Slavery and abortion - what's the diff?

What's the difference in the arguments offered today supporting abortion and the arguments used to support slavery until 1861?

None really: "Arguments for Abortion Mimic the Arguments for Slavery Before the Civil War."

Both the arguments for slavery in the 1800s and the arguments for abortion rely on a central claim: that a human being is less than human. The dehumanization of black people relied on pseudoscientific claims that they were inferior. The dehumanization of unborn babies relies on claims that they are "just a clump of cells" or part of a woman's body. In both cases, a growing movement of moral clarity demands that the dehumanized be granted a fundamental right long denied them: freedom and life. (Note: I am not saying abortion and slavery are the same, only that the arguments for them are similar.)

Read the whole thing.

In his debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln said, "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." Slavery was the brutal exploitation of one class of human beings by another. Abortion is the actual destruction of one class of human beings by another. But that's different, we are told, because abortion is medical care.

Gendercide and the problem of millions of extra young men

Science Alert:

A deep-rooted preference for sons over daughters has skewed the world's sex ratios more than we thought.

A massive five-year analysis has found that since 1970, sex-selective abortions in a dozen countries have resulted in 23 million 'missing' girls.

These are women that were never born, and yet today, their absence is palpable, especially in eastern Europe and Asia. In China alone, the study found there were 11.9 million missing females, and India had 10.6 million.

Males are normally born at a rate of 105 males birth for every 100 female births. It evens out over the next 20 years or so because males die at a higher rate before maturity than females. But now females die in the womb at a much higher rate than males.

After years of a controversial single-child policy, China was unsurprisingly at the top. At one point in 2005, the authors found that the most populated country in the world actually had a male birth ratio of 118.

So what do you do with tens of millions of young, virile and frankly horny young men who have zero chance of getting married because there are zero women available to marry them? Maybe more importantly, what do those men do? The question practically answers itself.

Today, in China and India, men outnumber women by 70 million, and it's causing an epidemic of loneliness, a distortion of labour markets, and an increase in female trafficking and prostitution.

Not only that, but those nations will lose one of the natural restraints of going to war that inhibited prior generations, though of course not always successfully: the fear of massive casualties. China could invade Taiwan and if it lost three million men conquering the country, so what? It still has 30 or 40 million more that can die invading somewhere else.

More insight is provided by the US National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health in, "Abnormal sex ratios in human populations: Causes and consequences."

In parts of China and India, there will be a 12–15% excess of young men. These men will remain single and will be unable to have families, in societies where marriage is regarded as virtually universal and social status and acceptance depend, in large part, on being married and creating a new family (45).

An additional problem is that many of these men are rural peasants of low socioeconomic class and with limited education (46). When there is a shortage of women in the marriage market, the women can “marry up,” inevitably leaving the least desirable men with no marriage prospects (47). For example, in China 94% of all unmarried people age 28–49 are male and 97% of them have not completed high school (48). So, in many communities today there are growing numbers of young men in the lower echelons of society who are marginalized because of lack of family prospects and who have little outlet for sexual energy. A number of commentators predict that this situation will lead to increased levels of antisocial behavior and violence and will ultimately present a threat to the stability and security of society (31, 45–49).

There is some empirical evidence to fear such a scenario. Gender is a well-established individual-level correlate of crime, and especially violent crime (50). It is a consistent finding across cultures that an overwhelming percentage of violent crime is perpetrated by young, unmarried, low-status males (50–52). In India, a study carried out between 1980 and 1982 showed a strong correlation between homicide rates in individual states across the country and the sex ratio in those states, after controlling for potential confounders such as urbanization and poverty (53). The authors concluded that there was a clear link between sex ratio and violence as a whole, not just violence against women as might be assumed when there is a shortage of females. These analyses were repeated by Hudson and Den Boer (46), who showed that the relationship between sex ratio and murder rates at the level of the Indian state persisted through the late 1990s. In China, young male migrant workers are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of urban crime, especially violent crime. It is reported that migrants account for 50% of all criminal cases in the major receiving cities for migrants, with some cities reporting up to 80% (54).

There is also evidence that, when single young men congregate, the potential for more organized aggression is likely to increase substantially (45, 53). Hudson and Den Boer, in their provocative writings on this subject (45, 46), go further, predicting that these men are likely to be attracted to military or military-type organizations, with the potential to be a trigger for large-scale domestic and international violence. With 40% of the world's population living in China and India, the authors argue that the sex imbalance could impact regional and global security, especially because the surrounding countries of Pakistan, Taiwan, Nepal, and Bangladesh also have high sex ratios.

It will get worse until 2050, when the number of "missing girls" will peak at present trend lines.

What about the United States? Wikipedia:

While the majority of parents in United States do not practice sex-selective abortion, there is certainly a trend toward male preference. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, if they were only allowed to have one child, 40% of respondents said they would prefer a boy, while only 28% preferred a girl.[107] When told about prenatal sex selection techniques such as sperm sorting and in vitro fertilization embryo selection, 40% of Americans surveyed thought that picking embryos by sex was an acceptable manifestation of reproductive rights.[108] These selecting techniques are available at about half of American fertility clinics, as of 2006.[109]

But I guess that's okay because abortion on demand is a woman's sacred right. Kidnapping young girls and women into sex-trafficking rings for unmarriageable men? That's a crime. That it occurs at increased numbers because of abortion does not matter because abortion? That's medical care.

Theology for Pete Buttigeig

Link

Here is how I would reply to Buttigeig:

1. By "my creator," I assume you mean God. You are incorrect. God did not create you - nor did God create me. Your mother and your father created you, just as mine did me. I have no issue with your parents. If you do, that's between you and them. Don't drag me into it.

2. You and I were both born into a sinful state. As the Bible says, we were literally born sinful. In me, my inherent sinfulness manifests itself in many different ways, probably 90 percent of so that are common ways that manifest in every person.

