Are Leftists Immoral

In today's American Thinker, Jeffrey Folks asks the question Are Liberals Immoral?, then answers in the affirmative in the first sentence. The rest of the article is example after example of hypocrisy, moral failings, out and out wrong doing, theft and seemingly every other failing of the human species.

Actually, I have a bone to pick with this article. Oh, not with the facts mentioned. No, the facts are on record and not to be disputed. Rather, the bone I have to pick is the terminology. You see, Folks, like a number of other writers and commentators insists on calling these people "liberal." Ann Coulter is guilty, as is Rush Limbaugh. But I think it is important to call things by their names. These people are Leftists, whatever flavor of Leftism they favor, be it communist, socialist, fascist, or progressive, or just plain Marxist.

The Left is famous for camouflaging itself in words that make it sound less threatening. For instance, it should rightly call itself "collectivists" to distinguish its philosophy from that of individualists. It chose communism, because that seemed less frightening, then when the horrors of communism became apparent, socialism. Fascism is just the nationalist form of communism. When those descriptions were exposed, they chose "progressive." Everybody wants progress. Progress is such a powerful word. But of course, when the horrors of eugenics and other progressive policies were exposed, they retreated to the word "liberal," to hide among the true liberals in politics.

Similarly, Leftists are famous for for camouflaging their policies with nice sounding words as well. For instance, since the Clinton administration, Leftists have spoken of spending tax dollars as "investing." Obama has almost made a cliche out of "investing." But an investment implies and expected return. Investors, such as Bain Capital, are very concerned about the proposed return on investment, and the price to earnings ratio. Where is the return on such "investments" as Solyndra? Instead we should call government spending "government spending."  But this is nothing new. Eugenics was  touted as "scientific," but in fact was just plain murder. Social Security, we were assured, was actuarilly sound, but the fact is it is a giant ponzi scheme. Under ObamaCare, we now have the concept that to not purchase a product is to act in interstate commerce.  But the fact remains that people who choose not to purchase health insurance do not act in interstate commerce, and the government has no business forcing them to act.

Are Leftists immoral?  Yes, because if we were to dig into the motives of the Left, we would find them worshipping at the golden calf of government.  We would find a deep desire to make of this world a Utopia.  But of course, Utopia doesn't exist, and in order to achieve their goals, they will have to murder many people who see them for what they are.

Update 6/1/2012:  The American Thinker had another article entitled Jealous God Obama Attacks Rival Religions by Stella Paul. Paul makes the point that we, as Christians and Jews need to decide with whom we are standing, God, or Obama. As noted in the last paragraph above, Leftism is a religion. It can not abide any rival religion. Thus, you will find that the Communists tried to get rid of Christianity in Russia, have tried to eliminate the Falun Gong in China, or created their own pantheism in Nazi Germany as an alternative. Note that Falun Gong isn't truly a religion, but a spiritual discipline that with elements of Buddhism, and emphasising moral teachings. But the Chicoms went after it because of its independence from the State. The State can have no independent groups. Note too that in the case of Fascist Italy, the Church was too powerful to be displaced, so that Mussolini was forced to accommodate himself to it.

What is Meaningful Work

When I was a child, we had apple trees in the yard. The previous owners had planted an orchard that had grown quite out of proportions, and the apples, while good, were small and not of much use. Hundreds maybe thousands, of apples regularly fell off the trees before they matured, and in late August the matured apples fell, since they were out of reach to pick. My Dad used to assign my brother and I to pick up the apples, by which he meant to rake them into piles, put the piles into the wheel barrow, and cart them to the compost heap. It was a big job for two little boys, and of course we didn't much like doing it. But as my Dad pointed out, it needed doing, it was legal to do, therefore we should be grateful for the work. Thomas Sowell has an article that debunks the latest thinking of academic elites on the nature of work that parallels what my Dad taught us. The article, entitled Meaningful Work can be found on today's Townhall.com. Before Sowell gets into the meat of his argument, he takes time to discuss the elite's understanding of reality here:

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.

