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Monday, January 20, 2014

Appropriate perspective on this day

Two very good articles offer something of value on this day.  The first item restores what should be clear, the connection between religious roots and the advocacy for freedom propounded by MLK.
Like his namesake, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr fought against the systems of his day. King used religion and God as his tools. And as a good friend and fellow black Conservative said to me recently, "God will free people who believe from slavery." And that's exactly what happened. Black people escaped bondage once again, as racist Democrats led by a racist government were forced to bend to the will of God.

So why is Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, now referred to as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr?


It's simple.


The Left wants no remnants of the Christian revolution that changed this country.  They want to make people forget that the biggest change to happen to American since the Civil War was led by a black Christian who was also a Republican.

Referring to King as "Dr. King" implies that the Civil Rights movement was led by an academic, that academia brought us "change we can believe in."


Liberals believe in their educations, even if they have not a lick of practical experience or even common sense. Ph.D. King can lead a revolution, but a Republican pastor cannot be put in charge. That role is exclusively for black demagogues and fake reverends.
Both the first and the second item touch upon a proud legacy that is now a sorry legacy misappropriated by what Walter E. Williams calls "poverty pimps & race hustlers."  This item also places the King vision in the context of the American ideal.
He references the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He pleads for real justice, the abolition of force-wielding institutions of racial segregation, not the false “social justice” of material provision. He explicitly condemns hatred and violence, recognizing whites as “brothers and sisters.” Most powerfully, he concludes with the exhortation to “let freedom ring!”

Who among those laying claim to King’s legacy sound like him today? Who among the organized Left advocates for objective freedom and true justice? Who rejects hatred and fosters the healing of racial divides? Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? Van Jones? Barack Obama? Who?

The truth, laid bare for the discerning to see, is that those who most vocally lay claim to King’s legacy fundamentally reject his noble dream. Recall that quote most cited whenever King is evoked:
I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will no longer be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Consider what such a nation requires. In order to judge someone by the content of his character, you must remain free to do so and to act upon that judgment in pursuit of your own happiness. Effectively, you must be free to discriminate, to judge this as right and that as wrong, to deem one person good and another bad. Liberty proves foundational to King’s dream. Yet those laying claim to King’s legacy stand opposed to liberty at every turn.

We cannot force individuals to judge others by the content of their character. Any attempt to do so, any attempt to abolish racism by state decree, will fail on account of its ignoring the primacy of choice in the formation of values. King’s dream can only be achieved through persuasion, by appealing to reason and securing individual consent. Consequently, the world necessary to foster racial harmony counter-intuitively must tolerate offensive attitudes and choices.

True, under liberty we may never reach the ideal. But we’ll come a hell of a lot closer than under any other condition.
Yes, there are myriad benefits to liberty.

71 comments:

Peter said...

One of the most enduring modern myths, axiomatic to the left but by no means just the left, is the old Enlightenment shibboleth that religion is a reactionary force that does the bidding of the rich and powerful by keeping ordinary people complacent and cowered through superstition and social control. There have lots of times when that charge is fair, especially when churches make devil's pacts with the temporal authorities in exchange for priority and privilges. The history of the Catholic Church in non-Catholic countries is often much more inspiring than in Catholic countries. But it is notable how often religion has been a force for reform and social change for the better, a fact modern progressives simply can't process and will go to desperate lengths to revise history to deny.

The early medieval Church was downright radical in the areas of rights for women, legal reform, the abolition of torture and slavery and generally trying to keep folks out of dungeons. Not to mention spearheading scientific inquiry. Ho-hum by today's standards, but compared to what came before? British democracy and parliamentary government--the breaking of feudal aristocratic domination-- would have been impossible without the Puritans, who of course founded the States. The slave trade was stopped, not by salon progressives and sceptics musing about how irrational and unscientific racism was, but by non-Conformist junior officers of the British navy who fought and died in the fever swamps of West Africa in the belief we are all equal as children of God. Ditto for American abolitionists. Churches played a huge role in the defeat of the Soviets in Eastern Europe by giving the people the strength to resist. And then, of course, there was the Very Reverend MLK. The modern party line seems to be he was essentially a progressive sceptic who borrowed the catchy lingo to keep attendance up.

This is a very tricky issue for conservatives with their natural antipathy to radical change, fondness for the status quo and tendency to confuse defending the West and its values with chauvinsim/jingoism. Plus this periodic reformist zeal can often be directed to less than inspiring ends, such as liberation theology or Islamicism. Even when it's not, it can keep you on your toes in the most irritating, nagging ways. The pastor who happily blesses the troops returning from the Middle East may still have some sharp words for them about things like waterboarding.

Arguments about whether religion is a good or bad thing are great fun, but futile in the end because the question defies simple analysis and ends up being a bit like asking whether romantic love is a good thing. But kudos to Howard and the rest of you for delving into these questions. Frankly, I find the idea of an idealized secular, atheist libertarian society (I'm not sure which adjective is the most worrisome) more than a little harsh and forbidding and I'd like to think my friends here are similarly nervous.

Bret said...

"...who was also a Republican."

He was neither democrat nor republican.

adri said...

I understand Howard's point on race hustlers. There are demagogues in every political channel, it happens indeed. But I also ask myself: the people who were most like our Guys here in those times (white, doing well in life, conservative) - what were their positions? What where they thinking about MLK back then?

