“Eric Holder can go to hell.”

In keeping with my policy of letting other people say it if they do it better than I can, today’s Quote of the Day from Larry Correia:

For example, if I talk about how when I lived in inner-city Birmingham, and it was an utter and complete cesspool of crime, poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, and other problems, that’s cool, but then I say that the area was 99% black and seeped in a culture of welfare and institutionalized laziness, then I’m a racist.

You want us to not be cowards, Holder? Then how about I say that inner-city black culture is broken. It has been destroyed by generations being stupefied and milked by scumbags that share your flawed philosophy of entitlements and rewarding failure. You’ve replaced fathers with a welfare check and propped up bad behavior for so long that people like 50 Cent are looked at as role models.

But I can’t talk about that, because it doesn’t agree with the PC worldview, so then I get slandered for it. Hell, look what happened to Bill Cosby.

It isn’t about race. It is about ideology. You don’t need to be brave to make fun of Asians, fat people, smokers, Republicans, rich people, Christians, hillbillys, rednecks, Mormons, home-schoolers, gun owners, the military, Fox News, or NRA members. You only need courage if you openly talk about issues relating to any group that votes in a block for Democrats.

Screw you, Holder. You’re the coward.

Read the whole thing.

Same Tune, Different Band

Instapundit links to a piece describing how reporters are being laid off, and then taking government positions working for the state agencies or officials they previously covered:

Many ‘Star-Ledger’ Reporters Turn to the ‘Other Side’ After Buyouts

At least 16 reporters and newsroom staffers at The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., most of whom left the paper in the past year’s massive buyout, are now working for public officials or state agencies the paper covers.

In several cases, writers who covered a specific beat are now working for individuals or agencies upon which they once reported.

With 151 newsroom staffers taking buyouts last October, out of 330 total, that figure represents about 10% of the departed reporters, although some left prior to that round of buyouts.

In January of last year I wrote The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation, a piece on how and why the media acts as it does. The essay was based on a very interesting book, The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage by Associate Professor Brian Anse Patrick of the University of Toledo. Professor Patrick began his research for the book for his Doctoral dissertation, and completed it early in his tenure at the University of Toledo. He explains:

“I come from a background where my father and uncle were hunters. When I went into the professional world and started writing, I ran into a lot of educated people who were horrified of the NRA and guns in general. I had a completely neutral experience,” Patrick explained. “I realized a lot of people had this attitude about a thing that I regarded as a commonplace object, and it was against my experiences with gun culture. I thought it would be interesting to see what the media thought.”

Patrick researched media coverage of the NRA and several other social organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, AARP and Handgun Control Inc. “Even though they have different purposes, they’re still roughly analogous in how they function — they have a large body of people, and they are more or less democratic in how they function. The idea was to study an array of groups. It was important to have a comparison, and I wanted some groups that were middle of the road, some right and some left,” Patrick said. He added that it would have been insufficient to only point to examples of negative coverage of the NRA; instead, it was important to compare the types of coverage with several organizations.

The most fascinating thing to come from his research, however, was his analysis of the news media and its front-line members. Patrick studied, in nearly infinite detail, how the “elite media” – defined as the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report – dealt with the five different groups. He found there was very definite evidence of bias, but that bias wasn’t specifically “leftist,” or else how could you explain the predominance of negative coverage of the very Left-leaning ACLU?

No, what Professor Patrick found when he analyzed the data was that the bias in the media isn’t a Left-Right bias (though the overwhelming majority of people in the media do lean Left), it’s what he terms an “administrative control bias.”

People who make careers in the media love government. They love it even better when the “right people” are in charge, but, as one much earlier commenter at Instapundit expressed it:

Perhaps the most pervasive way in which journalists are different from normal people is that journalists live in a world dominated by government, and they reflexively see government action as the default way to approach any problem.

Joining the “other side”? Hardly. They’re just losing their vestments as the clergy of the Church of State and taking up lay positions.

Same tune, different band.

And in Related News,

And in Related News,

Michael Bane reports on a door-to-door confiscation practice run scheduled for April in Arcadia, Iowa. Like Michael, I’m printing the whole thing for archival purposes:

Guardsmen to conduct urban training at Arcadia in April

By BUTCH HEMAN
Staff Writer

The Carroll National Guard unit will train on urban military operations by holding a four-day exercise at Arcadia.

The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company.

Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate.

Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer.

