The 'global President'

After 20 years, Obama has decided to cut his ties with his Afrocentrist 'church.'
Obama quits Trinity

...announced Saturday evening that he had resigned from his controversial Chicago congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ, “with some sadness.”
[...]
The move completes Obama’s slow walk away from a church that began receiving huge scrutiny late in the campaign’s primary season.

Obama has said he was not present for the most controversial sermons, and said he did not know about them until he began running for president."

Meanwhile, did you know that we Americans elect two presidents, one for us and the other for The World?
So says Simon Jenkins in a piece from the UK Times, dated March 9, 2008:

One belongs to domestic America but the other belongs to the world.

The first president is America’s business. While those who know and love that country may be concerned at its economic and political health - and therefore intrigued by the contest - this president is the one most voters have in mind.

The globalised president is a different matter. This leader must represent America’s values - and consequent actions - everywhere that is touched by American policy. His or her decisions benefit or afflict millions of people, rich and poor, in dozens of countries on every continent. Yet they have no vote.

Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Israelis, Pakistanis, Colombians, Brazilians, Russians, Chinese have no means of saying yes or no to decisions taken in Washington that may intimately affect their families, their security, their jobs and prospects. Nobody accounts to them or invites them to any caucus. Few of them enjoy democratic privileges even in their own countries. Yet the next president of the United States can mean life or death.
[...]
All three presidential candidates have qualifications to be this global president. In public statements they have acknowledged the strategic mistakes made in America’s attempt to police the world through a “war on terror”. All have proposals for restoring America’s relations with the world.
[...]
The candidates for the global presidency will not be judged by experience, programme, oratory or novelty. They will not be judged by the prospect of likely success in office, which is always unknowable in foreign affairs. Few American presidents are seen to have been successes on leaving office. The art of presidency is that of managing perceived failure. The candidates will rather be judged by what they symbolise, by the package of expectations that they carry with them to the White House. Here it is simply incontrovertible that the election of Barack Obama would transform, indeed electrify, America’s image worldwide.''

The Jenkins piece is referenced in The Week magazine, in a piece called How they see us: What a black president would mean for Europe
I don't think this piece is online; it's in my hard copy which just arrived in the mail.

The piece also quotes Francois Durpraire in the Paris Libération as saying that the 'disaffected youths' who were 'venting their frustration and hopelessness' in the recent riots and car burnings are now inspired by Obama, so much so that they now have "something to smile about." Obama, we're told, has the ''power to inspire pride and hope even in the slums of another continent. Think about that. Much has been written about what an Obama presidency could do for race relations in the U.S., but only now are people starting to realize that a win by Obama could even improve race relations here in Europe."

Next, the same piece in The Week tells us that Thomas Klau in Germany's Financial Times Deutschland finds this an uncomfortable thought -- but only because it would dismay Germany that 'barbarous, immature America'' could be the first to elect a black President. He says it would force Germans "to ask ourselves questions we have never asked before....We Germans pride ourselves on our social tolerance and progressive thinking, but come election time we take it for granted that all major candidates will be white-skinned.'' This would lead to some kind of crisis of conscience, apparently, and the appearance of 'cracks' in Europe's self-image. Painful soul-searching in Europe will ensue, so he says, if we barbarous Americans elect a black President first.

Now, Germany has a population of 82 million plus. 91.2 percent of the population is German.
2.1 percent are Turkish, and 6.7 percent are ''other'', including other European nationalities. So why on earth should Germany feel it's necessary to elect a black President?

And why should France concern itself with how the rioters feel about having a black President of the United States?

More to the point, why should we Americans concern ourselves with what others want, especially non-Europeans occupying Europe?

There should not be a 'global presidency'. Unfortunately, that seems to be what we have now, and the candidates we are being told to choose between are all globalists who will, in fact, not be representing our interests in any meaningful way.

But to return to the Simon Jenkins piece, despite the obvious fact that he neither knows nor ''loves'' the America that I know and love, he does touch on something that I've emphasized here: the symbolic significance of a black President. He implies that the non-white world everywhere will see Obama's election as a triumph for them. He puts it in syrupy liberal terms, referring to ''hope" for these poor underprivileged "youths'' in Europe, but it's evident that they will see it as a sign that the sun has set on whitey's ascendancy, and their day will have come.

This idea that we ''ought'' to have a black President is another one of those contradictory liberal ideas. Race doesn't matter, and it's wrong to choose based on racial criteria, so we've heard for 50 years and more. Now, suddenly, it's right to choose Obama because of his race.

And the idea implicit in this cheering for the election of a non-white President is that he is superior based on his race. His racial makeup qualifies him in a unique way to be President. So race does matter, the liberals are now admitting; and not only that, but it appears that the black race is superior in some way to the White race. And all these years we've been hearing that the races are absolutely equal. So Obama can do what a White President could not do; only a President with African genes and sufficient melanin in his skin can 'inspire' and 'give hope.'

Monochrome would become colour. A drone of antagonism would turn into a cry of pleasure. With the genes of an Irish-American and a Kenyan, and the nurture of Hawaii, Indonesia and Chicago, Obama has personal roots in four continents.''

What a load of multiculti claptrap and self-abasing Afro-olatry Mr. Jenkins dispenses. And by the way: why should some sort of rootless cosmopolitan outsider be preferred as our President?

In choosing a president for a world half of which America seeks to evangelise, voters could hardly find a candidate better cast. He embodies a yearning expectation of a new contract and a new beginning.'

The fact that Jenkins and all the other servile White liberals yearn for their own people to be overthrown and displaced in favor of resentful outsiders is an appalling commentary on our age. Much of the world seems to have gone collectively insane.

Guilt makes the world go 'round

...the liberal world, at least.


Here is David Thompson on the Ron Rosenbaum Slate article praising white guilt. I've read a lot of commentary on the Slate piece, and this piece by Thompson is possibly the best. Read it all; it's to the point. But be warned of some annoying liberal posturing in the comments following.

David's piece is called Phantom Guilt, Revisited.
I like the phrase 'phantom guilt'. I like how Thompson seems to perceive the obvious falsity of the displays of guilt on the part of many of the liberal handwringers:

To publicly rend one’s garments over some vicarious, borrowed sin is not to affirm conscience or poignant human feeling, but to parody those things and to indulge in emotional pantomime and moral masturbation. Rather like this:

But was slavery not immoral? Was not the century of institutionalised racism and segregation that followed the end of slavery a perpetuation of “flawed values” that the nation should feel an enduring guilt over? Should we abolish the history and memory of slavery and racism just because they're no longer legally institutionalised?

Again, note the car crash of non sequitur. I’ll paraphrase for clarity:

Slavery was immoral. It was abolished. Therefore we must still feel guilt, or pretend to – all of us, indefinitely and forever. And those who don’t pretend to feel this way are abolishing history.

Assertions of this kind are, very often, for the benefit of a sympathetic audience and thus, ultimately, for the benefit of the performer. As I’ve argued before, saying, very loudly, “it’s all my fault” is only a notch and a half away from saying “it’s all about me.”

I think there is a lot of truth in his observation that what liberals display is not real guilt, but a simulation thereof, a mimicry of guilt.

I've written a lot here about liberal guilt, but when we really think about it, liberals do not feel guilt because they presume that they are, by virtue of their superior liberal sensitivity, free of the guilt they try to induce among their less liberal racial brethren. They are, as I've said, like the Pharisee praying loudly to thank God that he is not like other men -- not a sinner. They are good at finding motes in others' eyes while ignoring the beam in their own eyes.

Guilt -- just as Leona Helmsley supposedly said about taxes -- is for the 'little people', one's inferiors.
Liberals see themselves as the moral aristocracy of the world; they pride themselves on their superior consciences, but somehow their consciences only find the sins of others.

As for that comment section, notice the liberal woman slapping down someone for saying that whites abolished slavery -- whites must not get credit for that; whites did NOT stop slavery, she says, only SOME whites did.

So unless all whites equally contributed to ending slavery, they deserve no credit. Yet oddly, all whites are made to carry the blame for what some did. And I don't mean slave-owners vs. virtuous abolitionists, or Southerners vs. saintly Northerners, or even rich, evil whites vs. poor, noble whites. I mean primarily today's whites being asked to pay, endlessly, for what whites (some, all, whoever) did hundreds of years ago.

At some point we will have to deal with the issue of slavery, over whether the slavery as practiced here in this country was the greatest ever human evil, comparable perhaps only to Hitler's crimes according to most people. This subject seems to be used as the ultimate weapon against us; we have no rejoinder except the rather liberal one of saying ''but...but we abolished it; don't we deserve praise for that?"

