The Black Republican

I'd missed this entry in littlegreenfootballs over the weekend. Charles Johnson doesn't exactly keep his feelings to himself when he writes, but he usually doesn't make speeches, either. Like me, he tends to write a setup, offer a quote from the linked article or column, then make some followup comments. Obviously, the nonsense over General "Jerry" Boykin's religious-themed comments caused Charles to become even more agitated than usual.

This is why, even though I might not agree with his religious views, I support General Boykin wholeheartedly. He knows which side he's on. Call the enemy "Satan." Call it "the Dark Ages." Call it the "Religion of Peace." Call it whatever you like, in whatever terms you like. If you're on my side, we're fighting together. No holds barred. Until the finish.

I had meant, in Part III, to link to a decisive op-ed piece describing the failure of legislatures of the various states to impose their will - and ultimately, the will of the people - over the objections of an unelected clique known affectionately as "the court system". Unfortunately, I lost track of the link, and you get Howard Fineman instead.

The president isn't the only Bush working the Red State voters hard on cultural issues. His brother is, too. In Florida, at Gov. Jeb Bush's urging, the Legislature empowered him to order the resumption of tube feeding to a severely brain-damaged woman named Terri Schiavo, who had been in a vegetative state for 13 years. The governor sided against Schiavo's husband and with her parents, who wanted her kept alive. More important, Bush sided with anti-euthanasia forces, who share many ties and sympathies with those who oppose abortion.

As a family, the Bushes are making a political and moral statement: We are for the sanctity of life, as the Catholic Church defines it, and against legal powers that would extinguish it. (Except in the case of the death penalty, which the church also opposes.)

If it sounds like a Holy War at home it is, and the Bushes are hoping that red is the color not just of blood but of victory.

Now we turn - merely as an interlude, of course - to the heart of the matter. Daniel Henninger lays out for us a scene very reminiscent of the last time the Supreme Court made a judgment over the worth of a human soul.

The men who made the American Constitution understood that nothing in the pristine vapors of their nation was so special or unique as to ensure that Jack would never despise the opinions of Tom--and more than anything would like to shut Tom up, for starters. It is clear in the Federalist Papers that the Founders, above all, tried to reduce the destruction often done to civil life by political factions. I don't know that James Madison is spinning in his grave over the factionalism washing through U.S. politics, but surely he is heaving heavy sighs.

I think many people who don't get paid for waging politics are becoming quite frustrated with dysfunctional legislatures that are now polarized--as in Congress or in California--essentially along the cultural faultlines created by 30 years of allowing judges to pre-empt the broader community's ability to discover, or re-examine, its social beliefs. These legislators have become little more than clerks to judges and the complainants in their courts--the law as not much more than a brief. When this happens, citizens lose their status as voters or electors and become mere courtroom spectators. How can this be good?

Jacob Sullum surgically analyzes the differences (of which there were few) and similarities (of which there were many) between the ban on partial-birth abortion and (another) proposed ban on assault rifles.

Another difference between the two bans is that supporters of the abortion bill are more honest than the anti-gun activists about what they're trying to accomplish. President Bush, who is expected to sign the bill soon, called it "very important legislation that will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America." That "culture of life" presumably will include the recognition that D&E abortions are just as bad as D&X abortions. If killing a fetus is murder, doing it hidden from view does not make it OK.

During the debate over the bill, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) displayed a photograph of a 21-week-old fetus who had suffered from a birth defect that was surgically corrected in the uterus. "Is little Samuel's hand the hand of a person," he asked, "or is it the hand of a piece of property?"

The rather excitable fellow below is my good friend and the newest contributor to The Black Republican, Steve Johnson. Actually (and as this post will attest), Steve was one of the inspirations for The Black Republican, and it could be said that he was a Black Republican long before I took on the label. It has been many months of coaxing, but Steve has finally come out of his well-manicured shell to assist us in our blogging efforts. I've already asked Steve to send along a bio for the About Us page, so you should see that posted sometime after the nominating conventions.

Now, if I could only teach him to code and edit his own posts....

My journey this evening began with a visit to littlegreenfootballs, where Charles Johnson highlights a "Muslim Student Slammed for Pro-Democracy Views". Great read.

Thanks to one reader's comment, we were led to Right-Wing Arab, the aforementioned student's blog. Though the site is slightly outdated, this guy deserves a medal for proving that the problems we're experiencing are definitively ideological, and have little or nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or religion.

Mr. Shahbandar's web page has a collection of "Great Links", one of which is a site called BlackGenocide.org. This one is especially near and dear to my heart. Each page is emblazoned with a quote such as, "A Vote for a Pro-Choice Candidate is a Vote for Black Genocide", and "Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion." I'd suspect these are not the people electing the Congressional Do-Whatever-Is-Worst-For-The-Blacks Caucus.

Please visit each of these sites and let them know how much you appreciate the great work they are doing.

An article at littlegreenfootballs.com prompted me to write the following.

I'm not feeling very verbose today, so I'll just ask you to ignore the tempest in General William Boykin's teapot. The good general - like all our soldiers - has a right to hold religious beliefs protected by our Constitution. Without soldiers who understand and exercise their rights (as far as the UCMJ will allow), we have nothing left but a few passionless automatons who probably couldn't fight off the Swiss Navy. Ignore the whining, anti-religion Democrats and their secular mouthpiece newspapers. (Nobody really reads those rags anyway.)