People living close to nature know that animals of any type have defenses. If they didn't, they would not have survived being chased down by powerful cats and other natural predators. But today's children have grown up with anthropomorphized versions of animals that often think and talk just like people, and have the same views of people as they have of the animals. Thus they approach real animals in the wild as if they were the cartoon versions. Sweet little Bambi and her mother aren't so sweet when they are feasting on your carefully nurtured tomato plants and your peaches. Sowell goes on:

It was painful, for example, to see an internationally renowned scholar say that what low-income young people needed was "meaningful work." But this is a notion common among educated elites, regardless of how counterproductive its consequences may be for society at large, and for low-income youngsters especially.

What is "meaningful work"?

You can read the rest of his article. As for me, I will stand by my Father's definition: any work for which someone has a need, and is legal, is meaningful work. The workman should be paid what he has earned. Every job is not worth the same amount, and one should strive to obtain the highest paying job for which he is qualified. If that means that young people may have to clean houses for a while, or work at a McDonald's restaurant, these employers have needs, and it is legal. One of the important skills that everyone learns doing these simple  jobs is the necessity of being on time, of dressing appropriately, and of taking and following the orders of those who pay you.  McDonald's has trained a huge number of kids in the art of being marketable.

Note that I call these jobs simple, rather than menial.  Menial implies a certain meaningless to such jobs, like digging a hole and then immediately filling it in.  Busy work.  But flipping hamburgers, is not of that nature.  People in a hurry often need to eat on the run.  McDonald's, and other fast food chains provide a needed service by putting a nutritious meal in peoples hands at a reasonable price.  The logistical chain that makes it possible for someone to go into any McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the world, and get  a consistent, quality hamburger, french fries, and a drink in a clean and safe place is pretty impressive, but it all breaks down if someone thinks frying up hamburgers is not an important part of that.  Looked at like that, are there any jobs that are not meaningful? 

Why He Carries a Gun

Mike Adams has an article up at Townhall.com on this Memorial Day entitled Amarillo by Morning (Smith and Wesson on my Mind) that is must read. Mike Adams teaches at the University of North Carolina at Willmington, and for as long as I have been reading his articles, he has had an appreciation of guns and hunting, of fine cigars, and of good whiskey. He has also been a ruthless debunker of the politically correct absurdities of the feminazis and most other "studies" programs. In short, he is a thorough going conservative.  Since Adams makes a reference to George Strait's signature song Amarillo by Morning, I've included it here for your enjoyment.

Today's column talks about a recent trip he made to Amarillo, Texas and an encounter with a person of questionable motives. Adams says he was suspicious of the guy because:

1. He invoked race where it was irrelevant.

2. He falsely claimed to be a member of a noble profession.

3. He pretended to be acting on others’ behalf while he was acting in his own selfish interests.

I have had similar run ins with people of various stripes. The stories told as they approach are always designed to conjure up a flood of emotion, and disarm and distract from the fact that a stranger is approaching by stealth. Once inside your perimeter, you have no idea whether he will be satisfied with merely panhandling, or mugging, or killing. But one thing you do know, race has nothing to do with the situation. Hard luck, bad decisions, or any combination is not unique to any one race.

After recounting his encounter, which ended without pointing his gun, a Smith and Wesson 640 by the way, or shots being fired, he then talks about his experiences carrying concealed:

My experiences as a handgun owner have been no aberration. States passing concealed carry laws have seen significant decreases in predatory crime. Academic studies have also demonstrated that these decreases are statistically significant even after controlling for variables that might otherwise explain the reductions in crime.

To date, there have been 16 refereed studies that have concluded that violent crime goes down as a result of concealed carry laws. About 10 refereed studies have shown the results of concealed carry laws to be inconclusive with regard to violent crime. No refereed studies – I repeat, zero refereed studies – have shown that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons increases the rate of violent crime.

Adams has his own views on why every time there is a proposed change in concealed carry laws that threatens to loosen the State's grip on concealed carriers, there are cries of blood in the streets. It's because sociologists:

1. They invoke race where it is irrelevant. Too many “social scientists” ignore citizens’ legitimate concerns over their safety and well-being. Those who would like to carry a gun lawfully are often dismissed as having an irrational fear of people or color.

2. They falsely claim to be members of a noble profession. In addition to avoiding doing research on gun ownership, most “social scientists” are not familiar with the results of studies on the topic. To ignore science and hold oneself out as a scientist is simply wrong.