This guilt game will go on and on until we find some way to break this cycle, and that will not be easy.
Doing so will require a lot of re-thinking on our part, and a general determination to find some new way to look at the guilt-producing historic episodes that are being used against us so successfully. We can only say 'mea culpa' so many times.

Uncle Tom's mirror image

Over at a certain Republican forum, the mostly 'colorblind' regulars are finding great amusement in the YouTube video here, where you can see the Reverend Father Michael Pfleger, at Obama's church, mocking Hillary Clinton. Of course the politically correct Republicans see Hillary Clinton as the greatest threat to America, ever, and so they don't mind that Father Pfleger's slams against Hillary also are directed at them, as Whites.

Pfleger is one of those ideologues who believes that there is such a thing as 'White privilege', which is shared equally by all those of European ancestry, regardless of their circumstances. He thinks that this 'White privilege' is something which was acquired by oppressing non-Whites, mostly blacks. He also seems to believe in generational guilt, because in his warped view, everything a White has or possesses is an ill-gotten gain, even your 401k. He apparently does not recognize any hard work, ingenuity, or planning on the part of Whites as being the source of any of their possessions.

Can any of us watch this video without discomfort of some kind? When I say 'discomfort' I don't mean guilt. I mean, the sheer embarrassment of seeing an ostensibly 'White' man making such a buffoon of himself in front of a church full of black folks who apparently harbor considerable hostility towards him or at least, toward those who 'look like' him. I always squirm at the sight and sound of this kind of sycophantic, craven, unnatural behavior. I speculate about what in the world goes on in the minds of people like this cleric. Even in my most deludedly liberal days, I don't think I could have resorted to this kind of truckling, or such open disloyalty to my own. Pfleger's pathetic attempt at some kind of 'dialect' is downright cringe-inducing. Hillary herself is not above this kind of thing, as we've seen in her past appearances at black churches, but he outdoes even Hillary.

I have to wonder if there isn't perhaps an isolated liberal or two out there who might have his or her eyes opened by this kind of thing. Do they not, just once, think something like 'wow, if even the most pro-black liberals can be skewered for being racist and for benefiting from white privilege, we're all fair game, no matter what our politics, no matter how servile towards minorities we are.'

But I suspect only one in a million would dare to think that; I suspect the vast majority will only redouble their efforts at being tolerant and anti-racist.

Back in the naive old days of the Civil Rights revolution, also known as the 'Civil Rights Movement', most white people thought that if only we guaranteed equal access, the right to vote, the right to attend any school, to be served by any business owner, and so on, then all the grievances of blacks would evaporate, and we'd all coexist in harmony. Being 'non-prejudiced' was all that was required, so they thought. Now, we've learned that mere lack of prejudice and 'colorblindness' won't get you anywhere; you are still part of the problem unless you are emphatically anti-racist -- which in effect means anti-White. And that includes denouncing your own mother, if necessary, condemning yourself if need be, confessing your own sins and your own disgraceful acceptance of ''White privilege." It certainly demands that you turn viciously on your own racial kin who display any tendencies toward 'racism.' We see this at work in many an Internet discussion, where rabid 'anti-racist' Whites attack any of their brethren who step outside PC boundaries.

And we see it in excruciating performances like that of Pfleger pandering and preening before blacks.

Are these people trying to work out their own guilt by projecting all their self-hatred onto their fellow Whites? Do they think they are buying leniency from those they have 'wronged', or those they believe their ancestors wronged a couple of centuries or more ago? Do they believe they will be spared in case worst comes to worst and open hostilities break out? Do they think they are establishing their moral superiority, or gaining points with the Almighty by displaying their good intentions and good works publicly, like the Pharisee praying loudly in the Gospel accounts?

Last night I was watching some videos about the South on YouTube, and one of them was nothing more than a video of music from the War Between the States. But even music has to be made a fighting issue, thanks to political correctness. Every video comment section on You Tube, having to do with the South, is defaced by ranting liberal 'anti-racists' frothing at the mouth over 'slavery' and 'rape' and racism. This thread was no exception.

We really and truly are a badly divided and fragmented country, and I am not optimistic about any reconciliation -- not only between blacks and Whites, but among Whites. We are sharply divided among those of the old values, and the anti-racist haters of the old values.

I read the ugly anti-White, anti-South comments on YouTube, and I see videos like the one of Pfleger, and I am more convinced that there is no healing the divisions in this country. Obama, in a stroke of extreme irony, is running as some kind of 'healer' of racial divisions. Nothing could be further from the truth; anybody with eyes to see can see that he is only exacerbating the divisions in this country, and he is doing nothing but focusing an already race-obsessed country even more on race.

On the other hand, every cloud has some silver lining, so the saying goes, and if there is any good that might come out of the situation, it's that it is making clear who stands where. The animosities simmering below the surface are coming out in the open.

We will see for ourselves how very many Pflegers there are in this country: people who are somehow stunted in their very identity, who are 'without natural affections', who in some twisted way, despise those of their own race and yearn to be accepted and approved by a hostile group of people. These people are some kind of willing martyrs to racial restitution; by immolating themselves they think they can make a statement or win the love of those who hate them. Some of these people will genetically immolate themselves by literally joining the race they idealize, and rejecting membership in the race they were born to. If that's their choice, so be it; it would strengthen us if they removed themselves from us.

However they seem to have no desire to; far better, they think, to torment and harass the rest of us who want nothing more than to be left to our time-honored ways and allegiances. Despite their pious cant about 'tolerance' they will not tolerate this; they see themselves as some kind of agents of racial vengeance, and they will continue to harry us and hunt us down, leaving us no peace.

Most peoples in the world hold renegades to be the lowest of the low, those who would sell out their own in order to win some benefit for themselves -- or who would betray their own simply out of malice.

The word 'renegade' originally meant one who had forsaken the Christian faith, or a knight without a master.
In our day, it seems to take the form of those who identify with the outsider, even when that outsider is openly contemptuous of them. We seem to be plagued with such people today.

Blacks call those they perceive as too friendly to whites as 'Uncle Toms'. Mexicans condemn 'Tio Tacos' or 'vendidos' -- sellouts.
What name do we have for our equivalents? Just calling them 'liberals' isn't strong enough. We need to be as censorious towards our renegades as everybody else is toward theirs.

Instead, we are too prone to turn on those who are less politically correct, rather than directing our opprobrium where it is deserved.

Even the 'conservatives' over at Free Republic are prone to castigate each other for political incorrectness. We can't just blame it on 'the liberals' meaning the Democrats; it's a Republican plague too.

Offended by the offense-takers

Via Steve Sailer's blog, a post from the Stuff White People Like blog, called Being Offended:

To be offended is usually a rather unpleasant experience, one that can expose a person to intolerance, cultural misunderstandings, and even evoke the scars of the past. This is such an unpleasant experience that many people develop a thick skin and try to only be offended in the most egregious and awful situations. In many circumstances, they can allow smaller offenses to slip by as fighting them is a waste of time and energy. But white people, blessed with both time and energy, are not these kind of people. In fact there are few things white people love more than being offended.

Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about “flyover states”). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.

It is also valuable to know that white people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. Once they have finished lecturing another white person about how it’s wrong to use the term “black” instead of “African-American,” they can sit back and relax in the knowledge that they have made a difference.''

I originally found the Stuff White People Like blog via Steve Sailer, and I blogged about it then. As I said then of the blog:

Is it all in good fun, or does it contribute further to the disparaging of white people which is so popular today? And assuredly this kind of self-ridicule (I am going on the assumption that the blogger is in fact white) is hardly fresh or new; I've (unwillingly) watched parts of movies of the last ten years or so in which caricatures of white people were a central basis of the 'humor', movies like 'White Chicks' or 'Undercover Brother'.

Reading the many, many comments following, I am still left asking myself who the target audience of the blog is. Is it the upper-middle-class or affluent liberal whites who seem to be the subject of much of the ambiguous 'humor'? I suppose such people would greatly enjoy laughing at themselves, or at somewhat grotesque caricatures of themselves; after all, their lives are centered around guilt and self-examination, and seeing themselves satirized or lampooned feeds into their sense that they are flawed, morally inadequate people, and also at the same time very important people. They like being the center of attention, even if the attention is unflattering to some degree or another.

Am I stereotyping white people? I hope not, because the stereotyping is one of the things I find unenjoyable about the blog, SWPL. One segment of white people, mainly liberal, PC, urban or suburban, affluent, educated, (probably over-educated) and mostly young, is made to represent all white people, and that is grossly inaccurate. White people are so much more varied than the blog implies, and the people described therein simply as 'white people' or 'whiter people' (whatever that means) are a small and unrepresentative segment. Yet they are made to stand for all white people. What is the message behind that? It could be that the blogger is himself part of that group, and feels more comfortable aiming barbs at his own group, or it may be that the blogger is part of that group and, having had contact mostly with that rather ingrown group, really considers them to be representative of the white race.

