Sep 08 2011

Ã…re the independents really this stupid and short sighted? Based on past performance…. just maybe

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 10:55 pm

This one is from Redstate, and I’d be proud to have written it: Yep, “Social Conservatives” need to Sit Down and Shut Up. Maybe “FiCon Moderates” have a Solution Here…

New York, Thursday:

Patience Boyd, 2, was shot in the head and is fighting for her life at New York-Presbyterian Medical Center and Jayla Rodriguez 6, was grazed in the neck. The intended target, Ricky Rodriguez, 20, (not related) was wounded in the torso. All three were rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital.

Chicago, Friday:

A 27-year-old man was ordered held without bond Sunday, charged with fatally stabbing his 3-year-old son and raping and stabbing the boy’s mother Friday morning in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. The boy, identified by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office as Jaivon Sandifer, was pronounced dead at 12:18 p.m. Friday at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. A Saturday autopsy determined he died of multiple stab and incise wounds and the death was ruled a homicide.

Detroit, Friday:

Detroit police say three men were shot, two fatally, as they were walking on the southwest side Friday afternoon. The men were at Cabot and Vernor about 1 p.m. when three men in a vehicle pulled up and fired shots, Detroit Police Officer Samuel Balogun said. Two of the men were found dead at the scene, Balogun said. The third was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.A total of 238 homicides had occurred in the city this year as of Sunday, a 22.7% increase over the same period in 2010.

Camden, Wednesday

“I don’t want to question you God, but I keep asking. Why her? Why Madison?” Dentsy said today as she stood over a tiny pink casket which held the body of 10-month-old Madison Marie Spearman. The toddler was beaten to death in Irvington last week. She died because she was crying, authorities say, and her mother’s 15-year-old boyfriend didn’t want to hear it anymore.

Cleveland, Saturday

Crime Stoppers is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of the person who fatally shot 15-year-old Danica “Tugga” Nelson. Danica was shot in the head Saturday at East 39th Street and Longwood Avenue, where more than 100 people gathered Monday evening for a candlelight vigil. “She was a bright and popular sophomore at Jane Addams High School in their Design Lab and a student at Tri-C’s Early College Program,” community activist Khalid Samad said Sunday in a news release.

Los Angeles, Saturday

Deshon Rasberry was with about twenty people in the 2100 block of East 103rd Street. A lone Black male suspect walked up to Rasberry and fired several shots at him. Rasberry collapsed to the ground and Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) personnel transported him to a local hospital, where he died a short time later. This murder was gang related.

Philadelphia, Thursday

The grieving women knelt on a floor scrubbed of blood, praying the children’s souls to heaven. In life, the children were Savanna Mao, 12, who wore stylish purple glasses to match her personality, and her brother, Savann, 8, who at night prayed for a guitar and a drum so he could form a rock band. Their mother killed them in this tiny bedroom Wednesday evening.

Atlanta, Friday

A killing in broad daylight Friday has Carrollton police on the lookout for a suspect they say is armed and dangerous.Police said three men were in a vehicle around 3:20 p.m. at the Chateau Apartments at 460 Hays Mill Road when a man identified as Evan Winston came up to the car and fatally shot one of its occupants.

East Saint Louis, Wednesday

East Saint Louis Authorities say Smith, 25, shot her daughter, Yokela Smith, 4, and son Levada Brown, 5, in their heads with a shotgun Wednesday evening at their East St. Louis home in the 3000 block of Lincoln Avenue. Another son, 8, was not harmed. Authorities said only that he was able to escape. Smith fled to St. Louis in a vehicle while several calls brought police to the apartment, authorities said. St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly said the crime scene they found there was horrific and that “officers don’t get paid enough to do this.”

Our society is crumbling.

The pictures are haunting: The children, usually cherubic little toddlers, oftentimes black, with names like Yokela and Levada and Jayla are frozen in the amber of permanent newsprint, smiling for all eternity at a reading public that skips past the latest horrific murders and moves onto the box-scores.

There is a low level and gruesome war occurring in our cities, with new victims each day.

