Lilliputian Foreign Aid Percentages Coupled with Gargantuan Military Budget Amounts: What, If Anything, Is Hiding Behind Two Allegedly Damning Statistics About Uncle Sam?

    Most of us are familiar the adage attributed to Mark Twain, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Fewer of us know Georges Fischer's saying: "Statistics are like bikinis; they show a lot, but they hide the essential" (Les statistiques, c'est comme les bikinis : ça montre beaucoup, mais ça cache l'essentiel).

    Let the following be a demonstrating why, or in what ways, such sayings are largely truthful.

    You have probably heard and read — not once but many times — that America’s aid to the developing countries of the Third World is nothing short of disgraceful, as it amounts to nothing but a much smaller percentage of that of many other Western nations.  For example, in 2013, the official development assistance by country as a percentage of Gross National Income was at about 1% or above for Sweden, Norway, and Luxembourg, with the United States arriving a dismal 20th, at "only" 0.17%.

    But wait!  There is a second statistic, one that is just as, if not more, damaging:  you have also probably heard or read that the amount of money that America uses on its military is far larger than that that other nations use, and indeed, you have probably heard broadsides to the effect that America's defense budget is larger than that of the next 20-25 or so nations combined.

    Paired, this pair of statistics, this couple of “facts”, seems to give nothing but a damning image of Uncle Sam.

    Both of these “facts”, incidentally, are mentioned in the famous rant that is often called "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History".  (In the opening scene of The Newsroom's Episode 1, Aaron Sorkin has his Will McAvoy character (Jeff Daniels) spit out: "we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies … We [used to wage] wars on poverty, not poor people").

    So we have here two “facts” that, by themselves, “prove”, or ought to prove, and that behind the shadow of a doubt, that America is egoistical, that Washington is power-hungry, that Uncle Sam is war-mongering, that Americans are blind, and that the rest of the world is in distress because of Uncle Sam's despicable policies.  (Or, that at the very least, its leader — except when he or she happens to be a Democrat, of course — and/or the leader's policies are racist, greedy, bellicose, and self-centered.)

    First of all, Matthew Cina puts the high military figures into perspective:

most European nations, namely France, Germany, and the U.K. are purposefully downsizing their militaries in favor of relying on the U.S. to come defend them in case of an incident. Even more to the point, half the reason the U.S.'s military budget is so expensive, besides the technology that is literally decades past the competition, is because we take care of our soldiers. A Chinese soldier is paid one-ninth that of a U.S. soldier, and even then, the Chinese soldier gets drastically smaller healthcare or Veteran benefits. If the U.S.'s big military budget comes from futuristic technology, taking care of our soldiers, and single-handedly protecting the western world, I think it's worth the bill. 

    As for Megan McArdle, she adds that

The freeloading countries don’t even send a fruit basket to Washington to say thanks. In fact, as a rightish American who’s spent a bit of time abroad, I can personally attest that many of those NATO members’ citizens feel free to disparage our massive military budget, as if their smaller budgets were some sort of moral sacrifice rather than an unearned benefit paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

    Which, indeed, is what the usual popular outrage discussed in this post is all about.

    Indeed, Loren Thompson points out in Forbes some salient facts about the "military-industrial complex":

most of the defense budget is not spent on weapons, it is spent on items like military pay and benefits, training, maintenance and the like. The amount of money set aside for developing and procuring military equipment in the budget agreement Congress reached [in May 2017] is $197 billion — a third of the $593 billion defense budget, and barely 1% of GDP (which stands at $19 trillion). … how much of a problem can the "military-industrial complex" be when it only represents 1% of the economy? Healthcare is 17%, but nobody refers the "healthcare-industrial complex." … As I often point out, the amount of money the Army gets for weapons each year is a fraction of what Americans spend on beer or cigarettes.

    But even if we decide to ignore the above, may we be allowed to take a closer look at these facts and figures?

    What is the first thing that we notice?

    We notice that one “fact” is a percentage figure. And we notice that the other “fact” is an amount figure.

    More precisely, one puts America (and other countries) in a list according to a percentage of GNP.  While the other puts America (and other countries) in a list according to absolute dollar terms.

    Does this signify anything?  At all?

    As a matter of fact, yes.

    It signifies a great deal.

    Both ways of making comparisons are valid and, in an ideal world — in a world where the reader, the student, the citizen, is given all necessary data — all figures, all facts, and all relevant statistics would be supplied — would be set forward for him to make up his own mind.

    How about if we provided all necessary data on these two subjects?  Wouldn't that be something?

    (For instance, changing the dollar figure of military expenditures to the dollar figure of military expenditures per capita used to drop the U.S. to third place a few years ago (with $936 per person, in third position following Israel and Singapore, with respectively $1,429 and $1,010 per person) and today to fourth place.)

    In the meantime, how would you like to try a fun experiment?  We have two "facts" about America, right, based upon two different types of calculating statistics.

    How about this?

    How about if, in each category (foreign aid and military budgets), we tried reversing the way the positions of countries are calculated?

1) What Happens If We Calculate Uncle Sam's Foreign Aid According to the Process Used to Compute Uncle Sam's Military Budget?

    Shall we try the foreign aid list first?  Let us see what happens when we calculate foreign aid in absolute terms and what position the countries end up in then.

    Lo and behold!

    While America’s development assistance as a percentage its GNP is indeed smaller than that of other aid nations, the net amount that it donates in absolute terms turns out to be — by far — the largest!

    At $31 billion, it is close to double that of the next country in the list (the UK, at $18 billion) and until recently (Germany has inched up over the past couple of years), more than double than every other country on the list, including all the Scandinavian countries combined (indeed, with the smaller Northern European countries mentioned above dropping to four to five times less than the USA each). As it turns out, for those among you who love the "combined" comparisons, the U.S. gives as much as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, and Australia combined.

    Obviously, it turns out that because the US is the superpower, in economics as well as everything else, the (far) lower percentage turns out to be an amount (far) superior to any amount offered by less rich countries.  (Now, think about this:  Does a farmer in central Africa, in southeast Asia, or elsewhere have a chance of profiting more from a donation of millions of dollars or from a donation of 1.40%?  The question doesn't make much sense, does it?)

    Now, you may well reply : Yes, you may agree …somewhat, but still, think about the following:  if Washington were to raise its percentage to the same level as, say, Japan and and the Europeans, wouldn't the amount of aid be that much larger?

    Alright, let us keep this in mind, we will get back to it (in the third part of this post), but first we must address the second “fact” discussed above.

    For the moment, notice that many people who reacted as mentioned above have not been willing to even entertain the thought that the Washington critics were even slightly wrong, not to say misleading.

    Indeed, those critics do not advertise the “amount” aspect of the aid matter, for one simple reason:  it does not go far in nourishing their (self-serving) message, which is that Americans, or their leaders, are inherently greedy, simple-minded, self-centered, short-sighted, etc.

    That is why we do not learn that, in real terms, the U.S. is
• top donor at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(its $157 million is three times as large as the next country (Holland)),
• top donor at UNICEF (along with the UK and Japan),
• top donor at the UN's fund in the fight against AIDS (half a billion dollars),
• and of course top donor at the United Nations itself.