3. They pretend to be acting on others’ behalf while acting in their own selfish interests. Sociologists are opposed to rape. But they are overwhelmingly opposed to concealed carry laws that reduce rape. Clearly, they have decided that they are more interested in preventing an assault on their worldview than in preventing assaults on innocent women.

Indeed.

QOL and the Cult of Death

On April 25 of this year, I had a post Treating Human Life like an Old Car in which I stated:

We have been discussing human life in utilitarian terms. Like a old car, we seem to have decided, without much debate among those who will be affected, that at some point we just throw that person away. We view people as if they were units, not unique individuals. But each human is unique. Their presence touches our lives, and our lives would be poorer if they were not there. The cost of repairing the old car is greater than old car is worth. But, a human life can not be weighed by its utility to anyone in particular, or to society as a whole. If we were to weigh a human life in terms of utility to society as a whole, more prisoners would be executed, rather than spend the $30,000 that the average inmate costs society in this country. Surely criminals contribute nothing to society. But we don't execute people for petty crimes. Life is a gift from God, and only God has the right to end a life. It is not for us to hurry death along, particularly for the reason that this hospital bed is needed by another, so just hurry up and die.

I want to take that argument further now. Quality of Life (QOL) arguments are really QOL as defined by someone other than the one facing death, as it was for this unfortunate little girl in Vietnam. Casey Mattox has the story in a piece entitled Born Alive to a Dead World at the American Thinker today. In her case, the person defining the QOL was a combination of her mother and various doctors based on ultrasound findings that indicated the child would be born with debilitating, possibly fatal, flaws. As it turns out, the child had none of these flaws, but was allowed to die anyway. I am sure that God does not turn away such innocent life from an everlasting relationship with Him, but what a tragedy for her mother and father, who will never know her. What a tragedy for her future husband, her own children, and so on. Rather than view life as a gift from God, which should be preserved to the best of our ability, even at the cost of our own lives, certain people have decided that they know what is best for the rest of us. They have defined QOL, and whether we agree or not, they mean to enforce it. If we don't agree to die on our own, they will deny medical help. We will, as this poor, unnamed girl, die by neglect. They will deny food, and water, and wait us out. Nothing so kind as a bullet to the brain. Apparently the elites defining our QOL for us are squeamish about out and out murder, but less so about murder by neglect.

One of the arguments advanced early on against abortion on demand was that the some of very same rationales for abortion could eventually be used to justify euthanasia. Eventually, the rationales for euthanasia could be defined down to any point one wished. And then it is a small step from euthanasia to eugenics. Why not sterilize every person of child bearing age who has a tendency to obesity? In a generation of two or three, we could wipe out the "obesity epidemic." Obesity negatively affects QOL after all. Why not abort the fetuses of women who smoke, or who are alcoholic or drug abusers? Such children will not have a good life according to our elites. We might as well nip future gang members in the bud.

God must weep every time a child he has sent to someone shows back up as "Return to Sender."  He must be crest fallen when someone shows up prematurely because no one could be bothered to help a person through one more day, one more hour.  Is this really the paradise on earth the Leftists promised us?  

The FBI Usurps Authority Not Granted

The Rev. Paul, of Way Up North fame pointed me to this article by Nat Hentoff entitled FBI Free to Ambush our Rights on the CATO website. Hentoff is one of the last true liberals in both journalism and politics, and one of the few where you will find principled argument and not talking points.  Recommend you read the whole article.

He is right, of course. The FBI has now taken upon itself the authority to spy on,  and keep records on any and all law abiding people, citizen or not. Hentoff in turn quotes a paper by Michael Ratner and Margarate Ratner Kunstler:

“As surveillance and the gathering of information can be carried out without any criminal predicate and on the completely innocent, these guidelines have effectively granted the FBI the authority to use and retain records on millions of law-abiding Americans.”

Of course, the FBI has been doing this for years, performing surveillance on, for instance, Martin Luther King. But absent criminal activity, it was seen as illegitimate. But now it has been legitimized by executive fiat. Coupled with the NDAA, the TSA's list of indicators of domestic terrorism, and most recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of "right wing" terrorists, which includes Black Panther Malik Zulu Shabazz*, along with Journalist Frank Gaffney, Blogger Pamela Geller, Blogger Mike Vanderboegh, and Historian David Barton, one wonders who will be targeted next, and why?  Note that this policy was legitimized under Bush, for those who want to use a "but Bush..." argument.  Bush, in my opinion, handed Obama a number of precedents that Obama has since carried to extremes.  This is but one.