I am under the impression many would be calling him just one more race hustler, poverty pimp, false pastor.

Am I wrong?

adri said...

Ops, for the record, this is still Clovis. Got my wife's ipad...

Anonymous said...

I don't want to state my age, but this all happened before I was in high school so it's not something I thought about much at the time. However, in my very early days I was an anarchist and gradually evolved to minarchist / conservative.

erp said...

I was about your age then and the answer, Adri/Clovis, is no. Although King was a real Communist, he wasn't a race hustler -- big difference.

erp said...

PS: ... but he was surrounded by them.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Could you elaborate, please?

Why was he a Communist?

And how did you know back then he was different from the race hustlers surrounding him?

erp said...

I don't know why King was a Communist. Perhaps he believed communism was a better form of government than our Republic.

Race hustlers, or as I prefer to call them, poverty pimps, are easy to spot.

Hey Skipper said...

[Peter:] Frankly, I find the idea of an idealized secular, atheist libertarian society (I'm not sure which adjective is the most worrisome) more than a little harsh and forbidding and I'd like to think my friends here are similarly nervous.

Didn't used to be.

[erp:] I don't know why King was a Communist. Perhaps he believed communism was a better form of government than our Republic.

Zeitgeist.

And given how the US had treated blacks so badly for so long, perhaps he can be forgiven the mistake of believing that communism would eliminate racism.

It is a real shame he didn't live long enough to see what he helped cause.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
It is a real shame he didn't live long enough to see what he helped cause.
---
Do you believe that, as Robertson, he would say back then they were not singing the Blues?

I think he can only get a few comments of approval now, from Conservatives, precisely because he is dead.

For all the skepticism of the so called "Narrative" our friends here present, it is still true the social (r)evolutions during the XX Century were achieved not due to, but in spite of Conservativism.

Harry Eagar said...

'Puritans, who of course founded the States.'

Huh? I 'eard diff'rent.

Harry Eagar said...

'Am I wrong?'

Incomplete.

The first thing they called him, first and last, was communist.

I am laughing my ass off reading a supposed conservative encomium of the 'real' ideas of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King (as those of us who marched with him always called him, formally). No conservatives -- not one -- of the time ever thought that what he stood for was what they stood for.

I am the last person to tell conservatives what they think, but I know from knowledge gained at the wrong end of a shotgun what they did.

Harry Eagar said...

He wasn't a communist. erp wouldn't know a communist if she ever met one, which I doubt ever happened.

He was certainly supported by communists, and he certainly accepted their help. But he was in no way a communist.

As I wrot in a debate I had with the archconservative Virginius Dabney (who was among the first to try to cover over what they had done to King and start claiming him for themselves), I believe King would have welcomed the support of Dabney (editor then of the Richmond paper), but Dabney would not offer it.

While King's core supporters were black Christians, and while some white Christians also came to his aid (including me, who was a Catholic back then), the mass of white Christians reviled him.

I was there and enjoyed being reviled myself.

So let's stop falsifying events. I was there.

Harry Eagar said...

I am also laughing heartily at the rightwing talking point that calling Dr. King Dr. King is supposed to de-Christianize him. James Marocco, the most strident Christianist in Hawaii, is always referred to by his flock as Dr. Marocco.

It is meant as a term of respect. Nobody imagines Dr. Marocco is no a man of God.

erp said...

Harry:

a. Members of my family were Communists, you know the kind that live in Communist countries.

b. I actually met a KGB agent who was acting as the chauffeur when UN delegates came to my parent's house for dinner and their command of English was better than most Americans.

c. The whole event could have been a Woody Allen film.

d. As does Clovis, our relatives were lecturing us on the American way of life.

e. We had just returned from a 9,000 mile camping trip throughout the U.S. and Canada with photos, etc. but we were told that it was impossible and the photos were fakes because those things were propaganda put out by Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. (outside the 25 mi. area UN delegates were permitted to travel) was just as poor as the third world. You see, you and Clovis aren't the first to tell me that I am lying about my life experiences.

f. Our kids were small and we left because the response to their august presence wasn't what they expected and my husband, being of half Sicilian descent was getting more and more agitated by the condescending bordering on rude way they spoke to my bewildered mother, so we made our excuses and left. Apparently, they left shortly after.

These comical characters were the only certified Communists I met, but I knew many, many others who were Communists whether card-carrying or not. After all, I grew up in the 40's and 50's in New York City where there were, and probably still are, far more Communists than Protestants.

So you see you are wrong about this just as you are wrong about almost everything else. You marched with King! Really? If everybody who says they marched with him really did so, his entourages would numbered in the millions.

I believe King was a charismatic man who sincerely believed that black people could achieve equally as well as their fellow citizens if given half a chance. It's something I firmly believe as well. However, that wasn't the goal of the poverty pimps or professional agitators from whom he accepted lots of money. I don't believe he was an intellectual giant, so perhaps didn't understand exactly what he was buying into, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a Communist because on the score the "science is settled."

I love that phrase. :-)

Harry Eagar said...

So you are related to Albanian communists? Even other communists considered them an exotic breed.

What precisely did King say that was communistical?

