Old Blind Dog

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Location: Texas

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Conversations

Some of my "turbulent thinking" over at Majority Rights.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

"America is creating a perverted orthodoxy"

Has belief in God become evidence of mental illness? Over at Majority Rights this is evidently the case.

In the post-war period American Christianity has seen a recession of the Christian element and a procession of the democratic. As the Christian element diminishes the democratic element - as if to mask its newfound muscularity - cloaks itself in sacred Christian rhetoric; a clever shell game.

This is a disturbing development for America and Christians. For instead of promoting the universality of Christ’s message – with a minimum of Christian dogma - America is creating a perverted orthodoxy with Christianity hopelessly entangled in democratic imperialism, engaged by military force.


So our President has faith in God. He is a Christian. He is a Liberal. He is showing evidence of Bipolar Disorder. He is one of the worst political criminals in American history. (see the comments section of the linked post)

I don't agree with everything George Bush does. I didn't agree with his father when he was President. Hell, I was as pissed at Ronald Reagan as I was at Bill Clinton! But, damnit, just because I don't agree with them politically is no reason to believe that they are mentally ill or somehow involved in some weird conspiracy because of the beliefs they have that are different. It pretty well precludes any meaningful dialogue doesn't it?

Demonization of the opposition is the order of the day.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

The Civil War Again

Libertarian Girl is writing about the Civil War again. In her latest she makes the statement:

Leftists would rather believe that the Civil War was a fight about tariffs, turning a noble cause into a greedy war about nothing but money and allowing leftists to wallow in guilt about being American.


I'm not sure where she's getting this interpretation. It isn't Leftists that think this. Leftists are the ones that think the civil war was only about freeing slaves. They also believe myths like the South's economy was based on cotton, which isn't true either.

Leftists, "blue staters", aka yankees, love to wrap themselves in the self-righteousness of freeing the slaves and claiming the South fought tooth and nail to hang on to the institution because our economy would fail when we had to pay people to pick cotton. Sorry, only 18% of the South's 569,201 farms produced enough agricultural staples to be classified as plantations by the Census Bureau. Fewer than 5% of the South's white's owned any slaves, and fewer than a third were even members of slave ownning families. Most Southerners made their living raising livestock, primarily hogs* but cattle too. This was, and still is, a battle of states rights. You can see it to this day in the recent efforts to abolish the electoral college by Sen. Feinstein and the grandstanding by Sen. Boxer and Congresswomam Tubbs in Ohio. It is nothing but an attempt to destroy this country by destroying federalism and states rights.

She says:

Paleo-conservative southerners also want to revise Civil War history. These types want to revel in the supposed "glory" of the Old South, and there's nothing glorious about a Confederacy that existed for nothing except slavery. So they made up the story that the South was about noble things like states' rights. Yet, in fact, the Confederacy was about nothing but slavery. The "states' rights" argument is bogus. The only "right" that was at issue was the "right" to own slaves, which is a right that no state should be allowed to have.


Besides the fact that that statement is breathtaking in its ignorance, it is also sad commentary on this country that the majority of people believe this PC rubbish and somehow seem to believe that if they dare to even entertain any other ideas their souls will forever be tainted. They will be branded RACIST for all the world to see.

Update: John Ray brings to our attention an article about Political Correctness in the case of professor Summers comments:

The soul of Political Correctness is a blinkered insistence that something is true, because of politics, especially in the face of all reason and evidence to the contrary.


As I have already stated above, the same can be seen in play in the debate of the causes of the Civil War.

*Walter Prescott Webb's classic The Great Plains provides a table that shows the number of Texas cattle driven to market in each of the fifteen years from 1866 to 1880. The average annual number was about 280,000, the total during the period 4,223,497. By contrast, during the last fifteen years of the antebellum period, Southerners drove or otherwise marketed an average of 4,468,400 hogs per year, the total during the period was 67,026,000. -- from Cracker Culture, Celtic Ways in the Old South, Grady McWhinney, pg. 53-55.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

The Cost of being Right

Clayton Cramer blogs about being right and on the Right in academia:

Then I look at examples like the ones that Lindgren gives. I look at the crap that Dr. Lott has gone through (and there are some stories he has told me on the phone that just infuriate me). I look at the political nonsense that even liberal academics have to go through because they aren't hard enough left to satisfy the prevailing orthodoxy. The only thing that I can think of, "I would love to devote my life to teaching and research, but why would any sane person throw themselves into that shark tank?"


Read the whole thing.

George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln

Libertarian Girl is blogging about George Bush's inaugural address and makes this statement:

In 1865, Lincoln addressed only half the nation, which was fighting a war against the other half. The purpose of the war was to free the slaves. (Despite what hate-America leftists say, the Civil War was about slavery.)