Is the blogger secretly pro-white and politically incorrect? Some claim this to be so, but I'm not convinced. The commenters (and there are many) all seem to see something different in the blog: some see it as an indictment of liberal political correctness, while others think, seemingly, that the satire of liberal young whites is meant to discredit them, deservedly. Some seem to think that the blog is rather anti-white, and therefore hip, since anti-whiteness is hip these days. Most of the young (white) people in my vicinity seem to think that anything which humiliates or caricatures whites is high hilarity, and well-deserved by whites.

The approach of the blog is successful, certainly, in terms of the traffic it draws, and the attention it has gotten. The blogger has also obtained a sweet book deal. However, I think the quality of the comments leaves much to be desired; I don't enjoy reading the comment threads at all.

Nevertheless, despite the uneasy feeling the blog evokes in me, the post in question makes some good points about white people (I would say liberal, PC white people) and their exasperating habit of taking offense on the behalf of their non-white 'wards'. Or should I say their non-white charges? Clients? My previous blog entry about 'The White liberals' burden' relates to this habit of theirs. They are so caught up in being the advocates or self-designated protectors or champions of minorities that they react as if they themselves are wounded when they perceive any slight or slur against their dependent clients, non-whites.

For some whites, specifically liberal/leftist PC whites, their protectiveness of nonwhites extends as far as wanting to adopt them, literally, and thus make non-whites part of their literal family, under their tutelage and protection. Is this a God complex? A desire to be the Savior or saint? For many liberals, their political and social belief system is a substitute for a non-existent religious faith, and in the cases where the liberal is actually a churchgoer, they affiliate with a church which serves their liberal agenda, so their social gospel beliefs are the center of their religious practices.

But just as with all the other manifestations of this attitude, this taking of offense on behalf of others is condescension, and it should be seen as somewhat of an affront to the one who is supposedly the target of the offense, real or imagined.

Taking offense for somebody else assumes that the person supposedly being defended cannot judge for himself when offense has been given, or that he is unable to speak up for himself, being either too ignorant or inarticulate -- too childlike.

I suppose a more generous assessment of these self-righteous liberals is that they have so fully identified with the minority groups that they truly do take offense at some careless word or phrase, feeling personally wounded by it. Even if that is the case, however, it's still unnatural and rather weird. There is a significant sub-group of (mostly young) white people who seem to have convinced themselves that they are non-white, adopting the styles, speech habits, and tastes of non-whites, usually blacks. I have always found that behavior somewhat embarrassing; I feel embarrassed for the whites who try their best to appear non-white. There are many manifestations of this; we see a lot of it on college campuses with young liberals sporting dreadlocks, piercings, and tribal tattoos, who get involved in drumming or other multiculti 'arts'. And there are those who dress in thug style and listen only to rap or other black styles of music. There are those who wear kaffiyehs, in solidarity with Palestinians.

It's not a new phenomenon; back when I was in college, however, whites who wanted to be non-white usually chose to be 'Native American' but apparently that has fallen from popularity somewhat, although Ward Churchill has stayed true to his calling to white Indianhood all these years.

In the 1970s there was a comedy movie, 'Made For Each Other,' in which actor Joseph Bologna, playing a confused young Italian-American man, goes to college and takes up black militancy, and harangues his baffled Italian-American parents about the wrongs done by 'whitey.'

I found that scene especially laughable in the context of today, wherein such attitudes among liberal young people are not as incredible as they appeared when the movie was first shown. There are plenty of young liberal whites who have been convinced by years of indoctrination at school, by the media, and by their deluded peers, that whiteness is a mark of Cain. It's these young people who are out marching alongside illegal Latinos, throwing projectiles at their white elders and calling them names. It's these who are trying to assuage their guilt and attain redemption from the stain of whiteness by swooning over Obama, listening to rap music, dating interracially -- and excoriating anybody who utters a politically incorrect word.

These people are not so much something to be laughed at or about; they are the scourge of anyone who wishes to practice free speech and to utter truth. We all complain about the controlled, PC media, and about our one-world, globalist ideologue politicians, but a bigger part of our problem is that the professional offense-takers, those who have made it their personal crusade to censure and vilify those they disagree with. This 'democratic censorship' only makes the job of the thought police that much easier. At this point, people are more or less being kept in line by these PC vigilantes who will make a citizen's arrest, as it were, of those who utter heresies. The result is a much more cautious conversation among people in general; many of us have to censor our speech closely or risk having someone publicly condemn any forbidden thought we express out loud.

The offense-takers are a plague in our society.
Yet they are our own people -- aren't they? Or by their willful choice to side with everybody but their own, have they in effect renounced their citizenship among whites? These days I am inclined to say the latter. They won't own any connection with people like me because they see us as the enemy; so be it.

Maybe interracial adoption isn't such a bad thing; those who have chosen to identify with others, and only with others, should be adopted into their chosen group and make their home there, instead of staying behind to antagonize and work against their biological kin.

The white liberals' burden

It seems the liberals have belatedly discovered that race does matter.

On a recent thread here, the subject of interracial adoptions came up, and coincidentally, foreign, interracial adoptions are in the spotlight. And as usual, whitey is the guilty party in any problems associated with this practice:

Halted foreign adoptions leave would-be parents in limbo

...Guatemala announced this month that it would conduct a case-by-case review of every pending foreign adoption case. That put on hold the adoption plans of about 2,000 American families.

The crackdown comes amid reports that some in Guatemala coerce mothers to relinquish their children for adoption -- or steal the children outright and present them as orphans.

Similar accusations have arisen in Vietnam.

After the United States accused adoption agencies there of corruption and baby-selling, Vietnam said in April that it would no longer allow adoptions to the United States.

"My husband and I were absolutely devastated," Teresinski said. "Adoptive parents have put a lot of emotional energy and a lot of financial resources in the process."

Vietnam's decision affects several hundred families.

Families in the United States adopted 4,728 children from Guatemala and 828 from Vietnam last year.

The halt in adoptions from those two nations unfolds against the backdrop of a dramatic rise in international adoptions in the United States.

The number of foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families more than tripled from 1990 to 2004, when it reached a high of 22,884, though the figure has declined slightly each year since.

In 2007, the U.S. granted visas to 19,613 children so they could join an adoptive family in the United States, according to U.S. State Department figures. About 70 percent of those children came from four countries: China, Guatemala, Russia and Ethiopia.''

I live in a (to date) non-diverse small town. Foreign adoptions, mostly from the countries mentioned above, seem to be quite the trend among the conspicuously altruistic. Adopting a child from a Third World country is the thing to do in certain sets, and the more exotic, the better.

It seems there is little consideration given to the question of how the children will adapt, or fit in, and how they will identify among a group of people unlike themselves.

And then there's the matter of how the demographics of a small town will be affected by growing numbers of people of different races. Will there be conflicts as they reach adulthood, or will the kumbaya spirit prevail? Given our trend these days toward ethnic splintering, the presence of many adoptees of various races will only contribute to the confusion and the division.

This news story has to do with the question: Do whites need training before parenting black children?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Several leading child welfare groups Tuesday urged an overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by a "colorblind" approach meant to encourage their adoption by white families.
[...]
Of the black children adopted out of foster care, about 20 percent are adopted by white families. The Donaldson report said current federal law, by stressing color blindness, deters child welfare agencies from assessing families' readiness to adopt transracially or preparing them for the distinctive challenges they might face.

"There is a higher rate of problems in minority foster children adopted transracially than in-race," said the report. "All children deserve to be raised in families that respect their cultural heritage."

For once, I actually agree with the 'experts' in the article, although I suspect my reasons are different. It is not that inept, clueless Whitey is too innately racist and insensitive to properly 'respect the cultural heritage' of any black or other non-white children they adopt or foster. It's simply that people are not interchangeable, and babies and children probably fare best with people like themselves, ideally.

Children in cross-racial adoptions tend to have identity issues, and those who are biracial have further problems, as witness this adoptee's account.

Because I felt that I did not belong to any group, my confidence eroded. I was ashamed and embarrassed when people discussed race or when they wanted to know about my family. I was confused because I did not understand my biracial background and did not have the support of my natural parents to help me understand my heritage. Instead of believing in myself, my abilities and my intelligence, as I had in high school, I became withdrawn. I did not readily participate in class or take part in extra-curricular activities because of my insecurity and confusion about my racial identity. Although I learned that we simply do not live in a "color blind" world, I felt that I had no one to turn to in order to help me understand what it meant to be an African-American man in our society.''