3. I am guilty of sexual sin, as is every person on earth. It is unavoidable. For me, my sexual sin was lust for various women to whom I was not married. Sexual lust is a sin even for married men and women. I am thankful that I no longer lust for women to whom I am not married, but I am frank enough to admit that it is possibly not due solely to the work of the Holy Spirit (at my pleading), but also because I am in my mid-60s and have all I can can handle already. Nonetheless, that form of sexual sin is thankfully overcome in me, for which I thank God and give him credit.

4. I am heterosexual. The Bible is clear that human heterosexuality is both intended and endorsed by God. But God does not make a hetero man or woman a hetero adulterer or hetero fornicator. Those are sins that we do on our own. God neither leads us to those things nor shrugs and says, "Oh, well, it's okay because you think you were born that way."

5. You are homosexual. There is not one verse in the Bible that even remotely indicates that homosexuality is either intended or endorsed by God, or that anyone is "born that way," other than the general declaration that all persons are born unavoidably sinful in their being. But that does not make you (or anyone else) "special." It does not mean that your sexual sin is somehow off the books just because you think it should be or want to blame it on God. God does not lead you to have sex with other men. That is something you do on you own. Nor does God simply shrug and say, "Oh, well, it's okay because you think you were born that way."

6. I was, and am, honest enough to admit that my sexual sin was contrary to God's will and God's intentions for humankind. God being my helper, I was able to overcome sinful lust. But I could never have done so if I had dogmatically and selfishly claimed, "I was just born that way."

7. Over to you, Pete.

Sincere congratulations to New Mexico Democrats

Some of them anyway: "Pro-abortion New Mexico governor shocked as Democrats sink bill to kill born babies," a bill that would have legally authorized infanticide. It passed the NM House but failed in the Senate, where Democrats hold a decisive majority.

No one was more surprised by Thursday night's vote than Governor (and abortion extremist) Michelle Lujan Grisham (D). After the House had sent the bill on with a 40-29 vote, the Democrats' stranglehold on the Senate was supposed to mean that the New York-style H.B. 51 was a done deal. But despite the party's 26-16 edge, the vote fell far from party lines. In a stunning victory for pro-lifers, eight Democrats crossed over — killing a bill that would have legalized infanticide and given abortionists the right to destroy babies up to the moment of birth.

Governor Grisham, who hadn't counted on the intense lobbying from pastors and state conservatives, was astounded. "That... it was even a debate, much less a difficult vote for some senators, is inexplicable to me," she told reporters. By a 24–18 tally, Democratic Senators Pete Campos, Carlos Cisneros, Richard Martinez, George Muñoz, Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen, Ramos, Clemente "Meme" Sanchez, and John Arthur Smith proved what a complicated issue abortion is becoming — even in liberal states.

Infanticide has been argued as justified and morally unobjectionable for many years now. As I documented in 2012, "First, we kill all the newborns."

Academic philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva—shockingly working in Australia, a land where commonsense was once held sacred—have written a peer-reviewed paper in which they say that killing newborns is A-OK, and even in some cases to be encouraged.

Their “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” is in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Much more at the link.

Democrats want to kill Democrat voters

I mean that literally: serving Democrat politicians want laws to allow the deliberate, pre-meditated killing of future Democrat voters. How else to explain the words of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who openly ...

endorsed infanticide and tried to make it sound as harmless as he could. When asked by a radio host if he supported Virginia legislator Kathy Tran’s proposed law to permit abortion while a woman was in labor, Northam replied:

This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.

Here is the video:


Please note that Northam thinks this is perfectly okay because, after all, "The infant would be kept comfortable" right up until it is destroyed. Maybe the SS should have taken that tack at Auschwitz because, "We will be nice to you right up until we brutally kill you" can't possibly be wrong.

The Federalist points out that the bull being discussed here was presented by Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran, who said this during a subcommittee hearing:

“How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?” [subcommittee chairman Todd] Gilbert asked.

“Through the third trimester,” responded Tran. “The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.”

“Where it’s obvious that a woman is about to give birth, that she has physical signs that she is about to give birth, would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?” Gilbert asked.

“She’s dilating,” he continued, using the term for a woman’s cervix naturally opening to allow a baby to exit his mother during birth. “I’m asking if your bill allows that.”

“My bill would allow that, yes,” she said.

Which is to say, Tran wants the law to allow the mother to tell the doctor to kill the being-born or newborn (Northam: "the infant would be delivered") infant. While Northam said that more than one physician needs to be consulted, Tran insisted that only one be permitted for the go-ahead.

I do not know words nearly harsh enough to condemn the overt, public murderousness of today's Democrat party specifically and progressives generally. And on the same day that Gov. Northam, considered a rising star in the Democrat party, said that just-born babies should be killed on the mother's whim, the extraordinary hypocrisy of this party was on full display by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D.-Ohio, who said, talking about President Trump,

"Real populists don’t engage in hate speech and don’t rip babies from families at the border."

But the law already allows babies to be literally ripped - as in ripped apart - inside the womb and now Democrats want to allow living, delivered infants to be ripped from life itself.

The Left is already howling at we who explain what Tran and Northam said - accusing us, of course, of being the wrongdoers here.

I used to listen attentively to by left-of-center friends and ministerial colleagues on the matter of public policy, even though I hardly ever found that I could agree with their positions. But I did try to understand their point of view and how they justified it, whether on secular or biblical bases.

That door is now slammed shut. After Tran/Northam/Brown, there is no "understanding" possible that stays on this side of insanity. Starting now, I absolutely refuse to tolerate any lecturing by a "progressive" on the subject of morality on any issue, and this is now my number one reason why.

But back to my title for this post, "Democrats want to kill Democrat voters." Why do I say that? because according to the Guttmacher Institute (2014 data), of women who had an abortion,

Thirty-nine percent were white, 28% were black, 25% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3% were of some other race or ethnicity. ...

