Published in Race

One of the giants of contemporary political science, James Q. Wilson, has passed away. His writing displayed insightful commentary on areas of public policy--crime ("broken windows"), poverty, bureaucracy (the classic book), bioethics, marriage, and ethnic politics, plus a book on snorkeling,co-authored with his wife. I happened to use his Bureaucracy book last spring, originally published in 1989. Wilson taught us what questions to raise in examining political institutions. Some of his writings for the Claremont Institute can be found here. An appreciation of his work by Shep Melnick is here.

It is not to damn him with faint praise to say that Wilson was likely the nicest and the wisest President of the American Political Science Association. I can still recall the headshaking and denunciations of his presidential address, on "The Moral Sense."

Addendum: A conversation from 1987 with Wilson, conducted by Steve Hayward mostly.

Not intentionally of course. But by inflating the test scores of its incoming students, Claremont McKenna College provides ammunition for critics of race and ethnic preferences in admissions.  How can we trust colleges to provide honest information? Won't they skew data about race to make the case for preferences? John Eastman's brief in an upcoming preferences case lays out this argument well.

In the meantime, a legal blogger has raised the possibility of law school deans serving jail time for falsifying student data and, biggest bonus of all, US News being charged with fraud for knowingly publishing false information.

U.S. News itself may have committed mail and wire fraud. It has republished, and sold for profit, data submitted by law schools without verifying the data's accuracy, despite being aware that at least some schools were submitting false and misleading data. U.S. News refused to correct incorrect data and rankings errors and continued to sell that information even after individual schools confessed that they had submitted false information. In addition, U.S. News marketed its surveys and rankings as valid although they were riddled with fundamental methodological errors.

NY Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin exhibits American virtues, not Chinese ones. One could conclude this from simple observation as well from this book on Chinese (PRC) professional baseketball. "Why are there no Jeremy Lins [point guards] coming out of China?" The answer lies in politics--the sports of a free society and those of a totalitarian one.

Speaking of Lincoln, note this 1860 cartoon of the presidential candidates, featuring baseball metaphors. Lincoln installed a baseball diamond on the White House grounds, as Diana Schaub relates in her classic essay on the All-American sport.

Charles Johnson tracks Claremont McKenna's race preferences admissions policies with the scandalous inflation of SAT reporting to US News and the world. Once again we see how a perverse policy of preferences leads to further unethical conduct. The issue for Claremont McKenna is not the superb quality of its teaching and much of the research--it's rather whether its key administrators (its Dean of Admissions resigned) based the College's policies and altered its identity for the sake of a higher standing in US News.

Did the President create a culture of cheap ambition? The Administration could have further played up its Government and Economics programs and been happy with a major national niche. Perhaps the prominence of conservative scholars in those departments made such a strategy distasteful, though.

We honor King when we try to apply his example to our times. William F. Buckley on Martin Luther King:

We read the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life we celebrate while tending to ignore the essence of his beliefs, acclaimed by him (as by Abraham Lincoln) as the ground of his idealism.  A bizarre paradox in the new secular order is the celebration of Dr. King's birthday as a national holiday acclaimed as the heartbeat of articulated idealism in race relations, conscientiously observed in our schools [think of all the colleges and public schools that ignore national holidays such as Veterans Day--but recognize the King holiday] with, however, scant thought given to Dr. King's own faith. What is largely overlooked, in the matter of Dr. King, is his Christian training and explicitly Christian commitment.  Every student is familiar with the incantation, "I have a dream." Not many are familiar with the peroration.  The closing words were "... and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." [speech honoring the Heritage Foundation, Oct. 20, 1999, p. 472]

The speech, from collected Buckley speeches, is available via google books.

Teaming with secular media, the Obama Administration is clearly hostile toward organized religion, in particular the Catholic Church.  Would King have stood for the churches or the Obama program?  Would he have joined the March for Life?

Update:  The Buckley speech can also be found here, with some added commentary, as Michelle notes in the comments below.  Please read Lucas Morel's comment as well--an excerpt from his MLK Day remarks.

As a typical conservative, I'm rather fond of patriotism and generally dissent from the "blame Amerikkka" crowd. And while I subscribe to a strain of American exceptionalism, I find patriotism in those of other nations to be highly commendable. In particular, I think Europeans are often lacking in national pride - leading to the sort of cultural drift currently observed in many northern European countries.

On the other hand, the last time France took a stab at patriotic nationalism, they ended up with the Reign of Terror. So, while I commend the latest attempt by the French to introduce substantive prerequisites to French naturalization, I do so with slight hesitation. According to France 24:

Foreigners seeking French nationality face tougher requirements as of January 1, when new rules drawn up by Interior Minister Claude Guéant come into force.