Sorry, but that is revisionist history. Besides it is the "hate-America leftists" that claim it was about slavery. Slavery was nothing but a pretext for war and an effort by the North to villify the South. The actual cause for the war was states rights. Like so much else in this country, just because you were taught a lie in school doesn't make it true.

Here are some of the myths about the issue with the correct facts:

1. Slavery was a "Southern" institution.

(Actually, most of the slave trade was conducted by Northerners, and Northerners owned slaves too.

2. Slavery was an attempt solely by the white race to subjugate the black race.

(Actually, slave owners were white, black, AND red, and slaves themselves were black, white, AND red).

3. The Civil war was waged by the Northerners to defeat slavery, and the Southerners were motivated solely by a desire to protect slavery.

(Actually, slavery was not the major cause of the war on either side. "States rights" indeed were the major issue; slavery was merely the trigger issue.)

4. The Northern Abolitionists were motivated by goodwill toward blacks.

(Actually, anti-black sentiment and racism was much more widespread in the North than in the South. Slavery was abolished in the North not because of any moral superiority, but primarily because whites wanted to protect jobs for white laborers.)

5. Abraham Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator," was a friend of the black race.

(Actually, Lincoln was a racist who believed (and publicly stated this belief) in the superiority of the white race. Lincoln trampled on the Constitution, going so far as to have his political enemies arrested without warrants of any sort, and held in jail without allowing them legal counsel as guaranteed by the Constitution.)

From a speech by Steve Wilkins:

Slavery, so far from being the cause of the war, was merely the pretext for revolution. As Prussian military theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz once stated, ‘War is the pursuit of political goals by other means.’ There was seldom a more successful revolution. The old Constitutional Republic was destroyed and an octopus‑like centralized government took its place.

James McPherson has noted, ‘The war marked the transition of the United States to a singular noun. The ‘Union' became the nation, and Americans now rarely speak of their Union except in an historical sense.’ This is a significant change. Our speech reflects this. Before 1865 the accepted usage was ‘The United States are,’ but since that time it has been ‘The United States is.’ We are no longer a union of confederated states, but a nation where the individual integrity and political sovereignty of the states is denied.

Thus, the old federal republic in which the national government rarely touched the average citizen except through the post‑office is now dead and has been replaced by centralized bureaucracy which seeks to control every action. What we call liberty, our forefathers called slavery.


Rev Steve Wilkins is the pastor of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and serves on the national board of the League of the South.

Libertarian Girl quoted George Bush's speech thus:

The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."


Abraham Lincoln and the Northern States denied the freedom to secede from the Union to the Southern States. The war was over states rights. Bluster about slavery does not change that but it certainly covers up the reality. The attack on our manner of government and way of life has been ongoing.


The South Was Right!

Myths of American Slavery

Justice

Judge gives officer 60 days for shooting boy

By ANDREW TILGHMAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Despite a jury's recommendation of probation, a judge today sentenced former Houston police officer Arthur Carbonneau to 60 days in jail for fatally shooting an unarmed 14-year-old boy during a scuffle.


This boy was not involved in the incident to which the police were called and attempted to leave the area, not wishing to be involved in something that was none of his business. So the officer assaulted him and then killed him. The prosecutor charged the officer with murder.

Having grown up in Houston, I can assure you that if the boy had killed the officer the penalty would have been life in prison at the least.

The judge declined a request from Assistant District Attorney Don Smyth that Carbonneau also be required to write an open letter of apology to the residents of Harris County.

"They think their police officers are gun-toting, trigger-happy fools," Smyth said afterward. "He's put everybody in fear and he owes everybody an apology. It's all his fault."


I doubt a letter of apology will do much to dispel the fears of the community. But HPD doesn't get it.

Lt. Robert Manzo, an HPD spokesman, said he doubts the trial's outcome will hurt police relations with the Hispanic community.

"We've built too many bridges over the years," he said. "The vast majority of Houston's population, including the Hispanic population, knows the great majority of our officers are good men and women."

Marticiuc said officers will continue to have a good relationship with the Hispanic community, although tensions will always exist between the department and certain groups with "political motivations."

"That's the way it always is, and we try to work with them," he said. "Policing is a difficult job, and sometimes bad things happen in the line of duty."


I feel so much better now knowing that the "great majority" are good.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Cancer silences “the most influential voice in the fight for gun rights”

Neal Knox is gone.

Evidence For Speciation & Intermediate Forms

Clayton continues blogging about evolution. He's been fairly even handed at it but is still holding evolution to a standard that other sciences don't have to meet, discounting much of the evidence as just not enough.

