What is Privilege? Does The White Man have it?

The short answer is that the White Man doesn't have privilege, but homeless illegals and Jussie Smollett do. The long answer follows a definition.

Privilege is defined as "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." But the modern use of that term implies something more: privilege implies being a member of a group that gets special treatment because of who they are, not because of what they have accomplished.

For an example, we begin with the special immunity granted to homeless illegal immigrants by the Sanctuary City movement, exemplified by Denver's odd move to decriminalize public defecation.  The problem was not so much that homeless aliens without official permission to reside in the US were relieving themselves on public sidewalks, but that when they were arrested and convicted of such behaviour, they risked automatic repatriation under the US federal government's new policy of expelling criminal aliens. By reducing the offence from a misdemeanour to an infraction, the Democrats who control Denver's city government were able to make an end-run around this policy, and keep their Sanctuary City status at the expense of clean streets and sidewalks. In Denver, homeless illegals have privilege.

How about Jussie Smollett? In the early morning hours of January 29, 2019, Chicago Police received a report from Jussie that he had been assaulted on the sidewalk of his upscale Chicago neighborhood. Now, here is were Jussie's privilege kicked in. Chicago police receive hundreds of reports of assault every day, the vast majority of them far more serious than what Jussie reported. But Jussie was a celebrity, even claiming that he was identified by, and targeted for, his celebrity. So instead of sending him off to have his superficial wounds checked out at the hospital and filing his report in the bottom drawer, the Chicago Police force went into high gear. They notified the FBI. They began the exhaustive process of viewing footage from every surveillance camera that may have caught the alleged incident on tape. They began a publicity campaign to keep the public appraised of any progress in the case. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in tracking down the attackers and bringing them to justice. In the end, Jussie turned out to have fabricated the whole thing, paying a couple of his buddies to act out the attack. Again, privilege kicked in. For weeks into the investigation, Jussie continued to keep up his story and demand justice. Democrats around the country, including several Presidential candidates, circled the wagons to defend him and share in his outrage. It was only when the Chicago Chief of Police read a scathing statement accusing Jussie of choreographing a hateful fraud that was a discredit to everything he should have stood for that the house of cards finally began to wobble and sway. Jussie was protected at every stage by his privilege, and that privilege means that although he's committed any number of crimes, up to and including federal Mail Fraud in the process of mailing himself white powder, he may well never end up seeing the inside of a prison cell for it. At far greater levels and to a far greater extent than your average Joe Homeless in Denver caught with his pants down, Jussie Smollett has privilege.

But privilege extends much farther than even that. Look at Ted Kennedy, whose father started out with a small degree of privilege as the son of a rising Boston politician, forced his way into Harvard despite failing grades in high school, and leveraged his way into a political dynasty so powerful that not even Ted's obvious culpability in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne could cost him his Senate seat. Joseph Kennedy himself was not above murder to consolidate his political power; an underage prostitute whom he hired to accuse a competitor of rape died under mysterious circumstances just as she was about to come clean with her story. As a result, the competitor was ruined, and Joe got an even bigger corner on the movie industry. Through an endless succession of such dirty deals, Joe was able to enlarge his empire to the point that he could coerce an editor to put his son Jack on the cover of Time Magazine, helping to ensure his success in the upcoming election. The Kennedy brothers had privilege.

But the White Man does not have privilege. I was turned down by the elite university to which I applied, even though I was far more qualified academically then either Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. or Thomas Watson Jr.--the least-qualified-ever president of IBM--neither of whom could have even gotten into college without privilege. I don't have a father who gets invited to the White House. I can't call upon the vast resources of a metropolitan police force to investigate a minor complaint, or expect to escape prison if my complaint turns out to be a hoax. I can't even expect to get away with relieving myself against one of the signs at the St. Louis Transit Station stating for all to see that public urination is a crime. Unlike homeless illegals, sons of politically powerful people, and self-important TV stars, I don't have privilege.

Another look at Loving v. Virginia

Today, in honor of Loving Day (which would have been celebrated yesterday, but for the modern habit of moving the observance of all holidays to Monday), The White Man will revisit the case which brought it about: Richard Perry Loving, Mildred Jeter Loving v. Virginia.
Right off the bat, there's a problem: look at the photo of the famous couple, described everywhere as being of separate races:




Note that whilst they are described as "white" and "black" respectively, it is evident that they have the same skin tone just by comparing where their bodies touch. Mildred Jeter, at the time Richard Loving impregnated her, was basically as white as he was. What she had, and he hadn't, was verified African and Native American Ancestry, in addition to the majority European ancestry that they both shared; and under the law then current in Virginia, their entire lives must needs conform to that almost invisible distinction.

This is very important: had it not been that all Virginians were already divided, first by convention and then by law, into discrete categories of Pure European and Not Pure European, there never would have been a case. Mildred's European ancestry, despite contributing the majority of her genome, counted for nothing, admixed as it was with the blood of supressed races. Thus the whole foundation of the Racial Integrity Act, which Loving v. Virginia overturned, was a distinct theology of racial purity which deliberately sought to ignore the reality of the racial mixing plainly evident just by looking at the co-defendants.  It is the height of hypocrisy that none of Mildred's European ancestors were ever prosecuted for raping their African slaves, yet her lawful husband was prosecuted for sleeping with her, with her full consent. It was a law that had no chance of surviving in a righteous nation.

