
Alex Pareene on Olbermann. I did imagine he'd be taller.
The [Congressional Black C]aucus lives in a fantasy in which it is the "conscience of the Congress." Immune to the sort of scrutiny that many other groups receive, it has benefited from the soft bigotry of low expectations for decades.
As the Economist recently noted, gerrymandering and Democratic politics have resulted in a caucus well to the left of black America. Only four of 43 members of the group voted to ban partial-birth abortion in 2003, even though a majority of blacks favored such a ban. Most African Americans favor school choice, but because the caucus is firmly ensconced in the teacher-union racket, it bars the schoolhouse door to black kids who want a better education via vouchers. A majority of blacks oppose outright racial quotas, but don't tell that to the caucus. Or that blacks are heavily opposed to gay marriage.
Why pick on the blacks in Congress? Because they represent black leadership in America, and it has been on their watch that black America has descended into such a mess.
If you include blacks in prison or not seeking work — which conventional unemployment surveys don't — the true jobless rate for black men in their 20s without a high school diploma is 72%. At the height of the economic boom, in 2000,...
it was still about 65%, according to the New York Times....
Statistics on the black family are, if possible, even more depressing. In a moving essay in the Washington Post, Joy Jones lamented how wedlock has become unfashionable in much of black America. A sixth-grader recently informed her that "marriage is for white people." The statistics back the kid up (though marriage among whites isn't that rosy either). More than two-thirds of black babies are born out of wedlock. Sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University says blacks were more likely to be raised by both parents during slavery days than they are today.
There's a lot of Marxist-infused nonsense about how economics are at the root of black America's problems. But this doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Of course poverty makes social pathologies worse, but it's the pathologies that cause poverty in the first place.
I grew up in a time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. Then, as an adult, I saw divorce become more commonplace, then almost a rite of passage. Today it would appear that many -- particularly in the black community -- have dispensed with marriage altogether.
"Marriage is for white people."
That's what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title.
"That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."
"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."
The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country.
Although slavery was an atrocious social system, men and women back then nonetheless often succeeded in establishing working families.
But working mothers, unmarried couples living together, out-of-wedlock births, birth control, divorce and remarriage have transformed the social landscape. And no one seems to feel this more than African American women. One told me that with today's changing mores, it's hard to know "what normal looks like"
Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. Moreover, in an era of brothers on the "down low," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the decline of the stable blue-collar jobs that black men used to hold, linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman.
The turning point in my own thinking about marriage came when a longtime friend proposed about five years ago. He and I had attended college together, dated briefly, then kept in touch through the years. We built a solid friendship, which I believe is a good foundation for a successful marriage.
But -- if we had married, I would have had to relocate to the Midwest. Been there, done that, didn't like it. I would have had to become a stepmother and, although I felt an easy camaraderie with his son, stepmotherhood is usually a bumpy ride. I wanted a house and couldn't afford one alone. But I knew that if I was willing to make some changes, I eventually could.
As I reviewed the situation, I realized that all the things I expected marriage to confer -- male companionship, close family ties, a house -- I already had, or were within reach, and with exponentially less drama. I can do bad by myself, I used to say as I exited a relationship. But the truth is, I can do pretty good by myself, too.
Can you image the uproar over someone holding up a sign that read "White is Beautiful?"
Some of those voices aren't particularly civil; certain signs at the Los Angeles rally read "THIS IS STOLEN LAND" and "If you think I'm 'illegal' because I'm a Mexican learn the true history because this is my homeland."
After all, some of these guys want to follow St. Benedict into monasticism -- presumably with enough of a budget to keep the neo-monks in Priuses and organic toothpaste for as long as it takes Moloch to fall.
It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the more misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age ... and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. ... A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going,
Every now and then I've seen them running, running.
MacIntyre’s book argues that we have reached a decisive point of moral and cultural fragmentation in the West, having pushed radical individualism and moral relativism to the point where it is difficult to appeal to shared moral norms as a way of deciding public policy. Our moral language is increasingly empty, as we haven’t kept the communities and traditions that gave meaning to our moral language. He argues that we are at the point where the only sensible thing for traditionalists to do is to withdraw into smaller groupings and to construct “new forms of community within which the moral life [can] be sustained.”