Related: • Misleading Statistics — Would the EU Really
Dominate the Olympics in Medals Won If It Were "United"?
• The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control
• Mass shootings in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century
that the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is
• Facts Which Europeans and American Leftists Conveniently Ignore

2) What Happens If We Calculate Uncle Sam's Military Budget According to the Process Used to Compute Uncle Sam's Foreign Aid?

    What do we notice with the military budget “fact” mentioned above?

    Lo and behold!

    Yes, this description of a problem with America turns out to be exactly the opposite of what was criticized in the foreign aid field.

    (Needless to say, one problem with statistics is that, as we have seen, there is more than one way of calculating sums, ratios, and other types of proportions)

    If we calculate military budgets as a percentage of GDP, we find that the figures change drastically.  We find that the USA falls to fourth place (3.5%) in one report, below Israel (5.2%) and Russia (4.5%).  First place?  That belongs to Saudi Arabia with almost three times as large a percentage (10.4%) as America. By capita, Riyadh also spends as much as three times the amount as the next country (as mentioned, not the United States) on the list.

    In early 2017, The Wall Street Journal summarized America's defense budget over the past 30+ years:

The U.S. spends barely 3% of gross domestic product on defense—about 16% of the federal budget—down from 4.7% in 2010 and a modern high of 6% in 1986.

    If we calculate military expenditures as a percent of GDP, the U.S. drops even further, falling to 9th place in one study and to 11th place in another, below eight or nine countries in or close to the Middle East (including Israel) as well as Russia.

    And if we try calculating the dollar figure per GDP, we find that the figures change drastically.  The U.S. drops down, not to second place, not to fourth place, not to 10th or 15th or 20th place, but almost all the way down to 30th place (it's actually position 29)!  This is according to the Global Militarization Index (GMI), which compares a nation's military expenditure with its gross domestic product (GDP) and which is roughly comparable to… the foreign aid statistic so widely bandied to scold America for.

    In some earlier studies, America has appeared at or near the 50th mark (#47, to be exact)!

    But hold on — what many of the above studies seem to fail to do is mention North Korea, although it has been reported variably as spending an astonishing quarter to a third of its GDP on its armed forces and should therefore belong in first place.  Indeed, let's go to the NationMaster website, where the 10-year-old figures for military expenditures as an estimated percent of gross domestic product already then put the US all the way down in position 27.  This makes more sense, with North Korea coming up front. (At almost 23%, it is double the percentage of the next entrant (not the United States but Oman).)

    And what nations follow it?

    The next nine countries are all in the Middle East. The first 30 nations are all in the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia, from Yemen, Eritrea, and Mauritania to Chad, Angola, and Swaziland. Besides Israel, Bosnia, Greece, and the United States, along with Turkey, there is not a democracy and/or a European country among the first 50 or 60 nations.

    Does that leave those Western nations off the hook, however? Hardly, given the very fact that many of them are cosseted by Washington’s providing for their defense, which — who knows? — may go some way towards explaining why they can afford having both their amounts and their percentages be so low — all the while basking in the self-serving statistics of a Newsroom monologue.

    As for the developing countries, an inordinate amount of money is spent by Third World leaders on the army, on security forces, and on police battalions, forces that amount to their leader's (to their leaders') personal bodyguard and forces which are then often turned loose… on the countries’ own population.


3) How Do We Tie Points 1 and 2 Together and Which Fundamental Factors Are Being Overlooked?

    Now we're getting to the gist of things.

    Because what you are saying now is:  Hold on for a second:  Back in section 1, you said that we would tie this second “fact” in with the first “fact” mentioned above.  How so?  Well, it so happens that this — any number of countries run by an autocrat using the country's military as his personal bodyguard — is the… type of country that… many of Washington’s critics would have America provide… a larger percentage (or a larger amount, whichever) of aid to!

    Of course, the critics will say, rubbish, they in no way want to provide aid to régimes that are oppressive and murdering their own people.

    I think it would be quite easy to come up with a number of examples disputing their claims.  (Leftists' support for and their aid to Saddam Hussein's Iraq — including peace-for-oil — comes to mind, for I don’t know which reason.)  But if it is true that a number of these countries are not having their personal bodyguard forces machine-gun their unarmed civilian populations (or otherwise disposing of internal enemies, imaginary or other), they are using quite an amount of moolah to buy luxury vehicles for their government ministers, and putting their friends in high places, and engaging in other types of corruption.

    Corruption, inefficiency (except in repression), wasted money:  this is a seemingly integral part of a number of the countries that would supposedly benefit from increased American (and Western) aid.

    Have you ever heard the old joke told inside the NGO community:  How can you predict when a famine is about to threaten an African nation?  Give up?  It's when the country's president needs a new Mercedes.

    Enter Kenyan economist James Shikwati.

If [Westerners] really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

    Thus spoke James Shikwati to Der Spiegel's Thilo Thielke in July 2005 as the Kenyan economics expert pleaded, For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid! (See also Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid (Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa).)

    Good intentions such as eliminating hunger and poverty

have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

 … Huge bureaucracies are financed [with the aid money], corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

 … Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.

 … Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: 'The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it.'

 … There must be a change in mentality. We have to stop perceiving ourselves as beggars. These days, Africans only perceive themselves as victims. On the other hand, no one can really picture an African as a businessman. In order to change the current situation, it would be helpful if the aid organizations were to pull out.

    Case in point.  Tanzania was supposed to be Sweden’s showcase in the aid “industry.”  A couple of decades ago, it was said that there was as much chance of seeing a blond head behind the wheel of a vehicle in Dar es Salaam as a black one.  Now, I have a question for you:  How often do you hear the government in Stockholm bragging about the wonderful advances it has made in Tanzania?  Not often, do you?  As a matter of fact — and I write this perhaps primarily for those who love to dish out statistics — the per capita income in that Western African country has decreased since Sweden’s millions of kronor started flowing in.

    So: must we do nothing, ask Washington’s critics?

    I will try to answer that in the a later post.  For now, just notice that the question doesn’t, as before, even start to cast doubt, be it a single iota thereof or otherwise, on the claims, implied or otherwise, that foreign aid is working, that aid in general is undoubtedly a proof of generosity, that Uncle Sam's military budget is a monstrosity, that Washington is greedy and evil, and that Americans are devious and mean.

    In fact, isn't the (pressing) question meant to change the subject as quickly as possible?  Change it back to the old we-are-still-the-most-compassionate-most-intelligent-most-humane-people-to-ever-tread-the-face-of-Earth mantra?

    To sum up: 

    What is the reason that all of us are not more familiar with the net amount figures in the matter of foreign aid?  Because it would be much harder for the critics to depict America capitalists as greedy, clueless, heartless clods.

    And what is the reason that we are not more familiar with the percentage figures on the question of military budgets?  Because it would be much harder for the critics to demonize Americans as bellicose imperialist warmongers.

    By the same token, it would be much harder for America's critics — U.S. leftists and Europeans foremost amongst them — to laud themselves as the most compassionate people in the world, as the most intelligent people in the world, as the most tolerant people in the world, and as the most humane beings in history ever to walk the face of the Earth.