As recent terror arrests have indicated, often the people arrested might have a mild interest in committing an act of terrorism, but one wonders how successful at executing such an act they would be without the "help" of FBI undercover agents.  The case of the Cleveland bombers is instructive. The Cleveland bombers, members of the Occupy movement, clearly wanted to blow something up. FBI informants infiltrated the group, actively worked with them to figure out a target, and supplied them with what they thought were plastic explosives. One wonders if the plot would have gone beyond a couple of blowhards venting their frustrations had it not been for the FBI agitating and encouraging these people. Now, I have little sympathy for anyone who is protesting with the Occupy movement, but if the FBI can do this to one group, they can do it to any other group.  We need to return to strict adherence to the Constitution for everyone, to protect everyone.

* Note: Shabazz, and the Black Panthers are not on the right. Their philosophy and what the espouse places them on the collectivist Left, along with Neo-Nazis, skinheads, and the socialists, communists and progressives.

The TSA Again

Katie Pavich has a quick piece over at Townhall.com today that indicates Senate Democrats have increased funding for the TSA.

The piece also notes that the TSA has been responsible for stopping exactly zero terrorist attacks. Zero, Zilch, Nada.

Which then begs the question: "What do Senate Democrats think they are buying with TSA?" I should point out that any private company that wants to stay in business would evaluate what was the stated goal of a component of its business, and measure how effectively it was accomplishing that stated goal. In the case of TSA, they would have a hard time doing so. TSA would be forced to use the "elephant" defense from the children's joke:

Child 1:  What are you doing?

Child 2:  I'm chasing away elephants.

Child 1:  But there aren't any elephants here.

Child 2:  See, I'm doing a good job.

Of course, such an argument would not go over well with the board of directors, and unless some other metric could be found, the budget would be slashed.  But our Senators seem to feel there is some worth to what the TSA is doing.

Hmmmm....

Could it be the goals of the TSA are not to protect us, but rather to dominate and control us?

National Right To Carry

An AmmoLand article entitled Coalition of Attorneys General Want National Right to Carry Reciprocity by the NRA-ILA.

H.R. 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 passed the House in November of last year. While having 22 Attorneys General petitioning for passage in the Senate, I don't really see the Senate passing it, and I certainly don't see the President signing. I suspect the NRA is using the bill as a fund raising opportunity, and that politicians are using it to prove their bona fides to constituents back home.

One of the consequences of passage of such a law is to make may-issue States that are fundamentally anti-gun, like New York, no-issue States. The provisions of this bill are that if resident of a State, like North Carolina, that has shall-issue provisions travels to a State like New York, his or her right to carry would be recognized in that State. It sounds good, and would hopefully curtail some of the abuses of citizens that have occurred. But it could also provoke a defiant response from State legislatures that do not wish to be told what to do.

Ultimately, it is fine, of course, for free men and women to seek to make of the law something that reflects that liberty. But it is presumptuous of the State to attempt to say that one free man may carry a gun, or any other personal arm, and another may not. Your permit was written by God, our creator, and ratified in the Constitution of the United States in December 1791, the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights. It has not been revoked. In so presuming, they are laying claim to your God given rights, a usurpation you should jealously guard against. My point is not to be too concerned about the games being played in Washington right now.

Something Different

I have posted before about my bread baking.  I make sourdough from a starter I purchased from King Arthur Flour now 4 years ago.  I got a new Kitchen Aid Stand mixer in 2010, and I no longer have to knead by hand.  You can read that post here.

Because I am always working on baking bread, be it hearth bread or sourdough, I keep a small inventory of various flours around. For instance, I use a small percentage of whole wheat flour in my hearth bread. Mrs. PolyKahr likes Rye bread, so when she begins agitating for that, I have to purchase a small bag of rye flour. And I usually have several bags of bread flour in the cupboard. But flour, even white bread flour, tends to go bad as it ages. Wheat berries can stay fresh for several years, but once they are ground into flour, they lose their liveliness within a month or so. What to do?

