{"id":54982,"date":"2015-08-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54982"},"modified":"2015-08-31T11:37:20","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T16:37:20","slug":"freedommatters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54982","title":{"rendered":"#FreedomMatters"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Gramnez, a representative of Black Lives Matter, on my show on Saturday.<\/p>\n

To which one of the groups adherents might reply “yeah, he’s not the real<\/em> Black Live Matter”; Gramnez was the one who took up the Minnesota State Fair on their offer for a booth inside the fairgrounds, when other\u00a0<\/em>BLM group that\u00a0carried out the march on the state fair, led by Rashaad Turner, turned them down.<\/p>\n

It was a good discussion. \u00a0And, by the way, I’d be more than happy to invite Rashad Turner on my show \u2013 provided that he does all of his race baiting on social media before<\/i> the show, rather than after, as he did after his generally cordial interview with Jack Tomczak on the lesser talk station. \u00a0I’d love to have a discussion with all of that on the table, rather than passive-aggressively held off for later.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

Takeaways from the weekend:<\/p>\n

Agreement<\/b>: Of course I agree with several of BLM’s points; anyone who cares about civil liberty, the Fourth Amendment, and limited state power should. We have<\/i> too many no knock raids; the police are<\/i> too militarized. \u00a0Anytime the police, for whatever reason, adopt an “us against them” attitude about the population they police, society fails (not that that is even necessarily always the police’s fault \u2013 it takes two to tango.<\/p>\n

So, long story short: \u00a0I agree with many of BLM’s stated<\/i> goals. \u00a0Not all of them – and neither do a fair number of African-Americans<\/a>; BLM’s desire to end “broken windows” policing flies in the face of most inner-city residents of all skin colors, who have to live with the consequences of unchecked petty crime. \u00a0And I think some of their local leadership – Rashad Taylor and Nekima Levy-Pounds – do their cause more harm than good. \u00a0But of course, my approval is not what they’re after. \u00a0And that’s just fine.<\/p>\n

But there is common ground on many of the stated\u00a0<\/em>goals. \u00a0And\u00a0I emphasize \u00a0stated<\/i> \u00a0for a reason.<\/p>\n

Motives<\/b>: \u00a0Last\u00a0 Saturday was a gorgeous morning \u2013 and as I frequently do I’m gorgeous mornings, I walked from my house to the state fairgrounds to do the show. Since the BLM March was assembling just a few blocks from my house, I thought I would stop by.<\/p>\n

There was a major police presence in the Midway, naturally:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnd when I got to Midway Park? I can’t say I was surprised to note that the crowd, probably an hour before the rally got underway, was easily 2\/3 \u00a0Caucasian – most of them giving off the usual visual signs of being one variety of Minnesota Liberal or another:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Including many, many union members, acting as traffic marshals. One observer noted that they were wearing AFL-CIO vests,\u00a0turned inside out.<\/p>\n

And yep, there they are:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

White Highland Park Liberals will certainly turn out, just for the fun of it, to march in any old parade. No argument there.<\/p>\n

But why are the unions turning out people and money – including, reportedly, busing protesters in from other parts of the city \u2013\u00a0for of an event like BLM?<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Fred Thompson in\u00a0Hunt for Red October<\/em>, “The unions don’t take a dump without a policy directive from the Democrats”. \u00a0And vice versa.<\/p>\n

They’re there for the same reason that there protests happened in heavily African-American neighborhoods, rather than in front of the capital or the governors mansion. \u00a0Because there’s a presidential election coming up in another year, and for the first time in eight years, the slate of septuagenarian white people is on the Democratic side, and the Dems don’t have a charismatic black man on the ballot, and the Democrat party knows it needs to keep the African-American vote whipped up or it is doomed.<\/p>\n

Question<\/b>: \u00a0So I agree with some of Black Live Matters agenda; I also think they are in the process of being co-opted into a Democrat campaign effort, to the extent that they weren’t to begin with.<\/p>\n

But let’s forget about the\u00a0politics and the personalities. Let’s talk about Black Lives.<\/p>\n

Freedom is something with which we are endowed by our Creator. \u00a0It can’t be taken away (short of some major offense against other people). It can’t even be given away. \u00a0It’s not a zero sum equation; the freedom I have, I don’t have because I got it from someone else. In the same way a right cannot interfere with another person’s right, one person’s freedom cannot take away from another person’s freedom.<\/p>\n

If freedom, equality and respect or what BLM is after, then I’m with you.<\/p>\n

But some\u00a0BLM activists \u2013 I’m not naming names, here \u2013 refer \u00a0to freedom and equality\u00a0in the same way \u00a0Bernie Sanders refers\u00a0to earned income; like it is a finite quantity, that they wish to redistribute. \u00a0As if some\u00a0people get freedom, equality and respect by taking it away from other people.<\/p>\n

Is it the imprecise phrasing of people driven by emotion?<\/p>\n

Or is it a slopover from the organization’s political backgdrop, a natural response from a group – progressivism, not BLM – that regards “equality” as the end result of redistribution, whether it’s money or equality.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0there, they’re wrong \u2013 and any American, whatever the color of their skin, needs to tell them so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Gramnez, a representative of Black Lives Matter, on my show on Saturday. To which one of the groups adherents might reply “yeah, he’s not the real Black Live Matter”; Gramnez was the one who took up the Minnesota State Fair on their offer for a booth inside the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebony-and-ivory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54982"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54993,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54982\/revisions\/54993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}