The primary phase will be done Saturday, April 4, when convoys will be deployed from Carroll to Arcadia. Pictures of the arms dealer will be shown in Arcadia, and soldiers will go door to door asking if residents have seen the suspect.

Soldiers will knock only at households that have agreed to participate in the drill, Kots noted.

“Once credible intelligence has been gathered,” said Kots, “portions of the town will be road-blocked and more in-depth searches of homes and vehicles will be conducted in accordance with the residents’ wishes.

“One of the techniques we use in today’s political environment is cordon and knock,” Kots explained. “We ask for the head of the household, get permission to search, then have them open doors and cupboards. The homeowner maintains control. We peer over their shoulder, and the soldier uses the homeowner’s body language and position to protect him.”

During this phase of the operation, troops will interact with residents and media while implementing crowd-control measures and possibly treating and evacuating injured persons.

The unit will use a Blackhawk helicopter for overhead command and control, and to simulate medevacs.

The drill will culminate in the apprehension of the suspected arms dealer.

Alpha Company will conduct a review of the drill on Sunday, April 5.

A meeting to give residents more information and accept volunteers will be held 7 p.m. Monday, March 2, in the Arcadia American Legion hall.

Kots said the exercise will replace Alpha Company’s weekend drill for April.

“We have a lot of extended drills this coming year,” he added.

In addition to surveillance, searching and apprehension, the exercise will also give the troops valuable experience in stability, support, patrol, traffic control, vehicle searches and other skills needed for deployment in an urban environment.

“This exercise will improve the real-life operational skills of the unit,” said Kots. “And it will hopefully improve the public’s understanding of military operations.”

The pre-drill work with residents is as important at the drill itself.

“It will be important for us to gain the trust and confidence of the residents of Arcadia,” said Kots. “We will need to identify individuals that are willing to assist us in training by allowing us to search their homes and vehicles and to participate in role-playing.”

“We really want to get as much information out there as possible, because this operation could be pretty intrusive to the people of Arcadia.”

I won’t fisk it, because Michael already has. As he says, “If this article doesn’t ice your blood, I’m not sure what will”.

It’s coming, ladies and gentlemen. It’s coming. And “frightening the white people” isn’t going to stop it.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water . . .

You Can Lead a Horse to Water . . .

Last night I posted a link to the excellent yet depressing essay How Democracies Become Tyrannies at American Thinker. Then, just for the fun of it, I poked at perennial commenter Markadelphia:

(Just a note, but I fully expect Markadelphia to either ignore it, or go off on a really entertaining tangent or twelve.)

Well, he took the bait:

I would be curious as to who you define as a tyrant…President Obama or the entire government?

So, in a horrible mixture of metaphors, it’s time to beat the dead horse some more!

Now, despite the fact that the rabid left vociferously accused George W. Bush of being a tyrant throughout most of his term, neither G.W.B. nor B.H.O. are or were tyrants. At this point, neither is the federal government.

The point of the essay is that it’s coming, and it was predicted by a philosopher – based solely on his understanding of human nature and his ability to reason (something Markadelphia has shown a distinct lack of capability for) – some 2400 years ago. Worse, the book in which this prediction was made is still available today – in the original Greek and in translation into nearly every modern language. And yet the majority, acting in precisely the way predicted, ignores the predictions and goes blithely on.

But does Markadelphia recognize this?

No, he wants to know, “Who you callin’ tyrant?”

One of my favorite (for want of a better word) quotes, one I’ve repeated here on numerous occasions, comes from the Rev. Donald Sensing:

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

I could be wrong in my understanding, but I did not interpret that comment – made in 2003 – to mean that Rev. Sensing believed that George Bush was a tyrant, or that the .gov was (yet) tyrannical. It meant that he too saw the progression that Socrates predicted.

And the timetable was short.

The election of Barack Obama is just another stepping stone on the path, another symptom of the decline Socrates predicted in detail. But that observation does nothing more than part Markadelphia’s hair.

Once again, the key point of the entire Tyrannies piece, with emphasis:

Flash forward fifty years to the election of Barack Obama and a hard left leaning Democrat Congress. What Americans want today, apparently, is a government that has no intention of leaving any of us alone.

It isn’t about (more than peripherally) Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, or the rest of the Left-Liberal-Collectivist-Progressive-Nanny-State members of Congress. It’s about the fact that the voting public put them there.

Just as Socrates predicted they would.

For the reasons he predicted they would.