This webpage gives a history of transracial adoptions in America. Interestingly, blacks have been opposed in many cases to whites adopting blacks:

The debate about transracial adoption changed course in 1972, when the National Association of Black Social Workers issued a statement that took “a vehement stand against the placements of black children in white homes for any reason,” calling transracial adoption “unnatural,” “artificial,” “unnecessary,” and proof that African-Americans continued to be assigned to “chattel status.” The organization was so committed to the position that black children’s healthy development depended on having black parents that its President, Cenie J. Williams, argued that temporary foster and even institutional placements were preferable to adoption by white families. This opposition slowed black-white adoptions to a trickle. In 1973, the Child Welfare League of America adoption standards, which had been revised in 1968 to make them slightly friendlier to transracial adoption, were rewritten to clarify that same-race placements were always better. The child welfare establishment never supported transracial adoptions.

A number of new agencies, staffed almost entirely by African Americans, such as Homes for Black Children in Detroit and Harlem-Dowling Children’s Service in New York, renewed the effort that had started in the late 1940s and 1950s to find black homes for black children. In spite of successful efforts to boost the numbers of black adoptive families, objections to whites adopting African-American children were never translated into law. Minority group rights to children were legally enforceable only in the case of Native American children, and only after the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Since 1972, the numbers of black-white adoptions have declined, but this may have as much to do with stubborn private preferences and prejudices among white adopters as with organized opposition or public policies that created new barriers to transracial placements.''

This piece depicts the popular celebrity trend of adopting Third World children as just another manifestation of -- as usual, racism. And colonialism.

The white Madonna's burden

In the May issue of Vanity Fair, there was a telling exchange between its cover star Madonna –- resplendent in leotard and black knee–length boots –- and her interviewer, Rich Cohen.

They were talking about David Banda, the child adopted by Madonna in Malawi in 2006. Understandably, Madonna is gushing about her adopted son and everything that he “represents”. And what is that, exactly? Cohen explains: baby David is a “living totem of life as it was lived before machines”.

In other words, he’s a simple, wide–eyed, primitive being who helps to remind Madonna about what is really important in life as she jets from one photo–shoot and session recording to another. Cohen compares David to Pocahontas, “the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America”, and says that for “bringing this boy into her house and giving him everything”, Madonna has got “something in return”: a child who symbolises a wilder, more earthy, gritty way of life, who comes from a time “before machines”.
[...]
Madonna does not only want her own little black baby to remind her of the simplicity of life -– she also seems keen to save the whole of Africa. As one British commentator put it, she is treating the entire continent as “a little orphan that needs adopting”.
[...]
There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna’s attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man’s Burden -– now we have the White Madonna’s Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug -– or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering.
[...]
There is something Kiplingesque in this celebrity swarming of Africa. Kipling branded colonial subjects on the dark continent as “half–devil and half–child” –- and today that old poisonous prejudice finds expression in the celebrity view of Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that must be punished (Sudan). Africans once resisted the armies of colonialism; now they should consider resisting the armies of celebrities, camera crews, make-up artists and hairstylists who are seeking to turn Africa into a stage for celebrity expressions of cheap moral bombast.''

It's incredible but predictable that the liberals and leftists cannot or will not see the condescension and paternalism in their racial do-gooding, their conspicuous trans-racial altruism.

Madonna is in all respects a quintessential liberal, as are the other 'diversity'-obsessed celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono, Bob Geldof, and all the rest. In no way are they connected to Kipling or colonialism or 'racism', unless you are honest enough to call the liberal racial meddling pro-minority racism of a sort, which it could be seen to be.

Implicit in their constant bleating about poor Darfur or the downtrodden wretched of the earth, who are forever in need of our help, is the idea that these people are indeed perpetual children, who have not reached an adult stage of development. Adulthood is characterized by independence and self-sufficiency.

Kipling's terminology which the writer sanctimoniously calls 'that old poisonous prejudice' simply expressed, with no sentimentality and cloying condescension, what most liberals actually, deep down, think about the Third World peoples.

Clearly, liberal westerners, whites, believe that the other races are incapable of taking care of themselves, hence they are in need of constant infusions of money and other aid from us in order to survive. And if we decline to intervene and make things all right for these benighted people, we are guilty of racism, genocide, or whatever term of opprobrium they deem useful to instill guilt.

If liberals, for a moment, believed the Third Worlders to be our equals, they would surely be content to leave them to their own devices -- wouldn't they? Obviously they view non-whites as children in need of a handout, not a hand up, in need of our supervision and assistance in everything.

Instead of admitting this upfront, they ascribe this attitude to the realists, who will say openly that the races are not equal in capacity for self-sufficiency. We all agree on that; it's just that those of us who say it frankly are condemned as 'racists' or 'bigots' or 'colonialists.' Well, if we must be permanently involved in the affairs of the Third World, why not just re-institute colonial rule?

And as for the attitudes of Madonna and her celebrity friends being 'Kiplingesque', that's an undeserved compliment, not an insult, as the writer intends it to be. If only Madonna and the other Hollywood do-gooding dilettantes were Kiplingesque. If only our leaders were Kiplingesque. Kipling was a man with good sense about people and their differences, a quality we seem to have lost beyond recovery in our day.

...This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf --
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

Worth checking out

A couple of recent pieces I would like to draw your attention to, if you haven't seen them already. The first is a recent one from Tom's Big Picture. It's titled Pareto's Maxims on 'Equality' at Work in South Africa, and it pertains very much to our own situation. Pareto's words also express a little-recognized truth about egalitarianism, and the constant demands for equality.

The video linked is not an especially brief one, but it is certainly interesting and thought provoking; what is happening to the Afrikaaners might be our future, if present trends are not reversed.

Meanwhile over at the Lee in the Mountains blog, there is a great piece making the point that 'The plain fact is that we do not have unlimited time to restore and build our community.'

I agree very much.
Please stop over and check it out.

The forced conversation

Over at Free Republic, the mostly 'colorblind' Freepers have been discussing this article, which addresses the question apparently posed by a reader named Richard Banbury:

Why do we call Obama black?


...If we are in the business of telling the truth, when a designation is necessary, Obama is most precisely identified as African American.

As Banbury pointed out, "If he chose to, Barack could have identified himself with his mother's heritage and referred to himself as a white candidate, and perhaps requested to be so identified.

"But I don't think the press would have referred to him in that manner. Equally so, he shouldn't be referred to as a black candidate. It's not a matter of race or group identification. It's simply a question of journalistic accuracy."

Banbury's question as well as headlines from Pennsylvania and West Virginia and from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright episode remind me that the press too easily paints events in black and white. It's time to raise our dialogue about race in America to a more progressive level.

Given its power, the press has an obligation to inform that dialogue as accurately as possible. Obama's candidacy is a rare and riveting opportunity exactly because it is forcing conversations about issues that have been easier to ignore for centuries.''

I leave the Free Republic discussion to my readers' judgment.
But what of the question posed above, and the answer provided?

The writer says that Obama's candidacy is ''forcing conversations" about race, which the writer seems to think is an issue that has been ''ignored for centuries."

Given that a war was fought, with many Americans killed, which at least tangentially had to do with race, I don't see how it can be said that the issue has been ''ignored'. And what was all that uproar in the 1960s about, with the freedom riders and the marches and the National Guard in the schools in Little Rock? Somehow I got the impression it was about race.

What the writer probably alludes to, when she says it has been 'easier to ignore race', is the fact that most white people (and possibly other non-blacks) are too uneasy speaking about race or anything remotely connected to it. Since at least the 1950s, the subject has been a minefield that it's much wiser to avoid than to try to venture across. We've seen good people become casualties, as they chose a wrong word or phrase or allusion, and found themselves exiled from polite society, out of work, and disgraced.

On the other side, it can hardly be said that blacks have 'ignored the subject', since it has been so profitable for them to speak about little else, and to interject the subject where it has no relevance, to insist that all difficulties and inconveniences they experience are a result of race.

We can 'discuss' race, but for all of us who are not black or of another 'special' group, our role in any such discussion is not to discuss, but to listen submissively while we are berated and accused for everything wrong we or our ancestors, however remote, were guilty of. Answering back in self-defense is not allowed, and if we attempt it, we are further denounced for 'racism' and 'hate speech.'

So maybe there are understandable reasons why there has been little real discussion, real give-and-take, on the issue.

But with Obama as a candidate, predictably the subject of race is ever-present, even if only implicitly, in any news story relating to Obama. As I said last year, his candidacy will mean there is no escaping the racial sermons and recriminations.

As to the question addressed in the article, "why do we call Obama black", does this not strike anyone as a bizarre question, which would not have been asked in the old days (pre-PC), a question which is really a strange product of our 'colorblind', politically correct age?