... three-fourths of abortion patients were low income—49% living at less than the federal poverty level, and 26% living at 100–199% of the poverty level.

Which means that minority infants were killed in the womb far out of proportion to the share of those demographics in the general population, and these minorities are by far super-majority voters for Democrats.Same with income levels - the demographic described as obtaining three-fourths of abortions are Democrat voters to a very high degree.

That's why I sometimes refer to the murdered infants as "Unborn Democrats." I New York City, for example, more black babies are killed in the womb than are born alive.

But Democrats won't talk about that because shut up.

Doctor Anthony Levantino performed 1,400 abortions until he abandoned that practice. Here is part of his testimony to Congress on how second-trimester abortions are done. (For third-trimester abortions, the baby is chemically killed in the womb and two or three days later the mother's body ejects the dead infant through the birth canal, usually with inducing drugs' assistance.)

When someone demands that a woman must have "the right to choose," remember that this is what that choice means:

  As Lincoln said about slavery, "If this is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." But "wrong" is far too wimpy a word to describe this. This is over the edge of evil.
Update: Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran says she was surprised by the pushback to her comments to the subcommittee and has tried to walk back her statements, but in so doing winds up more twisted around than an octopus playing Twister.

This is my shocked face: "No Democrats In Congress Seem To Have Heard Ralph Northam’s Abortion Comments," including this Democrat:


And yet, House Democrat warns ethics committee about Steve King promoting white nationalism website. In Democrat fantasy world, only Republicans have the duty to renounce members of their own party. When a Democrat does, every other Democrat pretends do not even know there is a problem.

"Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"

We have long known and studied dignity cultures and honor-shame cultures. Now sociology professors Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning say there has emerged a new kind of social-interaction dynamic: victimhood culture, kicking off with an incident at Oberlin University.

The Oberlin student [who took offense at an email] took a different approach: After initially emailing the student who offended her, she decided to publicly air the encounter that provoked her and their subsequent exchange in the community at large, hoping to provoke sympathy and antagonism toward the emailer by advertising her status as an aggrieved party.   

 But she was met from the original emailer with even more strident claims that she had victimized him even more. And it went downhill from there - "There is no end to conflict in a victimhood culture."

What's distinguishes this culture from honor-shame or dignity cultures? The professors explain:

It isn’t honor culture.

“Honorable people are sensitive to insult, and so they would understand that microaggressions, even if unintentional, are severe offenses that demand a serious response,” they write. “But honor cultures value unilateral aggression and disparage appeals for help. Public complaints that advertise or even exaggerate one’s own victimization and need for sympathy would be anathema to a person of honor.”

But neither is it dignity culture:

“Members of a dignity culture, on the other hand, would see no shame in appealing to third parties, but they would not approve of such appeals for minor and merely verbal offenses. Instead they would likely counsel either confronting the offender directly to discuss the issue, or better yet, ignoring the remarks altogether.”

The culture on display on many college and university campuses, by way of contrast, is “characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties. People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large. Domination is the main form of deviance, and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization.”

It is, they say, “a victimhood culture.”

Read the whole thing, "The Rise of Victimhood Culture" in The Atlantic.

Now I have two responses. The first is that victimhood culture is literally childish. It is a dynamic that resides at elementary-grade level, although, as the professors explain, college students today are far more adept and energetic in it than small kids. It is taking personal disagreements or conflicts to well, this level.


Remember one of the first rules of economics: That which is subsidized increases. When posting one's latest "I'm being repressed!" event across social media or public forums become routine, it will become rewarding. Posters become affirmed in their grievances and over time (not a long time!) want that affirmation again and again. So their level of "I'm offended" get lower and lower, their sprint to public revelation becomes quicker and sooner, and their claims of harm become ever-more insistent and exaggerated.

In short, victimhood culture is not about justice or peacemaking or conflict resolution. Quite the opposite: it is about domination and conflict creation and lengthening the fight, all the better to be affirmed. Victimhood culture is at bottom selfish, self-centered and ultimately self-defeating.

My second response is that victimhood culture is very specifically contrary to the teachings of Christ, so anyone who thinks him/herself a Christian who engages in it very seriously needs to get a new understanding.

Let me start with a referral to my essay of how Jesus rebutted the honor-shame dynamic that was firmly entrenched in first-century Judea, "How Jesus invented individual liberty."

Then how to get even with others the right way.

More urgently than ever, this is what we must teach our children.

The sanity of the shooter, the insanity of the debate

Stephen Paddock no doubt thought he was sane until the very end. At some level, until his last thought was removed by the bullet he fired into his own brain, he thought what he was doing was reasonable, just and fair.

But he had to be angry. A contented man does not commit massacres such as this one. Why was he angry? Gambling debts? Father issues (his father had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list)? Jilted by his long-time girlfriend, who had left the country? Brain lesion that veered him horrifically off course?

One day we may know - or think we do. Or we may never know, not even enough to make a decent guess. But this I think is true: Stephen Paddock no doubt thought he was sane until the very end.

Now, what to do? First, I think we should admit that there is still far more we do not know about Paddock and the whole horrific event than we do know. I do not want to announce "the solution" while still mired in ignorance about the why, not knowing the details about what laws Paddock  have followed, skirted, or outright disobeyed. Apart of murder, of course, which is already illegal.

I think that columnist David Harsanyi hit it on the head, though:

There are generally two kinds of social media reactions to heart-wrenching events like yesterday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas: one is to offer prayers and sympathy to the victims and their families, and the other is to reflexively lash out in anger at those who don’t share your political agenda. Although emotionally satisfying, one of these responses makes it nearly impossible for the country to engage in any kind of useful discussion moving forward.