At least you have confirmed for Clovis what I said about what rightwingers thought of King and made hash out of Howard's post. Sorry, Howard.

erp said...

Harry, what's so surprising about being related to people living in a country of my parent's origin.

Howard, I don't know how I made hash of your post, but if I did I apologize. King said he wants his kids to be judged by their character, not the color of their skin. I agree completely, as I do with Skipper's statement that King would have been disappointed that that concept has been turned on its head and the color of one's skin is the only thing that matters now.

Hey Skipper said...

While these parents may earn at or below the poverty level, they are never "poor." To them being broke is a changeable condition, while poverty is a mindset to be avoided.

[Hey Skipper:] It is a real shame he didn't live long enough to see what he helped cause.

---

[Clovis:] Do you believe that, as Robertson, he would say back then they were not singing the Blues?


That is a rigged question. Robertson spoke in the here and now; Rev. King died 46 years ago. The only way to unrig it is to ask what Rev. King would say about African Americans today compared to then. That is the comparison Robertson made, and Dr. King cannot.

He might say, as Robertson in effect did, that fewer African Americans are poor, but more of them are impoverished. The former is a material condition, the latter spiritual.

For all the skepticism of the so called "Narrative" our friends here present, it is still true the social (r)evolutions during the XX Century were achieved not due to, but in spite of Conservativism.

I think you simplify too much. With respect to African Americans, within my lifetime, the zeitgeist — of which I was a part — was that blacks were an inferior form of human being. Which raises the problem of applying contemporary standards to our predecessors. Most of the time, we foist that beguiling (because always self flattering, or in the case of progressives, self deceiving) intellectual mistake on our ancestors. But, and credit here must really be laid at Rev. King's feet, within a very few years, and with astonishingly little violence, the attitude of virtually all non-blacks changed completely.

So the US went from being overtly and pervasively racist to non-racist in less than a generation.

Nothing conservative about that.

But where conservatism comes in is inherent in the word itself: suspicion of rapid change. Not that because change isn't needed, or the present is perfect, but rather because there is a great deal of knowledge embedded within society that individual humans cannot begin to capture. Those advocating, or imposing, rapid change are either arrogantly assuming they possess sufficient knowledge to have know all the consequences, or, adding a splash of tyranny, simply conclude that their beliefs are reality as it should be.

Which means that when assessing the costs of conservatism, you also have to address the costs due to progressivism. For just one example, as an abstract concept, integrating schools is a good thing; therefore forced busing to achieve in the short term what would otherwise take decades, and a conservative would have left to the decades.

Discuss.

Hey Skipper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

Harry,

So you were in that marching? Pretty amazing.

Hey, give me some feeling of it. How did you end up there? And what do you mean with "the wrong side of a shotgun"? Did anyone actually shot you??

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
[...] but rather because there is a great deal of knowledge embedded within society that individual humans cannot begin to capture. Those advocating, or imposing, rapid change are either arrogantly assuming they possess sufficient knowledge to have know all the consequences, or, adding a splash of tyranny, simply conclude that their beliefs are reality as it should be.
---

I think you are walking over thin ice here.

Not every "knowledge embedded within society" deserves the name "knowledge". In many cases, it is ignorance in brute form. The discrimination of people by color is such one example, and to defend such discrimination should not stop suddenly, but take decades, is to covertly condone it.

I understand you, and Howard by the end of his post, believe that coercive laws implemented to stop that discrimination were wrong headed. I disagree. No one can command you to love thy neighbor, but society can certainly oblige you to stop throwing rocks at him, be them physical or moral ones. To the contrary, violent conflicts - which any society must minimize - will always erupt.

Harry Eagar said...

Early in 1963, my parents moved from Georgia, where nothing was integrated and as a young boy of 16 I was aware of the freedom protests only through news stories, to North Carolina, where the Catholic high schools were integrated. (This was regarded a impossibly radical and daring.)

Though my parents, especially my father, were antiracist, they were not activists, and it had not occurred to me that I could take part in street protests myself.

Within a few days of entering Raleigh Catholic High, I was invited to march in protest to integrate the movie theater. Curiously, the 5 of us who went were all white. The white students lived far, far from the black students, and there was no race mixing outside of school, until a little later when my sister and I had a sock hop party at our house and individually asked the black kids to come. (Some did, and after that there was integrated activities after school, although we still lived too far apart to just pal around together.)

I joined the 4, and I was completely ignorant and naive. I didn't know who had organized the march, or anything but the vaguest idea of its purpose or where we were going or what was expected to happen as we went.

There were at least 5,000 marchers, probably more. Other than our group of 5 kids, I saw only one other white person that day.

I had no fear. I expected there might be violence from the conservatives but I assumed that as a white person I would be immune. (I did not tell my parents what I was doing and when very late that night I got home and explained what I had been about, my father turned pale; he knew a lot about redneck violence and was frightened.)

We marched up the main street. If there were any speeches I was too far back to hear them. I don't think there were, it was a silent witness.

At sundown, my friends had to leave. The reason they gave was that they were worried about what might happen after dark and we had a girl with us. When I say "friends," I barely knew them; I had been in the school only a few days.

So I stayed. In Raleigh, the governor's mansion is in a square downtown and we marched around and around the square. I didn't see any police and there were only a few white people watching us.