Candidates will be tested on French culture and history, and will have to prove their French language skills are equivalent to those of a 15-year-old mother tongue speaker. They will also be required to sign a new charter establishing their rights and responsibilities.

"Becoming French is not a mere administrative step. It is a decision that requires a lot of thought", reads the charter, drafted by France's High Council for Integration (HCI). 

Residing in Asia, I'm accustomed to rather strict naturalization laws. Viewing nationality as primarily a matter of blood, many Asian countries take a dim view of non-ethnic naturalization (excepting mixed-marriages) and simply forbid dual-citizenship. The thin-skinned may sense a pervasive racism in such sentiments, but there is an undeniable and obvious truth in the assertion that I, for example, am simply not Asian.  

America, of course, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum and is rather exceptional with regard to citizenship. We alone in the world are truly a nation of immigrants and boast no purely ethnic component to citizenship. History has rarely witnessed such a national condition, and never upon so broad a scale. We are truly unique.   

Immigration has never been my hot-button issue. Illegal immigration is certainly objectionable, but I can't passionately condemn something that I might very well attempt myself (for the safety and prosperity of my family) were I born into radically different circumstances. I see American citizenship as a privilege which should be available to those possessed of a certain American patriotism and willingness to adopt American culture (i.e., our language and basic civil and moral virtues). Immigration and citizenship are practical matters to me, best determined by balancing national interest with the circumstance of the applicant.

Yet America's immigration discussion generally encompasses Mexicans and the occasional Latin American. France is facing culture-altering waves of Muslim immigrants who have no will to adopt Western culture.

Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, described the [naturalization] process as "a solemn occasion between the host nation and the applicant", adding that migrants should be integrated through language and "an adherence to the principals, values and symbols of our democracy". He stressed the importance of the secular state and equality between women and men: rhetoric perceived largely as a snipe at Muslim applicants, who make up the majority of the 100,000 new French citizens admitted each year.

France's interior minister has made it clear that immigrants who refuse to "assimilate" into French society should be denied French citizenship.

Earlier this year, Guéant intervened personally to ensure an Algerian-born man living in France was denied French nationality because of his "degrading attitude" to his French wife.

That followed an earlier push by France's former Immigration Minister Eric Besson to revise existing laws in order to strip polygamists of their acquired citizenship.

France is correct in all of this. While Sarkozy is accused of "pandering to the right," he has a responsibility to uphold the basic laws and ethics of France. There is always a danger of such sentiments degrading into ethnic, religious or other forms of prejudice, but the alternate extreme of cultural abandonment is equally perilous. Nations must stand for something, and France is finally standing for something worthwhile.

In its continuing campaign against Voter ID laws, and other laws, the NAACP has appealed to the United Nations.

The largest civil rights group in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is petitioning the UN over what it sees as a concerted efforted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters ahead of next year's presidential election. . . .

According to The Guardian, the group complains that "34 states have introduced a requirement that voters carry photo ID cards on the day of the election itself."  Voter ID and other laws, such as laws that strip felons of the vote, at least for a time, are an affront to democracy, according to the NAACP:

Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP's president, said the moves amounted to "a massive attempt at state-sponsored voter suppression." He added that the association will be urging the UN "to look at what is a co-ordinated campaign to disenfranchise persons of colour."

So the NAACP is appealing to a non-democratic institution, and is attacking the American legal system, and American sovereignty, in the name of democracy?  How democratic do they think the world would be if the UN ran it?

Glenda Armand, a former MAHG student, has just come out with Love Twelve Miles Long, a gorgeously illustrated children's book about Frederick Douglass.  (Glenda wrote the text, Colin Bootman illustrated.)  We see young Frederick Bailey's mother explain to him how she manages to walk 12 miles to see him at night, after their separation.  She fills her son with love and hope.  Glenda explains her love of slave narratives at her website--it's family history, for one thing:

As a recent college grad, Glenda visited her grandparents in Louisiana.  While at their home, Glenda came across a Bible that had been printed in 1869. It had belonged to her great-great grandfather, Victor Jones, Sr., who was born a slave.  In one moment, one of the most tragic aspects of American history ceased being a chapter in a history book and became real, tangible, and personal. Victor Jones, Sr. died a free man in 1928. Later the Bible was given to Glenda and remains her most treasured possession.