Here is what I mean: On the one hand, it has been reported that Paddock used a "bump stock" to raise the rate of fire on at least two of the rifles police found in his hotel room. I had never heard of such a thing until earlier this week, but it is a replacement stock plus trigger-guard attachment that "bumps" the rifle forward after the first shot is fired so that the trigger re-contacts the finger/attachment and the gun fires again. Both technically and legally, the rifle is still a semi-auto because the firing mechanism's internals remain the same and a trigger pull still fires only one round. But it does so extremely quickly, up to rates of fire that rival or equal true machine guns,.

Now, people who think that gun laws are too lax would really want me as their ally, I would think. I am very, professionally familiar with firearms of many types and designs. I am politically libertarian-conservative. I am indeed an NRA member. And I am quite open to redefining "automatic weapon" to be based on rate of fire rather than merely the mechanical design, as the law now defines it (which is why bump stocks are legal; they do not change the mechanical design of the gun).

But, as has happened all over the internet and in some mainline media, before the police have even released the bodies of the slain to their families, I read, for example, that a vice-president of CBS has no sympathy for the victims because they were probably Republicans, or read that solutions are being offered when the problem is still undefined (such as keeping "silencers" outlawed), then honestly, it concretizes me even more into the "no" camp. Because there is no end to the prohibitions. There is never a time when the Left says, "One more gun control law, just one more, and then we'll never ask for another."

Outlaw "silencers." Then grip stocks. Then flash suppressors. Then "large capacity" magazines." Then forward hand grips. Then then then. It never stops. At least The New Republic came clean this week by publishing that all firearms must be banned in America (which can be done in only five easy steps!). So is there really any wonder when those on the Right suspect that each "reasonable" measure is really nothing but another brick in the wall?

How many gun laws did Paddock violate? We don't know yet because the police do not even know yet. Nonetheless, out comes the same, tired old list of prohibitions that this time will bring peace, love, joy and kum bah ya.

There are no dangerous guns. There are only dangerous persons. And there is no more dangerous weapon than the human heart. "But but but," one retorts, "if only Paddock had faced more effective gun laws..." Again, read the paragraph immediately above.

Senator Marco Rubio drew some flak for saying (in 2015), "None of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would gun laws have prevented them."

So The Washington Post's Fact Checker columnist did the research and found that Rubio was right.

More laws are not the answer. We do not have a legal problem. And we do not have a gun problem. As my friend, retired law-enforcement officer Ken Latham, put it,

In the aftermath of the massacre at the Bataclan in Paris, there were 137 dead, 413 wounded. In a city with complete gun control. Guns, you see, are tools. They have no hate, no anger, no motives, no agenda. They are inanimate pieces of metal, and wood, and plastic. It is the heart of the operator that brings to life the hate, who expresses the anger, who holds motives and agendas. A person determined to kill, will find a way. A cargo truck killed scores in France, a knife killed 2 women just this week in that country. A U-haul van was used in Canada. Fertilizer was used in OKC. Box cutters and airplanes were used on 9/11.

We have a culture problem. This is not a "racist, xenophobic, anti-anyone," problem. We have a culture that celebrates hate, that excuses it, that justifies it. We hold no one responsible for their actions, instead we assign that blame to either an inanimate object or a third party that we dislike. 

We demand that our rights be protected while attacking others'. We just know that we are right, and the others are wrong. We resort to names, that lead to divisions, and pushing them out of our circle. We live in echo chambers so we can hear our own beliefs validated, then spoken in someone else's voice. 

We surrender who we are and where we come from to create some connection to the cause of the day, to assuage our own sense of self-guilt, that has been taught to us by others doing the very same. 

We have a culture problem.

End note:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an un-uprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Confederate monuments: So what? Now What?

Part one of a series on this topic

So what? Now what?

One of the bishops of The United Methodist Church has told of his son’s soccer coach. If one of his players made an outstanding play and then unduly celebrated, the coach would rejoin, “So what? Now what?”

Meaning, now that you’ve done that, what do you do next?

Workers remove a monument dedicated to the Confederate Women of Maryland
early Wednesday, after it was taken down in Baltimore.
Photo by Jerry Jackson / The Baltimore Sun via AP

In his book The Martian Chronicles, written in the height of the Jim Crow era, Ray Bradbury tells of a day on earth when all the black people board rockets that they’ve had built in secret. They are going to move to Mars. The white people don’t find out until liftoff day. The main character is a white man named Teece. He watches the stream of people heading toward the launch site with dismay and impotence, cursing at them and dismissing them in turns. And then (profanity snipped),

Far down the empty street a bicycle came.

“I’ll be [snip]. Teece, here comes your Silly now.”

The bicycle pulled up before the porch, a seventeen-year-old colored boy on it, all arms and feet and long legs and round watermelon head. He looked up at Samuel Teece and smiled.

“So you got a guilty conscience and came back,” said Teece.

“No, sir, I just brought the bicycle.”

“What’s wrong, couldn’t get it on the rocket?”

“That wasn’t it, sir.”

“Don’t tell me what it was! Get off, you’re not goin’ to steal my property!” He gave the boy a push. The bicycle fell. “Get inside and start cleaning the brass.” …

“You still standin’ there!” Teece glared.

“Mr. Teece, you don’t mind I take the day off,” he said apologetically.

“And tomorrow and day after tomorrow and the day after the day after that,” said Teece.

“I’m afraid so, sir.” “We got to leave now, Mr. Teece.”

Teece laughed. “You got one named Swing Low, and another named Sweet Chariot?”

The car started up. “Good-by, Mr. Teece.”

“You got one named Roll Dem Bones?”

“Good-by, mister!”

“And another called Over Jordan! Ha! Well, tote that rocket, boy, lift that rocket, boy, go on, get blown up, see if I care!”

The car churned off into the dust. The boy rose and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted one last time at Teece: “Mr. Teece, Mr. Teece, what you goin’ to do nights from now on? What you goin’ to do nights, Mr. Teece?”