Loving v. Virginia was long thought to be the culmination of Supreme Court decisions that invalidated laws meant to prevent fornication and adultery; but these were to resume under a new court after a 20-year hiatus. So rare was homosexuality in the mid-1960's, it's unlikely that anyone at the time would have been able to predict that in her own lifetime (and she only lived another four decades), Mildred Loving would be able to point out, to widespread acclaim, that by filing suit against the state that denied the validity of the one-flesh relationship she shared with her husband, she was laying the grounds for the invalidation of all laws that denied equal treatment in the eyes of the law to people of the same sex who cohabited in the same way she and Richard had.

Ironically, the eight years since Mildred Loving's death have still failed to eliminate the classification into which she is always placed, now usually referred to as "African-American," but recent months have seen the proliferation of people who are still pigeonholed by race, but left free to change their gender at will. Thus Virginia's Act could yet stand, with modern Lovings fully evading its force merely by claiming to be of the same sex. The bizarre twisting of reality gets ever worse: race is as immutable as ever, but it is sex that is now malleable to the will of the person claiming it.

Backing up to the Racial Integrity Act, we see that it was specifically written to criminalize relationships such as that of the Lovings, which under common law had never been illegal:

"This bill aims at correcting a condition which only the more thoughtful people of Virginia know the existence of.
 It is estimated that there are in the State from 10,000 to 20,000, possibly more, near white people, who are known to possess an intermixture of colored blood, in some cases to a slight extent it is true, but still enough to prevent them from being white.
 In the past it has been possible for these people to declare themselves as white, or even to have the Court so declare them. Then they have demanded the admittance of their children in the white schools, and in not a few cases have intermarried with white people.
 In many counties they exist as distinct colonies holding themselves aloof from Negroes, but not being admitted by the white people as of their race.
 In any large gathering or school of colored people, especially in the cities, many will be observed who are scarcely distinguishable as colored.
 These persons, however, are not white in reality, nor by the new definition of this law, that a white person is one with no trace of the blood of another race, except that a person with one-sixteenth of the American Indian, if there is no other race mixture, may be classed as white. "

It is obvious on its face that this law was designed to reserve special rights and privileges to those with no discernible trace of non-European heritage (a loophole having been inserted to allow white people to claim descent from the famous princess Pocahontas).  This approach had already been roundly condemned by Justice White in his McLaughlin v. Florida decision earlier in the decade:

"That a general evil will be partially corrected may at times, and without more, serve to justify the limited application of a criminal law; but legislative discretion to employ the piecemeal approach stops short of permitting a State to narrow statutory coverage to focus on a racial group."

It is quite ironic that the Racial Integrity Act, a product of the American Eugenics Movement, is now so roundly condemned by everyone from Supreme Court Justices on down, whilst the other major achievement of that movement--the suppression of the black race by sterilization and abortion--is still celebrated as a major victory for women, its crowning victory, Roe v. Wade, having been handed down by the same court that overruled the decision of Pace v. Alabama.

Under the Racial Integrity Act, the sanctity of Mildred Loving's bedroom could be invaded by officers hoping to catch her in the act of sleeping with her husband. Under Obergefell v. Hodges, which cited Loving v. Virginia as precedent, the sanctity of her daughter's bathroom stall can now be invaded by any sexual predator claiming to share her gender.

This, we are told, is progress.

One more thing: Obergefell v. Hodges effectively replaced 'race' with 'gender' in evaluating whether any law since Loving v. Virginia can be held to provide equal treatment under the law. Just imagine all the implications of doing this to Associate Justice Potter Stewart's concurring opinion, in which he stated that "it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor."

The first result of this ruling being applied in such manner is that no state will be able to continue regulating the depiction nor the exhibition of any part of the human mammary gland (nor will Facebook, or eventually any other interactive website). Better get used to it; it's coming.

And it will be hailed as progress.

Polygamy--a result of slavery?

Foreign Policy has released an article that shows a correlation between tribes on the West Coast of Africa which contributed males to the transatlantic slave trade, and tribes which practice polygyny today. The implication is that the slave trade freed up a surplus of virgins, who were graciously taken in by the remaining men.

Like so many studies, this one failed to ask the question, what caused which?

Polygyny was already a factor during the slave era--and the authors admit this. But what they don't envision is that a conquering tribe would have retained the captured women of the conquered tribe, whilst selling the men as slaves. This scenario turns the whole theory on its head: the sexual disparity in the slave population was not a cause of polygyny, but a result of it.

West African slaves were mostly sent to the New World, where buyers strongly preferred men capable of performing backbreaking tasks on plantations. By contrast, buyers in slave trades centered on the Indian Ocean and Red Sea were often looking for women who could work as domestic servants or concubines.
Record-keeping by European slave traders shows a consistent pattern, Dalton and Leung found: Between 1545 and 1864, 66.4 percent of slaves sent to North America and the Caribbean from present-day Senegal and Gambia were men, as were 66.6 percent sent from Sierra Leone, 65.4 percent from the Gold Coast (now Ghana), and 65.4 percent from the Windward Coast (now Ivory Coast). Going a step further, Dalton and Leung looked at data on the slaves taken from specific ethnic groups and compared it with the percentage of women in those groups who today share husbands with other wives. (They controlled for factors such as education level and religion.) The researchers found that groups hit heavily by trans-Atlantic slavery were significantly more likely to have a high percentage of polygynous marriages.