After many years of teaching in the primary grades, Glenda decided to teach eighth grade.  In preparing to teach US history, Glenda read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. In those pages, Glenda met Harriet Bailey, the mother of Frederick Douglass. As the mother of two, Glenda related to Harriet's heartbreaking dilemma and could not get it out of her mind.  Glenda felt Harriet's guiding hand as she wrote Love Twelve Miles Long.

The Washington, DC Folger Theater presented a noble rendering of Shakespeare's Othello (through December 4). This tragedy deals with race, religion, tolerance, and the costs of living in a diverse society and serves as a companion to The Merchant of Venice.  Stagings of both often suffer from our contemporary views of these issues, which undermine Shakespeare's tragedy and quasi-comedy.  (For a contrast, see Dennis Teti's astounding study of the Merchant, which uncovers Cathollic themes.) The Folger's rendition does not condescend and brilliantly emphasizes the depravity of Iago in the last few seconds of the play--I won't spoil it for now by revealing the technique.

I can rarely think of the play without also recalling the old Redd Foxx Sanford and Son spoof on it.  Howl with laughter:  Part 1, part 2, part 3.  Instructive in its own way, as well.

Why do universities think they are doing minorities a favor by these policies?  The Center for Equal Opportunity strikes again, this time against grotesque racial disparities the University of Wisconsin undergraduate and law school admissions process:

The odds ratio favoring African Americans and Hispanics over whites was 576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively, using the SAT and class rank while controlling for other factors. Thus, the median composite SAT score for black admittees was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and the Latino median SAT score was 100 points lower. Using the ACT, the odds ratios climbed to 1330-to-1 and 1494-to-1, respectively, for African Americans and Hispanics over whites.

For law school admissions, the racial discrimination found was also severe, with the weight given to ethnicity much greater than given to, for example, Wisconsin residency. Thus, an out-of-state black applicant with grades and LSAT scores at the median for that group would have had a 7 out 10 chance of admission and an out-of-state Hispanic a 1 out of 3 chance--but an in-state Asian with those grades and scores had a 1 out of 6 chance and an in-state white only a 1 out of 10 chance.

CEO chairman Linda Chavez noted: "This is the most severe undergraduate admissions discrimination that CEO has ever found in the dozens of studies it has published over the last 15 years."

The studies can be downloaded on PDFs from the linked site.   UW's lame response here.

A new book, out today, questions the now conventional wisdom that Thomas Jefferson fathered illegitimate children through his slave Sally Hemings.  The board responsible for its publication includes such notables as Harvey Mansfield, Charles Kesler, James Ceaser, Paul Rahe, and Forrest McDonald and is chaired by UVA law professor Robert Turner.  Here's the amazon link.  The accusation should not have moderated devotion to Jefferson for his extraordinary achievements, though it could not have had any but that effect.  This book should help us readjust our vision of the man.  Jefferson celebrated enlightenment; let us follow in his footsteps on this accusation as well.

The diversity racket in action:

For those unfamiliar with TV staffing, the networks have initiatives that require most shows to set aside one staff position for a writer of diverse descent. The diversity hire is often the only writer on staff whose salary does not come out of the show's budget, but is paid by the network . . .

Here is what mostly happened: My agent pitched me on the phone as a diversity candidate, but once at the meetings my appearance confused people.

"Your father must be very light-skinned," one executive said.

When I told another that my paternal grandparents were interracially married in the 1940s, having met as founding members of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), she said, "So really, you are only a quarter black. You have more white blood than black blood."

Good to see that Hollywood rejects the one drop rule.

I previously noted the perverse hostility bleeding-heart liberals have toward Jews, the perennial minority-victim of world history. Ron Rosenbaum writes well on this hostility within the Ivory Tower of liberal academia, noting the recent hypocrisy and (continuing) anti-Semitism in "Yale's New Jewish Quota":

Who killed YIISA? It's a kind of academic murder mystery. YIISA--for those who have not caught the scant coverage of this deeply disturbing development--stands for the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism. Or should I say stood for that, till Yale, in a cowardly, clumsily-executed maneuver, abolished the program in the first week in June.

...

Yale cited several reasons for killing YIISA, a program devoted to the cross-cultural examination of anti-Semitism that had been in operation since 2006. But many observers suspect the turning point was a YIISA conference last August called "Global Anti-Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity" which, while featuring 108 speakers from five continents, dared acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism in some Islamic cultures. ...

But while the backlash against YIISA's conference included predictable protests from the official PLO representative and the group's supporters in America, the more subtle--and yet ludicrous--objection to YIISA's conference and YIISA's work came--as Ben Cohen pointed out in the Forward--in the charge of "advocacy," leveled by some YIISA opponents on campus. The charge that the program exhibited too much "advocacy" against anti-Semitism, as opposed to academic analysis of anti-Semitism. It seems unlikely that Yale tells its cancer researchers not to engage in advocacy against the malignancies they study, doesn't it?

