Day of decision rally is tonight at 5:30PM in the plaza at the Long Beach Civic Center. info http://t.co/cQYb9GnZEm pic.twitter.com/r7FRz8dSZi
— LB Mayor's Office (@LBMayorsOffice) June 26, 2015Long Beach raised a rainbow flag today in front of City Hall. pic.twitter.com/etTBvzHel0
— Lauren Raab (@raablauren) June 26, 2015
They only legalized gay marriage to get everyone off track about #BlackLivesMatter
— BabyBoy ⛽️ (@DavoneTurner) June 26, 2015It’s the summer of 2015, and the left is on the march. Or perhaps one should say—since the left presumably dislikes the militarist connotations of the term “march”—that the left is swarming. And in its mindless swarming and mob-like frenzy, nearly every hideous aspect of contemporary leftism is on display.I've snipped some of it, so go read it all.
We see a French Revolution-like tendency to move with the speed of light from a reasonable and perhaps overdue change (taking down the Confederate flag over state buildings) to an all-out determination to expunge from our history any recognition or respect for that which doesn’t fully comport with contemporary progressive sentiment. The left’s point, of course, is not to clarify and sharpen appreciation for our distinctive history; the point is to discredit that history.
And the point is not to advance arguments and criticize alternative views; it is to deny the legitimacy of opposing arguments and to demonize opponents and purge them from the public square.
We see a pitiful aversion to standing up to barbarism abroad and a desperate willingness to accommodate and appease. This requires an amazing ability to shut one’s eyes to reality, and an extraordinary refusal to make tough decisions and assume real responsibilities. As Harvey Mansfield put it in the 1970s, “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. . . . Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”
We see a wanton willingness on the part of leftist elites to use sophistic arguments to override democratic self-government when the people might not endorse the outcome (say, “marriage equality”) that the left has decided “progress” requires. We see a desperate desire to find a secular substitute for religious belief in the embrace of abstract doctrines (“global warming”) that are appropriately renamed (“climate change”) when the facts complicate matters. And we see a cavalier willingness to impose costs on others less fortunate and less well-protected for the sake of the left’s moral self-regard (by, for example, pledging to end “the era of mass incarceration,” also known as the era of crime reduction).
But as Alexander Hamilton (another recent object of the left’s perpetual discomfort with human achievement) wrote in Federalist 70: “There can be no need . . . to multiply arguments or examples on this head.” All the trends and tendencies, the pathologies and perversities that have made the modern left so corrosive of national spirit, so corrupting of self-government, so damaging to Western civilization, are on display front and center in today’s America. As the title of a brilliant article by Kevin D. Williamson in National Review puts it, “We Have Officially Reached Peak Leftism.” ...
The only way to ensure leftism has peaked, and to ensure that it doesn’t drag us further down into the abyss, is to fight it and defeat it. We either overcome peak leftism, or we’re doomed.
WATCH LIVE: As sun goes down, White House lights up rainbow colors to celebrate SCOTUS ruling http://t.co/yKJ71mR4fY pic.twitter.com/VezIVQpOvJ
— The Hill (@thehill) June 27, 2015
NEVER. GIVE. UP. pic.twitter.com/c3RSqpmRrg
— Stay Puft (@staypuft) June 26, 2015
Despite the multiple crises, our betters are screeching about utter nonsense. Whether a flag should be displayed in an iPhone game, whether people can choose their race and gender, if old ladies should be publicly flayed or just put out of business for not baking a cake.RTWT.
Eventually the electorate will come to its senses — I mean, they have to, right? As Glenn Reynolds often says, “what cannot continue, won’t.” But what cataclysm will it take to shake us out of our navel-gazing, microaggressed, Brawndo-swilling stupor?
An even worse financial collapse than in 2008 with no borrowed money left to rescue the banks? A deadlier act of war than 9-11? And if either happens, God forbid, will Americans just use the moment to blame each other in even uglier terms?
My ultimate hope, as a Christian, is knowing that God is in control. Being a student of history, I know that cultures have endured far worse calamities than our comfortable decline. But I want to know how you keep your hopes up. Fatalism will never win hearts and minds, let alone elections, so do you have advice on keeping political setbacks from dragging you into despond?
Finally. A big step in the right direction for our country! https://t.co/uDS6ltqpcR
— Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) June 26, 2015Let's hear it for @alexmorgan13 and the @ussoccer_wnt team! http://t.co/yRK3Dx1eJ2 pic.twitter.com/y4WX02WW93
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) June 26, 2015
Don’t know if you can see her here, but Senator Warren is wearing a boa at the State House right now. pic.twitter.com/uFClUBBoRk
— Jaclyn Friedman (@jaclynf) June 26, 2015I have had enough of smug liberal elites wrapped in their “Celebrate Diversity” banners tearing down minority conservatives.More.
Look in the mirror, media and academia bigots. Your own reflexive racism and divisive rhetoric are poisoning public discourse.
There’s nothing “progressive” about attacking the children and grandchildren of immigrants who proudly embrace an American identity.
We are not “self-hating.” You just hate what we believe.
The most recent grenade tossed by the jack-booted Enforcers of Ethnic Authenticity came from The Washington Post this week. The Beltway fish-wrapper hyped a 2,100-word investigation of GOP Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal with a condescending quote from Professor G. Pearson Cross, who sneered: “There’s not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal.”
Has pallid Professor Cross invented an ambient diagnostic test to measure sufficiently acceptable levels of ethnicity?
The Post quoted a grand total of one disgruntled Democratic donor who railed against Jindal for “forgetting” his “heritage” and his “roots.” But that was more than enough for the apartheid-lite adherents to heed the dog whistle immediately. The Post’s splashy attack on Jindal’s assimilationist ethic spawned a vile Twitter hashtag game: #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite.