Now, taking my approach, we see that polygyny in East Africa may have been stifled by a lack of women, the surplus of that sex having been depleted rather than augmented by the slave trade. So if anything was a result of slavery in Africa, it was monogamy. What native culture could not manage to effect--the suppression of polygyny--the outside force of slavery could.

As the Western world slides ever further away from monogamy, we wonder what it will take to reverse that slide, and from where such a powerful force may come.

Racism in Hollywood

Many months after starting this post--subsequent to viewing basically the entire ROOTS Miniseries for the first time--I've decided to cut my comments down to just the racism question. This is what I had noted right after viewing:

They glorified Muslims, truncated the Islamic prayer (made it sound very Christian) and gave a very syncretized view of African religion, yet made a big deal of pork.

Also, musings on the link between animism and illiteracy.


They only hired 'black' people to play the slave roles and 'white' people to play the 'white' roles, thus perpetrating the very racism the series was supposedly criticizing.

---------------------------------------

Okay, here's what I observed: the 'black' actors in the production ranged from almost completely white to almost completely black, but their skin tone had no bearing whatsoever on the characters they played, other than at the very beginning and very end of the series. In other words, Kunta Kinte's depictors looked believably African, and James Earl Jones bore a passing resemblance to Alex Haley, but in between you had a supposedly half-white slave, George, being quite a few shades darker than his supposedly half-African slave mother, Kezzie. As little as the actors' skin tone reflected reality, they may as well have hired 'white' actors to play some of the 'black' roles. Not bloody likely.

Except that is exactly what happened when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hit the big screen. Before I even saw how they were depicted in the movie, I just knew that there was no way the Oompa Loompas (depicted in Roald Dahl's book as little black pygmy tribesmen) were going to be played by black-skinned actors.

And, sure enough--they weren't. Despite the total lack of little white pygmy tribes anywhere in the real world, one had to be invented for the movie. All 165 identical Oompa Loompas were played by the Indo-European actor Mohinder Purba.

And that was okay, somehow.  Go figure.

The First American African President

The White Man never forgets that no one is perfect, especially he. So when I do recognise a mistake in what I wrote, I prefer to be the first to announce it. This is one of those times.

It came to my attention today that, despite claims that Barack Hussein Obama had no ancestors who were American Slaves, he actually appears to be descended--through his 'white' grandmother--from the very first African to be enslaved in Anglo America: John Punch.

PROVO, UTAH – July 30, 2012 – A research team from Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, has concluded that President Barack Obama is the 11th great-grandson of John Punch, the first documented African enslaved for life in American history. Remarkably, the connection was made through President Obama’s Caucasian mother’s side of the family.
The discovery is the result of years of research by Ancestry.com genealogists who, through early Virginia records and DNA analysis, linked Obama to John Punch. An indentured servant in Colonial Virginia, Punch was punished for trying to escape his servitude in 1640 by being enslaved for life. This marked the first actual documented case of slavery for life in the colonies, occurring decades before initial slavery laws were enacted in Virginia.
In the 372 years since, many significant records have been lost – a common problem for early Virginia (and the South in general) – destroyed over time by floods, fires and war. While this reality greatly challenged the research project, Ancestry.com genealogists were able to make the connection, starting with Obama’s family tree.
President Obama is traditionally viewed as an African-American because of his father’s heritage in Kenya. However, while researching his Caucasian mother, Stanley Ann Dunham’s lineage, Ancestry.com genealogists found her to have African heritage as well, which piqued the researchers’ interest and inspired further digging into Obama’s African-American roots.
In tracing the family back from Obama’s mother, Ancestry.com used DNA analysis to learn that her ancestors, known as white landowners in Colonial Virginia, actually descended from an African man. Existing records suggest that this man, John Punch, had children with a white woman who then passed her free status on to their offspring.

Much ado about Iran

I'm copying here various news articles from the Times of Israel, to give an idea of how the Iranian threat, and the appropriate response to it, are perceived in Israel and the USA: http://israeli-defense-officials-iran-won't-hit-back-at-us-targets-if-israeli-attacks

Tehran is not interested in raising the stakes in its standoff with Israel and would not strike US targets if Israel were to attack its nuclear program, Channel 10 news reported Wednesday, quoting unnamed senior Israeli defense officials. Contrary to previous assessments that Iran would turn an Israeli attack into an all-out regional war — involving the US and its Middle Eastern allies — current wisdom holds that it would avoid drawing the US into battle and settle for retaliating solely against Israel, the report quoted the officials as saying.

i-dont-want-to-be-complicit-in-a-strike-on-iran-says-us-army-chief

The US does not want to be “complicit” in an Israeli strike that “probably” would not only fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, but could also undo international diplomatic pressure on Tehran, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs General Martin Dempsey said Thursday in London. An attack by Israel would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” Dempsey said, adding: ”I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”
The US’s top general – the Guardian reported – said that he could not presume to know Iran’s ultimate intentions in pursuing a nuclear program, as intelligence was inconclusive on that score.
It was clear, however, he maintained, that mounting pressure from the American-led “international coalition…could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely.” Last week, Dempsey said that Israel and the US did not see eye to eye on the Iranian nuclear threat, admitting that Washington and Jerusalem were on “different clocks” regarding Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He noted, however, that he understood Israel’s urgency in calling for action against Iran’s nuclear program. “They are living with an existential concern that we are not living with,” he acknowledged, according to AFP.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-sharp-rebuttal-un-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon-denounces-iranian-threats-to-israel-and-denial-of-the-holocaust

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a sharp rebuttal to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday, after Khamenei delivered a speech denouncing Israel, the UN and the US at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. “I strongly reject any threat by any [UN] member state to destroy another, or outrageous comments to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust,” Ban said. “Claiming another UN member state does not have the right to exist or describe it in racist terms is not only utterly wrong but undermines the very principles we have all promised to uphold,” the UN chief added. Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in Iran, accused Israel of being made up of “bloodthirsty wolves,” a day after Ban asked the cleric to tone down his rhetoric against Israel.