David Greenberg also notes the Yale controversy as a starting point for a broader consideration of liberal and academic tolerance of anti-Semitism:

How did a concern with anti-Semitism, whether scholarly or political, come to be seen as the province of the right? How did liberalism--historically the philosophy of toleration and equal rights--come to be so squeamish about confronting Jew-hatred in its contemporary forms?

In the last decade or so, noxious attitudes toward Jews once voiced only on the far left and far right have gained a curious acceptance--indulged or explained away, if not actively promoted, by mainstream liberals. Remarks that can be charitably described as disturbing emanate from left-liberal icons ... doing no visible damage to their reputations.

Greenberg cites several causes for this shameful liberal legacy. First, liberals granted Islam - the grand perpetrators of anti-Semitism in the modern world - a "free pass" following 9-11.

Liberals (and many conservatives), anticipating an outbreak of nationalistic anti-Islamic feeling in an angry and wounded country, admirably took pains to fight negative depictions of Islam. But those laudable demonstrations of toleration sometimes became muddled, leading some liberals, as Leon Wieseltier put it, to start "granting Muslims a reprieve from the rigors of liberalism."

Greenberg also indicts the left for succumbing to their deranged "blame Bush" mantra.

The Bush administration's ideology-fueled agenda abroad made many liberals feel that either they were with the president or they were against him--and who would want to be with him? Clinton-era liberal internationalism fell from favor after several of its prominent adherents short-sightedly backed the Iraq War. As the Bush administration grew tight with the Likud governments in Jerusalem, sympathy for Israel came to be equated with a "neocon" position.

Finally, Greenberg notes that the great barrier to anti-Semitism over the past half century is beginning to fail.

As these developments opened the door to the frank expression and reflexive rationalization of anti-Semitic views, another, longer-term trend was eroding the cultural taboos against that expression: the vanishing memory of the Holocaust.

Stanley Fish ... wrote with self-awareness some time ago about his sensitivity to anti-Zionism. It was magnified, he said, by two factors: the time he spends on campuses, "where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position," and his age (now 73). Unlike friends just 10 years younger, Fish remembered World War II--as do his peers everywhere. For decades those memories chilled anti-Semitism and extended the world's concern and protection to the Jewish people. Now they are fading.

Rosenbaum and Greenberg write on serious matters with great thoughtfulness and clarity. Liberal anti-Semitism is an anomalous abomination, and its wide-spread presence within universities adds insult to injury. (I fully trust that Ashland University - or at least its Politics and History departments - does not descend into such barbarity.)

The descendants of the litigants in the great civil rights case of 1896 form a foundation.  Sweet idea, and I'm wondering whether serious tea party-style activists might follow suit by forming similar foundations devoted to ending irrational discrimination.  They might find inspiration in Jennifer Roback Morse's libertarian scholarship, which notes the City of New Orleans overriding the railway's preference for integrated seating.  (Clint Bolick has also performed great service along these lines.)  Here is another way to put natural rights-thinking to practical use.  Reading Charles Lofgren's classic work on Plessy is essential background.  The Claremont historian shows the direct ties between Plessy's arguments and the Declaration of Independence.

The Tea Party's most appealing argument is for the restoration of the principles of the Declaration of Independence in everyday life.  The fight for color-blind justice is an essential part of that argument.  Thanks to Mike in the comments.

Treppenwitz:  Here is one version of Edward Erler's argument on Plessy's persistence in our jurisprudence.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center attacked Rep. King and the Homeland Security Committee's hearings on homegrown Islamic terrorism by offering that radical Islam isn't America's greatest threat. You'll never guess who is....

Well, I think it's not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country.

Asked for an example, Potok cites the "so-called anti-government patriot movement," such as the "sovereign citizens' movement."

These are people who believe the government has no right to control them in any way, to pass laws that affect them, to require them to pay taxes, even to require things like driver's licenses and auto registrations.

Other than Wesley Snipes and a few leftist anarchists, do you know anyone (especially anyone on the right) who thinks the government can't collect taxes or pass laws? Have you ever heard of any such groups committing an act of terrorism, anywhere in the world? Now, can you recall any acts of terrorism, here or abroad, committed by an Islamic group?