My most vivid (because personal) memory of that afternoon and night was when we marched past a public bench on which 2 or 3 older whites sat. As we passed a woman stuck her chin out at me and said to her companions, "They're worse than the niggers."

When people like Howard try to claim antisegregation away from the liberals and for the conservatives, that is what I think of. I was the liberal. The people on the bench were the conservatives.

Night fell and we kept circling the mansion, where a soiree was being held. At one point a young couple in evening dress came out on the verandah and waltzed to show us they didn't care. Those were conservatives, too.

Later the crowd moved to the gymnasium at Shaw University (a black college). By that time I was the only white person left. (I know there were at least 5,000 at the march because he gym held 5,000 and we filled it.)

I was seated in the top row and was ignored. No one spoke to me or even looked at me with any curiosity. They were absorbed in singing hymns. As a Catholic, I didn't know the music so I sat there for several hours.

Harry Eagar said...



I don't remember how the meeting broke up or whether I left before it did. I walked home, about 10 miles, and got back after midnight, to find my parents anxious.

We failed to integrate the theater and after that I did most of my integrating one-on-one by being as provocative as I could in stores and school.

The shotgun came the day after King was shot in 1968. Tricia and I were driving back from the hospital where we had gone to get syphilis tests in preparation for our wedding the coming Saturday. (Tricia ran the tests for the department of health.)

As went went one way we encountered a memorial march of black people, mostly students, coming up the road the other way. Hey were proceeded by a couple of motorcycle cops and escorted by squad cars that signaled all traffic to stop.

As we waited for the throng to pass, a high-left Chevelle raced past us to the rear of the march, then reversed at high speed into the crowd. The students broke and ran. It was lucky no one was hurt.

As one passed my car, he leaned into the open window and spat in my face. Just ahead of me, another used his umbrella to smash the windshield of a pickup truck occupied by 2 whites.

The driver got out and pulled a shotgun from behind the seat. That was the first time in my career as an integrationist that I felt danger was close to me personally.

I memorized his license plate number and maneuvered my car through the riot (fortunately it was a small Saab) and stopped just beyond the melee where I found a telephone and called the police about the shotgun.

And then I went home as I was selfishly more concerned about my wedding than Dr. King's murder.

(I have been shot at twice but neither involved race relations.)

The 1963 march was my last. I concluded (wrongly I now see) that marching was ineffective. From then on, I made it a point to integrate the South by going places where no other white people went -- concerts, football games, restaurants, stores, churches, farms. And by razzing and jeering the racists.

I should not say it, but I feel deep contempt for conservatives who try to muscle in and claim that integration was something they can claim on their credit ledger. I was there, they were always opposed. Always.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

society can certainly oblige you to stop throwing rocks at him

As we've discussed, I don't consider such a law coercive, as it increases consent, it doesn't restrict it.

Harry Eagar said...

'I don't consider such a law coercive'

Yeah, well, the people the law was aimed at did.

Anonymous said...

Argue with them about it, then.

Harry Eagar said...

I have been all my life.

Hey Skipper said...

I think you are walking over thin ice here.

Not every "knowledge embedded within society" deserves the name "knowledge".

In many cases, it is ignorance in brute form. The discrimination of people by color is such one example, and to defend such discrimination should not stop suddenly, but take decades, is to covertly condone it.


That's all well and good as a declarative statement, but that amounts to a wholesale denial that societies have, in effect, mass and inertia. Progressives make declarative statements such as yours, and, when they can manage it, back them up with similarly stringent actions.

Unfortunately, progressives never think to consider the costs of their impositions, because they are so obviously correct. Forced busing, which shifted kids all over cities to eliminate de facto segregation in schools, was an extremely coercive policy imposed by progressives upon other people.

It isn't the least bit obvious that busing produced a better outcome than simply outlawing institutional discrimination in housing and school funding. Yes, neighborhoods might well have remained segregated for decades, because there is all kinds of information embedded in society that should have warned progressives that societies no more turn on a dime than do cruise ships. It is arguable that coercive busing is one of the things that has caused significant damage to the US public school system.

Also, you lose sight between kinds of coercion: preventive, where government uses its power to prevent people doing things (speeding, heroin trafficking, murder) and compulsive, making people do things (purchasing healthcare coverage, kids getting bused across town).

With regard to civil rights, Howard's (if I may be so bold as to speak for him) and my position is that our society would have been far better served by a Civil Rights act the prohibited discriminatory laws and practices. That would have been preventive coercion, and, in so doing, would have aligned the US legal system with the FF's fundamental assertion that, before the law, everyone is equal.

Considering the pathologies afflicting contemporary African Americans, I think it takes more than declaratory statements to demonstrate that compulsive policies produced better outcomes than preventive policies. Especially when considering the circumstances of other minorities, easily badly enough treated, who were not compulsions "beneficiaries".

Harry Eagar said...

'prohibited discriminatory laws and practices.'

That was what the liberals did; for example, they prohibited discrimination in public accommodation.

And the conservatives hated it and are still trying to undo it. So your hopeful fantasy is belied by real experience.

And where do you get the idea that progressives don't consider results? They observed actual results and took effective steps to change them.

Clovis said...

