Oct
31
2006
The election, in 80 words or less
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The election, in 80 words or less
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment
James Taranto summed up next week’s election in such bold and concise terms, I quote the following entry in its entirety:
“Arab governments are looking for change in U.S. policy in the Middle East after the midterm elections,” the Associated Press reports:
One thing they hope for is that a politically weakened President Bush would talk with Iran and Syria. They also hope he would show greater interest in the Palestinians and find a way out of the crisis in Iraq.So if you want a politically weakened president cutting deals with terror-sponsoring dictatorships, vote Democratic on Nov. 7.
Oct
30
2006
The more the merrier
Filed Under Internet and Blogging | Leave a Comment
The more the merrier
Filed Under Internet and Blogging | Leave a Comment
Today we welcome longtime friend and occasional kibbitzer Dan Wheeler as our newest contributor to The Black Republican. Despite being the instigator of more than a few posts, Dan has rebuffed several requests to join the blog on prior occasions. Finally, today, after sending a blistering email complaining about our foes in the Dino-Media, he has accepted the offer. The retooled rant is already posted as Dan’s first contribution.
As is our tradition, we eagerly await a brief statement from the new arrival that can serve as his bio on our About Us page. Welcome aboard, Dan!
UPDATE: Unlike our other contributors, Dan sent me a brief bio within 24 hours (as requested) rather than post an elaborate self-introduction. You can read it here.
Oct
30
2006
I’ve been thinking for some time now that publishing the results of polls is the MSM’s way of swaying political opinion. Since high school economics class nearly 20 years ago, I’ve been aware of the ‘bandwagon’ technique. You show people that a LOT of other people are doing X and the people who are doing Y suddenly feel the need to do X. It’s peer pressure.
Oct
30
2006
I was planning to just show the second video in this post, mainly because it is in support of Michael Steele – a true Black Republican – but decided that to be fully understood and as affective as possible it needed some context. So I have decided to include the ad that prompted the Steele response. And similar to a real STEEL response, it cuts straight and wounds deep, and leaves the viewer with no other reaction but “Ouch! That’s gotta hurt!”
Watch them both and see if you don’t agree.
Political Ad for Democratic Candidate Ben Cardin:
Response Ad from Republican Candidate Michael Steele:
Oct
28
2006
What Price, Freedom?
Filed Under Liberty and Democracy | 2 Comments
What Price, Freedom?
Filed Under Liberty and Democracy | 2 Comments
The debate at Dean’s World continues, with a response from Dean. In one curious passage, he tries to make a parallel that undermines his case, I think.
But hiding your head in the sand and pretending there is no Islamophobia problem would be like, in the 1950s, hiding your head in the sand and claiming there were no Communists in America. After all, McCarthy was discredited–and rightly so–so therefore, there was never any Communist problem?First of all, for the analogy to work, the people we would be “sticking our head in the sand” about, analogous to the Communists, are Muslims whose loyalty to the Great Experiment we are questioning. The Lizardoids of LGF would be McCarthyites. And Dean’s belief that Islamaphobia is a great concern would put him in the role of Edward R. Murrow.
The problem is, Dean’s hypothetical and the question that follows is a common belief among the hard left and their friends in the media. Or, at least, many of them say it’s true that there were no Communists in Hollywood in an attempt to influence the American people to believe it. I can’t count the number of people who have told me that there never were any communists, really.
As an example, Good Night, and Good Luck certainly leaves the impression that if there were any Communists, they were vastly outnumbered by the false accusations. The KGB archives and the Venona project show us otherwise. Which do you suppose more Americans believe? How many Americans have even heard of Venona, and understand its significance?
Ronald Coleman countered with this insightful comment:
Is every expression of one’s ideas entitled to be accepted in the public debate — even when those ideas themselves are antithetical to such debate and, if adopted, would end it?Ron is right – while we continue to allow all Americans the right to free speech and free association, there are some groups that we have attached a stigma to, in effect saying: don’t buy into the rhetoric from these people. The KKK and the American Nazis rightfully bear that stigma. Communists, not nearly so much, but the Communists have a different plan than the KKK and the Nazis. They seek the advancement of their goals more than the banner they fly under. When someone comes close to pinning someone else with this stigma as Communist, they say, “This isn’t communism, this is Liberalism or Progressivism.” Then they spin it around: “This is just the attempt of our McCarthyite opponents to shut us up.” Progressives and Neo-Liberals (because today’s Liberals aren’t really), out of sympathy for the ideals they share or out of ignorance, do not shun the arrival of these Leftists to their ranks.That is the concept in play here. McCarthy said, Communism, like Nazism, is beyond the pale. They only want debate so they can end debate.