Those I’ve highlighted above have all occurred in only the last four or five days. There is usually some accompanying narrative in the newspaper coverage, complete with pictures, of a grieving aunt, or grandmother, clutching the stuffed animal that the latest child-victim once hugged in life, wailing: We must stop the violence, we must take back our streets, why, why, why did the have to die in such a cruel, unspeakably tragic way?

The questions are bellowed in hysterical grief, but are met only with stone cold silence of the next days calamitous murders– There will be more tomorrow.

And yet, we are told to stay away from the moral causes, don’t talk about social issues. Keep your mouth shut about the violence of abortion. Don’t drone on about the baggy pants, the foul-mouthed rap– after all, we’ve got a Federal Government with mutli-trillion dollar deficits to fix. Nobody cares about the devaluation of life, the senseless violence. Shhhhhh….. Independents get turned off by all the social issue crap.

Recently, I pulled up to a gas-station-and-convenience-store in a remote hamlet in Northern Michigan– the kind of place that advertizes “Homemade Jerkey!” outside, and is fifteen miles from anything resembling a town. I was pumping gas, and my little 8-year-old boy was helping– in the manner that 8-year-olds “help”. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon, and we were both anticipating a tall fountain soda-pop, and maybe some hunter sausage.

The ground and air started to thump and shake with a ferocity that seemed to portend an earthquake, or worse. The noise grew louder, until we realized the obnoxious din was emanating from a 1990′s vintage Saturn tooling along the rural road, evidently equipped with mammoth bass speakers that verily shook the ground as it proceeded. A young man with a tailored baseball cap, and wife-beater tank top debauched from the car as it came to a stop in front of the store, but the hideously loud “rap” music continued. We couldn’t hide from it. The tender lyrics of the song went:

“Motherfu**er!

Motherfu**er!

Motherfu**er!

Motherfu**er!”

I’ve not bothered to look up the lyricist, but I’m sure I’ll find their biography right next to Jerome Kern’s in the annals of the Great American Songbook.

So, I’m standing there, trying to fill up my tank and simultaneously seem unconcerned with the auditory assault being leveled at my 8-year old boy. What should I do? At the moment, the idiot playing the music from his car couldn’t have heard me if I’d had George Bush’s bullhorn at hand, yelling epithets. It was a teachable moment, to be sure, but shouting lessons would be useless. I did corner the young twerp in the store, and asked him to turn down his stereo. He looked at me like I was from Lichtenstein.

Nope, the culture is just fine. No problems, at least none big enough to have our Presidential candidates address, that’s for darned sure. We don’t want to scare off the independents.

I would like to posit a theory that perhaps you “FiCons” might want to consider: Our fiscal house is a disaster because our culture is a disaster. And the one can’t be fixed without the other, at least in a meaningful, long-term way. A society that doesn’t care about the deadly toxic nature of its culture, where two-year-old children of 15-year-old mothers are routinely slain by their 16-year-old “boyfriends”, or where the most deadly crime in our inner cities is “disrespect”, is a culture that really doesn’t care that it is saddling its children with debt. Long-term, multi-trillion dollar deficits are a form of child abuse, writ large. It’s just a normalized, institutional form of that hideous crime, but much less gruesome than all the sensational news stories about rape and murder. But, it’s quite plain now: Here in America, children are quite clearly disposable, and have been for a long, long time.

Since about, oh, January, 1973. But, whatever you do, don’t bring it up. It scares the independents.

10 Responses to “Ã…re the independents really this stupid and short sighted? Based on past performance…. just maybe”

  1. innermore says:

    Where’d you dig up this ancient banality? I remember reading the first of hundreds of op-eds like this in 1981. Some well-heeled guy collected newspaper clippings depicting all the calamity going on around him after he bumped into a random member of that calamity at a 7-11, and it scared the crap out of him. Then the dude blamed his soiled skivvies on America’s cultural corruption, brought to you by whichever political idealism he hates.

    So basically we’ve been led to believe that the Losers will still keep right on losing, for some glaringly ignored key reason, and we winners should feel eternally contrite about it. The End. That’s all these hacks have ever had to offer. No solutions: at least none that have ever succeeded, obviously. No interest: no actual TIME spent in these scary places trying to help people. Just a contrived inconsolable white guilt: with a few conflated moral cliches thrown in for good measure at the end. You’re calling THAT compassionate critical thought that you’d be proud to write?!