Fired not for tolerating voter fraud for years but for admitting that there’s a problem at all

Voter fraud deniers will have to grasp those straws a little tighter 

predicts Benny Huang,

after an undercover video released last week showed Alan Schulkin, Manhattan’s Commissioner of the Board of Elections, admitting in no uncertain terms that the problem exists. Schulkin, a Democrat, was not aware that he was speaking to an operative of the public integrity outfit Project Veritas. Unfortunately, Shulkin is just another public figure who says one thing in public and something entirely different in private.

“I think there’s a lot of voter fraud, people don’t realize certain neighborhoods in particular, they bus people around to vote,” said Schulkin to a Project Veritas journalist. When he was asked what kind of neighborhoods he was talking about, he replied: “Oh, I don’t want to say.” The journalist pressed a little harder, asking: “Oh, like minority neighborhoods? Like black neighborhoods and Hispanic neighborhoods?” Schulkin replied, “Yeah. And Chinese too.” Nor did he believe that the problem was confined to in-person voting. When he was asked about absentee ballot fraud, he replied “Oh there’s thousands of absentee ballots. I don’t know where they came from.”

The problem of voter fraud is real. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either trying to perpetuate it or extremely naïve. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who’s the least bit cognizant of the culture of corruption that pervades many American cities. All that is required for voter fraud to flourish is a corrupt political machine willing to scam the honor system that operates our vulnerable elections.

And yet vote fraudsters are protected by a code of silence nearly as sacred as the mafia’s omertà. Even Alan Schulkin won’t talk about it unless he thinks no one will hear. As an election official he’s overseen numerous elections and had the opportunity to witness the shenanigans firsthand, yet he won’t do anything about it. That tells me that he’s under extreme pressure to keep mum.

And alas, that pressure has predictably come to bear. Mayor De Blasio is now calling for Schulkin’s resignation—not for tolerating voter fraud for years (which really should cost him his job) but for admitting that there’s a problem at all. De Blasio, like most Democrat politicians, is less scandalized by the existence of voter fraud than that anyone would speak its name aloud. If you ask them, it’s not happening, and anyone who says that it is happening ought to pay an enormous social penalty up to and including his job. “Again, this is just urban legend that there is a [voter] fraud problem,” said De Blasio. “There isn’t. There’s no proof of it whatsoever.”

Is that so? The definition of “proof” can sometimes be elusive, but I would argue that when a major election official, speaking off the record and with nothing to gain, says that voters are being bused around from precinct to precinct, that’s at least a form of evidence, if not proof. At very least, it merits further investigation, which is exactly what De Blasio doesn’t want.

But in fact Mayor De Blasio is wrong; there has been a major voter fraud operation uncovered in New York City in my lifetime, which means that voter fraud is not some kind of “urban legend” similar to alligators in the sewers. In 1984, a grand jury delivered the results of its investigation, asserting that it had found evidence of systematic election fraud in large parts of Brooklyn taking place from 1968 until it was stopped in 1982. The fraudsters apparently used a smorgasbord of methods to tilt the elections their way—absentee ballot fraud, voting in the name of dead people or people who were known to have moved away, the impersonation of legitimate voters, and the wholesale invention of fictitious voters. Yes, they also bused people around. According to the book “Who’s Counting?” by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund, “One of the witnesses before the New York grand jury described how he led a crew of eight individuals from polling place to polling place to vote. Each member of his crew voted in excess of 20 times, and there were approximately 20 other such crews operating during that election.” By doing a little back of the envelope arithmetic, I can estimate that these electoral wrecking crews probably cast about 3,600 fake ballots, give or take a few hundred.

The New York grand jury said it all when it concluded: ”The ease and boldness with which these fraudulent schemes were carried out shows the vulnerability of our entire electoral process to unscrupulous and fraudulent misrepresentation.” Yes, indeed.

I can already hear the objections: “But that was more than thirty years ago!”—the implication being that election fraud in the past doesn’t prove election fraud in the present. True, 1984 was a long time ago, though not nearly as long ago as 1964, and we still have federal election monitors in the South to ensure that racist white officials don’t disenfranchise blacks. It seems that people’s idea of what constitutes a “long time ago” varies in inverse proportion to how much they want root out the problem. The argument that the 1984 Brooklyn fraud case is old news misses the point, namely that fraudsters even then had both the capability and the intention to scam the system. All those who think voter fraud is an “urban legend” will have to explain how the problem magically solved itself while those same capabilities and intentions survived.

New York is no less corrupt today than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Here’s what really changed between then and now—in those days, there was an actual sense of outrage that elections were being stolen. Now anyone who talks about the problem runs the risk of being smeared as a racist. In 1984, public officials were able to see voter fraud because their eyes were open to it, to say nothing of their minds. Today the attitude is nothing less than willful ignorance. No prosecutor in his right mind would go to trial with that case because, as the adage goes, you can’t beat city hall. Even people who are charged with guarding the integrity of our elections, people like Alan Schulkin, have given up trying to stop it. It’s a third rail of politics—talk about voter fraud and you get zapped.

Alan Schulkin himself is now backtracking from his claims, though only because he’s tasted some of the mayor’s wrath and presumably that of the city’s “civil rights” establishment—in other words, the race hustlers. Schulkin now claims that he should have said “potential” voter fraud, but that’s clearly not what he meant when he spoke unwittingly to Project Veritas. When he said that “they bus people around to vote” in black, Hispanic, and Chinese neighborhoods, he wasn’t speaking hypothetically. If he were, that would actually be racist. If we assume that Schulkin was talking about potential voter fraud, not the real McCoy, a prudent person would be right to ask how he knows that it would happen in black, Hispanic, and Chinese neighborhoods. But the answer is moot because he’s lying when he backtracked on his comments. He got caught being honest and had to make up a lie to wiggle out from under the implications of his earlier statement. If he had known he was being recorded he would have denied the existence of the problem just like the rest of the New York City political establishment.

The former congressman Artur Davis, a black Democrat turned independent turned Republican turned Democrat, summed it up well when he said:

“Most people would not change their mind on voter ID if someone walked in front of them and admitted they committed voter-ID fraud yesterday. They have their heels dug in. A number of people opposed to voter ID are opposed for political reasons, for reasons that don’t have substance. People plead guilty to voter fraud, and that doesn’t seem to move the opinions of some of those opposed.”

Truer words have never been spoken. It’s hard to make a political establishment that has risen to power via voter fraud care about the issue because they just don’t see it as a problem.

Kirchenkampf: Hitler Was Determined to Diminish the Number of Catholic Schools

As an addendum to my posts on the Nazis' hostility to the Christian faith — proving that Adolf Hitler was no Christian and neither had nor wanted any ties to Christianity or any other organized religion — the International Herald Tribune carried the following item in its In Our Pages 75 Years Ago column:

1937 Hitler to Ban Church Schools

Acting in the face of a specific clause in the Reich-Vatican concordate which guarantees the existence of Catholic schools in Germany, the Nazi government, it was disclosed today [Jan. 26], is preparing a law under which attendance at non-denominational state schools would be compulsory for all German children. The law was considered at a special Cabinet meeting here today under the chairmanship of Chancellor Hitler, and it may be issued in connection with the celebration Saturday of the fourth anniversary of the Third Reich, although on this point there is no certainty. In pastoral letters read Sunday in Catholic churches throughout the Reich German bishops charged that the existing policy of the government in gradually diminishing the number of Church schools was an outright violation of the concordate and appealed to the faithful to resist these “illegal encroachments” of the state.