Silence. The car faded down the road. It was gone. “What in [snip] did he mean?” mused Teece.

“What am I goin’ to do nights?”

He watched the dust settle, and it suddenly came to him.

He remembered nights when men drove to his house, their knees sticking up sharp and their shotguns sticking up sharper, like a carful of cranes under the night trees of summer, their eyes mean. Honking the horn and him slamming his door, a gun in his hand, laughing to himself, his heart racing like a ten-year-old’s, driving off down the summer-night road, a ring of hemp rope coiled on the car floor, fresh shell boxes making every man’s coat look bunchy. How many nights over the years, how many nights of the wind rushing in the car, flopping their hair over their mean eyes, roaring, as they picked a tree, a good strong tree, and rapped on a shanty door!

“So that’s what the [snip] meant?” Teece leaped out into the sunlight. “Come back, you [snip]! What am I goin’ to do nights? Why, that lousy, insolent son of a . . .”

It was a good question. He sickened and was empty. Yes. What will we do nights? he thought. Now they’re gone, what? He was absolutely empty and numb.

Bradbury’s story continues, but the question remains: “Now they’re gone, what?”

Let us suppose every public statue or monument to the Confederacy is removed as fast as their opponents want. “So what? Now what?” Who exactly will be better off? Black unemployment will be unchanged. The risk of horrific war with North Korea will not be lowered. The near-total breakdown of civility in our political life will not be improved. The inability, indeed, unwillingness, of the parties in Washington to come together to govern well will not increase. Obamacare will continue to fail and there will continue to be nothing on the docket to replace or repair it. Al Qaeda will still attempt to carry out the attacks it recently promised against mass-transportation means in the United States.

Now they're gone, what? What difference will it make, exactly?

It may be answered that deleting the monuments is a worthy thing in its own right. It may be that an “afterward” plan is not necessary to do a thing inherently good and desirable in itself. The presence of such statues and monuments has a meaning much diminished now from what their erectors intended. Black Americans, still living with the after-effects of 200 years or so of slavery in America, are constantly reminded by the monuments’ continuing presence that their status as Americans remains somewhat provisional as long as those statues remain.

In this I will not argue contrary. Practically none of the statuary concerned dates to just after the Civil War. Almost all were erected from the 1890s – 1940s, most completed well before World War II. The main objective in them was to comfort and reassure aging Civil War veterans (of both South and North) that their sacrifices were real, they were remembered, but they were not going to determine the future of a United States. In their day, the monuments served as implements of peaceful reconciliation – and it took decades of time and veterans’ old age before even that could occur.

Of course, no Civil War veterans are alive today and even Boomers like me are five generations removed from their Civil War ancestors. I had lineal ancestors who fought on both sides. A multi-great uncle of the CSA’s 11^th Tennessee was KIA at Stones River and another g3-uncle of the 45^th Pennsylvania lost both his legs at Chancellorsville. Another of my g2-grandfathers has the distinction of being the only American POW in history ever to be broken out of POW camp by his wife, a woman who personally brained a Union soldier who attempted to rape her in her Nashville home.

So, for me there is a personal connection, at least of sorts, to the War and to its monuments today. It is not a strong one. The great majority of Americans today, descended from immigrants arriving after the Civil War, have no personal connection to the War or to the monuments that memorialize it.

But black men, women and children in the country do have a personal connection to the war because they continue to live now with its consequences and legacies, regardless of whether they are descended from persons living in either North or South before or during the war.

Perhaps, though, with both whites and black people more emotionally distant from both the War and its aftermath, we can assess both the war and its memorials with some dispassion – although higher passion seem to be the order of the day now.

First, let us dispense with all the “Lost Cause” nonsense Southern apologists invented after the war.

There are some hard truths about the CSA. I am a Nashville native and grew up here. My family's roots in Middle Tenn. go back to just after the Revolutionary War. I have mentioned my ancestral-family members who fought (and some died) for the CSA on both my mom's and dad's side (also for the Union on my dad's). Alexander Stephens, vice president of the CSA, was my wife's great-great grandfather's brother.

I take no back seat to anyone for Southern heritage and upbringing.

Like probably most native Southerners of my generation, I was raised being taught that the real reasons for the Southern states' secession was to preserve states’ rights and that the northern economic lobby was choking the South's economy with high tariffs on Southern goods.

Slavery? Well, it was in the mix somewhere, but slavery was not the real reason for secession.

It is a lie, pure and simple.

The states’ rights and tariffs arguments are entirely absent from Southern apologia until after the Civil War. In 1860 and before, no one in the South was using those topics to justify secession. Furthermore, in 1860 federal tariffs on Southern goods were lower than they had been since 1816. 

The Democrats in Congress, dominated by Southern Democrats, wrote and passed the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and kept reducing rates, so that the 1857 rates were down to about 15%. ... The South had almost no complaints... . [Link]

It was the Southern politicians who had actually attacked the concept of federalism and state rights when, some years before the Civil War, some non-slave states defied the Fugitive Slave Act and declared that when slaves were brought into those states by the masters, they could be declared legally manumitted by state law. Southern politicians fought that tooth and nail and applauded the Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court, which denied Dred Scott, a black man, the right to sue for his freedom in US courts even if he resided in a free state. (Seven of the Supreme Court's judges in the case had been appointed by pro-slavery presidents from the South. Five of the seven were from slave-holding families.)

Nor was the North's industrial power significant at all in the secessionists' decisions (although it may be argued that it should have been). In 1860, Southern goods accounted for 75 percent of all American exports' dollar value ("King Cotton" being the main export) and the market value of the slaves across the South was greater than the entire Net Asset Value of the combined industrial base of the North.

The North's industrial revolution had begun in the 1840s, but was hardly in full speed in 1860. The war great accelerated it, leaving the North economically ascendant afterward, but before the war the South was the dominant economic section of the country (and it was economically wrecked by 1865).