An Albino Race--or not.

96885 My posts on albinism fast turned out to be the most popular destinations on this website, outpacing reads about Arthur Blessitt's divorce ten to one this week. I've continued to keep my eyes out for more information on the subject, which has resulted in a couple of discoveries: One, that some of my own cousins probably carry the albinism gene; the other being possible evidence for an actual race of albinos along the southernmost Caribbean coast:

 "The Kuna have a very high incidence rate of albinism. In Kuna mythology, albinos (or sipus) were given a special place. Albinos in Kuna culture are considered a special race of people, and have the specific duty of defending the Moon against a dragon which tries to eat it during an eclipse. Only they are allowed outside on the night of an eclipse and used specially made bows and arrows to shoot down the dragon."

Well, these claims don't bear up so well under scrutiny--especially the 'special race' part. Since carriers of the albinism gene are indistinguishable in the general population, it has never been possible to isolate the albino population into a separate race. If albinos are encouraged only to marry other albinos, an albino population will immediately emerge, but this still will not serve to keep albinism out of the general population; only a controlled breeding program empowered by the modern science of genetics could succeed in that. And no one has tried it, nor is ever likely to, as albinism is a very debilitating condition. I have now received some reports of two successive generations of albinos, but not yet of three [UPDATE: there is now at least one current case of a third-generation albino, referenced in another post on this topic].

But back to the Kuna/Cunas of Panama. Despite their accepted social status, the physical limitations of their defect keeps Kuna albinos from fully engaging in Kuna society (albino men are limited occupationally to traditionally feminine or adolescent roles). Yet albinism persists, due mainly to the small tribal gene pool (compounded, it would appear, by a high rate of incest), misunderstanding of the genetic cause ('moon children' have traditionally been thought to form due to Lamarckian influence at some point in the development of the foetus), and lack of meaningful artificial selection against it (the herbal remedies against fetal albinism being totally useless, racial infanticide being traditionally frowned upon, and the miscegenation prohibition unenforceable in the face of rampant fornication).

The Kunas, despite their unusually high percentage of albinos and social acceptance thereof, generally do not allow them to marry, and take active steps (however futile) against passing on the gene through non-albino carriers. So much for a 'special race,' if such a term actually means anything.

A few cogent observations could be made on what we have learned so far:

- Environment has not appeared to be a factor in the development of a high percentage of albinos in a population. In fact, the populations with the most albinos are very close to the equator, where climactic conditions make albinism the least survivable.

- Albinos are anywhere from two to two hundred times more likely to be found in dark races than in light ones, despite the much more obvious stigma that they would carry among people who look so much different then themselves. Three concentrations of albinism have been identified so far: The Hopi/Zuni of Arizona, the Kuna of Darien, and a so-far unspecified population of Tanzania [UPDATE: The highest concentration of albinos turns out to be due to artificial selection. See articles on Ukerewe Island].

- The main common factor behind the various ethnogeographical concentrations of albinism seems to be animism, functioning in three ways: one, sexual promiscuity resulting in uncontrolled inbreeding; two, a strong resistance to a scientific approach for preventing the passing on of the trait; and three, a typical association of whiteness with heightened spiritual power or influence. This last factor could be a result of the fallacious cause-and-effect reasoning of animists: an albino shaman did something that was perceived to be a demonstration of great spiritual power, and the source of that power was then attributed to his or her whiteness.

- Animism, especially in Africa, puts a premium on body parts from albinos, which results in pressure on albinism in the general population, but also in an artificial concentration of albinos in safe havens, where they are more likely to pass on their albino genes.

There is much we are still learning about the cultural factors behind the preponderance of albinism, but one thing seems sure: No albino race has apparently ever existed, nor is one ever likely to.

Is the White Man a racist?

The White man has written about race on this blog. Does that make him a racist? Well, no. Earlier on this blog (in a post which, among other things, gave Abe Lincoln's own words identifying him as one), racism was defined as follows:

The belief that a certain race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges.

My own race, it should be obvious, is European. To specify further (which is not quite so obvious), I am of English extraction. This is my race, but I do not consider it superior to all others. There are those among my race who, however, do. These are adherents of British Israelitism, and they are convinced, from their interpretation of the Bible and history, that the English people, wherever in the world they may live, are God's chosen people-- that only those of my nation are objects of His special favour. They are racists.

Do you see the problem? Their racism is part and parcel of their understanding of the Bible. But how can racism be biblical, when the Bible clearly shows that we are all part of the same human race?

Well, it all comes down to passages in the Bible like this one:

Genesis 27:22 And Jacob (also called Israel) went near unto Isaac his father . . . 26 And his father Isaac said unto him . . . See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed: 28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: 29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

Was Jacob a racist?