The author of The Bread Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum, in her discussion on flour says to ruthlessly throw out any out of date flour in your inventory. I have found her to be correct in using out of date flour for baking bread. A couple of recent breads have not come out to my standards. I then tried some newer flour, and what a difference. Nice crispy crust, chewy, open crumb with large holes, and a slightly sour flavor. At the same time, throwing out flour seems to be a waste of money at a time when every penny counts.

The first thing I use out of date flour for is feeding my sourdough. There are times I am not actively baking bread, but I need to keep Fred (my starter) fed. During those times, I feed him out of date flour. When I am baking again, I of course feed him the new flour, but between times he can keep alive on the old stuff. Then there are those tasks during bread baking that call for spreading flour on the counter. As mentioned, I no longer knead by hand, having a 575 watt mixer with a dough hook that kneads better than I can, but in shaping the dough, there is no substitute. Since flour spread on the counter is to keep the dough from sticking, and otherwise won't be incorporated into the bread, why not use old, out of date flour?

If anyone has any other ideas, I am open. I have a five pound bag of King Arthur Bread Flour that went out of date, and I didn't notice. It will take some time to use that up.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Fleetwood Mac had a hit song in the 80s that keeps ringing in my mind's ear every time a new revelation comes out about the Fabulist in Chief. The song was entitled Little Lies, and you can listen to it on YouTube by clicking on the link. Christine McVie is lead on this song, but Stevie Nicks provides great counterpoint.

Mark Steyn comments, in National Review Online, in his typically witty style about today's fabulists on the left, Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, citing F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby in a piece entitled The Great Barry. Just as Warren made up the fact that she is "woman of color" by virtue of being 1/32 Cherokee, so has the Fabulist in Chief simply made up facts that would make him seem "cool" to his leftist friends. Thus life imitates art, as Steyn quotes Fitzgerald:

“I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then,” says Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. . . . So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

So what, you say? People exaggerate about themselves all the time. Maybe. But here's the thing: if he lies so deeply about who and what he is, what else is he lying about?

My Bad Brain

So now I know, finally, why I am a conservative. I have a "bad brain!" Just ask author (and obviously liberal) Chris Mooney. The revelation comes to us from Jonah Goldberg, writing at Townhall.com, in an article entitled Republicans Have Bad Brains?

Interestingly, one of the examples used to show conclusively that conservatives are unable to process reality, weigh facts, or understand nuanced and complex situations is their skepticism of global warming. Every liberal knows that the earth is getting warmer, and that man is to blame for it. Except, according to an article at the American Thinker by Randall Hoven, entitled Global Warming Melting Away, by the government's own statistics, the earth appears to be cooling. Worse, the cooling appears to have been going on for 14 years.  Even worse still, the evidence that carbon dioxide, and thus man is to blame could just as easily be explained by the rising federal deficits. Both have a correlation coefficient of 0.91. Lots of things can be paired, and found to correlate. Such reasoning leads to such superstitions as that burying a potato in the garden would cure warts. It doesn't, but people seemed to find some sort of correlation.

But back to Goldberg and my bad brain, Goldberg writes:

Of course, Mooney believes he's simply going where the science leads. Consider that one of the more famous studies was conducted by liberal researchers at University of California-Los Angeles and New York University and published in Nature Neuroscience. Subjects were asked to spot the letters M or W on a screen for a fraction of a second. It turns out that self-described liberals did somewhat better on the test than the conservatives.

What does that mean? Well, according to the researchers, it means: "Liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty." Liberals are also "more likely than are conservatives to respond to cues signaling the need to change habitual responses," NYU says.

Translation: Conservatives literally aren't smart enough to be spell-checkers at an M&M factory because they won't be able to understand quickly enough that the occasional W is just an upside down M.

The data might be correct, but as with Mooney, the conclusions are beyond absurd. London's Guardian newspaper responded to the study by declaring, "Scientists have found that the brains of people calling themselves liberals are more able to handle conflicting and unexpected information." The Los Angeles Times announced in an editorial that the study "suggests that liberals are more adaptable than conservatives" and "might be better judges of the facts."