Could Bush have become the tyrant Socrates predicted? It’s possible. Could Obama? It’s possible. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but who knows what could happen in the next four years? As Rahm Emmanuel said, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.” And we all know that passing the “Stimulus” package narrowly averted the turning of our current economic crisis into a catastrophe!

If crisis provides the opportunity to “do big things,” what does catastrophe provide?

2400 Years, and the Logic is Still Irrefutable

2400 Years, and the Logic is Still Irrefutable

The main themes of this blog have been, since day one: Freedom, Individual Rights, Education, Personal Responsibility.

I have posted, over and over, on the topic of our failing education system and how it has contributed to our national decline.

I have stated, over and over, that our Republican form of government is the best one yet devised to protect the rights of its citizens and promote their prosperity and safety.

And yet 2400 years or so ago, Socrates accurately predicted what would happen to a nation dedicated to the ideal of freedom.

Please read How Democracies Become Tyrannies, by Ed Kaitz in American Thinker. A couple of excerpts:

Back in 1959 the philosopher Eric Hoffer had this to say about Americans and America:

For those who want to be left alone to realize their capacities and talents this is an ideal country.

That was then. This is now. Flash forward fifty years to the election of Barack Obama and a hard left leaning Democrat Congress. What Americans want today, apparently, is a government that has no intention of leaving any of us alone.

Near the end of the Republic Socrates decides to drive this point home by showing Adeimantus what happens to a regime when its parents and educators neglect the proper moral education of its children. In the course of this chilling illustration Adeimantus comes to discover a dark and ominous secret: without proper moral conditioning a regime’s “defining principle” will be the source of its ultimate destruction. For democracy, that defining principle is freedom. According to Socrates, freedom makes a democracy but freedom also eventually breaks a democracy.

For Socrates, democracy’s “insatiable desire for freedom and neglect of other things” end up putting it “in need of a dictatorship.” The short version of his theory is that the combination of freedom and poor education in a democracy render the citizens incapable of mastering their impulses and deferring gratification. The reckless pursuit of freedom leads the citizens to raze moral barriers, deny traditional authority, and abandon established methods of education. Eventually, this uninhibited quest for personal freedom forces the public to welcome the tyrant. Says Socrates: “Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.”

Read the whole damned thing.

And ponder, once again, how we got here.

(Just a note, but I fully expect Markadelphia to either ignore it, or go off on a really entertaining tangent or twelve.)

It’s Not a Rainbow-Farting Unicorn, But . . .

It’s Not a Rainbow-Farting Unicorn, But . . .

. . . I like the way this guy thinks!

Phoenix talk-radio station KFYI set up a “Mock Protest” of President Obama and the “stimulus” bill for his appearance at Dobson High School in Mesa today. The idea was to bring protest signs asking Obama to give out things in the name of stimulating the economy. This, in my humble opinion, was the best one:


Other than that, I got nothin’ for ya tonight.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

The whole thing is simply drenched in evil.

Money is taken from us, both individually at corporately, at gunpoint, on authority that ranges from dubious, at the very best, to outright usurped.

This Money is then handed over to men, granted them unauthorized power to decide to whom to distribute it, and even more unauthorized power to decide what conditions to place on its disbursement.

Thus, we are transformed from gold havers and rule makers to supplicants. We apply for the highly conditional privilege of being bribed with our own gold, because failing to do so places us at a competitive disadvantage compared to another in a similar situation.

Too many of us view this as natural, right, and just.

Too few of us hold the whole thing in the disgust and contempt it so richly deserves.
– The GeekWithA.45, It Took The Parasites Less Than 24 Hours To Line Up.

Google: Still Evil

Google: Still Evil

As most of you probably know, Google bought Blogsnot awhile back. Google also agreed to censor the web for those accessing it from China, at the insistence of the Chinese government.

I discovered something fascinating (in a creepy way) tonight. When I write a post, I put the title for it in a block marked “Title,” then repeat it as the header to the body of my post. The “Title” space, I suppose, goes out to RSS feeds and such, but if I don’t repeat the title in the body, you won’t see it. Whatever goes in the “Title” block is made part of the URL for that post, assuming, of course, that the title isn’t as long as many of my posts are. It’s truncated at twenty letters or so, and “the” and “a” are dropped out. My post last week “Made as China, Norinco”, should have carried a URL that reads:

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/02/made-as-china-norinco.html

It does not.

Google truncated the link to http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/02/made-as.html

The words “China” and “Norinco” were redacted.

Kinda makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?