There is a word in German for the Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church: it is Kirchenkampf ("church struggle").

Related:
• Adolf Hitler in Religious Surroundings: Is There Really Evidence That the Führer Was a Christian? — an in-depth, dispassionate look at the evidence brought by a couple of commentators claiming that Christianity was an integral part of Nazism…

• Worshipping Little Else But the Aryan Race, Hitler Abhorred the Christian Faith and Wanted to Replace Christmas with the Pagans' Yuletide

 • 卐mas Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the "Religion" of National Socialism

The fact is that airlines have no incentive to end their cumbersome boarding processes

In response to an Economist piece on a how a faster way of boarding planes could save time and money, Hugh Rooney writes that

I think you missed the point in your article about efforts to find faster ways to board planes that could “save time and money” (“Please be seated”, September 3rd). The fact is that airlines prefer to keep their cumbersome boarding processes. That way some travellers will pay more to avoid the chaos by purchasing first class, or priority access, or some other premium-priced ticket. Airlines also reward frequent flyers by allowing them to board early. They have no incentive to end a practice that enhances their revenues.

Hugh Rooney
Glenview, Illinois

Related:
• Airplane Etiquette:
Undue Deference Is Not Applicable When Exiting an Aircraft

• Do airline companies assume that
terrorists can only afford a seat in economy class?

• Do Airline Safety Rules Make Sense? Yes,
But Not in the Way You Were Taught to Think

Quotas: According to the Obama Administration, the U.S. Air Force should be 51% female and 13% black because the general population is

Grab your ankles

warns Benny Huang,

the Secretary of the Air Force is talking about diversity again.

Deborah Lee James, a career bureaucrat who has never worn the uniform of any service, announced last week that she aims to remedy the supposed problem of too many white men in positions of authority.

“America is a diverse population, and we don’t want to shut down pieces of the population from which we can recruit,” said James. “We want the best we can possibly get from all sectors.” Oh yeah? Well why not just hire the best person for the job and let the chips land where they may? She doesn’t say.

This most recent policy comes about a year and a half after Secretary James announced another equally discriminatory “diversity” initiative. In March of 2015, she unveiled her nine step plan to diversify the Air Force, particularly its most glamorous career fields such as pilots and air battle managers. One of her nine points was to reduce height standards for pilots, thus making it easier for women to qualify—as if height standards were arbitrary obstacles dreamed up by sexist men to preserve their boys’ club.

A year and a half has passed and Secretary James is not satisfied with the “progress” made thus far so more drastic measures will be imposed. … Of course, that one “diverse candidate” has to be “qualified”—a term that is highly malleable whenever race or sex is of paramount importance.

It’s no wonder that the blurb on the cover of the Air Force Times cover blared: “Minorities, Women, Now Have Edge in Key Positions.” Yes, they do. In years past affirmative action proponents framed the issue in terms of “leveling the playing field” but these days it’s all out in the open—minorities and women have an “edge,” which is another way of saying that they’re favored. It is literally impossible for favored groups to exist without the existence of corresponding disfavored groups. Don’t be fooled—this policy has real victims with names and faces.

But the Rooney Rule alone isn’t discrimination, is it? After all, no one is saying that the “diverse candidate” has to get the job. Well…not exactly. While it may be true that the “diverse candidate” isn’t guaranteed to get the job, commanders will now have to explain their decision to a board which will consist of a certain proportion of women and minorities. Commanders who care about their careers will take the hint from on high—things like performance are no longer considered to be as important as race and sex. Commanders are not under any explicit mandate to select the “diverse candidate” but there is pressure to discriminate against white men in order to meet “goals”—or what used to be called quotas.

No one dares use the “Q” word anymore, at least not since the landmark 1978 court case of California v. Bakke. … Secretary James’s 2015 “diversity” initiative failed to reach some critical mass of women and minorities in key positions so she resorted to more drastic measures in her 2016 initiative. If she’s allowed to stay on into the next Clinton Administration she will surely continue to tighten the screws until she gets the numbers she wants. As long as she has any number in mind—the “right” proportion of women and minorities who should be in key positions—that’s a quota and it’s illegal.

 … Secretary James’s lickspittle Chief of Staff, General David Goldfein, is completely on board with the policy. If you listen closely, you can hear him speak openly of quotas: “Having a diverse group of leaders, having a diverse group of airmen that are representative of the nation, that can come together and bring those diverse backgrounds and [ways of] thinking, to provide creative solutions to some of these complex challenges is as much a war-fighting imperative as it is about improving our Air Force.” (Emphasis added).

When the general speaks of creating a force that is “representative of the nation,” he is clearly implying that the program’s goal is to adjust the demographics of the Air Force to match the demographics of the country as a whole—or at least in regard to sensitive categories such as race and sex. In other words, the Air Force should be 51% female and 13% black because the general population is. Not only that, but these proportions should remain constant across all ranks and throughout all career fields—lower enlisted through general officers, cooks, mechanics, pilots and navigators. Again, that’s a quota. Quotas are discriminatory even by the Supreme Court’s screwy logic—and they’re illegal.

General Goldfein’s comment about having airmen that are “representative of the nation” is boilerplate diversity-speak that echoes a thousand public officials before him. …

It’s possible that some discriminatory, quota-mongering bigots don’t realize that they’re discriminatory, quota-mongering bigots. They just think they’re good people who want to make everything fair. They would never use—gasp!—quotas. But alas, they do. Quotas never lapsed into disuse, not even after the Bakke decision which changed nothing except maybe the way people employ language. People learned to speak of “goals” rather than quotas, to talk about reforming institutions to “look like” the general population, and to stress the importance of achieving demographics that are “representative” of the community. These are all coded language, red flags that illegal discrimination is being employed. Watch out for phrases like these and call them out when you hear them. 

Dalrock Finds One More Major Problem with the Thrust of the Leftists' Complaints Regarding the Trump Scandal

Cuckoldry they don’t mind, but describing slutty women with disrespectful language is unacceptable!

I thought that all the liberals' double standards about Donald Trump's 10-year-old video had been said on scores of Instapundit posts (Bill Clinton, the Kennedys, etc), but Dalrock manages to find another, indeed one of the basic problems with the scandal. Indeed, they can be presented as bring two problems.

Not only may women, even those who do behave sluttily, no longer be called out, but the fact that a man goes after another's wife in no way fits into the scandal equation.

It has been telling that Republican outrage over the audio of Trump describing his attempt to cuckold other men is almost entirely focused on the fact that Trump spoke crudely in describing the way women threw themselves at him.  Cuckoldry they don’t mind, but describing slutty women with disrespectful language is unacceptable!