Is the question not at least implying that race is truly a "social construct", or that it's just a matter of personal choice, as we self-identify?

I think this idea began to gain traction back in the 1970s. In college I knew more than a few leftist whites who claimed some Indian ancestry and who then began to wear beads, fringe, and turquoise jewelry and join 'Native American Students' groups on campus. All this with only a tenuous connection to some remote Indian ancestry. However, it is less easy to shift back and forth between a black and white identity.

I've met my share of people of mixed black and white, or black and Indian ("Native American") parentage, who always identify as black. In one case, the woman in question did not look black; I never guessed she was anything but white, but I learned from our boss that the woman was 'African-American.' Unless she informed them, nobody would guess.

It seems an ironclad rule that people of mixed race choose the nonwhite heritage, regardless of their appearance. But if we met Barack Obama, not knowing of his white maternal ancestry, would any of us look at him and think 'white'? If he decided to identify as 'white' and asked to be considered such, would that be credible? Yet that's what many of the Freepers seem to think he should do. "He has a white mother, so he's equally white and black." But does it work that way?

Many whites seem obsessed with Tiger Woods, and cite him as an example of somebody who embraces both heritages (Asian and black). But is he either? Both?

Can anybody be truly half-and-half, neutral between the two poles, especially when the two heritages are so greatly at odds?

And why is it important for the social engineers, the 'colorblind' liberals (Republican and Democrat alike) to pretend that race is not a given, but a chosen thing?

I think the fact that you have so many self-described 'conservatives' adopting the colorblind ideology is what's troubling.

And why is it that the old terms describing people of mixed ancestry are now apparently banished from our vocabulary? Is the word 'mulatto' verboten, like so many old-fashioned descriptive words?

The idea of the 'one-drop rule', supposedly enforced by racist whites, is mentioned, disparagingly, in this connection. In my experience, it seems that people with any degree of black ancestry automatically are part of the ''black community'' simply based on appearance. And that seems to be their personal preference.

By embracing the notion that race is something we can 'choose' I think we are giving place to the liberal idea that all of us are, or can be, self-created individuals, not constrained by sex/gender, nationality, or even that very visible quality, race. This is the liberal's idea of freedom: to construct our own identity, free of any innate, fixed traits over which we have no control.

Are we all perhaps just suffering from a serious cognitive dissonance, given the paradoxical, contradictory messages regarding race which our society imposes on us? On the one hand, ''we are all the same. There's only one race: the human race. Race is only skin deep. Race is a social construct." And on and on.

On the other hand: race is everything, because we are constantly told that 'diversity' based on race is essential to every society. Homogeneity is a bad, unhealthy thing -- and yet aren't we "all the same?"

But how is diversity possible unless we truly are unlike each other in some important ways?

And if colorblindness is the ideal, and recognizing race is bad, why are non-whites constantly talking about race, as if it's the most important thing in their identity and in their life? Why is affirmative action a good thing if judging based on race is bad?

What we have is an impossible situation in which non-whites obtain considerable advantages from keeping race front and center, emphasizing it, focusing on it, using it. Most whites, on the other hand, would prefer to play the 'colorblind' game, seeing as how the issue of race leads to accusations, guilt, and demands for concessions of one sort or another. It's a losing game for the rest of us, but a useful one for blacks, who reap the benefits of being a victim group.

I don't know how we can find our way out of this maze, but it's obvious that we need to try some different path than the present one, which keeps leading us in circles.

Is this the future?

I still can't get over this situation: the town of Mattawa, Washington, which is said to be no less than 93 percent Hispanic, is now being forced by the DOJ to provide city services in Spanish. This is for the sake of the 8 in 10 residents whose English is inadequate.

I posted a link to the Seattle Times article on this over at the Forum, and it indicated that the town has grown, in the last 20 years, from a population of about 300 to its current total of 3200. And from all appearances, virtually all of this explosive growth is due to immigration.

I would bet, too, that probably close to 100 percent of the immigration is illegal.
Think about those numbers, and also contemplate the fact that Washington state is not exactly a border state -- well, not a Mexican border state. Occasionally on various forums there is discussion of the rural Northwest being a good place to go to escape the immigrant tidal wave. Can I assume that we are all now disabused of that overoptimistic idea? The Northwest is not immune from the diversity epidemic, and what illegal immigration fails to do, the government will 'fix' by dropping a few thousand 'refugees' down here and there.

The VDare piece linked above emphasizes the necessity of assimilation; once I would have agreed without thinking. Yes, speak our language and defer to our ways of doing things once here in our country. But is assimilation a cure-all? No. Some immigrants, as I've emphasized before have assimilated outwardly, speaking English and participating in our mass culture -- but have nonetheless kept their old allegiances and identifications, and have not grown to be fully American.

I also question whether all CAN assimilate to our ways. I believe the more distant from us ethnically, the less likely to be able to truly assimilate. Culture is part of our genetics; it can't be changed like a suit of clothes as the pollyannas believe. And many, if not most, of today's immigrants have no wish to assimilate and be like us.

The other obvious issue is that assimilation is simply not workable or possible when we have such overwhelming numbers of immigrants from everywhere being deposited on our doorsteps. Assimilation only worked in the past because the numbers of immigrants were more manageable, and because we had a system which required that immigrants learn our language and conform to our ways. Nowadays, the system thwarts the process: with the emphasis on 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism', and aided by our lack of cultural pride and confidence, assimilation is impossible .

And in a way, I think this is good. Separation of incompatible groups of people is sometimes the only workable solution, contrary to our official government policy of throwing us all together in The Big Blender.

Assimilation, I think, is a false hope; as an ideal, it only delays our day of reckoning. It gives us the illusion that we can all coexist in this ever-more-confused 'nation of immigrants', and that we can all 'get along.'

Surely people will one day wake up and see that assimilation is really not possible in our present situation. In fact, if any assimilating is done, it will be our assimilation to the invaders' culture.

The remaining non-Hispanic people in Mattawa, if there are any, will either have to Hispanicize (via intermarriage, or simply conforming to Hispanic culture) or leave. Mattawa may be the future for a lot of us.

Memorial Day, without politics

I thought twice about posting anything related to Memorial Day, given that last year, my simple little Memorial Day picture and quote drew a rather angry comment from someone who objected to it on the basis of perceived jingoism or pro-militarism, from what I gathered.

So now it seems Memorial Day is controversial for both liberals and paleocons, based on objections to the Iraq War. Thus it seems as if the day is becoming more and more ignored, which I think is rather sad. After all, we all have kin who have died in various wars, and family members who have served in the military or are serving currently.

Can we not honor their memories without controversy over the war, or over the current government, with which many of us are disillusioned? Surely it should be possible to maintain this day of remembrance without politicizing it.

America, as I've said often, is really the people, not a government, or an idea, or a proposition. Let's remember the people in whose memory this day is set aside.

On the post-Katrina events

Since a commenter challenged me about my lack of a ''timeline'' following Katrina, I offer this page from FactCheck.org which provides a summary of 'What Happened When', for anyone who is interested.

Here is another page with much information from the Right Wing Nuthouse.

There are plenty of links provided on that page, not all of which may still be live, but good luck and happy hunting.

Is the all-powerful Red Queen toast?

The omens are not looking good for Hillary Clinton's campaign, and in the past, several years ago, I would have found that much more of an occasion to rejoice, as most of those on the mainstream 'right' are doing now. Why do I not feel that way now? Because unlike a few years ago, I now see that there are worse candidates than Hillary.

Does anybody really think her allusion to the RFK assassination was a 'threat' to Obama? I mean, would she be that stupid, even if she were as evil as those who loathe her believe she is?

She denies, (of course), that the comment was intended as a threat or a 'warning', and the Obama campaign (of course) is making what hay it can with the comment, though they may pretend to take the high ground and to be magnanimous about her gaffe.

But really: this woman is being abandoned by everybody that matters in the Democrat Party, it seems; Carter is telling her to give up, she's got the Kennedys incensed about her infelicitous remark.

Things don't look good for her, so where is the invincibility that many conservatives ascribed to her? Much of the semi-hysterical rhetoric about her on the right hinged on her almost superhuman ruthlessness and power. I have thought for some time now that Hillary's enemies on the right were exaggerating her supposedly formidable nature way beyond all reason.

When the Clintons first emerged onto the national stage in 1992, I had an immediate distrust of and antipathy towards Bill Clinton, so much so that it was the beginning of the end of my association with liberalism and the Democrat Party. However, I quickly noticed, early on, that Hillary inspired a much fiercer animus than did Bill among most on the right. Why was this so?

I certainly didn't like her; I still considered myself a feminist and I thought she was a fraud as a feminist; after all, she stupidly defended her husband's adulterous behavior and later on, when it was evident that she had political aspirations of her own, I saw her as riding on his coattails, and not relying on her own achievements.