Skipper,


---
With regard to civil rights, Howard's (if I may be so bold as to speak for him) and my position is that our society would have been far better served by a Civil Rights act the prohibited discriminatory laws and practices. That would have been preventive coercion [...]
---

I guess you lost my point. It was about preventive coercion I was talking about.

Or please walk me through on how to not understand that part...

"Consequently, the world necessary to foster racial harmony counter-intuitively must tolerate offensive attitudes and choices."

... as a disclaimer against the "preventive coercion" kind of laws?

Imagine you are Black, and everyday a White passes through you and say "You *&#@%^# inferior niger!". If there are no laws for you to complain about it to the police, how would it not end up in racial blood feud?

Clovis said...

Harry,

That makes for a really interesting story, thanks for sharing it.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] That was what the liberals did; for example, they prohibited discrimination in public accommodation.

Full credit where credit is due. Progressives were, indeed, the ones who pushed for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, gender, etc to be equal before the law. Progressives were instrumental in getting the US far closer to its ideals.

Herein lies irony. Progressives, collectivists that they are, had their greatest achievements in pursuit of individualist goals. And their greatest failures are due to their collectivism. Title IX has long since turned into a farce, but progressives hope to extend its silliness into STEM fields. Lifetime entitlement to welfare at least contributed to generational unemployment among Africa Americans. Progressives did everything they could to resist changing it. Maybe my imagination is limited this morning, but I can't think of a single progressive program that has been reformed in any meaningful sense of the term.

And the conservatives hated [anti-discrimination laws] and are still trying to undo [them].

Conservatives are trying to undo what? Why? Links, please.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I guess you lost my point. It was about preventive coercion I was talking about.

Yes, I must have lost it. I think you are arguing that the individualists here have been happy with all manner kinds of governmental coercion, and you used abolishing slavery by decree as an example. After all, it coercively deprived people of their property; if that is OK, then there is nothing unconstitutional about the ACA.

That sounds to me like you are using an example of eliminating an institution that grotesquely traduced the constitution with accepting a law that itself tramples on the constitution, using degree of coercion to equate the two.

That is where you lose me. Once enough people took on board that blacks are human, then slavery and the Constitution could no longer co-exist. The degree of coercion involved is immaterial is completely beside the point: when the zeitgeist changed, then slavery became in political fact what we now know was always morally wrong.

This is a good example of why arguing from analogy is almost always wrong. If the situations are not analogous, then any such argument is facially wrong. With regard to slavery, the consequence was to greatly reduce the scope of coercion; the ACA, in contrast, greatly increases it.

(I also think you have neglected another value of a negative-rights Constitution. It can act as a corrective. Yes, there will be laws that push, or step over, the boundary. But without some overarching basis that can provide some sense of limits to governmental power, then it is a lot harder to contain government's power.)

Imagine you are Black, and everyday a White passes through you and say "You *&#@%^# inferior niger!". If there are no laws for you to complain about it to the police, how would it not end up in racial blood feud?

I'm not sure there are any specific laws against saying such a thing. (There are "fighting words" limitations to free speech, but they are based upon the likely outcome of any such statement, not any specific group to which fighting words could be addressed.

Harry Eagar said...

Here's an example: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2013/11/photographic-license-to-discriminate.html

There are worse out there but I might have to direct you to Wonkette.

I won't say that all, or even most conservatives are out to overturn public accommodation laws but there is definitely a section of the libertarians who want to.

erp said...

Skipper, I can't remember any actions of so-called progressives that did anything to help anyone. All their actions are self-serving to gain more power. The Civil Rights Act was passed by Republicans. As I said in a previous post, if integration was so important to the left, why didn't FDR take the opportunity at the height of the war to integrate the military?

This argument is getting ridiculously repetitious. The leftist unions kept blacks out the country and returning GI's were given preference to non-union jobs so they were forced to accommodate themselves to welfare rules that said only women without a man in the home could receive welfare. That broke up families and started the slippery slope to the disgrace we see today.

Hey Skipper said...

There are worse out there but I might have to direct you to Wonkette.

Really, is that all you have?

A woman is forced by the state to provide labor for something that violates her religious beliefs.

There is no suggestion that she declines to serve officially aggrieved groups in any other context. There is no argument that her constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion or speech should fall prey to statutory anti-discrimination law. Nothing in the way of the pernicious effects of created protected classes of people. Not a hint that these women could not get photographic services elsewhere. No acknowledgment that the photographer was acting against monetary interest.

Among the very many things the rest of us can count on progressives for is conclusions without arguments.

You presume the correctness of your conclusion: protecting aggrieved groups outweighs all other considerations.

Once again, a conclusion absent an argument.

[erp:] Skipper, I can't remember any actions of so-called progressives that did anything to help anyone.

IMHO, without progressives, equality before the law for blacks, women, and gays would have been greatly delayed.

But I do agree with you that everything following, everything focused on the group rather than the individual, has been pretty much a slow-motion disaster.

erp said...

Skipper, here I must respectfully disagree. In fact, I fully supported the hippies at the beginning being young and naive I assumed they meant it when they said we should all do "our own thing." It was only when I found out "our own thing" was socialism that I opted out.

True fact: In the early 60's we were on a road trip and at a toll booth somewhere in the hinterlands we came upon a VW bus adorned with peace signs*, etc. Disreputable looking bearded and beaded creatures were being harassed by the attendants.