Trump had claimed he pushed a married woman to have sex with him and said he could grab women “by the p****” because he was a celebrity. A recording of his conversation with then-”Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush was published by NBC News and The Washington Post on Friday.

“No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever,” Priebus said in a statement released that night.

The title of Dalrock's post is

Do as you please with their wives, so long as you respect her in the morning

Don't the Main Respected Institutions Gutted by the Left Turn Out to Be the IRS, the FBI, the State Department, and the White House?

A famed Iowahawk meme has been, all to accurately, used to describe every kind of institution, from the Smithsonian and the NFL to, most notoriously, college campuses around the country:

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect. 

Of course, what is the most venerable institution of all? Isn't it the United States government — most notably the IRS, the FBI, and the State Department, as well as the White House itself?

David Burge's meme is the story of Barack "fundamentally transform the United States" Obama and the Obama administration, and David Burge's meme will be the story of the Hillary Clinton administration.

What can we expect regarding the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House of Representatives under a Hillary administration, as well as "the miracle at Philadelphia" — the Constitution itself?!

Turning America, one step at a time, into a banana republic.


Addendum: For this, you can thank in great part the 26th Amendment.

In reply to "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," the reasonable reply ought to have been the French proverb, "si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait" ("If youth had the knowledge, if old age had the energy", i.e., Youth is wasted on the young).

To the Yahoo Answers question, "What is meant by 'youth is wasted on the young'?", the "Best Answer" reads in part:

It means that young people have everything going for them physically; they're in the best health they will ever be in; their minds are sharp and clear BUT they lack patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort.

In other words, Youth has the muscle, so it fights, it goes to war.

Adulthood has the wisdom, so it votes, it takes care of the laws.

Before you are tempted to protest, let's add to the previous sentence: Adulthood has the wisdom, so it votes, it takes care of the laws; including the laws concerning the beings for whom they have the deepest love in this life — their very own sons.

Think of this: don't the reasons given for the Amendment XXVI turn out to be some of the most extreme-leftist arguments ever raised?

Indeed, what is the main assumption behind "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote"?

That a boy's (or girl's) father, and a boy's mother, are clueless clods, incapable of reflecting beyond their own self-interest, thinking of nobody but themselves, far too clueless not to vote in favor of what would be the best for their son (or daughter), especially in what concerns matters of life and death; no, for that, you need to go somewhere else.

And what would that else one should go to be? Tthe government, of course, and its politicians (those white knights in shining armor come to rescue a hapless citizenry, in this case the young), which has/have so effectively taken over the roles of family (as well as religion) — Big Brother — all over the Western world.

… young people … lack patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort

Another reasonable reply to "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote" would be the famed saying:

If, at 20, you don't lean to the left, you have no heart;
If, at 30, you don't lean to the right, you have no brains.

You have no choice but to wonder whether the United States is where it is at — institutions identified, killed, and gutted, with respect demanded (not to mention "5 Make the carcass apologize") — because it has, out of a sense of "justice" and "fairness", enacted amendment after amendment during the 20th century, most of which have undermined the Republic while building Democracy, thereby enabling the era of the Drama Queen.

You have no choice but to wonder whether the entire Western world is where it is at because it has allowed election after election to be decided by millions of immature voters lacking "patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort"; election after election to be decided by millions of immature voters with plenty of passion ("this is not who we are") but with no brains.

No brains at all…


To repeat what I wrote on Sunday:

Never would I have thought that the Republican Party, and the United States of America, was ready to commit suicide — certainly not in my lifetime…

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia … could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

— Abraham Lincoln

A "Ferocious" and "Blistering" Attack: MSM Outlet Uses Extreme Vocabulary for the GOP Candidate While Ignoring Both Clintons and Hillary's Campaign Entirely

With the words "ferocious" and "blistering" attack, the BBC has, far from unsurprisingly, shown its true colors again — spinning everything negative towards the GOP's candidate while ignoring his Democratic challenger, leaving her and her spouse out of the equation…

Abe Lincoln and the USA's Future as a Banana Republic: How Can Republicans — and Americans in General — Be So Naïve?!

I strongly reject the idea that there is some kind of moral obligation to abandon Trump.

Doesn't John Hinderaker have it exactly right (thanks to Instapundit)?

First, … I was never under any illusions as to Trump’s character, his competence or his conservatism. I think he is a horrible Republican nominee. But he is still better than Hillary Clinton. His character is no worse than Hillary’s, he is more conservative (or less liberal), and he would make a better president. So I have every intention of voting for him as the lesser of two evils. I strongly reject the idea that there is some kind of moral obligation to abandon Trump.

Second, it can be useful to ask, What would the Democrats do? Here there is no need to speculate: we saw what they did in the 1990s. They circled the wagons and defended their man to the hilt, using whatever smears and lies were helpful, even though he was credibly accused of rape and multiple instances of sexual harassment. Indeed, that is what the Democrats are doing now with Hillary Clinton, as revelations much more material to her performance in office than the Trump video have come out over the past year or two. See, generally, Clinton Cash. Republicans are always held to a higher standard than Democrats, but why? Maybe this is as good a time as any to reject the double standard and fight fire with fire. E.g., this Drudge headline: “KATHLEEN WILLEY CALLS FOR HILLARY TO RESIGN FROM CAMPAIGN…”

Finally, calling on Trump to resign signals, at best, an unprecedented and humiliating disarray within the GOP. It still may make sense if the party has an opportunity to substitute a better candidate with a greater chance of winning. But, as Paul noted earlier, it is not clear that such a switch is practical. If Mike Pence (not Mitt Romney) could be substituted on the ballot for Trump, it would be an improvement. But I doubt that any such smooth transition is possible.

Ted Cruz's (non-brainer) prediction is coming true (is there no way the GOP can make the Texas senator the party's nominee?). The Alinsky Democrats, having maneuvered a highly controversial candidate into the opposition party's front ranks with the help of the media and idiot Republicans, in true banana-republic fashion, are bringing their October surprises

Applying Alinsky's principles, the Democrats are tempting Republicans — Americans — to live by their higher standards, standards that they never have applied, or had any intention of applying, to themselves (see Clinton, Bill, as well as Kennedy, Anyfirstname).

And those idiots are falling for it.

Paul Mirengoff ponders whether

it may be that no course is better than letting this horror show play out, learning the lessons it has to teach us, and then picking up the pieces

That is, if there are any pieces to pick up, and anybody, any party, left to take heed of the lessons…

As Peter Ingemi, who refuses to let himself "be played" (thanks to Instapundit), puts it,

Right now a lot of people are forgetting that for good or I’ll the only thing standing between us and the financial, military, security, cultural and constitutional rights disaster that a Hillary Clinton administration would be is Donald Trump.

See also Ed Driscoll on the 1990s' "It's just sex", with Kathy Shaidle pointing out that

If ‘it’s just sex!!!’ in 1995, then it’s ‘just sex’ in 2005, and this year and every year forever. THEY made that rule. Make your enemy play by his rules — remember your Alinsky.