We know how bad civil society broke down in New Orleans after Katrina, though happily many of the initial claims proved to have been exaggerated. What made an impression on me was three weeks later, when Hurricane Rita hit the Cajun country. I was down in south Louisiana that weekend, and it was instructive to watch the TV coverage of the aftermath on a Lafayette TV channel. Those rural and small-town Cajuns took care of each other.
2 boys ordered released
1 suspect in high school takeover plot faces immediate expulsion
By Paul Bird
paul.bird@indystar.com
FRANKLIN, Ind. -- Two of four boys accused of plotting to take over Center Grove High School were ordered released from custody after a Thursday hearing in Johnson County Juvenile Court.
One boy, 16, was scheduled for release after the hearing, according to his attorney. Juvenile Magistrate Marla Clark ordered the other boy, 15, released Monday.
All four were ordered by Clark to submit to psychological evaluations.
The Indianapolis Star generally does not identify juveniles charged with crimes.
The 16-year-old faced Clark for the first time. He is the only one of the four charged who is not in special-education classes, according to his attorney, Brian Newcomb, Franklin.
What seems to be the first thing on everybody's mind is that the prosecutor will seek to try the boys as adults. This seems, if not outright bloodthirsty, at least a tad premature to me--at least insofar as the public interest, if not the prosecutor's actions, go--and I have a relative at the school and a wife who's a teacher.
Some people have taken issue with an old two-line comment of mine on RedState.com where I referred to Coretta Scott King as a Communist on the day after her funeral. Coretta Scott King was many things, and her most significant contribution was the unflagging support of her husband in his own noble work to bring equality to all Americans. She was also a liberal activist on a number of issues, including same-sex marriage and abortion. The thread where my comment appeared discussed President Bush's attendance at Mrs. King's funeral, which was criticized by some for its political nature. My comment questioned the president's decision to attend the funeral after he had phoned in a message to the March for Life, the largest pro-life rally and a significant annual event. Mrs. King participated in many different political causes, some of which involved associations with questionable people, but referring to her as a Communist was a mistake, hyperbole in the context of a larger debate about President Bush's political priorities. Mea Culpa.
Well, look at this addenda posted at 9pm EST tonight by the radical left-wing Christian Peacemakers Team:
Addenda 23 March 2006, 9 p.m. ET
We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:
We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet.
BUT then the belated, grudging expression of gratitude is immediately followed by this:
As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers.
We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.
Religion [Rod Dreher 03/22 09:08 AM ]
I didn't set out to write this book with this in mind, but it became clear to me that the base of this entire neo-traditionalist sensibility is religious conviction. It quickly became clear in doing my research that almost everyone to whom I'd spoken was in some serious way a religious believer. Why is that? I think it's because people who are serious about their religion understand in their bones how devotion to God and to His laws must be the basis for ordering our own lives, and that of our society.
That does not have to mean a theocracy, I hasten to add;
I doubt anyone here would want to live in a theocracy, and the idea that the bishop could call the magistrate and have me put in jail is a revolting idea.
Why do I find it much easier as a Catholic to talk to a Southern Baptist or an Orthodox Jew about matters of faith, politics, society, etc., than with liberal members of my own church? It has to do with the way we view religious truth, and indeed Truth itself. Conservatives in whatever religion view Truth as transcendent, as something that can be known, however imperfectly, and as an objective standard that humans have to conform our own consciences to. The modern, liberal view is that Truth is mutable, and can be reinterpreted in every generation to suit the perceived needs of the community.
Re: Religion [Rod Dreher 03/22 01:01 PM ]
Given the direction of American society, is it becoming harder or easier to be a good orthodox Christian or Jew and a good American? ( In most ways, yes.
(The decline of public morality hardly needs commenting on. The deeper problem is that we have lost the vocabulary of moral absolutes, and increasingly, the only “thou shalt not” our pluralistic society recognizes is, “Thou shalt not impose your values on others.”