Update: We are continuing the e-mail exchange. As Clayton says in his post, it is a stimulating conversation.

Here's a link for further study.

Alvin 6th-grader shoots himself in the leg in class

ALVIN - A 6th-grade student at Passmore Elementary School accidentally fired a .22-caliber automatic pistol he had in his pocket Tuesday, grazing his leg, school officials said.

The student, who was not identified, had apparently brought his father's pistol to school and was playing with it in his pocket when the gun went off shortly before noon, said school superintendent Greg Smith.

Smith said a surprised substitute teacher in the language arts class asked "What was that?" when the gun went off.

"That was my gun," the student answered. "I shot myself in the leg."

The wound was minor and did not cause any bleeding. "He was very lucky," Smith said.


Well, that is certainly more fodder for the gun grabber's hysterical ravings.

Campus police are investigating to see if the boy will face criminal charges of bringing a firearm onto a campus. The boy's father may also face charges of allowing a minor to have access to a firearm, Smith said.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy against any kind of weapons being brought to school," Smith said.


Sounds as if they have it under control. The student will be disciplined, the father will have to shoulder responsibility for his child, but I'm certain that won't stop the GFW's from calling for more laws.


Shameless Self Promotion

Libertarian Girl blogs about a piece I wrote about in her comments where we were discussing the Muslim hate crime in NJ.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Leveraging Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

Last year Bush proposed a time out on proliferation of nuclear fuel making plants. Last week Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposed a five-year international moratorium on the further construction of such plants as documented at National Review Online.

[..] the U.S., its partners, and the IAEA should use the next five years to reassess which nuclear activities and materials can be safeguarded to provide timely warning of attempts to steal or divert them to make bombs. Certainly, after A. Q. Khan's proliferation successes (including the sale of a high-fidelity, Chinese-tested, missile-deliverable nuclear-weapons design), the amount of time, money, and staff required to make a bomb have declined. Also, with new technologies more widely available (e.g., compact uranium-enrichment centrifuges), what can be hidden from inspectors' view is greater than it once was.

The question in each case is by how much. Here, we owe it to ourselves and the future of nuclear power — to say nothing of the security of others — to find out. Certainly, what the IAEA can know and what it can adequately safeguard against is less than we previously thought. This has been made clear by the cascade of proliferation revelations in Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and the hair-raising discoveries about missing plutonium in Japan and unmonitored Pakistani nuclear sales. They're the reason why Bush last year proposed a time out on the further spread of nuclear-fuel-making plants and why ElBaradei's proposal last week is one we should back.


Certainly to be seriously considered. However, if that doesn't work, and it seems doubtful that Iran will go along with a moratorium on nuclear proliferation, another plan seems to be in the works.

WASHINGTON- U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism.
"It's not if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, the magazine said.

"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."


UPDATE (7:46pmCST):

I heard this report this afternoon almost as soon as I had posted the comments above, but just now have had the chance to get to it.

The Pentagon on Monday criticized a published report that said it was mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets.
"The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled "The Coming Wars," the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, said in a statement.


Sounds reasonable. Still, it's a pretty good dis-information campaign.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Getting your panties in a wad

Libertarian Girl spends the night out and decides to kiss and tell. Okay, maybe that's not such a good idea but what is amusing is all the guys in the comments section with their panties in a wad over it. C'mon guys what about the sexual revolution? Or was that just for us? Remember, if you nail her she nails you right back. So chill!

Recognition

I've been blogrolled by Publicola. As far as I know that is the first time I've been blogrolled by anyone. Thanks, I'll try to have something interesting to say.

For everyone that comes here from there, I certainly hope it is worth your while and you enjoy the visit.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Doubting Thomas

John Ray has a discussion at his scripture blog about what Thomas said when confronted with the sight of a risen Jesus.

As discussed here before one must be careful about what is in the NT. This passage is certainly one that makes the family of Jesus look defective in their knowledge and certainly foolish. It has all the earmarks of having been massaged by Paul, or his scribe, Luke, in order to promote his version of gentile Christianity. One must remember that Paul was a member of Herod's family and a Roman citizen. He had a vested interest in destroying Jewish Christianity and promoting himself to his masters.

Once again I refer those that doubt this to go and read this book before commenting. You may find yourself with a new perspective on the Gospels.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

The "Security of a Free State."

"A Well Regulated Militia, being Necessary to the Security of a Free State"

A select militia, particularly if it existed to the exclusion of the citizen militia, might undermine the free state, if citizens excluded from it were left defenseless, or if it disarmed the citizens and infringed their other rights (or both).


Like the police, FBI, ATFE, DEA, etc.? And laws restricting or banning firearms?