You see, on the most personal level, a racist believes that "I am superior to others, and that superiority entitles me to certain rights and privileges." Clearly Jacob believed this, and this belief was behind the scheming that ended up with him getting the rights and privileges away from his older brother Esau. But however he got them, he did get them. There's no denying the fact that in historical terms, Israel has fared better than Esau. Better than Ishmael. Better than Lot. Better than Nahor. Better, in short, than any of his other relatives in the earth. Why, for example, were half of the doctors in pre-WWII Hungary Jews? It certainly wasn't because Jews were half the population of Hungary. Why were such a huge percentage of the early nuclear physicists in Germany Jews? It certainly wasn't because Jews were a huge percentage of the population of Germany.

Wherever Jews have gone in the world, they have suffered persecution--even in the land of Israel, 60 years after independence, they are daily targeted for elimination. And yet, wherever Jews have gone in the world, they have prospered. In whatever country takes them in--on whatever terms--Jews rise to the top in fields too numerous to mention.

Is it merely because they believe that their race is superior to all others, and that they are thereby entitled to certain rights and privileges--certain blessings?

Or is it because God said that they actually are?

Now, there are only two responses to the realization that the agnate descendants of Jacob are uniquely the objects of God's favour--hatred toward them, or a love and respect. The former are the objects of God's curses, the latter the objects of his blessing.

Take just one example: Adolph Hitler. There is no question that Germany would have had the atomic bomb before any other nation but for one thing: Hitler's oppression of the Jews meant that the top nuclear physicists in his nation--men like Albert Einstein--would be forced to flee to his enemies merely because they were Jews. He went ahead with his nuclear program anyway, using only Teutonic physicists, but at such a delay that the Allies were able to send in special forces to take out his top nuclear facility before it had produced enough heavy hydrogen to make a bomb.

Hitler's single-minded hatred of Jews led him to invade Poland to start off WWII. There were two and a half million Jews in Poland, and Hitler managed to kill just about all of them. But he wasn't done; millions more were in Russia, his ally. So he turned his back on conquering the rest of Western Europe and launched a surprise attack on Russia--where his forces killed millions more Jews. But Russia, that great bear, merely retreated behind a bone-chilling curtain of frost, while Hitler's men, deprived of the attention of Jewish doctors, died by the tens of thousands. Awakened, and armed by Hitler's unconquered enemies, Russia moved in on Germany itself, and--rather than send his last six tank divisions to defend his borders, Hitler ordered them moved into his last remaining ally in Europe, Hungary. Why? Because Hungary had a million Jews, which they refused to give up to the gas chambers. Hitler's forces were able to kill only half a million Hungarian Jews before the gates of Berlin fell to the Russians. Meanwhile, virtually every German woman along the Eastern Front was gang-raped by Russian soldiers (and, to my nation's shame, a large proportion along the Western Front suffered similar treatment): a heavy price indeed to pay for their loyalty to one who so hated God's favoured people.

In short, there are really only two kinds of racism: a racism that springs from an acceptance of the historical implications of God's promised blessings--and curses--; and a racism that springs from a rejection of them.

In that sense, everybody is a racist: either a realistic racist, or a rebellious one.

The White Man, if he must be called a racist, would definitely choose the former. As, for the most part, has his nation.

And may it ever be so.

Or else.

Geert Wilders on the Islamic conquest of Europe

An email has been making the rounds allegedly containing a speech by Geert Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament. It's variously titled Report from Holland or Warning from Holland, and, according to Snopes, it's correctly attributed. Snopes also notes that Geert was finally acquitted just this past June (2011) of inciting racial hatred in his own country, the Netherlands. The actual address was given in 2008, in the USA, and has suffered from severe truncation and liturgical editing since then. I give it here, in its entirety, as it appears on EuropeNews.

Geert Wilders, chairman Party for Freedom, the Netherlands Speech at the Four Seasons, New York September 25, 2008

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that’s new to me.

It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.

My short lecture consists of 4 parts.

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.

But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see – and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.

Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.

The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.

Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.

I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.

Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.

A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.

Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel. Because, very soon, we will get together in its capitol. The best way for a politician in Europe to loose votes is to say something positive about Israel. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel. I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.

It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe’s history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in, what President Reagan so aptly called: “the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.

Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all smililary-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time.

Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe’s last chance.

This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic.

This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance I seek your support.

This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks tot its location, it is safe from jihad and shaira. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.

These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:

“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.

Brothers in the hood: Racism in Romans 9:3-4. NIV

I have earlier defined racism as:

The belief that one's own race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges.

 On the first read through the following paragraph in the King James Bible, Paul doesn't immediately strike one as a racist:

Romans 9:3-5 King James Version
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

But what happens when you read it in the NIV?

New International Version 1973-84
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Christ, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Christ. God who is over all be forever praised!

Pauls "own race" definitely comes across as superior, with certain rights and privileges, even when the translation had been gone over to remove all language offensive to women--well, almost all:

New International Version (T/NIV) 2001-2011
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Messiah, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Messiah. God who is over all be forever praised!

The CBT started off the problem way back in the late 1960's or early 1970's when they decided not to bother translating the Greek words οἵτινές εἰσιν,"who are." They apparently thought the passage would flow better as "my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." Fifty years ago, the usage of 'race' as synonymous with 'ethnic group' had not yet gone obsolete, especially in poetry. But this is a most singular translation of the Greek word συγγενής, which is usually translated 'relatives' in the NIV. Biblical uses of this word refer to those outside the immediate family but still in the extended family; in Luke 21:16 it is also used in an expanding list of relations, falling between 'brothers' and 'friends.' So how did it become 'race' here?