It's not a point of disagreement between the left and right on this issue, it's a point of sanity. If the SPLC - which, in its desperate attempt to remain relevant recently included "pro-family" groups on their annual list of hate groups - truly believes the "sovereign citizens' movement" is a greater threat than Al Qaeda, they must be so consumed by hate or fear as to be pathologically deranged. The only other possibility is that they are utterly immune to the due shame which should accompany such a ludicrous lie.

Student Free Press reports a study by the Center for Equal Opportunity which claims Miami University and Ohio State "discriminate based on race and ethnicity in the admissions process." CEO Chairman Linda Chavez said:

The study shows that many, many students are rejected in favor of students with lower test scores and grades, and the reason is that they have the wrong skin color or their ancestors came from the wrong countries.

If this seems unbelievable 60 years after the civil rights movement, it's because you're making the wrong assumptions. The study found that the universities preferred "African-American, Hispanic and Asian students over white students."  

Now, if the bigotry seemed untenable when you thought it harmed blacks, shouldn't the same outrage accompany the revelation that it harms whites? Of course, it doesn't, because we've grown accustomed to the "soft bigotry" of affirmative action and racial preferences for minorities. But the principle of government preference for certain racial groups is just as loathsome to American morality as ever.

H/t: NRO's Corner

Stephen Meister argues that government caused the housing bubble:

Federal policy was the chief cause of the crisis. Prior to the end of World War II, the percentage of US home ownership ran well below 50 percent; after the war -- with Veterans Administration assistance to returning GIs -- we saw it climb into the low 60s. But, as the chart above shows, it didn't skyrocket until mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration began pushing its "affordable homeownership" agenda.

In 1996, HUD set an explicit target, commanding that 42 percent of the loans bought by Fannie and Freddie be to people with incomes below the area's median. That target rose to 50 percent before Clinton left office -- and was pushed even higher in the Bush years.

Meanwhile, Washington used the Community Reinvestment Act to muscle banks into making loans to minority borrowers with poor credit ratings who put down miniscule down payments.

On the other hand, one could say that the bubble would not have happened absent government pushing banks to loan more to people with weaker credit is like saying that the machine gun would not exist if gun powder did not exist.  That's probably too strong, but it seems more reasonable to say that pushing banks to loan more to less qualified borrowers was a necessary, but not sufficient explanation of the bubble.  It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the financial crisis.

Reacting to David Cameron's recent comment that "multiculturalism has failed," Peter Kirsanow notes that the U.S. "hasn't traveled as far down the road of multiculturalism as Britain," but he also notes that we've gone further than many think.

One area that might be worth highlighting is in the area of citizenship.  The day someone becomes a U.S. citizen, he becomes an American in the most important respect.  His character as an American is whole, perfect, and complete.  By contrast, familes can be citizens of France or Britain for generations, but still not be thought of as British or French.  The same is true in most countries.  What sets the U.S. apart is that citizenship in America has been, in principle, primarily political.  It has not been based on soild or blood, but, instead, it has been based upon being party to the compact built on the principles of 1776 and confirmed when we the people ratified the compact in 1787-88. 

By making citizenship depend primarily on soil, and also, to a degree, on blood, birthright citnzenship changes that.

The efforts we have seen in the past few decades to make it easier to be a citizen of the U.S. and another nation fit in here too.  (Dual citizenship makes no sense if citizenship is primarily political, but which is possile when citizenship is cultural--Once we're talking culture, however, citizenship probably is no longer the best word. Race or ethnicity would probably be better). The efforts to weaken our citizenship oath in the same line.  These efforts are all, ultimately, of a piece with a reading of the constitution which separates citizenship from the principles of 1776.

Gary Schmitt and Peter Skerry note the indifference of Muslim American groups to vicious acts committed in the name of Islam. 

While Muslim-American leaders are constantly reminding their followers to exercise their rights as Americans, they also embrace the view that Muslims here are part of the worldwide community of fellow believers-the ummah. As such, these organizations are riven by numberless fissures that run along linguistic, ethnic, racial, and doctrinal lines. Their leaders are preoccupied with not saying or doing anything that would cause such fissures to develop into major ruptures.

Immigrants are obliged to acknowledge the truths of the Declaration of Independence.  Many could already teach the native-born such lessons by their example.  All need to keep in mind that being American is about duties to each other as well as rights. 

The historical premise of Dolen Perkins-Valdez's novel Wench:  "The land for Ohio's Wilberforce University, the nation's oldest private historically black college, where [W.E.B.] DuBois had once taught, at one time had been part of a resort - a place called Tawawa House, where wealthy Southern slaveholders would take their slave mistresses for open-air 'vacations.'"