    Let’s get real frank about all this, shall we? According to wise reformers like your friend Mr. Curmudgeon here, America’s Inner-City Revival can be accomplished in just 3 short stages of action:

    Stage 1. Repeal Roe V Wade. Call in the National Guard and shut down Planned Parenthood and every abortion clinic in this country.

    Stage 2. All inner-city couples who become pregnant must obtain a marriage license and bring their healthy pregnancy to term, or face incarceration. All inner-city pregnant couples tempted to consider an abortion must report to the authorities any illegal involvement by a doctor, psychologist, nurse or clinician; or face incarceration.

    Stage 3. All inner-city residents must be an active member of a church or synagogue within their jurisdiction, or face incarceration. All inner-city residents caught using profanity, carrying a gun or possessing illicit drugs shall immediately be imprisoned. All inner-city residents caught playing loud rap music, wearing baggy pants or backwards baseball caps must immediately tighten their belts, turn their caps around and switch to country music, or face incarceration.

    That oughta do ‘er.

  2. Tom says:

    Most of us live in a bubble. Protected from the horrors that go on around us. We don’t want to know about these horrible aspects of our culture. The killing of babies, had by babies, by babies. In large segments of our society this is normal. Generations of people who do not respect life or anything else for that matter. Roe v. Wade is just a symptom of a larger issue.

    With no moral baseline in their life this is how humanbeings devolve into the animal kingdom around them. Without a belief in God and the precepts that belief brings, this is where we are headed. To that 16 year old who killed his baby for crying, his action was moral because he has established right and wrong in his life. He is the only thing that matters. He was stronger so he was right. To someone else, it’s her body so killing her baby is right. To the student with a gun, they are now stronger so the killing of fellow students is right. God save us!

  3. harmonicminer says:

    Innermore, I can’t really quite tell what you’re saying.

    Are you trying to suggest that the moral perspectives we teach as a society to our young don’t matter, after all?

    Or that the law should not protect basic human rights, like the right to not be killed before you’re born? Or that people who think that should be the law should not try to change the law back to what it was for centuries?

    In any case, your last three points are pure straw man argumentation. Points 2 and 3 are truly silly, and point 1 is almost as silly. Repealing Roe v. Wade would simply put the matter back to the states, where it should have been left in the first place. A constitutional amendment protecting the right to life would require a huge majority of American agreement in order to pass, so that the process of getting it passed would involve a lot of education, and remove, again, the coercive element you imply.

    So I don’t really know what you’re about here.

  4. Tom says:

    I said, in my previous post, “Most of us live in a bubble.” Well innermore after reading your response, let me add that some off us choose to live in a bubble. You said, “Where’d you dig up this ancient banality?” Was anything in the original post false? What do you have to say about murders in the inner city? Why is the murder rate so high? Why are fifteen year old girls getting pregnant? Why shouldn’t the subject be brought up? Just curious.

  5. innermore says:

    Well Tom, I’ll ask you: why should I answer your questions when you’ve already eloquently answered them yourself, and you already know what my answers are going to be, too, since we’re all supposedly following this ancient banal script. Aren’t you kinda tire of that?

    Sorry if I’m being flippant. I’ll get off script for a moment. Was anything in the original post NEW? Why is the murder rate in Omdurman so high? Why aren’t we talking about 8 fifteen-year-old girls A MONTH getting knocked up and abandoned by ONE guy?

    Miner, why don’t you think beyond the trite criticism as well? Yes, obviously I was facetiously creating straw men. That was illustrating my repulsion to the “silly” notion of law as a means of moralizing an unsavory part of a free society. Yes, abortion is immoral. But women who have abortions (and doctors who provide them) get prison time in Iran, not here. Law and government force “morality” in a totalitarian system. In an autonomous one, the collective morality of the people create law and government.

    RE: your Right To Life becoming law process. Common morality is derived by individual moral behavior influencing the whole. Moral behavior isn’t really intentional teaching, exactly. So in this case, involving “a lot of education” can be mistaken to mean: putting the cart before the horse, or cramming your One True Morality down my throat; which itself is immoral. THAT is why I think the long road to passing a Human Life Amendment isn’t going to curtail abortion in this country any more than Planned Parenthood does. By the way, that’s despite my own passionate belief in that One True Morality. Maybe some form of that thought should be part of the education you propose.