Huh? The test didn't measure "informational complexity." It measured informational simplicity. As Slate's science columnist William Saletan notes, the study actually excludes complexity and ambiguity. It measured response times to a rudimentary visual acuity test. Almost by definition, conscious thought isn't part of the equation. My hunch is that Socrates would do very poorly hunting and pecking for Ms and Ws on a screen, too.

What books like Chris Mooney's do is once again allow liberals to pat themselves on the back and feel smug because of their "superior" intelligence. They are the self appointed "anointed" ones, who should rule by virtue of their vastly superior thought processes, and conservatives should just sit down and shut up.  But junk "science," superstitions, and lazy PC thinking is not a substitute for rigorous reasoning from facts.  In deciding which policy prescriptions will lead to prosperity, liberty, and opportunity, the issue is not who is smarter, but who is more correct.

A Beating in Virginia is not Justice for Trayvon Martin

When I lived in Virginia, I was a member of the Virginia Citizen's Defense League, and I still receive e-mailed alerts from VCDL. This morning I had a alert in my e-mail about a story that appeared in the Virginia-Pilot, a Norfolk, Virginia "newspaper." The story is from the Virginia-Pilot and can be found here. I will let Philip Van Cleave, president of the VCDL tell the story:

It took 3 tries to get through to 9-1-1 and I'm thinking the Virginian-Pilot now has two employees who might be in the market to get a CHP.<,/br>
Some thoughts about this story from a self-defense point of view:

1. If you are in a vehicle and can speed away from danger, do it! Certainly don't confront a mob!

2. Don't bet your life that 9-1-1 will save you - even a one minute wait could be fatal. Your best bet is to be ready and able to defend your own life at all times.

From WND.com: http://tinyurl.com/8axg86m

100 blacks beat white couple, media bury attack

'That is sad and disgusting. Someone should be fired or resign'

Published: 2 hours ago

by Joe KovacsEmail | Archive

There’s outrage in Norfolk, Va., today after a white couple was attacked by a group of 100 black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being employees of the paper.

Even today, the Virginian-Pilot did not cover the crime as news, but rather as an opinion piece by columnist Michelle Washington.

snip...You can read the next few paragraphs at the Virginia-Pilot website highlighted above. Now back to comments:

Washington says neither suffered grave injuries, but both were out of work for a week. Forster’s torso ached from blows to his ribs, and he retained a thumb-sized bump on his head. Rostami reportedly fears to be alone in her home., while Forster wishes he’d stayed in the car.

The columnist admits the story has not, until today, appeared in the Virginian-Pilot.

Washington says the day after the beatings, Forster searched Twitter for mention of the attack, and one post in particular chilled him.

“I feel for the white man who got beat up at the light,” wrote one person.

“I don’t,” wrote another, indicating laughter. “(do it for trayvon martin)”

Trayvon Martin, is the unarmed black teen, who died after being shot by a community-watch captain with white and Hispanic parents, George Zimmerman, in Sanford, Fla., sparking a wave of outrage long after the incident.

The newspaper is coming under heavy criticism today from residents in the greater Norfolk area, known as Hampton Roads.

“It is unbelievable that the Virginian-Pilot would BURY this story for two weeks for politically correct reasons. That is sad and disgusting,” said David Englert of Norfolk. “Someone should be fired or resign over the decision not to report this attack. It is a sad enough commentary on our society and community to read about how the responding police viewed this crime, but for our only newspaper to decide that they will hide from the truth rather than report the truth is PATHETIC! Any attack by a mob of people on any innocent victim should be put under a bright spotlight for all involved to be judged and exposed as appropriate, and to make sure that the criminal justice system does its job to protect those who obey the law.” [PVC: Hah - don't hold your breath for anyone to be fired. When a reporter lied about what I said in an interview and was caught red-handed, the Pilot ignored the situation.]

William Tabor of Chesapeake, Va., complained: “Surely the Pilot knew about it. A racially motivated attack is certainly news. Was it not politically correct enough to be reported? Is civilization suspended in Norfolk after dark? If we can’t rely on the police for protection, and our [news] media fails to warn us of such hazards, we can only rely on ourselves.”