Modern critics of Islamism say the same about that ideology.
Assuming they are right, do we not agree that democracy is not a suicide pact? Must not the price of admission to the debate be a rolling acknowledgment that there will always be debate?
If not, democracy is not even worth fighting or dying for — in which case our concerns are moot.
How are we supposed to respond to this? Classical Liberals long ago decided (I think, wrongly) to redefine themselves as “Conservative”, and continue the stigmatization project by demonizing Liberalism. It’s worked to a lesser extent (less than 20% of the American people will now identify with the label “Liberal”), but at what price?
Oct
26
2006
Dean’s World featured a lengthy diatribe against Little Green Footballs yesterday, followed by an intense comment thread in which I took part. This is my response to Dean.
First, I’ll link to the same video Charles and Dean did, because it’s slick, powerful, and effective.
But while Dean seems to suggest this is a kind of proof that there are moderate Muslims, and therefore we should redouble our efforts to avoid “Islamophobia”, I say we haven’t seen this often enough to know that we don’t have anything to fear from Islam itself. It reminds me of some Cox & Forkum cartoons, and a reprint they post today makes me think it’s not a coincidence they’re on the same topic.
In their accompanying post, the artists opine:
It remains to be seen if the American people will turn on Bush. But it’s clear he is not fighting to win.I’m as strong a supporter as the President has, and I’m voting Republican enthusiastically as far as the eye can see. And yet I can’t say I disagree.
Dean, I don’t judge your dedication to the war, or your support of the troops. But threads like yours that suggest we’re not being nice enough to Muslims are what drives the President to try and fight a “decent” war. And that not only drives me nuts, it’s quite probably the cause of most of our deaths in Iraq. If we’d fight balls-to-the-walls, we’d not only run the enemy to ground, and scare the bejesus out of anyone thinking of supporting them, but we’d inspire our own people to stop squabbling and sniping, and quite possibly destroy the anti-war liberal nutroot movement by depriving Liberalism of what little sanity it has left.
The enemy is already willing to sacrifice some of its future for its cause. We can only defeat them when we convince them their only two options are surrender or sacrificing ALL of their future as targets to our war machine.
That’s despicable and unthinkable. But that’s what total war is all about.
I’m very sorry for all those good and decent, freedom-loving Muslims who don’t want their religion to become just another target of hatred in this conflict. I feel bad that some people will end up hurt by prejudice. But no matter how many times you say there should be no scare quotes around “moderate”, we haven’t rounded up all Muslims like we did to the Issei. And in return for our allegience to our principles, do we see stories of large swaths of young Muslim Americans joining the fight against jihadism to prove their loyalty, the way the Issei did? Not so much.
Do we see rallies of enraged Muslims, angered that their American homeland was attacked and their religion hijacked by lunatics? I haven’t seen any.
Do we at least hear about American imams encouraging their faithful to help root out terrorist infiltrators in their communities? On the contrary, CAIR sues the government for trying to protect its own members from the terrorists.
So we have a President trying to fight a war without offending anyone, and Muslims who spend a great deal of time being offended over cartoons, the pope’s remarks, and our government’s intrusion into their privacy when they just happen to talk to terrorists calling them on the telephone for a little chat.
Amid all this, I’m supposed to indulge your need to berate people because they get a little stir-crazy over this kind of lunacy and say stupid stuff about Muslims?
Sorry, but I can’t really say you’re being very classically liberal on this. I want to offer democracy and freedom as an alternative to the Arabs and Muslims we’re dealing with. But, unfortunately, it’s got to be an alternative to their own deaths.
It’s them or us. It’s for us or against us. It’s victory or death.
UPDATE: Back over at Dean’s World, Mary Madigan seems to be calling Dean out on the carpet for his post.
(H)ow many of us have gone nutpicking in LGFs comment section? …How many people avoid reading or linking to sites that have been blacklisted as Islamophobic, despite the fact that these sites contain hard-to-find information about real, often local terrorist groups?Maybe we have been looking for hate in all the wrong places.
Another update is in the extended entry.
Oct
25
2006
It’s Deja Vu all over again!
Filed Under History | Leave a Comment
It’s Deja Vu all over again!
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Adhering to an unofficial rule of this website that any mention of Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War automatically rates it own post, I give you this.
How does it go again…oh, yea. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Oct
24
2006
In a shocking display of honesty, the ABC News blog The Note has disclosed the talking points of the DMP (Dino-Media Party) for the last two weeks of the election.
How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election:Throughout the dextrosphere, this should kind of disclosure should be officially known as “Rathergate Insurance”.1. Glowingly profile Speaker-Inevitable Nancy Pelosi, with loving mentions of her grandmotherly steel (see last night’s 60 Minutes), and fail to describe her as “ultra liberal” or “an extreme liberal,” which would mirror the way Gingrich was painted twelve years ago.
