Despite the fact that the captured forces were willing to provide trucks and fuel for their own transport, the Japanese military insisted on forcing the men — who were already sick and starving — to march for a week in tropical heat to faraway prison camps.  And the savagery they were subject to is staggering.  Writes Wikipedia:

Beheadings, cutting of throats and casual shootings were the more common actions—compared to instances of bayonet stabbing, rape, disembowelment, rifle butt beating and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching . . . .  Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.    

At least a quarter of them died.

Yet the US did not respond in kind.  Our brutality was reserved for the battlefield and only exercised because we faced the Samurai creed incarnate, an enemy that was intent on fighting to the death.  And death is what they got.

As for Forrest, some may wonder how a man’s thinking can become so twisted.  Well, the Time interview may provide some insight in this regard.  It seems that Daddy Hanks served in WWII and left his boy with a very definite impression of his time in uniform.  Said Forrest, “He had nothing nice to say about the Navy. He hated the Navy. He hated everybody in the Navy. He had no glorious stories about it.”

Wow, everybody?  You mean, he didn’t encounter one nice person during all his time in the service?  There was no nobility, no virtue whatsoever?  Well, I guess Forrest’s particular talents don’t skip a generation.

Now, I should mention that my father not only served in WWII, he was a POW in Germany.  And while he also had no glorious tales, with the exception of a rather odious sergeant, he didn’t hate his comrades in arms.  In fact, he didn’t even dislike all his German captors (one of whom promised to protect him after the SS visited his camp and said that all the prisoners should be killed).  And should it be otherwise?  If you hate the whole world, it’s a good bet the world isn’t the problem.

As for my attitude, have I been too tough on Forrest?  Have I been a bully?  If so, I’ll be the first to say, run, Forrest!  Run!

Just not for political office.

                                                          Contact Selwyn Duke