    By “ancient banality” I meant: compassionate people have been butting heads about abortion, poverty and vice since Ancient Greece. I was just getting a little tired and indignant about all the platitudes, that’s all. Although I admit I was injecting a few as well. Why can’t we try another approach to this?

  6. harmonicminer says:

    Innermore, you think WAY too much about how things are, as if that is immutable, and not enough about how they have been in fairly recent times and can be again. There is not one thing “cramming down the throat” in the long process to amend the law, because it can only happen if a majority, probably a super-majority, agree. So your accusation that I intend such a thing is misplaced, and it’s hard not to take it as a deliberate misreading of what I said earlier.

    The exact same arguments you’ve used here would have left slavery in place AFTER the civil war, because so many people still wanted it in the south. Those same arguments would have left Jim Crow in place. Those same arguments would have left women unable to own property.

    Things change.

    It’s worth trying to change them in a good direction. Your “approach” strikes me as paralysis, not a real strategy to get somewhere worth getting to.

    Your IRAN example is just another straw man, since no one is suggesting any such thing here.

  7. innermore says:

    …involving “a lot of education” can be mistaken to mean: putting the cart before the horse, or cramming your One True Morality down my throat; which itself is immoral…

    You’re right, it can be a distressing accusation and a dangerous misreading of what you said; but by your liberal opponents’ ancient banalities, NOT ME. Read that quote again. Isn’t that what you constantly hear from your lefty friends? I’m ILLUSTRATING why I say it’s an argument that won’t be settled this way.

    Same with the Iran example. C’mon now, miner, are you kidding me?! I wasn’t trying to misrepresent anyone. I was ILLUSTRATING that your arguing this same worn out way is extremely vulnerable to increasing amounts of distracting, sometimes ridiculous misrepresentation. Try some other method.

    I never mentioned my approach in any of these posts, I just described you guys’s ancient banal approach; and you are correct, they have historically paralyzed progress. These arguments did extremely violently end the scourge of slavery. And at an escalating price. These exact same arguments (unintentionally) perpetuated racist hatred long after the Civil War, up to and past the Jim Crow era, because so many generations in the South were still choking on it being stuffed down their gullets. We occasionally have a bitter aftertaste even today. The same observation can be made about the unintended trachea injuries resulting from women’s rights, Prohibition, war on poverty/drugs/terrorism, right or wrong, pass or fail; anywhere these primitive techniques have been used. Don’t you think some of these problems could’ve been worked out in a slightly more intelligent way than just flailing emotional trial and error every time?

    Why are we just going down the same old path? I’m not coming down on you guys for trying to get your law passed; and it is a good direction. I just wonder why you think your immutable ways of accomplishing it are so optimally efficient, given such a poor and bloody record of performance. Or is that part of “how things have been” and should always be again, and again.

  8. harmonicminer says:

    Innermore, have you heard the phrase, “put up or shut up”? You’re exactly correct. I have never heard you discuss any positive approach you may have. You’re like a music critic who never composes, performs or conducts…. in public, at least.

    So will you share with us an historically grounded, realistic approach that doesn’t boil down to (in reality) doing nothing whatsoever, and (in effect) letting other, more actively vocal people drive the changes in society in directions you profess not to like?

    You seem to sing a single song: the futility of effort, rhetoric, persuasion or argument.

    What’s funny is this: that’s all YOU use in pointing out the (apparently to you) futility of effort, rhetoric, persuasion or argument.

    Got a new song? Or are you just going to be the tired, banal cynic forever, for whom all action is futile, and all persuasion is wasted vibrations in the ether?

  9. innermore says:

    Your same ol’ conclusions about me beating my drum are becoming a bit banal too.

    Do you really think the same ol’ mainstream issue-arguments you bring up, along with those of the opposition, are THE ONLY legitimate arguments that exist out there? Do you really think that in pointing out the futility of basically 2 opposing arguments, I must somehow conclude that the same applies to ALL possible arguments, efforts, rhetoric etc? Causing you to conclude that I must think everything is useless, forever? Oh, I must be misreading you or saying something you didn’t, right?