Whether The Second Amendment Secures An Individual Right

The Justice Department has rendered an opinion.

This is very long but a necessary read.

Here is a sample:

[..] the text of the Second Amendment points to a personal right of individuals: A "right of the people" is ordinarily and most naturally a right of individuals, not of a State and not merely of those serving the State as militiamen. The phrase "keep arms" at the time of the Founding usually indicated the private ownership and retention of arms by individuals as individuals, not the stockpiling of arms by a government or its soldiers, and the phrase certainly had that meaning when used in connection with a "right of the people." While the phrase "bear arms" often referred to carrying of arms in military service, it also sometimes denoted carrying arms for private purposes. The Amendment's prefatory clause, considered under proper rules of interpretation, could not negate the individual right recognized in the clear language of the operative clause. In any event, the prefatory clause - particularly its reference to the "Militia," which was understood at the Founding to encompass all able-bodied male citizens, who were required to be enrolled for service - is fully consistent with an individual-right reading of the operative language. Moreover, the Second Amendment appears in the Bill of Rights amid amendments securing numerous individual rights, a placement that makes it likely that the right of the people to keep and bear arms likewise belongs to individuals. Finally, a consideration of the powers that the original Constitution grants or allows over the militia makes it unlikely that the Second Amendment would secure a collective or quasi-collective right.


Read the whole thing.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Missing $10 leads to strip search

LA MARQUE - The Galveston County District Attorney's Office could take the case of 10 Mainland Preparatory Academy students ages 11 and 12 who were forced to strip to their undergarments while school officials searched for a missing $10 bill.

The incident happened on Thursday at the charter school, 319 Newman, when seven girls and three boys were searched during a study hall after one of the girls reported the money missing.

The boys were sent off with a male teacher and the girls with a female teacher, who told them to strip to their underwear. The money was never found.


Does this sound right to you? Evidently most of the parents of the students involved don't think so. Others, whose children weren't involved, think it's great.

Here is what the DA has to say:

Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said his office is waiting to receive a report from La Marque police about the strip search incident and will then determine whether there is evidence to proceed with any criminal complaints in the case.

"As far as the search goes, the schools have the same general right as law enforcement does," he said. "If they can articulate a reasonable suspicion that a law has been violated ... then they can proceed with whatever search that they feel is appropriate."



So the school has police powers?

Our children's teachers are cops!

Thursday, January 06, 2005

The Turd World

Diplomad writes:

Many years ago, as we prepared our return to a tough posting in the Far Abroad after leave in the States, our son asked, "Do we have to go back to the 'turd' world?" That phrase, "redolent" with the wisdom possessed only by children, has stayed with me over these passing years. My son was right about the 'turd' world. What tips you off that you have arrived in a poor country, a truly, genuinely dirt-poor corner of the Far Abroad, is the smell. As you leave the airport, you notice a special "exotic" odor of rotting vegetation, garbage, and feces combined with a slight whiff of smoke. Once you're there a bit, you no longer notice. When you leave and come back, it slams you all over again. The kid was right: we had been and still do live in the "Turd World."


Yes. I remember well the first time. As a kid I went on a visit with family to Mexico. The change from Texas to Mexico was (and still is) striking. It stinks!

Years later I was shocked to find, as a 20-something Corporal in the Marines on my first Med cruise so many years ago, that the very same rotten smell attached itself to Europe as well. The "first" world is the United States, the turd world is everything else.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Who is the bigger threat?

Many on the right love to hate left leaning "activist" judges, especially those of the 9th circuit. But the writings of these same conservative or libertarian blog and forum writers are just as alarming as those that are on the left. And these words are having an effect:

Judges must be protected, Rehnquist says

Threats to toss 'activists' from the bench may impede justice, he warns

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in a statement to be released today that judges must be protected from political threats, including from conservative Republicans who maintain that "judicial activists" should be impeached and removed from office.

The public, the media and politicians certainly are free to criticize judges, Rehnquist said, but politicians cross the line when they try to punish or impeach judges for decisions they do not agree with.

"The Constitution protects judicial independence not to benefit judges, but to promote the rule of law: Judges are expected to administer the law fairly, without regard to public reaction," the chief justice said in his traditional year-end report on the federal courts.

"A judge's 'judicial' acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment. Any other rule would destroy judicial independence," Rehnquist said. "Instead of trying to apply the law fairly, regardless of public opinion, judges would be concerned about inflaming any group that might be able to muster the votes in Congress to impeach and convict them."


Threats to impeach judges that don't rule "correctly" is as much an assault on our republic as are efforts to eliminate the electoral college. Either will see the destruction of the country.

Congress, however, is another matter.