But why did Hillary evoke such bitter hatred? People on the right coined various derogatory nicknames for Bill, most of them simply ridiculing him and his satyr-like inclinations. By contrast, most of the nicknames for Hillary were based on her supposed inhuman, evil nature: 'Hitlery' or 'Hellary' or 'HillZilla' or 'The Lizard Queen.'

Was the visceral dislike of her based on negative feelings toward domineering females? Did she remind many people of punitive schoolteachers they had as children, or overbearing mothers-in-law? I noticed that a lot of people called her 'Nurse Ratched'. I never saw the movie or read the book that character appeared in, but I understand the antipathy to that stereotype. I suppose there is something primally repellent about a cruel, ruthless, cold-blooded woman, given that the true feminine nature is supposed to have some nurturing, gentle qualities. For whatever reason, Hillary inspires a strong, negative reaction among many people, and she has definitely not won any friends lately.

The belief was she was inevitable as a presidential candidate, and that she had the whole Democrat Party in the palm of her hand, and was fully in command. There was no stopping her, so they said. There was this general idea that she was superhumanly powerful, unstoppable, a force of nature. Few believed that she was just a human being, and that she put her pant(suit) on one leg at a time like anybody else. No; she was the Witch Queen, like a character out of a horror movie. This still seems to be the consensus over at Free Republic and such places, and there seems to be little thought given to the idea that there may be worse than Hillary in store for us, while the Republican faithful are busy celebrating her impending political demise.

Just look at the nature of this latest kerfuffle: she supposedly made a veiled threat against Obama.
I said when Obama first began his campaign that he would be treated with kid gloves, and that any and all criticism of him would be closely scrutinized. I said that it would be all race, all the time, and so far that's not been too far wrong. Did the supposed 'threat' have a racial element to it? Remember that the Obama campaign, and the sympathetic media, have fretted about the possibilities of somebody making an attempt on the candidate's life. Surely that was in the back of such people's minds if not in the forefront when they overreacted to the comments.

Granted, it was a bizarre thing for Hillary to say; she seems to be lacking in tact and she seems to have a tin ear when choosing her words but I am doubtful that she is stupid enough to make threats in public, even those of a very ambiguous nature. If she was consciously doing that, she is evil, but if so, her evil is balanced out by her stupidity.

Evil is always more dangerous when accompanied by intelligence, and charm, the latter of which Hillary completely lacks, unlike her husband.

In that sense, I don't believe she is this menace to us all that she is cracked up to be; she might be a power-hungry woman and an ambitious woman, but she is so transparent that she is just not that good at duping most people. Beware of the charming people; they are much better at camouflaging their intentions.

Baldwin campaign website up

For those who aren't already aware of it, the Chuck Baldwin campaign website is now up, here.

Also, remember the The Baldwin 2008 Memorial Day Money Bomb.

Home

From the movie Gods and Generals, the opening titles and the beautiful song 'Going Home', sung by Mary Fahl.

Don't just stand there...

This post is not one that I had planned for today, but it's an impromptu post, based on comments I just read on another site, comments which echo almost identical remarks I've read countless times on other, similar sites and forums. In fact, more than once, I've had such remarks aimed at me on this blog.

Have you all guessed what I am about to write? The comments in question were along the lines of 'you talk about what is wrong but what are we supposed to do? Why aren't you out doing something? Why does everybody just complain, and do nothing? What about organizing?'

I've addressed such complaints -- or accusations framed as questions, before. But since this is such a common question, I'll try again.

To begin with: there are websites, forums, and blogs that DO promote some kind of action, usually along the lines of organizing faxing/e-mail/phone/letter-writing campaigns. Some have promoted boycotts. Some publicize and take part in protests and rallies, sometimes counter-rallies where the pro-amnesty mob is protesting. This is possible mostly where the people involved in the web forums are able to network in the real world with like-minded people and actually physically get together and do things as a group. Many of the people on certain anti-illegal forums, for example, are located in Southern California or Arizona, and hence can act as a group in their local areas.

Some bloggers are encouraging web-based activism, like e-mailing. But what other options are there, given that we are all scattered here and there?

This blog, like many similar ones, however, is frequented by people who are mostly widely dispersed throughout this vast continent. By means of my site statistics, I know that my regular readers are located not only in the U.S. and Canada, but in Europe, Australia, and even a few in Asia and elsewhere. This situation does not lend itself to organizing any kind of group effort.

I don't usually exhort my readers to fax, write, e-mail, or call anybody; I've done that on the odd occasion, like when the amnesty bill in, one of its lives, was threatening to succeed. But in general I tend to trust that my readers are savvy enough to do those things, and informed enough to know how to go about it: how to contact their representatives and make their wishes known.

But I support those who organize such campaigns. I don't disparage them, and I try to do what I can when I can.

I think many of us are prone to forget local action; this may be the area in which to concentrate, as opposed to Washington D.C., which seems to become more remote and unresponsive, if not downright hostile, with each day. I think we should be as involved as we can in local affairs in our towns/cities and counties, and let's remember school boards too, although I think homeschooling is the best choice these days.

And when I read these frequent complaints on various blogs and forums, I often feel inclined to question whether the complaining person is himself doing all he could in the real world, or whether he is looking to others to not only raise the alarm but to fight the fire too. Are we looking for leaders rather than taking our own initiative? When did we become such a nation of bystanders? In many cases we have to become the leaders we are looking for. If we wait around for the man on a white charger, it may be too late.

It's also good to remember that just because some of us are on the Internet, blogging or posting comments, that does not mean that we are not also doing what we can do in real life. It's a fallacy that the person who is a ''keyboard warrior',' as some disparagingly put it, is a shirker out there in the everyday real world. All of us, surely, have lives outside the Internet where we take these issues just as seriously as we do in cyberspace.

None of us knows what the rest are doing or not doing out there in the real world; it's not a case of either/or; being an 'internet activist' hardly precludes doing something in real life -- unless one spends all of one's waking hours at the computer.

Ideas and action are not mutually exclusive, although often the 'men of action' and the thinkers and exhorters and philosophers are two different groups of people. Everybody has a part to play, and as with any other effort, there has to be some specialization of function. We can't all be carrying out the same roles.

It would seem that the sphere of action is out there in the world around us, in our immediate surroundings. The Internet, in many cases, is just a place to discuss, philosophize, strategize, gather moral support, spread the word, but out there in the towns and communities we each inhabit, that's where we have to focus our real-life efforts.

At the same time, if anybody out there has suggestions for practical ways we can act, or if anybody has successes they can relate to inspire the rest of us, or give us hints as to what we might do, or how best to do it, I'm interested in any such stories.

This is a frustrating, disheartening effort, when it seems that the odds against us are long, and many people are outright hostile to us, but let's not blame each other for the obstacles we encounter. We need to have some kind of spiritual unity to give us the strength to keep going.

Reality comes to our town

Is worse better? We kicked that question around a week or two ago here on this blog, and I've been of the opinion that worsening conditions for white folks don't necessarily lead to a realistic attitude or a rejection of politically correct self-abasement.

We will soon see if worse is better here in my town. Some of my acquaintances are suddenly having their first experience with 'diversity' of any kind, really, and specifically of the Latino variety. Now I'm hearing tales from dismayed townspeople about trash-strewn yards, loud partying, lewd behavior (displayed to the entire shocked neighborhood), and verbal aggression by the immigrants. When I hear about these things, I have to resist strongly the urge to say 'I told you so.' I've been quietly informing people that this is what we may expect as our town Hispanifies.

What do my local friends answer, when I tell them the bad behavior is all too common? Well, it seems that the man who owns the house inhabited by the ill-behaved invaders is himself a fairly recent immigrant from south of the border --- ''but he's so nice!" everyone protests. This is always the problem: the naive whites, who want to think and speak only good things of everyone, will insist on clinging to the belief that the ones who are ''so nice" represent the vast majority, while the rowdies and the chaos-bringers are a few exceptions to the rule.

This is an across-the-board phenomenon when dealing with others, with minorities: the insistence, the desperation to find 'nice' members of the group and to focus on them alone, while wearing blinders in regard to bad behavior by many others.

How do we get past this? It's a real challenge.

Our media and our politically correct Marxist educators have successfully implanted in white people's minds the idea that any problems we encounter, from bad attitudes to violent crime among the minorities, is our fault, our problem, and that it's completely atypical. The 'real' minorities are the ones who are ''so nice'', like those on the ubiquitous TV commercials and in our movies and other entertainment. The real blacks are those nice lady judges and doctors and computer experts and teachers on TV and in movies; those who behave menacingly or belligerently, or who commit crimes against us or our neighbors are 'the exception'.