Walter Russell Mead begins his new "Black and Blue" blog by noting the effects of cuts on government for the black middle class.  He proceeds to give a sober assessment of black America today and will "highlight issues that affect Black Americans and look at ways to ensure that the transition increases Black opportunity in this country."  Mead gave a thoughtful assessment of Obama via a book review last year; this promises to be an important blogsite in our post-election efforts to "refine and enlarge" our political views.

Treppenwitz (in response to comments):

Conservatives in the private and non-profit sectors need to act prudently on our obligations here.  Example:  Must affirmative action preferences necessarily lower performance standards of minorities?  In my experience not necessarily, not if you know where to look for talented black students, and that is in inner city Catholic schools.  Conservatives need to becomes more imaginative about the way they think about opportunity issues; they must not become as stagnant as liberals.

There was Frederick Douglass.  Drawing on his significant book, Peter Myers succinctly describes Douglass's greatness here, on the Heritage Foundation's website.  Douglass's evolution from a despiser of the Constitution to a defender of it, even without an anti-slavery amendment, poses a model for Americans today who seek a return to the Constitution.  Douglass is required reading for the Tea Party. 

Also before King was Jackie Robinson, the Dodger star who integrated the All-American game.  Like sprinter Jesse Owens in the "Hitler Olympics," he showed excellence in his talent and in that way made the case for equality.  In their own way they made, like King, natural law arguments for equality.

UPDATE:  The Sage of Mt. Airy reflects on his own white, Southern tergiversations regarding the appropriateness of the King Holiday.  Unlike Douglass, King apparently declined in his esteem for the document. 

The EEOC is suing the Washington Post's Kaplan business for using credit histories in vetting job candidates.  Why?  Because in the judgment of the lawyers at the EEOC, ""This practice has an unlawful discriminatory impact because of race and is neither job-related nor justified by business necessity."

Perhaps I'm wrong, but my guess is that the Washington Post has been a big supporter of disparate impact lawsuits in the past.

Foolishly, I supposed that Helen Thomas' most recent meltdown would be the most fanatical anti-Semitic sentiment I would read today.

...we are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists.

Then I read that Egypt has blamed the recent spree of shark attacks off their coast on ... the Jews.

Speaking on the public TV program "Egypt Today" yesterday, a specialist introduced as "Captain Mustafa Ismael, a famous diver in Sharm El Sheikh," said that the sharks involved in the attack are ocean sharks and do not live in Egypt's waters.

When asked by the anchor how the shark entered Sharm El Sheikh waters, he burst out, "no, who let them in."

Urged to elaborate, Ismael said that he recently got a call from an Israeli diver in Eilat telling him that they captured a small shark with a GPS planted in its back, implying that the sharks were monitored to attack in Egypt's waters only.

"Why would these sharks travel 4000 km and not have any accidents until it entered Sinai?" said Ismael.

Earlier today, General Abdel Fadeel Shosha, the governor of South Sinai, backed Ismael's theory. In a phone call to the TV program, he said that it is possible that Israeli intelligence, Mossad, is behind the incident and that they are doing it to undermine the Egyptian tourism industry. He added that Egypt needs time to investigate the theory.

GPS, meh. If only they had "sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads."

You can't make this stuff up - and shouldn't have to take it seriously.

Following up on Gloria Steinem's accusation that Republicans are universally sexist, Southern Poverty Law Center quickly labeled conservative organizations as "hate-groups." SPLC, like Steinem's feminist movement, once served at least a partially noble cause. Now, all Republicans are misogynous oppressors and conservatives are the equivalent of neo-NAZI's and the KKK.

Tea Partiers were attacked as racist, sexist and hateful prior to the election - but November proved the movement resistant to such smears, no doubt to the chagrin of the progressive left. So, along with broad brush smears, the left has also adopted a narrower, targeted form of character assassination: SPLC's list of hate-groups includes Family Research Council and American Family Association. Virtual skinheads.

I doubt the good work of sexual, ethnic and gender tolerance is quite finished, so it's a shame that the self-described champions of such causes have decided to waste their time, efforts and credibility on ridiculous, partisan smears. These people defile themselves by accusing decent people of abhorrent intentions, and injure the greater cause of justice by wielding such weighty accusations with ideological frivolity.

Not long ago, Vinceng Gray defeated the incumbent mayor of Washington, DC, Adrian Fenty, and became the presumptive next mayor.  As a result, Michelle Rhee is leaving her job as schools chancellor.  Washington has notoriously bad, yet expensive public schools. Rhee was trying to improve the schools and was willing to knock heads and to fire people to do it. 