Never would I have thought that the Republican Party, and the United States of America, was ready to commit suicide — certainly not in my lifetime…

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia … could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Trump/Clinton: Second Debate Preparation Survey

The Trump Pence campaign has sent out a Second Debate Preparation Survey. Here is how one wag filled it out:

1. Which issue do you think Mr. Trump was strongest on during the first debate?
Fair trade
Foreign policy
Cutting taxes
Reducing $19-trillion debt
Job creation
Law and order
Other, please specify:

Not sure

2. Which issue do you think Mr. Trump should focus more on in the next debate?
Fair trade
Foreign policy
Cutting taxes
Reducing $19-trillion debt
Job creation
Law and order
Other, please specify:

Clinton and Obama must be constantly lumped together, as the purveyors of the (self-serving) view of an America that is evil (racist, sexist) and clueless in need of their generous management; as well as as one and the same architect of the fairy tale policies (domestic and foreign) of the past eight years

3. Should Trump call out Hillary for lying about her stance on the job-killing trade deal TPP during the first debate?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

DP must point it out, yes, but must add that he is FORCED to do so, since the mainstream media is not doing its job.

4. Should Trump lay out how his business, private-sector experience will directly benefit the economy?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Sure thing, but what must be pointed out is that less government, fewer regulations, lower taxes, and fewer bureaucrats is the way forward.

5. Did you agree with Trump’s decision to call out Hillary for being in politics for 30 years and not accomplishing anything?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: Other, please specify: 

Concede that HC HAS accomplished something, indeed, the same as Obama (see 2 above): she has brought Americans more rules and regulations; she has brought Americans more and higher taxes; and she has brought more functionaries and bureaucrats into their lives

6. On the subject of Hillary’s emails, should Trump have brought up the fact that Hillary jeopardized our national security?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Yes, but more than that, DT must point out that he is forced to bring it up, given that the media has not covered national security under Hillary (and under Obama—see 2 above)), other than uncritically

7. Should Trump have brought up the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play schemes?
Yes
 No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Again, what DT must do, additionally, is bring up the fact that he is FORCED to bring it up since the MEDIA has overlooked the issue.

8. Should Trump have brought up Hillary’s failure in Benghazi as a disqualification for the presidency?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

DT should point out that Hillary AND Obama's failure (see 2) in Benghazi ought to serve as disqualification for the presidency. Again, point out that Hillary's failure in Banghazi is part and parcel of the liberal fairy tale that has been governing Washington for the past eight years (see 2 above): that being nice to America's enemies will make America, and the world, safer. Bring up what MItt Romney failed to bring up in 2012: How top Democrats all are like Obama whispering to Medvedev that Putin can count on him once the election is over; meaning they cozy up to foreign autocrats while dissing the American people — as "racists, sexists, xenophobes, Islamophobes"

9. Should Trump have called out Hillary’s massive Wall Street fundraising and the paid speeches that she refuses to release to the public?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

DT should get specific, pointing out for instance that money received by the so-called champion of the poor for one speech is as much as the average person makes in two years (that was a wild-answer guess; I'll let your experts find the statistics, do the math, and come up with a viable comparison)

10. Should Trump attack Hillary as a life-long politician who has zero experience creating jobs?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Yes, but add that this is normal, as she is a government statist, like Barack (see 2 above); so she DOES have experience creating jobs: for lawyers, bureaucrats, and other types of parasites

11. Should Trump call out Hillary for flip-flopping on NAFTA and TPP in an attempt to gain votes from Bernie’s supporters?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Point out that flip-flopping is far from abnormal when, like Obama (see 2) and Bernie himself, your only "argument" consists in saying you are smarter than everyone else, you are more humane than everyone else, and you are more compassionate than everyone else.

12. Should Trump double down on the need to rebuild our infrastructure, and draw on his own experience in construction to get the job done?
Yes
No
 No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Make sure that the private sector is central to the plan — and, indeed, get the government out of the way: point to the Hurricane Katrina example of the public bridges in New Orleans being out of order for weeks, if not months, while a private company's railroad bridge was repaired and rebuilt within 24 hours

13. When discussing cybersecurity, should Trump bring up Hillary’s unsecured secret server left vulnerable to hackers?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Point out that for Hillary, as for Obama (see 2 above), hobnobbing with foreign leaders is the norm, be they the sweetest democrats or the vilest autocrats, and thus the only enemy of both seem to be the clueless American people (see 14 below) — who at times, indeed, seem to be the only beings on the planet not to know the contents of the Hillary Clinton emails.

14. Should Trump address Hillary’s failure to take the threat of radical Islamic terrorism seriously?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Point out that for Hillary, the main enemy of America and of the world alike is the same as it has been under 8 years of Obama presidency (2): the American people (see 13 above), also known (self-servingly) to progressives like them as nothing better than "racists, sexists, and other types of xenophobes"

15. Should Trump talk about the importance of rebuilding our own country instead of nation-building abroad?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Yes, but within the the free market and of its private sectors: the best and quickest way to do this is to let the private sector loose (see 12)

16. Should Trump criticize Hillary’s tax hikes on the middle class as senator and plan to raise taxes as president?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Point out that for Democrats in general, raising taxes, making more rules, and creating more bureaucrats is the norm. YOU know that the average American is perfectly capable of living a perfectly good life — indeed, a better one — with less of all of the aboves.

17. Should Trump paint Hillary as someone who has betrayed working-class policies in favor of Wall Street?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Explain that the whole Democrat Party has abandoned the working class — for which, these days, it has nothing but disdain and contempt.

18. Should Trump continue to tie Hillary to Obama’s failed policies including ObamaCare and the Iran Deal?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Again, these are the fairy tales that liberals love to tell themselves — which involves using the taxpayer's money for the most insane of schemes — while ramming it down everyone else's throat. Add this: Hillary is the successor to one Obama, who has been called the most intelligent man in the history of the nation. Well, say that, indeed, neither you (DT) nor Ted Cruz nor Marco Rubio nor any of the Bush brothers would ever have dreamed of sending not $100 million, not $1 billion, but $100 billion to the ayatollahs of a terrorist-sponsoring nation regularly holding mass demonstrations with shouts for "Death to America!"

19. Should Trump continue to promote his tax plan that will cut taxes in order to stimulate the economy for ALL Americans?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Yes, and for this reason: unlike the left, which views the average American as a spoiled brat (also, see 20 below), he knows that the average American can be trusted to take care of his own life

20. Should Trump attack Hillary for referring to tens of millions of American men and women as “deplorables”?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

BY ALL MEANS! Point out that this is the CENTRAL TENET of the Democrat Party today, and that Hillary will continue eight years' of Obama Fairy tale policies (see 2) of the average American being considered nothing but racist, clueless clods needing MAGNANIMOUS OVERLORDS like themselves to rule over the American people and manage their lives. Add that this is normal, when — like Hillary and Obama — you think that you are wiser than everyone else, that you are more compassionate than everyone else, and that you are more humane than everyone else — i.e., that you are superior to everyone else.