Why did the Southern states secede? To protect slavery, period.

Read the 11 seceded states' actual acts of secession, beginning with South Carolina's, and you will see that slavery was the sole reason for secession. South Carolina's act makes this very unambiguous: protection of slavery was the only topic presented as driving secession. Same with Mississippi. And the others.

There were four sections of S.C.'s secession act. The opening section claims and justifies the right of the state to secede in the first place. Then:

The next section asserts that the government of the United States and of states within that government had failed to uphold their obligations to South Carolina. The specific issue stated was the refusal of some states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and clauses in the U.S. Constitution protecting slavery and the federal government's perceived role in attempting to abolish slavery. 

 The next section states that while these problems had existed for twenty-five years, the situation had recently become unacceptable due to the election of a President (this was Abraham Lincoln although he is not mentioned by name) who was planning to outlaw slavery. The declaration states the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the Union, which is described as: 

... increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery ...

Then  the final section was simply the declaration of secession. There are no issues presented to justify secession except slavery. Note the contempt of "states right" in the secession act, in its denunciation of "... the refusal of some states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act... ." The other 10 seceded states' enactments are not significantly different.

The Confederate States of America was founded to do one thing only: to preserve the power of one class of people to literally own as chattel property another class of people. There is no other reason the CSA existed.

That would be bad enough on its own. But it's worse. David Goldman, an economist (Ph.D., London School of Economics), has some facts and thoughts (read the whole essay):

Southern slaveholders were rapists. We know this because only 73% of the DNA of African-Americans is African; the rest is Caucasian with a small fraction of Native American. Most of the admixture of DNA, a McGill University study concludes, occurred before the Civil War, that is, when slaveholders and their white employees could use female slaves at will. Keep that in mind the next time Foghorn Leghorn sounds off about the honor of Southern womanhood. To own slaves is wicked; to rape female slaves and sell one's children by them is disgusting in the extreme. Yet that is what the Old South did, and the DNA evidence proves it.

That is the "heritage" that CSA flag defenders are really defending; I hope, truly, that most of them do not know that.

Southerners must not defend the indefensible

To defend the Confederate States of America is to side with the abjectly, morally indefensible. To use the CSA's battle flag or national colors as a symbol of Southern pride should be deeply, deeoffensive to modern Southerners, who are the most racially harmonious people in the nation (by no means has the year of Jubilee arrived, but jeepers, just compare to practically any Union-states- heritage city).

Have Southerners nothing to display as an emblem of regional heritage and pride but the flag of a irredeemably corrupt and thankfully temporary regime?

God save us.

Endnotes: 

1. You can read all of Bradbury's chapter here. Be advised that there is rough language and that the book, written in 1950, envisions no change in race relations between 1950 and the year of its setting, 2003. But then, the narrative is not really about 2003 or Mars at all. 

 2. The number of Southerners who display the Confederate flag in any way is vanishingly small. So why we are letting this particular issue practically control the national public agenda sort of escapes me. That we have a president who practices public buffoonery, and a media apparatus that long ago went full ideologue, does not help matters. 

Next installment: "The issue isn't the issue." "The myth of 'noble Lincolnism'."

And kiss your $2 goodbye

The Power Ball lottery is up to more than a half-billion dollars this Saturday. Is it worth two bucks to buy a ticket? Nope, the math proves it's not a good play. Business Insider did the math.

What this table means is that you can expect the net payout (after taxes, etc) of each ticket you buy to be negative $1.21. Which is to say that if you buy one ticket per drawing (two per week) for, say, 10 years, you will buy 1,040 tickets at a cost of $2,080 and will win back in prize money $821.60. You'll lose a buck twenty-one per transaction. Buy more tickets and you'll lose more money.

And that is only one reason why lotteries are the greatest scam ever perpetuated on the American people.

Bill Nye proves he doesn't know environmental science

Bill Nye: Older people need to 'die' out before climate science can advance

Bill Nye specifically targeted the elderly this week as he spoke out against climate change deniers, saying that climate science will start to advance when old people start to "age out," according to a report.

The "Science Guy" said that generationally, the majority of climate change deniers are older.

"Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It's generational," Nye told the Los Angeles Times. Nye said that he is calling them out with "due respect," acknowledging that he is "now one of them."

"We're just going to have to wait for those people to 'age out,' as they say," Nye went on, adding that "age out" is a euphemism for "die." "But it'll happen, I guarantee you — that'll happen."

See, that just proves that Nye doesn't know climate science. Presumably, since Nye included himself in the denier generation, he means Boomers like me. (Nye is two months, 20 days younger than I.) The oldest Boomers are only about 72 years old, the youngest are not even 55. That means that it's going to take about 35 more years for us to be gone, and many of us will linger on well after that.

Thirty. Five. Years. Before anything can be substantially done to arrest climate change, according to Bill Nye.

We do not have that long to save the planet, and if Bill Nye is really a "science guy" he should know that. After all, "experts say we have three years to get climate change under control. And they’re the optimists."

A group of prominent scientists, policymakers, and corporate leaders released a statement Wednesday warning that if the world doesn’t set greenhouse gas emissions on a downward path by 2020, it could become impossible to contain climate change within safe limits.

I am not a scientist, but I play one on TV.

So don't listen to Bill Nye any more. He does not know the science!

Remember, though, that the Left's newly-approved position on controlling climate change is to get rid of people: "Want To Slow Global Warming? Researchers Look To Family Planning."

A recent study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the biggest way to reduce climate change is to have fewer children. 

"I knew this was a sensitive topic to bring up," says study co-author Kimberly Nicholas on NPR's Morning Edition. "Certainly it's not my place as a scientist to dictate choices for other people. But I do think it is my place to do the analysis and report it fairly." 