(This, of course, is only applicable to religious believers. A believer may keep his or her quaint devotions, but is expected to have the decency to keep them in the closet.
(Much religious life in America today seems to have accommodated itself quite nicely to the culture. Which makes it harder to live in an orthodox fashion. What are you supposed to do when the only doctrine ever heard from the pulpit is “I’m OK, You’re OK,” and you cannot be certain what anybody else in your church believes, other than the near-certainty that they believe they have the sovereign right to decide for themselves — that they are their own Pope? )
"If I had the money and the staff, we could enroll 200,000," [Falwell] said with a beatific smile.
There are building sites all over campus, including the recently dedicated LaHaye Ice Center, a hockey arena donated by Beverly and Tim LaHaye...
Monday, March 20, 2006
Qaeda failing to foment Iraq civil war: Cheney
WASHINGTON: US Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Al-Qaeda is failing in its effort to spark a civil war in Iraq, insisting that the group has reached a “stage of desperation.”
Speaking to CBS television, Cheney rejected the idea that the country had descended into civil war, despite a “clear attempt” by Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi to start such a conflict. “That’s been their strategy all along, but my view would be they’ve reached a stage of desperation from their standpoint.
“What we’ve seen is a serious effort by them to foment civil war but I don’t think they’ve been successful,” Cheney said. The vice president insisted that US efforts to establish a stable government in Baghdad are going well. “I think we are going to succeed in Iraq. I think the evidence is overwhelming,” he said.
What We've Gained In 3 Years in IraqSee what I mean? That stuff's so decrepit they would have refused to make soup out of it in Leningrad.
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
Washington Post Sunday, March 19, 2006; Page B07
Some have described the situation in Iraq as a tightening noose, noting that "time is not on our side"and that "morale is down." Others have described a "very dangerous" turn of events and are "extremely concerned."
Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years.
The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.
A NATION AT WAR: TUMULT
Cheers, Tears and Looting in Capital's Streets
New York Times, The (NY)
April 10, 2003
Author: JOHN F. BURNS
Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed in a matter of hours today across much of this capital city as ordinary Iraqis took to the streets in their thousands to topple Mr. Hussein's statues, loot government ministries and interrogation centers and to give a cheering, often tearful welcome to advancing American troops.
After three weeks battling their way north from Kuwait against Mr. Hussein's hard-core loyalists, Army and Marine Corps units moving into the districts of eastern Baghdad where many of the city's five million people live finally met the kind of adulation from ordinary Iraqis that American advocates of a war to topple Mr. Hussein had predicted.
Amid the celebration, many of Mr. Hussein's troops and officials simply abandoned their posts and ran away.
Much of Baghdad became, in a moment, a showcase of unbridled enthusiasm for America, as much as it metamorphosed into a crucible of unbridled hatred for Mr. Hussein and his 24-year rule.
A NATION AT WAR: THE IRAQIS
Looting and a Suicide Attack As Chaos Grows in Baghdad
New York Times, The (NY)
April 11, 2003
Author: JOHN F. BURNS
It was a day of widening anarchy in Baghdad today as the jubilation accompanying the collapse of Saddam Hussein's rule gave way to a spree of violence and looting.
A suicide bombing attack on a checkpoint manned by American marines left at least four of them severely injured, Marine officers said. The attack took place on the east bank of the Tigris River about a mile from the central Palestine Hotel. Mr. Hussein, before his fall, had promised a wave of suicide bombings against American forces.
For many Iraqis, the scenes of adulation that greeted American troops in east Baghdad on Wednesday, when whole neighborhoods turned out to cheer and wave at the Americans and to shout abuse for Mr. Hussein, began to give way to misgivings as a tide of looting grew.
The power vacuum in the city appeared almost complete, with no immediate prospect of a new order rising from the old.
For the second day, bands of looters had the free run of wide areas on both banks of the Tigris, breaking into at least six government ministries and setting several afire, as well as attacking the luxurious mansions of Mr. Hussein's two sons and other members of his ruling coterie.