A piece from the Princeton Alumni Review (via RealClearPolitics) is a must read for anyone concerned about the hot air today's college students have to breathe, and the status of Constitutional law.

...sealed with a kiss, no doubt. (As in a kiss from The Godfather!)

During his last week on the air, I do believe that Rush Limbaugh was giving all of us some subtle ideas, some nudges, some hints on what was coming and what we all would need to do about it. Maybe he just wanted to see for himself how good a job he had done on "instructing" us on how to defend our principals - and whether we would. This is speculation, I know, but thinking back on last weeks broadcasts I think Rush was trying to say (yet not wanting to come right out and say it) "you all may have to fend for yourselves for a while, and I'm not sure for how long."

Rush Limbaugh has been one of our leaders, one of our Generals - but we are the soldiers. One of the greatest fears the socialist USSR Red Army had of our forces was that if the commanding Officer was killed, an enlisted man could and would rise up to lead the unit, so no matter how many leaders they knocked off, there would always be another one to take his place. The Red Army didn't work like that - they kept their soldiers ignorant of the plans for fear of revolt - and neither do their American equivalent, the Liberal Democrats (for the same reason). The democrat soldiers need leaders to tell them what to do, what to think, how to act - we don't. Rush can not, at least for now, continue to lead us, so we must take up the mantle of leadership ourselves. And in order to lead we must know the enemy. I thought I did - until recently.

One of those subtle hints I alluded to is the fact that Rush mentioned the website democratunderground.net. With this reference he was saying "Know thy enemy!" After having visited this site and read some of the "opinions" expressed there, I literally wanted to puke. I knew that these people existed, I knew the rhetoric they spouted, and yet I was still overwhelmed by the depths of their hatred for all things conservative. And since the majority of this country, while they may not vote that way, in their heart of hearts have conservative values, that means that the people that support the site hate most Americans, and America itself. Having said that, I did manage to find one semi-lucid post - the "Letter to Whitney" referenced above. Please read it carefully - it is the OOB (Order of Battle) for the Democratic Party... full of generalities, falsehoods, and unsupportable assumptions, but important none the less.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Supreme Court will hear the pledge of allegiance case sent up from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It was painful enough to imagine SCOTUS taking on this case, knowing how it butchered the last two rulings it made in May. (The sodomy and UM admissions cases.) But it became a real migraine when I got to this:

Justice Antonin Scalia said he will not take part in the case. He did not explain why, but Newdow had challenged Scalia's impartiality based of remarks Scalia made at a 'Religious Freedom Day' observance this year. Scalia said the issue would be better decided by lawmakers than judges.

Scalia's absence sets up the possibility that the remaining eight justices could deadlock 4-4. That would affirm the 9th Circuit's ban on the religious reference, which would apply to 9.6 million schoolchildren in the nine states the court oversees: California, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Hawaii and Alaska, plus Guam.

Our favorite historian-philosphers at The Fourth Turning will probably slurp this one right up:

Special-Ed Student Voted Homecoming King

"I'm Mr. Popular here, for this whole school," said (Poco) Carton, who was crowned Friday. Students across campus said they welcomed the break from the usual homecoming winners. "It's always the same people, but not this year," said senior Kylie Taylor, 18.

When I asked Rick to provide something I could post on the "About" page, he sent me a much more personalized mini-essay than the blurb I wrote there about myself. Simply for consistancy, I've gone ahead and added there what I felt was the part appropriate to that format. The rest I post here as a more detailed introduction from our newest contributor.

A few words to introduce myself are in order. My name is Richard Jones, though I am commonly called Rick. A few special friends know me by a single letter, a mythical first initial I sometimes apply to my nickname. No, I am not going to reveal it here, to learn it you must get to know me.

Some things, that, while true, won't help you learn that secret:

I was born on Armistice Day 1953 in the "Land Of Lincoln", and raised in the land of Lincoln's birth. I am related, on my Mother's side, to Lincoln's private secretary and United States Secretary of State under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, John Milton Hay. I have never willingly belonged to a political party (In 1980 the county in which I reside required all voters to belong to one of three politcal parties, Republican, Democrat or Independent, in order to vote. My protest that my United States citizenship should be enough was not recognized until some years later. I gave in to their extortion and signed up as an Independent for that election, but have since re-registered as unaffiliated.) Independent, (little i), and unaffiliated are terms that aptly describe my personal life as well. For me, dating is now a race toward when I stop seeing a girl. Sometimes I skip the dating and just stop seeing her. Growing up in the '60s, exposure to new ideas was commonplace. I partook of the idealism of that time, I gave it a shot, and have now largely discounted so much of that stuff as being intellectually immature. I remain open-minded, but learn from mistakes.

I admire what Malcolm X did to transform his life, most people know him only as the militant Black Muslim, his life ended before he quit growing. These words are his: "I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary - to study, to learn some words".

I am certain: that language awareness is under-rated, and under-used. That practicing Transcendental Meditation changed my life in marvelous ways. That basketball is a religion. That chocolate, pizza, beer and meat taste good. That marriage should be taken seriously. That the traditional union involving one man and one woman is the only true form of marriage. That it is a being when the egg and sperm unite. That furniture should be made of wood. That we create too much trash. And, I am certain that I have already angered someone with this introduction.

Finally, for now, I believe everything going on can be explained by these words:

"The trouble with people is not that they don't know, but that they know so much that ain't so" - Josh Billings

I wish they were mine.