The study concludes that four high-impact ways to reduce CO2 gas emissions include having fewer children, living without a car, avoiding airplane travel and eating a vegetarian diet.

Get that? "Certainly it's not my place as a scientist to dictate choices for other people." Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Her disclaimer would not be necessary if she really believed that.

The article says that Ms. Nicholas is engaged to be married, but when asked, she declined to promise reducing the number of children she and her future husband plan to bear.

So, as the saying goes, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis themselves act as if it's a crisis.

Reducing the number of children the proles have can hardly be sufficiewnt to save the planet for the nomenklatura's future paradise. After all, if saving the world depends on cutting the population, then why settle for passive measures and merely hope that we proles will obey?

Remember John Holdren?

He was President Obama's Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a.k.a. the president's "Science Czar."

Here is what Holdren said in his book, Ecoscience, co-authored by Holdren and his colleagues Paul Ehrlich (yes, that Paul Ehrlich) and Anne Ehrlich. This is the totalitarian mind in full flower:

But this is entirely consistent with the whole world view of the Left: You are the problem and there are simply too many of you. Remember: When they say they want to "change the world," what they mean is they want to change you. As columnist David Harsanyi has pointed out, they are convinced "we have too much freedom with which to make too many stupid choices."

BTW, "In 1985 Holdren predicted a billion deaths from climate-related famine by the end of this decade." Try as I might, I cannot find any reference to such a massive die-off.

What does a "death" sentence really mean?

Ronald Gray has been on death row in a US Army prison for 29 years.
Twenty. Nine. Years. Exactly how is that a death sentence?

I wrote last December that I was present in the court-martial room when then-Spec. 4 Ronald Gray was sentenced to death for murdering a civilian cab driver while on the US Army reservation of Fort Bragg, NC.

His conviction was 29 years ago and Gray's case is still wrapped up in the appeals and review process. He was 22 years old when convicted, now he is 51. His latest appeal was to vacate his death sentence because (he claims),

... he was incompetent to stand trial and had ineffective lawyers. He also challenged the whole notion of capital punishment and argued the death penalty is racially biased.

This appeal was denied, but his execution does not actually loom. I am on record as opposing capital punishment, and this case illustrates one reason why: exactly how Gray was sentenced to "death"?

What he really was sentenced to was (and is) "decades more of life with unending appeals until he is an old man." Which costs the government untold thousands of dollars to keep going.

"Justice delayed is justice denied." If Gray's death sentence ever was just, it is just no longer. The murder for which the court-martial convicted him was indeed brutal, but putting him to death for it after after decades of delays cannot be said to be just recompense for the victim or her family.

When I am elected king I will abolish the "death" sentence and people convicted of such crimes will be sentenced to "imprisonment until death by natural causes." And the endless appeals and reviews will stop and the victims' loved ones will not be suspended in limbo awaiting a sentence that very well may never happen.

Also, here is another reason to oppose capital punishment: Ex-officer helps exonerate US prisoner after 24 years.

A Philadelphia man has been exonerated and freed from prison 24 years after he was found guilty of a murder he did not commit.

Shaurn Thomas, 43, was released after the Philadelphia District Attorney's office agreed that the evidence did not support the conviction.

How many men or women have been sentenced to death - and eventually suffered execution, but who were likewise innocent of the crime? We'll never know. For the record, I do not think it is a high number at all, but if one says that only one such execution is insufficient to abolish killing people, then tell me how many executions of the innocent it would take? A dozen? Twenty? What?

As I said last February, finding ways to kill people has become a near-religious idol of both the Left and the Right. Killing people in prison has become as much of a political statement by Republicans to define who they are as killing people in the womb defines the Democrats.

They just want to watch it burn

How do you handle a wolf in sheep's clothing? Charisma magazine examines the question from the viewpoint of pastoral ministry.

Fairly recently I dealt with a wolf in sheep's clothing issue that was complicated and difficult. It amazes me that as I have talked with others I've learned that many people have gone through this kind of thing in the body of Christ, yet few people are talking about it. I think often we've all found ourselves experiencing the gash of a wolf, and because we genuinely want to think the best of the other people, we turn the other cheek. We think forgiveness means you keep staying vulnerable and rarely speak up.

Forgiveness doesn't mean allowing yourself to continue to be chewed on and devoured. Matthew 7:15 tells us to be aware that there are wolves in sheep's clothing seeking to devour the sheep. We also know from Scripture in the last days false prophets and these wolves will increase. People often have this misguided notion that these wolves will be obvious to recognize and would never dare set foot in church or on a platform. That's not true. There are wolves lurking in pews, sadly sometimes behind pulpits and out in the business arena. It's more common than people realize. This is not meant to make anyone fearful or paranoid, but it is meant to wake you up and teach you how to deal with these situations.

Anyone who is an adult and worked in the church, in business or in charitable organizations for a few years or more already knows that wolves are there. That has been true since, oh, 10,000 BC. But, as Charisma's writer indicates, wolves seem more numerous than ever. And Prof. Anthony Esolen of Providence College in Rhode Island, agrees. He writes of the Leftist dominance among student bodies at his and almost every other college in America.

... college students, a majority of them female, demand to be protected from ideas and utterances that somehow, as they claim, deny their very existence or would cast doubt upon what they claim are their incontestable experiences as members of some historically underprivileged group. Their critics laugh at them and say that such students, “snowflakes,” want to lock our colleges into an orthodoxy that is unenlightened and medieval. These critics are wrong in their diagnosis and inaccurate in their criticism.

It is also something of a mistake to point at the students and laugh at them for being weaklings. The students hold the hammer, and they know it. ... But in our world of inversions, power is granted to people who claim that they have no power and who resent the greatness of their own forebears. They do not seek “safety.” They seek to destroy. The strong man is bound and gagged, and the pistol is pointed at his head — the seat of reason itself. [boldface added]

"They seek to destroy." There are times I cannot understand the destructive actions of others in any way that makes sense. But this comes close:



There is a destructiveness at loose in our world, our country, our communities, our associations and even our homes that cannot be explained adequately by excluding the spiritual dimensions at play.