2. Look at every attempt by the President to define the race on his terms as deluded and desperate; increasingly quote Republican strategists saying that the President is hurting the party whenever he enters the fray.
3. Refuse to join the daily morning Ken Mehlman-Rush Limbaugh conference calls, despite repeated invitations.
4. Imbue every Democratic candidate for whom Bill Clinton campaigns with a golden halo.
5. Paint groups that run ads or do turnout for Republican candidates as shadowy, extreme, corrupt, and illegitimate; describe their analogues on the left as valiant underdogs, part of a People’s Army (with homage to Rich Lowry).
6. Care more about voter disenfranchisement than voter fraud.
7. Take every Republican quote expressing some trepidation about the outcome and banner it.
8. Drop any pretense of covering good news from Iraq (uhm&.) or good news about the economy, including some upcoming positive macro numbers (Quick, Note readers: name the current Secretary of the Treasury.).
9. Amplify Obama-mania as a metaphor for the Democratic Party being the party of excitement and the future.
10. Fail to follow Bob Novak’s analysis of the difference between Democratic and Republican oppo plants.
11. Lock in the CW (which, shockingly, could be wrong) that the winner of two out three Senate races in Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri will control the Senate.
Oct
23
2006
Stand and fight, or cut and run?
Filed Under War and Terrorism | Leave a Comment
Stand and fight, or cut and run?
Filed Under War and Terrorism | Leave a Comment
Yesterday over at RealClearPolitics, Michael Barone has posted a very good article, Uneasy for a Reason, contrasting the United States of today – where the population has just passed the 300 million mark – to the United States circa 1967, when the population passed the 200 million mark.
Normally I would just post such an article to our Recommended Reading section and be done with it, but Mr. Barone’s article was not only historically insightful, but it ended with such a wonderful quote I just had to highlight it:
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
That line is attributed Lev Davidovich Bronstein – better know to the world as Leon Trotsky – scholar, journalist, philosopher, revolutionary and Marxist theorist, founder and commander of the Russian Red Army and People’s Commissar of War, and a founding member of the Politburo. In other words, a hero to the socialist left.
How ironic… a quote attributed to an iconic communist used as a warning to the elite social left of this country about the peril of pacifists in response to physical threats. Haven’t we all been saying that the first people that would lose their heads as infidels are the very group of people that seem to be helping and defending the actions of the Islamofacists the most? No matter how we try though, they just don’t seem to grasp the concept.
Perhaps we need to make it even more simple for the scholars, journalists, and elite from academia that comprise the liberal left and dominate the Democratic party of today. Maybe if they got a clue! Perhaps if we paraphrase Trotsky:
You may not be interested in war with the Islamofacists, but the Islamofacists are interested in war with you.
I guess we’ll see on November 8th if that concept has sunk in.
Oct
22
2006
I know I’ve been fairly silent lately, but there’s only so many different ways to repeat the obvious. Still, the Democrats surprised me tonight, and the New York Times manages to find a way to add that little extra spice to the recipe.
There is something unusual bubbling in Democratic political waters these days: optimism.That’s right. Just like Rush has been saying for years: “If it’s bad for America, it’s great for the Democratic Party.”With each new delivery of bad news for Republicans — another Republican congressman under investigation, another Republican district conceded, another poll showing support for the Republican-controlled Congress collapsing — a party that has become so used to losing is considering, disbelievingly and with the requisite worry, the possibility that it could actually win in November.
“I’ve moved from optimistic to giddy,” said Gordon R. Fischer, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “I really have.”…
“I feel better than I ever have,” said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from upstate New York. “I think we have the best chance to take over simply because of the pileup of disasters.”
Oct
12
2006
Leo Pusateri over at Psycmeistr’s Ice Palace makes a brilliant point. And to help any liberal in his audience to understand his point as well, he even provides pictures!
So? Can anyone answer the question? What would have happened if we had listened to the defeatists back then?
Hat tip to Blogs For Bush
Oct
11
2006
Drudge claims this ad was created by Democrat filmmaker Mort Zucker, who has recently sided with Republicans on national-security issues, but that Republicans won’t broadcast it because it’s too mean.
Luckily, I’m not just a Republican, but a Black Republican. And a blogger. And I’m in an anti-McCain-Feingold fit.
Feel the love!
Oct
8
2006
According to John McCain and Russ Feingold, this post is a violation of federal law, and the First Amendment doesn’t protect my right to say what I like about my leaders.
Let’s test the theory: come get me, jackasses.
A few Black Republicans of pallor are in the extended entry. Enjoy!