And how did 'brothers' fare in Luke 21:16? Ah, 'and sisters' of course had to be added, although the gender of the friends was still left unspecified. Whatever happened to the English word 'sibling?'

What's of even more concern is that even as recently as 2011, this 1960's reference to 'race' has been left intact. It's without question that the CBT revised the verse in 2001, when they applied a global search-and replace to make sure the word 'brothers' never appeared in the TNIV without 'and sisters' being tacked on to the end*. But here they found that 'brothers and sisters' just didn't fit in an expanding list of relatives, especially in the context of 'sonship' and 'patriarchs.' When all else fails, the NNIV translates ἀδελφoι as 'people.' But it really doesn't make sense to keep 'race' in the verse, as it reads as a double redundancy, with 'people' now added twice to the text: 

my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship. . .

Where is Virginia Mollenkott when you need her?

*update April 2012: There are some exceptions. Jesus' brothers are never identified as his "brothers and sisters," except, of course, when the sisters are explicitly mentioned. Interestingly enough, even though most manuscripts--including two ancient Greek codices and most of the Old Latin--do explicitly mention "and sisters" in Mark 3:32--and that is even the reading of the NIV's base text--the NIV doesn't provide the sisters with so much as a footnote.

Niggerhood in Iraq

Imagine not being allowed to attend school with the other children in your neighborhood because of what your ID card says. Imagine being told that your rent is going to go up simply because of who you are. Imagine losing your job when your employer finds out that you're one of "those people."

As explained in an earlier post, I've appropriated the word "nigger"--no longer allowed to be used by outsiders to describe those of a particular race--for a new use, one for which no suitable word previously existed (one of the many ways languages evolve). A "nigger" is anyone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. Crucial to this discrimination is being able to identify "niggers." In Iraq, it's a matter of which word one has on his ID card under the heading "Religion."

Iraqi society is strictly segregated by race and religion. Until recently, the two were one and the same. Assyrians were Orthodox; Chaldeans were Catholic; Armenians were Apostolic; and other than a smattering of Zoroastrians and Yezidis, everyone else was Muslim. Much as the two groups were at each other's throats, no distinction was made between Shia and Sunni; both classes enjoyed, at least in name, the full benefits of citizenship. For the others, a certain level of second-class citizenship was readily available, and as long as one did not aspire to anything higher than two stars in the military or a cabinet level position in the government, he was free to advance as long as he kept to his proper place.

But, ah. The 'uppity' Muslim who tries to become a Christian! Instant niggerhood.

Definition of Niggerhood

Inasmuch as I have used a certain word a few times in this blog, I though I should stop and define it for the benefit of my readers who have most likely never encountered it the way I use it.

As a boy, I could have gotten my mouth washed out for using the word 'nigger'. During the era of Race Riots and forced desegregation, it was a word so charged with emotion that just using it could incite a riot. I myself thought of it as a pretty demeaning appellation, so I saw no reason to use it for several decades.

In recent years, however, especially after reading the series of biohistorical novels by Mildred D. Taylor, I've come to realise that the word 'nigger' best encapsulates the experience of someone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. The word itself comes from the Southern English pronunciation of the pidgin word for black-skinned person, nigga. It has also been pronounced nigra, and originates in the Latin word for black. All of this goes back to the fact that black-skinned people have throughout recorded history been taken as slaves in battle, and that this custom persisted centuries after the custom died out among the other races. In fact, it persists to this day, with the black slave trade curtailed but still active in the geographically diminished country of Sudan (which name, by the way, means 'black person' in the language of those who continue to take them as slaves--Arabic).

But being a nigger doesn't necessarily have anything to do with slavery. Niggerhood persisted by custom in the American South for many decades after slavery was abolished, and wherever the Police State raises its ugly head, niggerhood inevitably will be found as well. Niggerhood is simply the state of belonging to a class, the members of which are considered to be not worthy of the rights and privileges enjoyed by members of the ruling class. The recent rhetoric in Washington, for example, to the effect that members of the Tea Party ought to be "taken out and shot" for opposing Obama's debt-raising scheme, indicates that in the mind of the ruling class, even legally elected members of this newest class of Niggers don't really deserve to belong--nor, apparently, even to live. It is typical of the suppressing class to seek to kill members of the suppressed class who 'get uppity' and try to find a legal way to express their human rights--in fact, the whole notion of lynching is based on this characteristic.

So, my dear readers, be advised that I use the word "nigger" not in any specific racial sense whatsoever, but merely as shorthand for "member of a suppressed class" whether that suppression be political, economic, or social in nature. In fact, niggers will invariably encounter suppression in all of those forms, should their identity become known.

Are saggy pants really a threat to airline safety?

A dispute that began after a passenger refused to pull up his sagging pants led to his arrest and removal from a plane at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday, police said.

Deshon Marman, 20, a University of New Mexico football player . . . was being held at San Mateo County Jail on suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest.

Not to mention all the passengers that were ordered off the plane so he could be arrested in private.

Clearly, the War Against Terror, as it is waged by the TSA, is nothing but a war against individual liberty, with millions of innocent Americans as its victims.

A humbling distinction

The White Man is now listed as a Black Blog. I'm deeply humbled.