Looters made off with liquor, guns and paintings of half-naked women from the home of Uday, one of Mr. Hussein's sons. They also took the white Arabian horses he kept.
Although there were some reports of American troops firing into the air to discourage the marauding bands, most of the looters were able to pick targets at will in plain view of American units, without fear of any American response.
One Marine officer standing atop a tank at a checkpoint in east Baghdad said that he had been asked repeatedly by Iraqis why his unit had done nothing to stop the looting and that he had explained that he had no orders to respond. "I tell them the truth, that we just don't have enough troops," he said.
Quirky Cons [Jonah Goldberg 03/15 01:40 PM ]
Quirkiness is good. Quirkiness is valuable. Quirkiness is fun. Why, right now I'm wearing a very quirky hat.
JEFF HART, BUSH, ETC [Jonah Goldberg ]
All due laud and honor to our colleague Jeff Hart. But I've only now read his LA Times piece . If you ask me, it makes his infamous Wall Street Journal essay seem cautious by comparison. I'm sure Rod loves parts of it, but I'd like to have a little more, you know, evidence . According to Hart, Bush is a free-market zealot and "privatization ideologue." Maybe someone could square that with this horrifying piece in today's USA Today which reports that:
A sweeping expansion of social programs since 2000 has sparked a record increase in the number of Americans receiving federal government benefits such as college aid, food stamps and health care. A USA TODAY analysis of 25 major government programs found that enrollment increased an average of 17% in the programs from 2000 to 2005. The nation's population grew 5% during that time.
Hart is a big believer in intellectual rigor but he throws out sweeping broadsides as if they are self-evidently true. Consider this passage:
Bush puts it this way: "It's wrong to destroy life in order to save life."
That works only if you think a dozen cells is the equivalent of an infant diagnosed with diabetes or an adult with Parkinson's disease. If you believe that, you will believe anything. In actuality, the supposed "culture of life" is a culture of disease and death.
Bush would like to abolish abortion. No one likes abortion. But a demand for it exists today that did not exist in 1950, let alone in 1920, when U.S. women got the vote. Today, look at a university campus. Half women. They are represented in all professions. They demand the right to decide if and when to have children. Criminalizing abortion would be folly, a disaster — and would fail, like that other prohibition. That's the actuality
Huh. So if you take the standard pro-life view on stem cell research "you'll believe anything." Does that go for the majority of the NR editorial board? Will Ramesh believe in unicorns and leprechauns because he believes respect for life requires a ban on embryonic stem cell research? In fairness, I don't think Ramesh ever said that a clump of cells is the same thing as an infant, but that just demonstrates how unfair Hart is being. He's created a strawman to debunk as an idiot and by association he calls a great many conservatives idiots as well.
As for the "demand" for abortion justifying abortion, this is really outrageous coming from someone who claims to despise populism. Indeed, he rests much of his criticism of Bush on the charge that Bush is a populist. But, simply because a large number of people want something he advocates -- in this case abortion -- pro-life conservatives should simply bow to "reality." By what standard of intellectual rigor should conservatives draw a line between what is right or wrong and what is merely popular if Hart is willing to cave to this logic on abortion?
I really don't get it.
WILLIAM F. Buckley Jr. has defined conservatism as "the politics of reality." Ideology is the enemy of conservatism because it edits, omits or ignores reality. George W. Bush is an ideologue.
As Buckley wrote in two recent columns, our Iraq policy "didn't work." The Bush centerpiece has been an astonishing flop.
Yet I know that I’m in a long line of those who have stood up for justice: John Brown, Henry Ward Beecher, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mary Elizabeth Clark, Catherine Doherty, Mother Teresa, Walter Rauschenbusch, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Nanne Zweip, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and on, and on, and on. Christians have stood against slavery, discrimination, war, poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, regressive taxation, and on, and on, and on, often well before the secular world cared about the issues. In spite of the church’s shining record of progressive issues, however, the Christian left’s contribution to mercy and justice has often been forgotten, perhaps because the right so often yells louder and pounds its fists harder.