21. Should Trump bring up the importance of not only the Supreme Court, but also the next president’s ability to appoint many federal judges?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify: 

Point out that Leftists like BO and HC want to judges to get the government to INTERVENE in people's everyday lives — such as the ridiculous bathroom conundrum — while Republicans want judges who, when necessary, will keep the government OUT OF people's lives

22. Should Trump point to his history of employing thousands of Americans as evidence of his firsthand experience and ability to create jobs?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Again, point out that he is FORCED to do so, since the media will hardly write anything positive about his campaign, as contrasted with its unwillingness to write anything negative about Hillary's campaign.

23. Should Trump hammer Hillary on wanting to enact more of Obama’s regulations that have stunted the economy and prevented small businesses from growing or even starting up?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

The big dream of government statists like Hillary and Barack is using government to give stuff to people; for that to have any value, people must not be rich. This is their dream, then: to make Americans poor! POOR enough to have to turn to government. In that perspective: Why not bring up the Country & Western song line, "They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please" ("Government Cheese" by the Rainmakers)?

24. Should Trump focus on Hillary’s proud claim to put a lot of coal miners out of business?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Same answer as 23: The big dream of government statists like Hillary and Barack is using government to give stuff to people; for that to have any value, people must not be rich. This is their dream, then: to make Americans poor! POOR enough to have to turn to government. In that perspective: Why not bring up the Country & Western song line, "They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please" ("Government Cheese" by the Rainmakers)?

25. Should Trump emphasize the importance of harnessing American energy in order to grow our economy and reduce the cost of gas at the pump?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

America was once a can-do nation; it's time to Make America a Can-Do Nation Again

26. Should Trump spend more time articulating plans to rein in corruption in D.C.?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Say that the VERY act of getting rid of thinning the ranks of bureaucrats and getting rid of bureaucracies as well as departments (education? etc) will — of NECESSITY — rein in government corruption.

27. Should Trump paint Hillary as the epitome of D.C. corruption and the close relationship between lobbyists and politicians?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Simply ask how on Earth she can consider herself to be a factor for change with all her history.

28. Should Trump accuse Hillary of representing everything that everyday Americans are worried about in Washington?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Say that it is worse than that: that, with Obama, she is creating a permanent oligarchy.

29. Should Trump speak directly to the American voters at home and defend our positive message for America?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Other, please specify:

Doesn't he already?!

30. Do you have any personal advice for Donald Trump for the next debate? 

As the webmaster of a 12-year-old blog, No Pasarán, I would say something like this: point to the Founding Fathers — those people who are not taught in school anymore, in favor of more and more ridiculous victim groups. 240 years ago, they told autocrats like King George one basic truth: that the average person is equal, and can be believed to take care of his or her affairs alone, without minimal "assistance" from the government.

Media Fact-Checkers

Media Fact-Checkers, by Branco, aka
Democratic operatives with bylines…

Who, Exactly, Is It Who Should Apologize for Slavery and Make Reparations? America? The South? The Descendants of the Planters? …

The Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor reports on a UN panel arguing that "The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans" (thanks to Daniel Aronstein).

I wrote about what follows 19 years ago, when the topic came up during the Clinton administration. Shortened versions of the post below appeared in the International Herald Tribune, in the Washington Post, and in Le Monde (and I admit to feeling honored when a college professor of philosophy later contacted me to ask to include my letter to the WaPo editor in his course book).

Notice that in 1997, all that was being asked for was an apology, and (to his credit) Bill Clinton did not give one. Only a dozen years later or so did the Congress vote for this — with one leftist lawmaker wondering "why nobody ever thought of doing so before" (perhaps, answered one pundit, because 600,000 Americans happened to have died between 1861 and 1865). And now, the liberals have gone to the next step and ask for reparations… (Nor will that be the end of it…)

Related: Richard Epstein on The Case Against Reparations for Slavery.

Having said that…

    I SHOULD LIKE TO KNOW ON BEHALF OF WHOM, exactly, slavery should be apologized for and whom remedies should be made to. I myself, like the majority of today's U.S. population, am descended from immigrants who arrived after the turn of the 20th century and therefore have nothing to do with the treatment of blacks on the plantations (or that of Indians on the plains, for that matter).

    As for Americans living at the time slavery existed, over twice as many whites lived in states where slavery was illegal and where it had been so, for the most part, since before the French Revolution. Nobody can hardly apologize for the South either, since most whites even there — two thirds of them, to be precise — did not own a single slave.

    Maybe somebody should apologize for the planters and slaveholders? (Their descendants?) But they inherited the system they dwelled in, and although they certainly did little if anything to change it, in what way are they more guilty than the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and other European nationals who introduced it in all their colonies (including, of course, the future United States) and whose only reason for not introducing it onto the European continent proper (as well as the North of the future U.S., needless to say) was the absence of a propitious climate?

    And how, finally, are the above-mentioned whites more guilty than the Arab traders and, especially, the African tribes whose warriors raided neighboring villages to gain slave labor (slaves of the same skin color in this case) themselves or to sell their enemies to the Europeans?

    Speaking of the "dark continent":  Did not Mungo Park note during his 1799 Travels in the Interior of Africa that the slaves in that part of the world "are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen", unable to leave "a state of hopeless and hereditary slavery" which "probably had its origin in the remote ages of antiquity"?  Didn't he further report that during times of great scarcity, there "are many instances of freemen voluntarily surrendering up their liberty to save their lives"?  The Scottish explorer was told that, during one drought, "many freemen came and begged, with great earnestness, to be put upon [a] slave-chain, to save them from perishing of hunger."

    That's true, isn't it?  In the past, when poverty was the norm for the vast majority of the human race — whichever continent they came from — slavery, or some type of bondage (racial or same-race), was likewise the norm, poverty's Siamese twin, if you will; that would be before humanity was on the path to making significant leaps forward to wealth, mainly following… the birth of the United States and thanks to… the yields of its free market.

    And speaking of remedies, didn't as many Americans die in the Civil War as in all of America's 20th-century wars combined? Didn't one Southerner of military age out of four lose his life in the conflict? How many bereaved families is that, altogether — North and South? And apologies, and remedies are still supposed to be owed?!

[Update: See also the New York Times' 1619 project of 2019]

Histrionics rule the day: Shouldn't "Black Lives Matter" ought to start calling themselves "Facts Don’t Matter"?

The quickest way to tell that the Black Lives Matter version of the Charlotte shooting is disintegrating,

writes Benny Huang,

is that the most basic facts of the case are now being declared irrelevant. Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP, told CNN’s Carol Costello that “In my mind, and in most of the community’s mind, it doesn’t matter if he [Keith Scott] had a gun.”

It doesn’t matter if he had a gun? Actually, yes it does. The gun is the sticking point of the entire debate, the hinge upon which so many judgements turn. Take, for example, the cell phone video released by Scott’s widow, Rakeyia Scott, in which she pleads with the police not to shoot because, in her words, “He has no weapon.” Her statement is oddly incongruous with the police’s shouted commands to “Drop the gun!” If he did in fact have a gun, the officers’ actions appear justifiable. If he was only holding a book, as the Black Lives Matters movement contends, then the incident appears to be a coordinated attack on an innocuous citizen. So did he have a gun or didn’t he? It makes a difference.