A short review of two self-published books--and a warning

Run a google search on "someone killed erik," (with the word 'else' inserted as the second word) and you'll find one of the books I'm referring to. For the other one, use "he had to go feed hogs" (with the word 'his' inserted before the last word). That should be enough information to suffice, should anyone be determined to read the books. No purchase is required, but I must warn the reader: don't expect to get any sleep tonight once you get started.

These two fictional books were both written about the same time (1995-1997), so I don't think that the authors influenced each other. But they both carry the same theme: a series of targeted assassinations of members of the government who were perceived to be enemies of the American people, with the threat that there will be many more unless certain unconstitutional laws are repealed. The government resists, but in the end, the assassins' demands are met with a minimum of casualties to their side. Other than that, and an adherence to the low moral standards of modern publishing, the two books don't have a whole lot in common. Oh, there is one other thing: Black Americans, and the neighborhoods in which they live, aren't portrayed all that favourably in either book.

In 'Erik', the assassins are a handful of former Special Forces, and their targets are strictly limited to politicians who voted for a pork-barrel budget. The goal is likewise limited, to passing a constitutionally limited budget. Obviously, the assassins will need more motivation than just this, so it turns out that they have personal vendettas against at least one of the politicians. As the story unfolds, the President's Chief of Staff hires a renegade CIA agent to arrange the murders of a few more politicians who favoured a balance budget, both to take advantage of the general mayhem and to settle a score on the other side. The original assassins manage to track down and capture the renegade, and use sodium pentothal to get a taped confession out of him that would bring down the government were it ever to be released. Made aware of the tape, the government capitulates to their demands, and the assassins are never arrested--nor is the tape ever released. No long-term results ensue from this fast-paced but limited campaign.

In 'Hogs', the action is much more widespread, and for far more basic causes. The American gun culture has been chafing for decades under the heavy hand of federal regulation, but is never quite willing to summon a call to arms over it until the BATF stages yet another military-style assault on the home of one of its members, thought to be vacant at the time. The lone occupant of the house, another gun owner, discerning that the house is under attack by armed intruders but not that they are government agents, shoots most of them before realising what he has done. Recognising that he has now completed the first phase spoken of in the maxim, "The first one is expensive, but all the rest are free," he goes on to kill the rest of the team. But first he manages to elicit a videotaped confession from the leader of the raid. The information on the tape convinces him that killing the six BATF agents who had targeted him and his two friends wasn't enough; he has to set his sights on them all. Within twenty-four hours, he has killed eighteen more--all armed, and all seeking to do him and his law-abiding gun-owner friends serious harm in an attempt to part them from their weapons hoards.

At this point he launches an ingenious scheme, one that came to him while he was interrogating the BATF raid leader. He assumes the identity of the agent and begins to fill the internet with missives, supposedly from the now-renegade agent, calling Americans to arms against their jackbooted oppressors. It's now open season on gun confiscators and the legislators who enable them--a target group of thousands. A grass-roots movement emerges to spread the killing, and at a crucial moment the video is released, with the result that the FBI finds no one willing to cooperate with their investigations. As the killings mount, the President goes on nationwide TV to capitulate, proclaiming a general amnesty for the rebels, and the war is over--but not until three top government officials with collective blood on their hands from Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the recent BATF raids are shot in the face at point-blank range.

These works are both fictional, but there is a major difference in their publication history. The first, 'Erik', was written purely as a political thriller. Although no publisher would touch it when it came out, the author went on to write many such books--all best sellers (one of which was mentioned elsewhere in this blog), and his original work was then picked up by a major publisher in paperback. The second (though it preceded it in time) is more autobiographical, published within the gun culture and the author's only such work published to date. He has, indeed, been threatened against ever writing another one, and no major publisher has yet picked up paperback rights, although the first several printings sold out immediately. For some reason that I don't understand, however, both books can be read in their entirety without purchasing either--something extremely rare, and, even in this case, not widely known.

It would appear that the government knows there really isn't any danger of a few disgruntled ex-SEALs bringing down the administration just over pork-barrel spending. But they must have a lot to fear from a few million gun owners with nothing to lose turning their guns on those attempting to make them turn them over.

But here's the problem with fiction. Neither book, I believe, accurately depicts what sort of scenario would truly play out if targeted assassination became part of the American way of dealing with problems in their government. 'Erik', I think, comes the closest, with Erik saying:

"Last Friday we started a new chapter in our country's history, one that is potentially very dangerous. The idea that one small group can dictate, through violence, the policies of this country runs completely against all of the democratic principles upon which our nation was founded. These acts of terrorism absolutely and emphatically cannot be tolerated if we want to leave a civilized and democratic nation for future generations of Americans."

Shortly afterward, Erik was killed--by the other side, and in a far less civilised fashion, with all his bodyguards being blown up with him. Erik had a point, which 'Hogs' never quite developed: once you open season on law enforcement, you no longer control the battle. Killing will escalate on both sides. For example, in 'Hogs', there were some grisly murders of BATF agents along with their families by people with vendettas against them; but no corresponding wholesale murders of gun owners' families, despite the BATF and FBI's proven record at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Instead, the agents only target the gun owners themselves, and always in such a way as to give them a sporting chance (i.e., no more than six armed and armoured agents per gun owner at a time).