Charles Chandler of Norfolk indicated: “I am not sure what I am angrier about. This story, or the crowd of black teens who needlessly and thoughtlessly beat two white victims. Or am I just angry that this still occurs in the year 2012. Nearly fifty years after the marches and the speeches and the declaration of civil liberties for all people. Clearly we are nowhere near the dream Dr. King envisioned. I am angry. I am angry at the calloused cop who stated “this is what they do”. I am angry at the Pilot for hiding it under a bushel.”

And Douglas Gaynor of Virginia Beach brought up the need for self-defense, saying, “If the young lady was armed and trained, she could have whipped out P345 and taken out a few thugs.”

VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/

Today we see the return of yellow journalism, where people are smeared for political reasons, where some things are just not printed, where things are made up to get the people stirred up, where the press can not be trusted to do its job.  Of course, now it's blacks that have become a protected class, and anything they seem to do to whites is looked upon as legal, or if not quite legal, as somehow deserved.  You can bet those reporters had never done anything to anyone in that mob.  This is yet more collectivist thinking, the notion that something done to a Trayvon Martin in Florida justifies beating a random someone in Virginia.  But once such "justice" is taken out on people in Virginia, does George Zimmerman go free?  Has justice been done?  Of course not, because justice is not collective.  The specific perpetrator must be punished if found guilty.  The mob in Virginia only succeeded in committing another injustice, which must be punished if they can be found and put on trial.

Martin Luther King's dream was of a society that was truly colorblind.  Everyone, no matter his race, or national origin, or his religion, should be judged by the same standards...the content of his character.  Everyone would have the same opportunity, and would reap the rewards of his good deeds.  But that's not what is happening.  And "newspapers" who refuse to publish the truth, both good and bad, are only adding to the injustices that go on everyday. Update: Instapundit has the inside story on the uninterest of the Virginia Pilot on this story.

Winston-Salem Journal Wrong on Guns Again

Even in a piece intended to be somewhat pro-gun, if lighthearted and a bit snarky, the reliably anti-gun, anti-self defense Winston-Salem Journal gets a part of its story wrong. In an article by Scott Sexton entitled An Experiment: Guns in parks, no disasters that ran on April 30,2012, he writes:

North Carolina loosened state gun laws in 2011, allowing residents to carry guns in parks — either openly or concealed, if the proper permit was legally obtained. Like the federal government, the legislature also allowed local governments to decide for themselves whether to ban weapons from their parks.

The city of Winston-Salem did so. Forsyth County decided to allow those with concealed-carry permits to do so in most county parks. Tanglewood, because alcohol can be served there, is an exception.

State law does not allow cities or counties to designate entire parks as criminal empowerment zones free of guns, as the City Council of Winston-Salem has done. Rather, State law allows them to designate certain portions of parks as gun free zones. Those portions are playgrounds, swimming pools, and athletic fields. That's it. Other areas of the parks, including hiking trails, greenways, meadows, parking areas, forests, and so forth are not permitted to be criminal empowerment zones. Note also that State law doesn't say that a city must designate these areas as criminal empowerment zones, only that they may. Never the less, little tyrants in most cities have seen fit to designate as much ground as they can, evidently feeling that maintaining a strong criminal underclass is a good thing for them to personally. How else to explain it?  By slanting his story in this fashion, Mr. Sexton either believes that the majority of his readers are ignorant, or he is pandering to the very government he, as a so called journalist, is supposed to be watching.  Which is it?

The City of Winston-Salem has been the most egregious in that they have designated their entire park system as one giant playground. Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC) has decided to sue the City to force them to come into compliance with the law, and make an example of them. A quote from an alert by GRNC:

As you know, the city of Winston-Salem is among the most egregious offenders in flouting our new law for concealed carry in parks, continuing to ban guns in up to 52 entire parks, lakes, greenways and hiking trails in clear violation of the law.

GRNC's legal action arm, Rights Watch International, has notified the city of their non-compliance and, after receiving the city's imperial "blow-off" ("We will not entertain your request for a change to the ordinance"), we have retained one of the best gun lawyers in the state, Dan Hardway, and are now interviewing potential plaintiffs for the lawsuit.

It is generally not wise to fight city hall. Unless you are wealthy, as in Bill Gates wealthy, they have more resources than you do, and they are likely to win. But when folks get together and pool their resources, they have a fighting chance.