The fact that the police were ordering Scott to drop his weapon demonstrates at least that they thought he had a gun. Purveyors of the book theory are implying that a book looks like a gun to racist southern cops when a black man is holding it. But this wasn’t a case of misperception—the police did recover a pistol at the scene, a possibility that Corine Mack almost certainly dreaded, hence her clever hedging. The pistol was covered with Scott’s fingerprints and blood, and it was apparently stolen property.

Scott’s supporters are now resorting to outlandish conspiracy theories to explain away the gun. Not only did the cops shout “drop the gun” for the benefit of the camera, but apparently they also planted the gun afterward, laced with fingerprints and DNA, all so they could shoot an unthreatening, unarmed black man while he read a book and waited for his son to get off the school bus.

Rakeyia Scott’s shrieking pleas to the cops seem criminal in light of the fact that her husband was in fact armed with a pistol. The police were caught up in a tense situation with an armed suspect and she was interfering with their duties.

 …/… Rakeyia Scott doesn’t see anything wrong with her lie because the facts of her husband’s violent history and criminal gun ownership are irrelevant to her. Nor do they matter to the NAACP and, if their chapter president’s statement is accurate, they don’t matter to Charlotte’s black community. Facts never seem to matter when a black criminal gets shot. Take for example the unnamed neighbors who claimed that they also saw a book in Scott’s hand, thus corroborating the widow’s story and painting the cops as liars. It’s Ferguson 2014 all over again, with the black community saying whatever they have to say to indict the cops. I wouldn’t be surprise if some of the “witnesses” weren’t even there.

Black Lives Matter really ought to start calling themselves Facts Don’t Matter because that’s what they believe. What’s important to them is the narrative—the story that gets told through the media. Luckily for them, the media is predisposed to tell their story for them, regardless of its veracity. The narrative is so well-rehearsed that reporters no longer wait for the facts to come in before dashing off ill-informed pieces filled with factual errors. The vaunted New York Times, for example, tweeted that Charlotte police had killed an “unarmed black man.” Just a mistake? If so, why do these mistakes always seem to portray the cops in the worst light? The Times later “corrected” itself, tweeting that it was still undetermined whether Keith Scott was armed. No, it isn’t undetermined, it’s merely disputed by a few halfwits who cannot and never will accept that a gun was recovered at the scene. The Associated Press ran a story that claimed Scott had been killed by a white police officer. False. Keith Scott was killed by Officer Brentley Vinson, who is black, and by all accounts a great cop.

This shooting should really be a 30-second story on the 11 o’clock local news, and it should go something like this—a violent convicted felon nearly killed a few police officers with a pistol he illegally owned but the officers defended themselves and, unfortunately, the felon died. That’s the no-nonsense version of what happened and it’s exactly how it would have been reported if Keith Scott had been white. The fact that the dead guy was black really shouldn’t be mentioned at all because it implies that he was only killed for being black. There’s zero evidence of that. If they must mention his race they should also mention, over and over again, that the cop who shot him is also black.

But of course histrionics ruled the day and this minor local story became national news. The media merely updated their template with a few details pertaining to this particular case and went to press with the same old story—racist cops murder innocent black man in cold blood for no other reason than his race. To my knowledge, there has never been a police shooting that actually went down this way—at least not in my lifetime. That’s not to say that in every case the police were blameless, though in some they were. In other cases, the cops were too quick to use force, and in others they showed indiscipline, but in no instance that I can think of did police officers gun down a completely innocent black person for no other reason than racial animosity.

But if the facts of the case won’t fit the narrative, it’s the facts not the narrative that Black Lives Matter alter. From “hands up, don’t shoot” to Sandra Bland’s supposed murder, the movement thrives on enormous lies. They seem almost incapable of telling the truth, hamstrung by some kind of mental or emotional roadblock that simply won’t allow an honest accounting of what happened. Charlotte is being terrorized over a lie, just like Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Ferguson before it. No, we don’t need to “understand” the rioters’ grievances because their grievances are bunk. We need to stand up for the truth and good cops.

Is It Betraying One's Principles — and One's Conscience — to Vote for Donald Trump?

As has been said elsewhere, it is quite simple actually:

Ted Cruz is not endorsing Donald Trump, he's voting for him.

That may sound the same but it is quite a different thing.

There are excellent reasons to be in the #nevertrump group, but if the Supreme Court is in the balance, and that for the next generation — while President Hillary uses immigration to make the entire nation, like California, a one-party state/nation — won't our deepest principles have ended up being highly harmful to the land we love the best?…

When you think a about it, doesn't this — voting, even for someone you find despicable, to prevent your country from becoming the banana republic the democrats hunger for — fit the definition of both patriotism and sacrifice while, indeed, quite literally adhering to Ted's "Vote your conscience" clause at the Republican convention?

Ted Cruz explains his decision:

This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.

In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.

Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”

For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.

Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it.

Third, energy. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s war on coal and relentless efforts to crush the oil and gas industry. Trump has said he will reduce regulations and allow the blossoming American energy renaissance to create millions of new high-paying jobs.

Fourth, immigration. Clinton would continue and even expand President Obama’s lawless executive amnesty. Trump has promised that he would revoke those illegal executive orders.

Fifth, national security. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s willful blindness to radical Islamic terrorism. She would continue importing Middle Eastern refugees whom the FBI cannot vet to make sure they are not terrorists. Trump has promised to stop the deluge of unvetted refugees.

Sixth, Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.

These are six vital issues where the candidates’ positions present a clear choice for the American people.

If Clinton wins, we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.

My conscience tells me I must do whatever I can to stop that.

We also have seen, over the past few weeks and months, a Trump campaign focusing more and more on freedom — including emphasizing school choice and the power of economic growth to lift African-Americans and Hispanics to prosperity.

Finally, after eight years of a lawless Obama administration, targeting and persecuting those disfavored by the administration, fidelity to the rule of law has never been more important.

The Supreme Court will be critical in preserving the rule of law. And, if the next administration fails to honor the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then I hope that Republicans and Democrats will stand united in protecting our fundamental liberties.

Our country is in crisis. Hillary Clinton is manifestly unfit to be president, and her policies would harm millions of Americans. And Donald Trump is the only thing standing in her way.

A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him.

BBC in Awe of One of Britain's Ambassadors After He Converts to Islam

It would seem that the reception of the UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia’s conversion to Islam is noted in British and Saudi society for the host’s exquisite taste that captivates its dhimmi guests…

In one of its "usual, fluffy BBC puff piece[s] on The Religion of Peace", the UK's key mainstream media outlet, aka Al-Beeb, is gleefully gushing that the

British ambassador to Saudi Arabia has performed the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca after converting to Islam, complete with photos and praise from Saudi royalty (if you need further background on the Hajj, click here)

reports David Vance on the Biased BBC Blog…

The Beeb says he made “the holy trip” wearing the white robes traditionally worn for the pilgrimage which re-enacts the actions of the “Prophet Muhammad” (once again Muhammad is referred to as “the Prophet”, as if it is a fact rather than an opinion). Still, let’s hope [that Simon] Collis doesn’t re-enact all of Muhammed’s actions now he has converted.