We got out of the car and offered to pay for the tow charges if it had broken down, but that wasn't the case, so told the attendants to cut it out, paid the toll for them and drove behind them for many miles to make sure the state police weren't alerted.

I also supported the first Civil Rights Act which desegregated all public facilities. It was only when they started down the slippery slope of telling people what to do with their private property, that I drew the line.

The end of that line is every part of our lives is now monitored. Even the Nazis didn't have as complete a record of us all as these vile "progressives." I love the New Speak. You can always tell what they're doing by what they accuse others of doing. Projection is alive and well among lefties.

They're progressive only in their headlong destruction of the U.S. and our way of life, now only a memory in old geezers like us. We'll all be gone soon. Then all the history books will be rewritten and then ................ and this is what I can't understand. Why and to what end?

*We supported the Vietnam war for reasons having to do with the SEATO treaty, etc. It was only later I learned that our cultural revolution was funded by and directed by real Communists just like the one in China.

Harry Eagar said...

' It was only later I learned that our cultural revolution was funded by and directed by real Communists just like the one in China.'

Bwaaaah!

Clovis said...

Skipper,


---
[Clovis] how would it not end up in racial blood feud?

I'm not sure there are any specific laws against saying such a thing.
---

Gosh, so my mistake for taking my reality to yours. To humiliate someone with pejorative use of racial words is a crime down here.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Gosh, so my mistake for taking my reality to [be] yours.

No worries, completely understandable.

My surmise about hate speech laws in the US is correct.

Note this from the intro: Critics have argued that the term "hate speech" is a contemporary example of Newspeak, used to silence critics of social policies that have been poorly implemented in a rush to appear politically correct.

Which is exactly what progressives do with their promiscuous defamatory accusations. They rely on TwoMinutes Hate to silence dissent.

I think it noteworthy that despite the complete absence of laws against hate speech, and an abundance of groups against whom it could be directed, it almost never happens. (Outside the fever swamps of progressive thoughtcrime, that is.)

Our college campuses however, havens for progressives, are far happier to charge thoughtcrime.

Hey Skipper said...

erp:

I don't see how equality before the law for blacks, women, and gays happens without progressives.

If they had stopped right there, eliminating institutionalized barriers to individual merit, then their success would be total.

But that would mean calling it a day, folding up tents, and heading home for well deserved victory beers.

Unfortunately, since they are inherently antagonistic to individualism, they went straight back to collectivism and disregarding individual in favor of the putative groups to which they belong.

That is where they turned poisonous.

erp said...

Skipper, what time period are you referring to and exactly what did they do?

During the 60's lacking obamaphones and video games, the left offered free sex and drugs to get the weakminded on their side.

Howard said...

Boy I missed lots of fun, but sometimes things need to get done in the crunch. Erp, you didn't make a hash of the post. The use by MLK of both religious principals and the ideals of the founding in appealing for broader freedom and inclusion have not been rebutted. That was the main point. However, the real problem is not the minor mis-characterization any of us might make, it's the items that are correct which "harsh the narrative." That drives progressives nuts...adds fuel to the fire.

Hey Skipper, I largely agree with your comments including clarifications and defense in my absence.(last one is a gem) Thanks

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Skipper, what time period are you referring to and exactly what did they do?

For black civil rights, starting with Truman integrating the military, through the Civil Rights struggles in the South, through to, but not including, Johnson's Great Society disaster.

For women's civil rights, what would count as "second wave" feminism; that is, the push to eliminate laws and practices that relied upon gender as a primary determinant of merit.

I think the free sex & drugs were not related to either black's or women's civil rights, but were the consequence of other things, and for the left, counted as a self-inflicted wound.

erp said...


Harry, if you can tear yourself away from the Wonket, read Horowitz' book and find out what really happened.

erp said...

Skipper, I don't know your age, but I assume it's within the Baby Boomer parameters. Free sex and drugs played a huge part in the riots, sit-ins and marches. It was Bacchanalia for a cause. How seductive is that to hormone infused young people,

I'm enough older than you to have seen all that from an adult's view point. The women's movement was mostly lesbian driven and became so stridently anti-male, it lost a lot of us who actually had to deal with and fought against the discrimination individually on a daily basis.

The sissifying of boys is another predictable outcome of the women's movement. It's a tragedy because without the bravado and feeling of immortality inherent in young males, who will build the future?

One of the amusing things I've noticed lately, is that young women are opting to be stay-at-home-moms -- anathema to women only a few years ago. It's become a status thing. How's that song go: Everything old is new again.

Harry Eagar said...

I was there, erp. I know what happened. I helped make it happen.

Howard, if King was conservative, how do you explain the total absence (to put it kindly) of conservative support for him?

Was Goldwater for King? No. Reagan? No. Helms? Bwaaahhh.

Hoover, who tried to persuade him to kill himself?

The claim of conservatives for a space in King's tent is really insulting.

erp said...

Harry if you were "there," you know I'm right.

Conservatives didn't support King because, if, as you say, he wasn't a Communist, he surrounded himself with them and allowed them to run him?

That's why conservatives didn't support him. Reminiscent of Mandala.