    I’ve shared alternative approaches to these issues many times here. They might be slightly unorthodox, but I think they’d meet your demands if you’d listened to them with an open mind. But no, they don’t sound enough like the popular songs they’re singing today. So to you they’re absurd, I guess.

    Miner, please squeeze your brain into the pea size of mine for a second and tell me: what do the Abortion, Drug War, Poverty War, Abolition, Prohibition, Immigration, trade and labor movements in the US have in common? For one thing, all these causes legislated laws that degenerate(ed) the legal system in many ways. They all lawfully demand something that’s impossible or extremely unfeasible. They all contradict themselves or other laws. They all have, or create, a huge gap between their legal publication and administration; breaking the bond between government and citizen. So citizen doesn’t have obey the law, destabilizing public order.

    What this logically proves to me (and I know you’ve heard this before) is: unless we want to ultimately solve our problems with criminal enterprise or civil war, core moral arguments cannot be resolved with positive law; especially if that moral argument allegedly contradicts sacrosanct natural laws (rights).

    The way you guys are fighting the abortion issue fits right into this. It is popularly argued (valid or not): legalized abortion is a direct threat to the right to life. Conversely, criminalized abortion is a direct threat to the right to liberty. That’s why we haven’t solved this issue yet. The abortion issue ARGUED THIS WAY contradicts nonnegotiable natural laws. Before these movements destroy the bond between gov. and citizen any further, try an approach based on an argument that doesn’t seem to threaten unalienable rights. DUH

    Here’s one: can most of us agree that having an abortion is a personal, as well as public tragedy that should be avoided at all costs? Well whaddya know, we CAN all agree on something morally! OK, what are some agreeable social reasons for abortions that can be corrected? One root cause I notice (as stated to Tom in a previous post): lots of inner-city 15-year-old girls getting impregnated and abandoned by ONE anonymous guy! Do something about that. Pass legislation that makes the multi-impregnator-abandoner legally/criminally/civilly accountable for his actions. Or at least, develop and publicly provide (if not require) reliable male contraception for these gigolos. I haven’t seen too many policy-makers suggest something like this, have you?

  10. harmonicminer says:

    Innermore, I disagree with nearly all of your presentation on “conflicts” in the law. I agree, they do exist… but not because they are inherently unresolvable. Rather, there are too many interests who want them to stay just as they are. But I’m not going to discuss it all in detail… don’t have the time.

    However, the reason I can’t take you seriously in your “suggestions” is because I can’t usually tell just what they are. But you slipped up here, and actually made a very specific suggestion. Here it is:

    Pass legislation that makes the multi-impregnator-abandoner legally/criminally/civilly accountable for his actions. Or at least, develop and publicly provide (if not require) reliable male contraception for these gigolos. I haven’t seen too many policy-makers suggest something like this, have you?

    The thing is, we ALREADY have laws against impregnating 15 yr olds. We ALREADY have laws to make the “multi-impregnator-abandoner legally/criminally/civilly accountable for his actions.” Regarding “requiring” “reliable male contraception for these gigolos”, exactly how do you propose to do this? One strike and you’re vasectomized by the court? Give me a break.

    The reason you haven’t “seen too many policy makers suggest something like this” is because it would be completely, totally unworkable, and almost certainly unconstitutional.

    As far as enforcing the laws we DO have, I’m all for it. But given that underage girls have relatively easy access to abortion in way too many places, without any questions being asked about who made them pregnant, how do you propose to begin enforcing the laws now on the books? If we start insisting that the father be identified to the police by any underage girl who seeks an abortion, that would be a start. I’m guessing, however, that the incidence of reported “stranger rape” would suddenly go WAY, WAY up… by several orders of magnitude.

    In any case, we don’t need new laws about sex with underage girls, we just need to find a way to enforce the ones we have. Making new ones won’t help without the will to enforce them. The precise reason we don’t enforce them is because the abortion lobby is so powerful, and would fight any required testimony from a girl, to identify the father, before she is allowed to have an abortion. They would call it “another rape” or something of the sort.

    Please make other very specific suggestions. It gives us something specific to talk about instead of rhetorical fog that obscures all meaning.

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