In the election, the black communities were central to Gray's victory.  Why?  As the Washington Post noted, firing public employees hits the black middle class:

As mayor, Fenty retained his overwhelming popularity among white voters, as a breakdown of last Tuesday's vote demonstrates. But he lost the support of vast numbers of black voters who derided him for ignoring their communities and slashing government jobs. Many of those jobs were held by African Americans, who since the advent of D.C. home rule have used city employment as a stepping stone to the middle class. . . .

Although blacks and whites recognize the importance of the public schools as a vehicle for educating their children, blacks also see the school system as a primary employer, providing jobs to thousands of teachers, school bus drivers, administrators and secretaries. When Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee laid off hundreds of teachers, many blacks saw something more than a simple purge of poorly performing educators. They saw an assault on economic opportunity.

To put it more bluntly, the leadership of the black community is heavily invested in working for the government.  Statistically, if memory serves, the percentage of blacks who work for the taxpayers is higher than that of any other ethnic or racial group in the U.S.  In short, it might be the case that the interest of the black middle class conflicts with the interest of the rest of the black community.  The idea of ending tenure for civil servants and teachers threatens a very strong, entrnched interest in the black community, even if opening up the job market is, in fact, in the real, long-term interest of the community as a whole.

Perhaps the rise of black tea party candidates represents a move to change that, reducing the dependency of the black community on the government, and breaking the perceived uniformity of interest in the community.

"Racism, racism, fight, fight, fight/Workers of the world unite"--a Communist leafleteer provided some zest for the Glenn Beck rally and handed out fliers to bemused participants.  In my mere 20 minutes at the rally (I had a lunch engagement) I heard little from the stage and saw less, save the apparently middle to upper-middle class crowd, very thick just NE of the Lincoln Memorial.  I have no way of estimating its overall size, except to observe that where I was it was denser than, say, the Fourth of July crowd.  I did hear numerous complaints about the sound and the lack of a view, as many people left, but maybe the audience further back had better sound and perspective on the stage.

In case someone else hasn't made this obvious point, I note that the Lincoln Memorial unites the Beck crowd, the counter-rally, and the original civil rights March on Washington through its presentation of simple justice.  After all, it was Lincoln who defined slavery as "you work, I eat."  That was at the heart of his attacks on slavery in the 1850s, and it is the moral precept that condemns slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and compulsory redistribution of wealth today.  And it is the logical deduction from the proposition that all men are created equal.  The Communists and others who don't share American principles would have a different view of the matter. 

UPDATE:

On the methodology of counting crowds:  Consider this photo analysis.  That's fine as far as it goes, but this is like taking roll at the start of class and ignoring all the students who sneak out (and others who come in later).  As I came in, around 11 a.m., I saw innumerable folks leaving, some complaining they could not see or hear.  Others may have found the heat too hard to take.  Yet they should count as attendees, too.  Many more people were coming in than leaving.  So the count needs to take into consideration the total numbers who were there throughout the day--not just a static snapshot of the event.  Maybe some (overly clever) social scientist (a new-bred economist) has devised a methodology for doing this.  So my total count would exceed the static count at the crowd's greatest size by a considerable factor.

It is the 50th anniversary of the Harper Lee modern classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  A question recently raised is whether the Tea Party movement should make racial preferences/affirmative action an issue.  Whatever they choose to say, they should embrace this book, on school reading lists for almost 50 years. Hero Atticus Finch is devoted to the rule of law in a way foreign to our current oppressors and Supreme Court nominees.  Conservatism, whether of the more traditional sort or the more activist Tea Party variety, is focused on restoring the rule of law--saving it from bureaucracy, command-and-control economics, hijacked Congresses, runamok judges, and idolators of foreign gods.

So, at Tea Party rallies, everyone come with your copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Singing "We Shall Overcome" would not be a bad idea either.

A related item is lefty Jacob Weisberg's distinction between western (property rights-Tea Party) conservatives and southern conservatives--the first he characterizes by Goldwater and Palin, the latter by George Wallace.  The westerners (here he mentions Harry Jaffa) used to have intellectual credentials, but now they are "anti-intellectual."  Of course Weisberg wants moderation on the right.   

Rich Lowry takes Rand Paul to task for believing "that it's never too late to re-litigate 40-year-old historic milestones."  Paul believes that the federal government may ban racial discrimination by the government, but he's questions its right to impose the same requirements on private individuals, clubs, and corprations.  Paul has walked back from his position, arguing, prudently, that such an expansion of federal power was necessary in the 1960s. 