My reason for posting the exact wording of the Constitution is because your side is spreading the news that it says blacks aren't human beings. It obviously doesn't, but abortionists do say it in plain English -- unborn babies are merely disposable tissue to be tossed into the dust bin.

'Splain that if you can.

Other persons means just that.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] Howard, if King was conservative, how do you explain the total absence (to put it kindly) of conservative support for him?

That must be the rhetorical "if", because near as I can tell -- that is, limiting myself to the words on the screen, and their meanings -- I can't see where Howard claimed King was a conservative.

Perhaps you have one of those special monitors that translates English into Progressive.

For those of us who speak English, that is really insulting.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] My reason for posting the exact wording of the Constitution is because your side is spreading the news that it says blacks aren't human beings.

Thanks for that.

I had for years kind of bought the lie without thinking about it.

(It is the same sort of lie progressives spread about Citizens United, but that is a subject for another day.)

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Skipper, I don't know your age, but I assume it's within the Baby Boomer parameters.

A lot older than AOG -- 59 in April.

IMHO, emphasis on the O, essentially all the people who took great risks for black civil rights were "progressives". Regardless of progressives' later failings, in this regard they were on the right side of history and morality.

My mother was, and remains, a toxic feminist, so I'm reasonably well versed in that regard.

But, again IMHO, from the suffragettes through the mid-60s, feminism was largely concerned with removing legal barriers that may well have been even more burdensome in many respects than Jim Crow laws.

If only progressives could have at that point simply declared victory.

erp said...

Toxic? Is she anti-men?

I'm probably your mother's age (79) and at the beginning that was the stated aim of the woman's movement, but they quickly went far beyond that and as with all lefties, have done far more harm than good, i.e., 110 lb, 5'3" girl firemen.

I was a victim of moral and legal attitudes about girls and women and could write a book about it, but that doesn't mean that I have lost my mind and deny biology. If somebody is going to rescue me from a fire, I want a 6'3" guy who can actually carry me out of the window.

I've always said, the girls got the brains and boys got the brawn. Works just fine.

Is your mother conservative?

Hey Skipper said...

Toxic? Is she anti-men?

Not in general, only those with a backbone.

I'm probably your mother's age (79) ...

Close as dammit is to swearing.

... and at the beginning that was the stated aim of the woman's movement, but they quickly went far beyond that and as with all lefties, have done far more harm than good, i.e., 110 lb, 5'3" girl firemen.

Exactly. She has a bookcase full of the sort of dreck that can only come from a full on, yet completely unacknowledged, insistence that evolution has no narratively unwelcome consequences.

IOW, she is the kind of feminist that if equality of opportunity does not yield equality of outcome, then so much the worse for opportunity.

... girls got the brains and boys got the brawn. Works just fine.

I am going to disagree a bit here. Girls have girl brains, and boys have boy brains. In your formulation, women have more brains to compensate boys brawn. But that implies equality in kind, but difference in degree.

I think it is opposite: difference in kind that is so substantial that it renders considerations of degree meaningless.

Is your mother conservative?

This is where we enter the twilight zone. She spent nearly all her adult life in the fever swamps of academia, and also spent a long time as deeply involved with the RNC.

About five years ago, she gave the GOP the heave-ho because of its bizarre tendency to view almost all abortions as murders of convenience.

(As an exercise to readers, see if you can identify which word I did not surround with scare quotes.)

Clovis said...

Skipper,


---
Critics have argued that the term "hate speech" is a contemporary example of Newspeak, used to silence critics of social policies that have been poorly implemented in a rush to appear politically correct. [...]
---

Well, I think a clarification here is in order.

Even though we do criminalize racial hate speech down here, it would be not true to say it is used to "silence critics of social policies".

Up to recently (10 years), there were absolutely no affirmative action kinds of policy here for the above to be true.

So every instance I know of where the law was used, it really involved what you would call "fighting words". (Disclaimer: I rarely follow judicial matters to be the best source about it though).

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Is your mother conservative?
---

God, are you doing background checks now Erp?

Are your sons conservatives?

erp said...

Skipper, I spent my life with women like your mother, in academia and in society, so you needn't elaborate. Girls have girl brains and girl brawn. It is different, but because boys with their boy brains and brawn don't value it, women like your mother had to drive it home to them by denying the undeniable.

I always liked to drive it home not aping men (pun intended), but by frequently bettering them at brain work. Very galling, especially among those god-like academics whose field of knowledge is so minute it's only understood by a handful of others like themselves.

This was driven home at a large academic party where playing Trivial Pursuit (it had just come out) was the main entertainment.

Quite hilarious. I had never played the game, but in those days my eidetic memory was still operating on full throttle. The winning question was, in the song, Yellow Rose of Texas, what were the girls from Tennessee called? The answer from the reigning genius was, that's a stupid question. The game, was after all about trivia. Had the game been about trivial writings in left-wing propaganda, his speciality, I would have declined to play, knowing nothing about the subject.

BTW - read up of suffragettes. They were in the main church ladies much in the same vein as the anti-slavery groups and not in my definition of lefties.

Harry Eagar said...

Except that they were leftists. Read up on the important influence of the Federation of American Women's Clubs.

Call them carriage liberals if you like.

Next thing, I guess, you will be informing us that the opposition to the 19th Amendment came from the Progressives.

Sheesh.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] I always liked to drive it home not aping men (pun intended), but by frequently bettering them at brain work.