The 'real' Mexicans are those like the ''so nice'' landlord from Mexico --- who nonetheless allows a group of underclass illegal types to rent a house from him.

The problem is, that even with the exemplary minorities, they usually have friends or family members who are of the less exemplary kind, and they do little or nothing to discourage the bad behavior of their lawless kin and friends. I see a lot of whites desperate to find someone in the minority 'communities' that they can hold up as an example of how 'they are not all bad', and such whites will grasp at straws, hoping to find someone to deliver them from the horrible fate of believing in the negative stereotypes. Many are truly afraid of descending into 'racism', which they perceive either as a kind of mental illness or as moral depravity of the gravest kind. So they grasp at straws; any friendly, decent non-white is proof positive that minorities really are just like you and me, and that race is only skin deep. Many conservatives seem over-eager to find someone to fill the niche for them. For many politically-minded 'conservatives', the role is filled by people like Thomas Sowell, Condi Rice, Walter Williams. Or, for the counter-jihadists, it's people like Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, or the other 'good Moslems' or apostate Moslems. ('See? Many of them are on our side!)

Those who are trying to find 'friendly Latinos' have fewer public figures to hold up as examples of Latinos who are on our side.

How many pro-enforcement Mexican-American elected officials are there? There might be one or two somewhere, but none comes to mind. However, for most Americans looking for rescue from their 'racist' thoughts, they can look to, say, the guy who owns their favorite Mexican restaurant. And believe me, every neighborhood has a Mexican restaurant or two these days -- even my town. We have two of them, three, if you count the taco wagon. And everybody thinks the friendly immigrant owner and all the smiling waiters and busboys are proof that mass Mexican immigration is not so bad.

So on it goes. As long as there are two or three friendly faces, or good examples, many Americans will continue to live in a wishful thinking world where it's only the few who cause the problems, and the majority are really our friends -- regardless of the deterioration and the disruption and the chaos and crime they begin to see around them.

I can hope that the real world will intrude into my town just enough to educate my naive 'colorblind' Christian neighbors -- but how much educating, I wonder, will they require? Or will they never learn the lessons of reality? I hope that they will wake up before the whole town is turned into a replica of some border barrio.

Will reality prove more powerful than the stubborn will of many of my neighbors to remain 'open and inclusive'? Or will they continue to believe the fairytales, long after the town is gone to ruin?

Personally, my faith isn't strong enough to convince me that worse will soon turn to better.
I am left wondering how a nation of people who were once fairly hard-headed and savvy have now become such soft-headed, gullible dupes. What happened to us? Can it be reversed? And can it be reversed in time?

Following the truth

Lately over at TakiMag.com, there has been a lot of back-and-forth, mostly involving 'conservatives' showing off politically correct credentials by denouncing 'racism' on the part of other conservatives.

As part of that ongoing series of skirmishes, during an exchange following this post, Christopher Roach raises, in passing, the issue of the reported violence in the Superdome, following Katrina.

In Caleb Stegall's response, he piously denies that such events occurred, dismissing any violence as just run-of-the-mill 'teenage rape', on the one hand, and then questioning whether such attacks really happened. He says they were unsubstantiated, or exaggerated, and of course race is irrelevant.

Now, I don't want to get involved in the name-calling over at TakiMag, but this whole issue of the Superdome violence, and the larger picture of what happened following Katrina, is something that has bothered me since Katrina happened, in August 2005.

I followed the events very closely, being transfixed by the sheer magnitude of the storm and its effects on the area where it hit. I think most of us followed the news over the several days of the crisis there. My interest in the story was also rather personal, since I spent part of my childhood in Louisiana, and I had, at that time, kin in the area affected by Katrina, though not in New Orleans.

When the reports of widespread looting, crime, and general lawlessness started, I was not really surprised. However, as the reports continued and the picture appeared to worsen, with reports of snipers shooting at rescue workers, people in hospitals under attack, and so on, the overall impression of a descent into barbarism was inescapable.

During that time, I was regularly posting articles from the media and blogs on a Republican forum, and I posted a number of rather shocking pieces describing the horrifying scene in the Superdome. At first, these accounts seemed to be considered credible, and the online discussions seemed to accept the veracity of the stories, considering the detail provided. However, gradually some of the major news media began to put out op-ed pieces, questioning whether the worst events described (deaths, gang rapes) actually occurred. The seed of doubt was planted and soon the stories suddenly disappeared or were played down or denied outright.

Strangely, many of the regulars on the Republican message board shortly began to deny that any such atrocities happened in the Superdome, despite the reports we had all read and discussed, and they asserted, irrationally I thought, that the reports were either wild rumor, or lies made up by the liberal media.

Why would the media outright invent the stories? Well, the Bush loyalists asserted that the media, full of insane hatred for the President, made up the atrocity stories ''to make the President look bad.''

I suppose the full-time Bush apologists by this time were rather unhinged by the accusations from the Katrina 'survivors' and their media enablers that the President had "left them there to die". Or the bizarre accusations that the government had blown up the levees in a diabolical attempt to 'finish off' New Orleans and its people. That kind of looniness begat another kind of loony response from the 'right': they denied that the worst reports out of New Orleans were true.

That kind of thing is one example of the bizarre thought processes of many on the Republican side which caused me to flee from that whole group of people. I think the Bush-bashing, which was undeniably real, caused a kind of reverse "Bush-derangement syndrome", in which every bit of bad news from Katrina was alleged to be part of a conspiracy by the Bush-hating left and the liberal media.

Why, I asked, would the media invent these stories out of whole cloth? What would be the motive, other than 'trying to make our President look bad'? This just made little sense to me, not least because it would violate the first commandment of the liberal media: Thou shalt make minorities look good at all times.

Why would the media, even for the sake of "making the President look bad", go to the lengths of using unfavorable stories about revered minorities to do so? The media, even more than they want to discredit Republicans, want to cover up any unflattering stories about minority behavior. Their whole agenda is about fostering an image of a class of people who are above reproach, and shielded from criticism. If that means downplaying certain stories, or of twisting facts to flatter that group of people, they will do so.

But I don't believe for a moment that the liberal/leftist media (many of whom are minorities now, remember) would make up false rumors about savage behavior in the Superdome.

Another reason I didn't doubt the veracity of the stories: there were too many of them, with too many details, and with names. They were not merely 'hearsay' stories, based on unnamed, shadowy sources. There were reports coming out of UK papers, reports via British citizens who had the misfortune to be in the Superdome during the worst of it. There were reports from Australian citizens in similar situations.

There was one memorable piece out of New Orleans, by reporter Brian Thevenot, which provided considerable detail. I cannot find the online versions of these stories, but I saved parts of them. Here is an excerpt from the above-mentioned story:

'Meanwhile, a National Guardsman showed a reporter the many bodies piled up in the New Orleans Convention Center, including in the freezer.

"Don't step in that blood – it's contaminated," Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."

Then he shined the light on a smaller human figure under a white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

Continued the soldier: "There's an old woman," pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

The Guardsmen stationed at the center say there are between 30 and 40 bodies in the freezer.

"It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.

According to the New Orleans paper, in just one subdivision, Sherwood Forest, survivors who showed up to the Convention Center yesterday said police told them roughly 90 people in the neighborhood had died.

In St. Bernard, 22 bodies were found lashed together. Officials surmised the drowning victims had tried to stay together to keep themselves from being washed away in the storm.''

Was this, and so many other stories which I read, replete with detail and names, all concocted by the media? I just don't believe that.

I know why many refuse to believe it: simple political correctness. They don't want to acknowledge that these things may have actually occurred. Admitting that would have to lead to too many uncomfortable possibilities. It's so much better to play see-no-evil than to face these politically incorrect thoughts.

There is also this story from the BBC, which is here.

And there's more where that came from, although I won't present it here. It isn't necessary. The willful non-believers won't be convinced; they will just insist it's all urban legend -- even though the much-revered though liberal Snopes.com has not disproven these stories.

The whole episode, and the apparent banishing of these accounts down the PC memory hole, should not be tolerated. It's downright Orwellian.

And it's a shame that conservatives should fall prey to political correctness, and don the blinders required by that delusional system.

The truth has to be followed where it leads.

Large families?

Caveat: the following is not meant to disparage anybody who has few or no children. I am speaking in generalities and I trust that nobody will take offense at anything I say here.