Such destructiveness always starts with or quickly moves to destructive speech. Usually (but not always) a huge dose of hypocrisy is involved as the "destructor" (to borrow a word from Ghostbusters) almost always conceals her or his slander or libel behind claims of only wanting a higher good. But in fact, their actual desire is self-oriented, selfish and significantly narcissistic: they frequently act as if they have been aggrieved or wounded and are in such psychological, emotional or spiritual pain that others rush to comfort. But the others are being played and only a few ever figure it out.

Understand that demands from destructive persons cannot ever be satisfied. For their real goal is not an actual solution to the putative issue, for as the old SDS slogan explains, "This issue isn't the issue." The real goal, very cleverly concealed behind aggrieved tones of voice and claims of how moral/spiritual/right minded/self-denying/unselfish (the list goes on an on) they are is always the same: "I must get my way, all the time."

But that's not the heart of the issue, either. These persons simply must have an enemy, someone or some group who opposes them. For the "my way" that destructors must get is inextricably linked to triumph over an opponent. That's why anyone who does not agree or assent to their demands is a target: the issue is not the demands, but the opposition.

Every issue is personal for destructors. It is not possible to hold a reasonable, contrary position. To resist a destructor's demand is not mere disagreement. It is to oppose the ordering of the world itself in some sense.

"The issue isn't the issue." Demands are only a pretense to evoke the fight. The fight itself is the goal. It is the only goal. Destructors never consider any issue closed for which they do not achieve total victory. They die in every ditch. Every fight is to the death because their very concept of self is woven into it.

His days of asking are all gone, his fight goes on and on and on. But he thinks that the fight is worth it all. So he strikes like thunderball.

Title song to the movie, Thunderball, referring to character Emilio Largo of Spectre

To yield to a destructor's demands is only to evoke others, more sternly expressed and more unreasonable than before.

Esolen continues with the impact this has on education. It wrecks it.

In such a world, it is insufficient to say that higher education suffers. Except in the most technical of disciplines, and perhaps even in those, the very possibility of higher education comes to an abrupt halt. If a professor must negotiate an emotional and verbal and political mine field before he opens his mouth, then he is no professor any longer. He is a servile functionary, no matter his title and no matter how well he is paid. He instructs his students not in freedom but in his own servility. That many of the students demand this servility of him and of themselves makes their capitulation all the worse.

This state of affairs is not confined to academia. You can substitute titles of any other leadership position for "professor" and it still makes sense:

• If a police chief must negotiate an emotional and verbal and political mine field before he opens his mouth, then he is no police chief any longer. He is a servile functionary ... . 
• If a department head must negotiate an emotional and verbal and political mine field before he opens his mouth, then he is no department head any longer. He is a servile functionary ... .
• If a pastor must negotiate an emotional and verbal and political mine field before he opens his mouth, then he is no pastor any longer. He is a servile functionary ... .

Here is the hardest part for targets to understand: Destructors are absolute masters in assessing within any organization two things essential for their success:

1. Whom the general membership considers expendable.
There's an old gamblers' saying, "at a poker table if you can't figure out who the patsy is, that means it's you." The corollary here is that to be targeted by a destructor means you are considered expendable by the general group, no matter your own official standing within the group. This is true about two-thirds of the time for your first targeting (which is often a trial run), but if there a second then it is absolutely true.

2. Who their own allies will be.
Destructors spend enormous time building alliances and coalitions among other discontented people. The old saying that "misery loves company" is true but incomplete. Misery does not merely love company, misery requires company. Destructors and any other merely unhappy person must have their discontent, anger or grievances validated by others. These persons are absolute experts at finding one another, and they do.

If you ever find yourself contending with a destructor a second or subsequent time, there are no positive potential outcomes. You will not be contending with one person or even a few, but an entire network that will support the destructor behind the scenes, and a few overtly. They understand that a small minority organized and oriented toward a common will almost always prevail against the vast majority caught by surprise, unprepared to resist. Furthermore, the majority, outside the fray, tends to think that the putative issue is the issue and is mostly accurate in thinking it trivial in itself. They don't see what the fuss is all about and just want the whole thing to go away. Some, but not many, see what is really happening but will not be willing to become targets themselves.

So when you are targeted, you will be alone and isolated. No one will be your ally, although you will get occasional expressions of sympathy. So what to do? Not much, I'm afraid:

1. Maintain your position but understand that the destructor will do his/her best to destroy your reputation as long as you oppose. And the destructor network is already leagues ahead of any defense you can mount.

2. Or just capitulate quickly enough, every time, so that there is no fight to be had with you and the destructor turns her/his attention to someone else. But of course, this almost always requires you to surrender some kind of authority that is rightfully yours. A destructor fights to gain power, so s/he does not target anyone of a lower or equivalent status or authority.

Either way, however, your time in the organization is coming to an end. The countdown clock starts when a destructor starts explaining why s/he is considering leaving the organization (always widely publicized and with as much woeful aggrievement as possible). If the destructor does depart, s/he will have poisoned the atmosphere and slandered your reputation enough so that your effectiveness in the association is permanently damaged. So understand that once a destructor starts threatening to go elsewhere, your time in the organization is coming to an end. The question is not whether you will leave (actually, you'll finally be told to leave by the larger organization), it is whether the destructor precedes you. But even if s/he doesn't, you will still leave.

There is such a thing as "creative destruction." But destructors don't know it. They set fires not to clear the way for something better, more useful or more beautiful. They just want to watch it burn.

End note: this helps explain: 'Everyday Sadists' Are More Common Than You Think

So does this: "Social Justice Syndrome: ‘Rising Tide of Personality Disorders Among Millennials’"