Left-wing racists mocked his skin color, his kids and his decision to change his name from “Piyush” to “Bobby.” A New York Times digital editor, Shreeya Sinha, gleefully linked to a BBC compilation of “The best of #BobbyJindalisSoWhite.” NBC News gloated over tweets from liberal Indian-Americans who mocked the accomplished governor, Rhodes scholar and father of three as a “Jindian.”
It’s the same old, same old from radical academics and reporters who spurned assimilation as a common goal long ago. As I’ve long observed, the media-ivory tower complex’s fidelity lies with bilingualism (a euphemism for native language maintenance over English-first instruction), ethnic militancy, extreme multiculturalism and a borderless continent.
If we conservatives “of color” refuse to promote the welfare state, unfettered abortion, affirmative action and massive immigration, we are guilty of “selling out.”
Conversely, if I point out that my skin is far darker than that of the TV progressives of pallor who presume to know more than me about what it’s like to experience prejudice, I’m accused of exploiting my ethnicity.
We’re coconuts, bananas and Oreos (brown, yellow or black on the outside and “white” on the inside).
We’re accused of “thinking” and “acting” white if we quote the Constitution, shoot, hunt, oppose high taxes, homeschool, take personal responsibility or demand that government leave us alone...
Rainbow flag flies over Santa Clara Co. Govt center after #SCOTUSMarriage decision this morning. @abc7newsBayArea pic.twitter.com/n2fEQc05Yh
— David Louie (@abc7david) June 26, 2015
Florida. @AmPowerBlog @debrapianalto @lheal @wellfonder
http://t.co/fJ2ndGDPpm
— DernDawn (@noprezzie2012) June 26, 2015Rainbow flag raised over City Hall in St. Pete to honor St. Pete Pride. (Photo: SPPD.) http://t.co/lz9bquV0P2 pic.twitter.com/aOffo28XU1
— Bay News 9 (@BN9) June 25, 2015TY @rgay for this truth: http://t.co/m7xAoDxo8I #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/t6hq1ccLK8
— Jodeen OlguÃn-Tayler (@JodeenOT) June 24, 2015"I do not foresee ever forgiving his crimes, and I am wholly at ease with that choice" — @rgay http://t.co/FCzhCjymkX pic.twitter.com/b3S6ITUFkh
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) June 23, 2015Forgiveness does not come easily to me. I am fine with this failing. I am particularly unwilling to forgive those who show no remorse, who don’t demonstrate any interest in reconciliation. I do not believe there has been enough time since this terrorist attack for anyone to forgive. The bodies of the dead are still being buried...."All who are complicit." Hmm, would that be all white people who are complicit?
Over the weekend, newspapers across the country shared headlines of forgiveness from the families of the nine slain. The dominant media narrative vigorously embraced that notion of forgiveness, seeming to believe that if we forgive we have somehow found a way to make sense of the incomprehensible.
We are reminded of the power of whiteness. Predictably, alongside the forgiveness story, the media has tried to humanize this terrorist. They have tried to understand Dylann Roof’s hatred because surely, there must be an explanation for so heinous an act. At the gunman’s bond hearing, the judge, who was once reprimanded for using the N-word from the bench, talked about how not only were the nine slain and their families victims, but so were the relatives of the terrorist. There are no limits to the power of whiteness when it comes to calls for mercy.
The call for forgiveness is a painfully familiar refrain when black people suffer. White people embrace narratives about forgiveness so they can pretend the world is a fairer place than it actually is, and that racism is merely a vestige of a painful past instead of this indelible part of our present.
Black people forgive because we need to survive. We have to forgive time and time again while racism or white silence in the face of racism continues to thrive. We have had to forgive slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynching, inequity in every realm, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, inadequate representation in popular culture, microaggressions and more. We forgive and forgive and forgive and those who trespass against us continue to trespass against us.
Mr. Roof’s racism was blunt and raggedly formed. It was bred by a culture in which we constantly have to shout “Black lives matter!” because there is so much evidence to the contrary. This terrorist was raised in this culture. He made racist jokes with his friends. He shared his plans with his roommate. It’s much easier to introduce forgiveness into the conversation than to sit with that reality and consider all who are complicit.
What white people are really asking for when they demand forgiveness from a traumatized community is absolution. They want absolution from the racism that infects us all even though forgiveness cannot reconcile America’s racist sins. They want absolution from their silence in the face of all manner of racism, great and small. They want to believe it is possible to heal from such profound and malingering trauma because to face the openness of the wounds racism has created in our society is too much. I, for one, am done forgiving.
A North Charleston police officer has been fired because he posted a photo of himself wearing Confederate flag boxer shorts.Well, the dude posted it to Facebook --- not sure if that was the best idea, considering.
Shannon Dildine, who was a sergeant and with the force since 1996, was sent a letter Wednesday from Police Chief Eddie Driggers detailing why the department let him go.
He was terminated because it was determined that the posting would make him incapable of effectively serving as a North Charleston officer.
“On Tuesday ... the City learned that you posted on Facebook a photograph in which you were wearing only a pair of boxer shorts emblazoned with the image of the Confederate flag,” Driggers wrote. “Your posting in this manner led to you being publicly identified as a North Charleston Police officer and associated both you and the Department with an image that symbolizes hate and oppression to a significant portion of the citizens we are sworn to serve.”
Further, Driggers said, Dildine could compromise any criminal cases involving minorities because a defense attorney could use the photo call to into question his motivation in making an arrest.
Confederate flags no more at Gettysburg Visitor Center: http://t.co/4ZpKht0LWc pic.twitter.com/ScR13nCHU7
— Donald Gilliland (@drgilliland) June 25, 2015