In the recent discussion, the question of family size and number of children came up. Now, the most common reason we hear for encouraging large families these days, is the Mark Steyn-esque argument that we need to outbreed the Moslems. I think that's one of the least compelling, and the worst reasons, for having large families. First, can we, who are a dwindling number globally, out-reproduce the teeming Third World? Remember we are far outnumbered, and also keep in mind that this teeming Third World is knocking ever more insistently at our doors and windows. Those who are not already in our midst are on their way or planning to be on their way or trying to find out how they can get here, wishing to be somewhere in the 'rich world', as they call it in The Economist. So hoping to outpace the Third World in reproducing is a far-fetched hope.

There are better reasons for having large families, the best being that we love children and want to welcome as many as we can take care of into our already happy lives. And for Christians, we view kids as God's gift to us, and we want to raise them to know and love and serve and give glory to God.

As members of a large extended family called our nation or people, we want to raise our children to carry on the life of that group, and to continue our ways and our heritage into the future. Our children are the future for our particular line, and for our people.

Who should not have a large family, or perhaps any children? Those who don't want children, who are not prepared financially to care for them, or who are in some way not good candidates.

People should not reproduce carelessly and should not have children by accident.

But apart from all this, what are the advantages of big families?

Over the last 30-35 years, we've seen the triumph of the leftist-feminist idea that large families are harmful to women, who are thereby made nothing but domestic slaves to husband and children. Even many 'conservative' women believe this, and say as much. Once, only leftist feminists said and thought such things; now it's considered common wisdom among 'conservatives', sadly.

The other attitude that has won out since the counterculture days is the 'zero population growth' attitude, that somehow people having large families are irresponsible and backward and selfish, while having few or no children is the sure sign of an enlightened, environmentally responsible person.

Somehow, this ethic is never applied to the Third World peoples, whether they are at home in their native countries or whether they are here in our countries, breeding large families, at public expense.

Another argument that has been widely accepted is that couples cannot afford large families because today's world makes childrearing and stay-at-home mothering out of reach of 'average' people. I say this is not as true as we think; it's all a matter of priorities. It's only economically unfeasible for some people because they choose to spend their resources on pricey toys and gadgets, extensive travel, dining, and many other non-essentials while ruling out the 'expensive' family.

This is very much a 'live for today' attitude, which is at odds with conservatism or tradition.

Today we have much higher standards in terms of what we think is an acceptable standard of living. Many think poverty means having only one car, or living in a modest home rather than a McMansion, or shopping at a lower-price retailer (and I don't mean Wal-Mart) rather than having the trendiest, most up-to-date of everything.

In other words, many of us are spoiled and self-indulgent.
Most of us, myself included, could cut out a lot of the frills and nonessentials and thus have more money for the essentials. In this day of rising gas prices, and tightened budgets, we will probably have to cut out the fat.

But are there real arguments to be made for large families?
I grew up in a fairly large family of five children.

My parents were from large families, of thirteen and eight children, respectively.

Here's what I know from experience and observation about large families:
The children of large families are given more responsibility, usually through necessity, and they have to pull their weight and do their part. This encourages a work ethic and a mature attitude at an earlier age, as well as giving them confidence in what they can do.

They learn the idea of accommodating and getting along with others among a group of siblings.

Kids in a large family are each others' company and entertainment, as well as emotional support. You learn to interact with peers through interacting with your sisters and brothers. Granted, it's not always a bed of roses, but neither is life in the larger world. It teaches you a sense of reality.

"The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness."
- Nancy Mitford

Older children in the family act as role models (in positive ways, and sometimes negative ways).
Older siblings can sometimes be an inspiration either to do good things, or an example to avoid, by bad example. Having younger siblings helps us learn childcare skills and responsibility, which prepare us to be parents in our turn.

Having many siblings tends to teach us not to be as materialistic, because resources are spread rather thinner in large families, and we learn to have regard for others and their wants and needs as well as our own.

Children in larger families have a less exaggerated sense of their own importance; in a larger family you are not going to be doted upon by your parents or grandparents as much as if you were an only child. You thus attain a sense of perspective about yourself and your value. You don't get the idea that the sun rises and sets on you, in a large family. It isn't all about you. There are other people to be considered, and everybody has to take their turn, and learn to wait.

I've noticed that many 'only children' have more trouble relating to peers, or that they tend to be more idiosyncratic, more inclined to be loners. That can be good or bad, but from an outsider's perspective, it seems rather lonely to be an only child. Friends somewhat take the place of siblings, but friends can and do come and go. They are not always there for life, as siblings usually are.

Now I can hear the arguments that 'brothers and sisters aren't always close; many times they can't get along, and even loathe each other.' That's as may be; no doubt it happens, but I don't see that in really well-functioning, loving families much. I didn't see any of that kind of conflict in my Dad's family; the bond between him and his brothers and sisters, and their loyalty to each other, overrode any squabbles they had, which were few.

Blood is, as the old saying has it, thicker than water. Friends can fall out and part ways forever, (and yes, so can family members) but especially with a large family, even if you are estranged from one or two of your siblings, there are plenty of others there for you. Large families present better odds of having supportive, loyal family members who will stick by you.

The same is true of parents and children. My beloved Grandma, with thirteen children and dozens of grandchildren and who knows how many great-grandchildren never lacked for someone to care for her at the end of her life. She did live a long and healthy and active life, and her health failed only at the very end. She was always surrounded by people who loved her as only family members can love.

Of course we can love those who are not kin. But there is a special kind of accepting, enduring, unconditional love that is found among close kin. We can see it also between loving spouses and among certain very close friends, but the family circle is the main source of such love, and after all, it's within the close family unit that we first learn love, acceptance, cooperation, self-sacrifice, and compassion. We also learn patience, and contrariwise, we learn how to stand up for ourselves, if we have contentious siblings.

The family is a microcosm of the larger world out there. It can prepare us to succeed and prosper, given the right conditions. Even a less-than-ideal family can teach us useful lessons.

And surely having large families, with many caring relatives is better for society, especially when seen from a conservative or traditional perspective. In the future, given the prevalence of small families, there will be many, many older people who will rely on nursing home care, and on the ministrations of strangers and the government to help them as they become infirm.

In past eras, when there were large families, siblings shared in the care of the elders when they could no longer take care of themselves, and there was less need for the old folks to be warehoused in nursing homes as they aged and their health failed. Usually, one of the many children could take in the ailing parent and care for them at home.

From a conservative point of view, smaller families and many childless adults will one day mean many frail elderly having to be cared for by the state and by strangers in the relatively near future. If our ideal is smaller government, and a shrinking of the 'nanny state', small families are counterproductive. The presence of strong (and large) family support systems means far less need for entitlement programs and institutions for the elderly.

Likewise, the leftist-feminist agenda has created a need for more day-care centers and has led to a tendency to put toddlers in 'pre-schools' at earlier ages, in the care of the school system.This contrasts to the customs of the past. When I was a child, most of us did not leave our mothers until age six, when we were required to start first grade. Now, at age six, most children are already veterans of the 'system', and fully acculturated to the public school institution.

So the smaller family tends to mean more isolation, early in life and late in life, with the reliance on the rather impersonal institution rather than the loving bosom of the family.

There are many reasons why the left pushed the idea the desirability of few or no children, and of the 'village' raising our children, as opposed to parents and the extended family having control over their children's upbringing. Overall, the agenda has weakened the family and home and the influence thereof, in favor of the influence of the state and debased popular culture.

And speaking of debased popular culture, has anybody noticed how much our popular culture tends to disparage and ridicule the family unit, especially the traditional family? Many sitcoms and movies tend to portray 'dysfunctional' families with obnoxious, boorish parents and malicious siblings. The family is treated very roughly in our entertainment media. I think this is intentional.

People in a society with mostly small families and a weakened family unit are often people with few close ties, people who are rootless and disconnected and more prone to alienation and anomie. They might be possibly more inclined to find 'surrogate families' in weird places, like cults, or political causes, or perhaps simply to remain permanent adolescents, doing adolescent things into middle age or beyond. We often read the standard excuses made by liberal sociologists and journalists about how fatherless kids, (of whom we have many now) or kids with weak family bonds, join gangs, and find their support system there. We are social animals, and people who lack the most primal connections will either tend to find some substitute, or perhaps just become isolated. There does seem to me to be a larger number of isolated, lonely people in today's America, compared to the past.

On WikiAnswers, someone asked about the advantages and disadvantages of a large family.
The only response was this:

If someone decides to have a large family that's their business, however having a large family you better have a good salary or both parents working as the cost of having a large family today is expensive. With a small family the costs are less.''

Is this what it really comes down to, dollars and cents? It isn't possible to count everything in economic terms. Doing so, or even attempting to reduce everything to the naked economic calculations, shows a kind of soullessness that is the unique product of our spiritually impoverished time.

Our parents and grandparents raised families, often large families, in less prosperous times than ours. If they did it, so can those today who want families.

It all comes down to priorities.

“He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.” - Benjamin Franklin