"He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." These words were spoken by someone accused of insurrection and treason, who never took up the sword even when he knew that the jackboots were coming to lynch him. It's a maxim that the authors of 'Erik' and 'Hogs' don't quite seem to have caught on to; in their books, the good guys always win, and seldom suffer any casualties. It doesn't work that way in a real live war: the main goal in a war is for each side to inflict the maximum of casualties on the other side, while suffering the minimum of casualties on their own. The best proven way of accomplishing this is for the military on either side to focus the bulk of their killing machinery on the respective civilians on the other side. Thus, in a war, the African maxim is always proved true:

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt the most."

I don't recommend that any of my readers try to implement government change by targeted assassination. Once let slip, the dogs of war are likely to come back and bite the hands--and throats--of those who loosed their bonds; and before too long, those of their wives and children as well.

UPDATE DEC '11: The 'hogs' search will no longer get you to the free book I review here; it will, however, lead in only two steps to a set of freeper books that are available for extensive preview and paint a more apocalyptic picture of this scenario, one in which the government rather than the gun owners fires the first shots, and is more than prepared for their backlash.

The Return of Debtors Prison

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)
Inmate Anthony McCoy was told to remove the jewelry from his teeth before heading to jail, but he said it was cemented to his teeth and couldn't be removed.

McCoy ended up spitting out blood and teeth after a sheriff's lieutenant reached into his mouth and yanked out the grill, according to McCoy's attorney David Raybin.

Raybin says the enamel on his client's front four teeth were ripped off and he was denied proper medical treatment afterward.

McCoy was arrested in November and brought to the jail for not paying child support.

Lawyers in Nashville have worked out a settlement of $95,000, which is schedule d to go before Nashville's Metropolitan Council on Tuesday evening.

The sheriff's lieutenant was demoted and suspended.

While I've heard of women being assessed child support, I've never yet known of one hauled off to jail in handcuffs for not paying it. But this is becoming an increasing problem for men, who can end up spending years behind bars for not bearing the costs of their children's mothers' independent lifestyles. The men who voted for Female Suffrage in 1919 could not have foreseen that their grandsons would be locked away in debtors prison just because their granddaughters had the vote. But all changes to the status quo have consequences that are not only unintended, but usually unforeseen.

Now that a jailer's job is more or less mob enforcement, it's no longer a surprise that a jailer should act like a mob enforcer. And there's one thing the article doesn't mention--another unforeseen consequence of Female Suffrage.

The jailer that assaulted Anthony McCoy was a woman.

Congressional Medal goes political

I'm pretty disgusted by this. President Obama has awarded the highest military honor, the Congressional Medal, to a bunch of WWII pilots. Their accomplishment? Flying airplanes.

Over the past decade or two, many military veterans have seen their medals upgraded to the Medal of Honor, mainly because their heroic deeds that would have earned them the Honor were overlooked due to their race. Justice was done in giving them what they should have deserved the first time.

But this isn't justice. By singling out some pilots to get the Medal for flying, President Obama is slighting all those who actually did something heroic behind the yoke, and didn't get a medal for it. This is sexist politics, pure and simple.

When President Lincoln first awarded the Medal of Honor, you didn't have to do anything particularly special to get it. Other than the Purple Heart, it was the only medal a soldier could earn. For that reason, early recipients of the Medal usually aren't featured in articles, movies, and books about the Medal of Honor.

I guess that will now be the case again, as the Medal of Honor once again is being awarded to those who did nothing special to deserve it.

But maybe, just maybe, the alleged "chemical missions" some of these pilots were involved in had something to do with this. Perhaps, like Bill McGonagle, they are being rewarded for their silence.

Racism Defined

What is Racism?

I'll answer that question for myself. I trust that any who hope to understand racism will see why I define it thusly:

Racist: Characterized by racism, which is the belief that a certain race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges. Primarily, a racist considers his own race to be superior, but will also expect those of other races to agree with his assessment, thus pulling into the definition those who hold up any race for special rights and privileges.

A good example is, of all people, Abraham Lincoln. In his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln argued:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

In March 1860, Lincoln's racism was evident in an address he gave in Hartford, Connecticut:

"I think I would go for enslaving the black man, in preference to being enslaved myself. ... They say that between the nigger and the crocodile they go for the nigger. The proportion, therefore, is, that as the crocodile to the nigger so is the nigger to the white man."

And this, from a man born the same day as Lincoln, but on the other side of the Atlantic:

I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit.... The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

--Charles Darwin in a letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881

It's MLK Day

Nearly 20 years ago, I participated in the local celebration of Martin L. King, Jr.'s birthday. I prepared to deliver his "I have a dream" speech, but was stricken from the program, I suspect because I wasn't black enough. At any rate, in celebration of the day, here are some ongoing quotes from the late racial rights leader--who, it should be noted, was born as Michael King and began his public life as M. L. King, and was actually the father of a son named Martin Luther King III for most of his celebrity.Therefore while Martin Luther King, Jr. is the name by which he is universally known, it was never more than a stage name.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

*

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

*

I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances; but even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men—for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao, as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

M, F, or O?

I just noticed it today, but for some weeks now the local law enforcement website has stopped categorizing arrestees by "Race." This, along with a removal of the "Age" field. The purge hasn't reached the statewide database yet. Question: does the Emergency Response Service still ask if suspicious persons are "Black, White, or Hispanic?" And is this a nationwide movement?

What's next--the elimination (or expansion) of the "Sex" category?

Stay tuned.