Clearly, women are (speaking statistically) as good, or better than, men at some kinds of brain work.

Toxic feminists insist that women are as good as men are, except where women are better.

But that is nonsense. Men are vastly better at some mental tasks -- mentally manipulating 3D objects and mechanical reasoning are two of the most obvious examples.



erp said...

If I were 20 years younger, I'd challenge you to a contest on 3D imagery, but you may be right that some men are better at spatial stuff than some women. That's as far as I will go.

I'm glad men and women are different and have different skills. We already went around this one. Women get men to fix things that require one to get covered with glop and goo, i.e., plumbing, car repair, etc. or lift heavy stuff and other icky things. So which ones are the ones with the most brains again?

The girls who worked at those jobs during WWII, girls who in the main never worked outside the home at all, stepped up to the plate and did as good or better a job and then, and this is most important part, went back to their kitchens and let their men think they were happy doing it.

How many men would do the same for their women?

erp said...

Harry, you really need to nail down who and what, in your feverish mind, are the right and the left. In your universe, the sides change with mind boggling speed. As far as I can see, if it's something you like, the left supported it and if it's something you don't like, the right did.

It's hard for a person some normal reasoning ability to keep up.

Obviously only women of upper middle class and above had the leisure and means to support causes like abolition and the women's vote and they were mostly affiliated with Protestant church groups. I wouldn't label them socialists at that time although in modern times, you're right, they've moved very far left.

Hey Skipper said...

If I were 20 years younger, I'd challenge you to a contest on 3D imagery, but you may be right that some men are better at spatial stuff than some women.

And you might well win.

However, [on average, men] have a standard deviation higher spatial intelligence quotient than women. A standard deviation difference is substantial. Given standard distributions, shifting the male curve one SD to the right of the female curve means the mean of the male curve is greater than something like 70% of the female distribution.

Mechanical aptitude is even more unevenly distributed.

So the question isn't who is smarter, or more manipulative, but rather one of capability. If men weren't around to outsmart or manipulate, and parthenogenesis worked for humans, humans would not have any of the mechanical marvels of civilization.

Assembly line work is an altogether different thing.

erp said...


... suitable for women.

I forgive you though because you're so cute!





Harry Eagar said...

'Obviously only women of upper middle class and above had the leisure and means to support causes like abolition and the women's vote'

You really don't know anything about America, do you?

There were working class women in those fights but the point I made was different: The upper income women you are talking about were important supporters of policies that today's rightwingers hate; all kinds of government regulation; support for poor working families etc.

erp said...

Harry, thank you for the compliment. You are right I don't understand your vision of what America is all about and please do define working class.


Working class women didn't have the luxury of time or money to engage in causes during the period of abolition or voting rights for women.

I stated categorically in my comment above that the church groups that supported those causes morphed into the upper class lefties of the present days who support causes that make them feel superior to us peons and most of the time also add a couple of bucks to their bottom lines.

Doing well by doing good.

Harry Eagar said...

'Working class women didn't have the luxury of time or money to engage in causes during the period of abolition or voting rights for women.'

History sez:

There were important ethnic involvements as well by recent immigrants. Norwegian American women, based in the rural upper Midwest, built their claims to an American identity on their suffrage work. They felt that the progressive politics of Norway, which included women's rights, provided a strong foundation for their demands for political equality and inclusion in the U.S. They told their kinswomen they had a cultural duty to promote women's rights, especially through the Scandinavian Woman's Suffrage Association.

Harry Eagar said...

And history also sez this:

Again, disappointment turned to resolve. White middle-class women's clubs, unions, church groups, black self-help groups, temperance groups, and Socialists all incorporated the suffrage issue into their day-to-day grassroots community work. They believed that if women could vote, they could clean up dirty politics and cure social ills like child labor, prostitution and poverty. Disfranchisement became a powerful symbol that unified women from all walks of life.

erp said...

Harry, your second comment makes my case for me. Thanks you. Unless, of course, you are claiming middle class women have been transmorgified into the working class category?

Your first comment doesn't even rise to your usual level of obscurity.

Again, thanks.

Harry Eagar said...

erp, you claim to have a good education. Can you read the word UNION, or is it invisible to you unless followed by thug?

You claim to have grown up in New York. Yet somehow you missed all he political activism by working women in New York.

erp said...

I get it now, by working class women you mean union thugettes. I don't consider them working class although they may wear blue (or pink) collar shirts and it's quite the joke if you think they were working for the blacks (or darkies as you call them). Unions kept blacks out of the unions back in the day and for all I know are still doing it.

You'll be amused by this: I ran into a New Yawker like myself and about the same age. We chatted and she said she worked for a union, I forgot which one and I took that to mean she worked for the union organization, but no, she worked for a company the union had in its grip. See, she knew for whom she worked and it wasn't the guys who signed her checks. When I queried her on her odd take on her employer, she was shocked by my question and couldn't understand it.

Harry Eagar said...

You know nothing about America. If you are as old as you say and lived in New York, you would have seen working women actively taking part in public issues. But perhaps you turned a blind eye to it all.

Your comments do provide a useful example of the "I got mine" ideology of the rightwing, in case sometimes we are inclined to give the rightwing credit for public-spiritedness.