That raises the question of whether it is still necessary.  America has elected a black president.  Racial milestones in America have become so commonplace that we seldom notice them anymore.  Prejudice still exists, but it's nothing like it used to be.  It is below the level faced by Jews, Irish, Italians, Poles, and other groups who integrated successfully without help from the federal government. Given that reality, it is time, once again, to restore to corporations, clubs, and individuals their right to choose with whom to do business and to spend time with?

(An added bonus of such action is that it would save us a good deal of money, by rendering countless federal, state, and local employees unnecessary. The same would be true at colleges and corporations.  How much money does affirmative action and racial-compliance cost the U.S. economy each year?  Are we post-racial enough to do well and good at the same time?)

Among the many reverberations of President Obama's election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

So says the NY Times.  But who made Obama possible? What about Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condi Rice? A succession of prominent Republican black appointments gave Americans the confidence that blacks are up to the task (younger readers will not remember the rarity of black quarterbacks). I submit that Obama could not have been the Democrat nominee without such precedents--from the opposing party.  Hence Obama's 2008 campaign put-down of Justice Thomas--why acknowledge one's dependence on the kindness of the other party?

Moreover, I would argue that baseball star and integration trailblazer Jackie Robinson (a Republican) made Martin Luther King's success possible.

While many were fit, and seem to work out, bike, ski, and hike, none understood the mechanics that lie beneath the veneer of the good life -- the chain-sawing, hammering, drain-unplugging, tractor-driving, irrigating, and welding that allows a pleasant afternoon Greek salad and cappuccino on University Avenue -- the disconnect between those Pennsylvania "clingers" and Obama's arugula-eating crowd.  [emphasis mine]

In the past four years, I have argued in this space that nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the commonsense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law--say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces--and then go have a Coke. Not everything has to be settled right away. Only controlling the border has to be settled right away.

Rob Schwarzwalder of the Family Research Council reminds us that the census was politically necessary to count slaves, so the South could build up an electoral advantage in the House.  (See our Richard's earlier post.)  In taking a shot at Karl Rove, Rob points out the difference between today's census and the original ones.  And John Judis notes how wrong Barack Obama was to record himself as black on the census form:  "he ... confirmed an enduring legacy of American racism."

The more opportunistic leftists libel Obamacare opponents as racists for wanting to limit federal government powers--and presumably justify states'-rights segregationists.  (Tell that to the sanctuary cities movement.)  We need to remind ourselves why the Founders made the bedrock principle of federalism, the equal representation of each State in the Senate, an unamendable part of the Constitution (Article V).  Consequently, thinly populated "red states" (with their guns and bibles) will always be with us.  (There are of course blue states with small populations, too.)  The federalist principle here is manifested most vividly in the electoral college--another institution the left would do away with.  The Sage of Mt.Airy has further thoughts on Federalist #51 and federalism's role in limited government.

David Brooks insists that Barack Obama, despite his misreading of public opinion, "is still the most realistic and reasonable major player in Washington."  (Look at the abuse leftist commenters heap on him, as your conservatism dismisses this as liberal madness.)  "In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism."  Bring me smarter citizens--the cry of savants throughout the ages!  In truth, Brooks has a point about Obama's Middle East policy and maybe on another issue or two.  But what is at the man's core, what he does he ultimately want to achieve?  Brooks is at odds with, among others', Charles Kesler's reading of Obama, which finds far more ambition (and political extremism) in him than in Clinton or other liberals.

Michael Gerson is even more problematic in his reasoning, making extraordinary parallels based on the relative successes of the gay rights and the pro-life movements:

But so far the gay rights movement has succeeded for many of the same reasons that the pro-life movement (to a lesser extent) has succeeded. Both have taken sometimes abstract, theoretical arguments and humanized them. Both have moved away from extreme-sounding moralism (or anti-moralism) and placed their cause in the context of civil rights progress. Whatever your view on the application of these arguments, this is the way social movements advance in America.

Yes, the way social movements advance is often through spurious comparisons, repeated by authorities.  Moreover, the civil rights movement morphed into racial/ethnic preference pleading that is a key part of expanding the administrative state.  It is the civil rights movement based on the Declaration that must move Gerson, but he has a strange view of it, if he wants to apply it to both pro-life and gay rights. 

Both Brooks and Gerson seem to lack any objective standards by which to assess whether a policy is moral or immoral, just or unjust.  Brooks endorsed a form of gay marriage; is Gerson far behind?    

But as much as some conservatives fail us we should ourselves of how bad liberal establishment journalism was and remains.  See the anti-Fox rant of Howell Raines, former NY Times editor, in tomorrow's WaPo.