The protests in Missouri have brought the notion of “Privilege” out in the open with full red-faced screaming anger, and jabbed it straight into our faces.

Oh, sure – “white privilege”.  Yep, that too.

In seeing the iconic photo of Professor  Click calling in “muscle” to eject a student “journalist” from public space, as he tried to cover a protest about “privilege”, I’m reminded of an episode I had recently with a local “Black Lives Matter” sympathizer/activist.

We were on a neighborhood Facebook page, discussing a BLM rally that’d just happened in my neighborhood.

I asked the woman a simple question; with the stipulation that “white privilege” exists, I asked her “what should we do about it?”

Her answer was the sort of condescension that comes from deep insecurity; “you wouldn’t understand, because of your privilege”.

I bit my tongue and refrained from responding “Ma’am?  You’re a professional in one of the soft sciences; you have an advanced degree, a practice, an upper-middle-class income by Twin Cities standards (which means you’re phenomenally wealthy by world standards), and an entree into upper-middle-class society.  I’m a freelance IT user experience consultant.  Who’s got the “privilege”, here?

It’s like when Nekima Levy-Pounds blows up an interview by pulling the “white privilege” lever; she’s a woman with a PhD in a very soft humanities area, and a tenured, all but unemployment proof job and an upper-middle-class salary and lifestyle, lecturing white roofing and siding contractors, delivery drivers and overnight Target shelf-stockers about their “privilege”.

There is all sorts of “privilege” out there; I was privileged to grow up in a family with married parents that stayed together until I was an adult; I’m privileged that my ancestors came to this country of their own free will, from a society with a history of stabbing and burning anyone who’d tried to enslave them, thus avoiding all the social pathologies that befall people with long histories of brutal persecution (white southern Scots-Irish, Armenians, and yes, even Jews).

And above all, class – a “privilege” that most of the American Left shares.  The essential Victor Davis Hanson notes that the left is harping on “white privilege” to draw attention away from  the “class privilege” that affects so much more of society – but benefits the left pretty handsomely.

Because they don’t give the faintest whiff of a rat’s patoot about gun safety.

When I was a kid, someone came into the school and gave us a quick demo and (IIRC) a film strip on actual gun safety.  It included a couple of simple rules that any kid can remember – and that I still do.  If you’re a kid, and you see a gun – your friends bring out their dad’s hunting rifle or grandpa’s WW2 pistol – and your parents aren’t there:

• Stop
• Don’t touch
• Run away
• Tell a grownup

That’s it.   That’s gun safety for kids.

There’s no way of knowing how many kids in my elementary school’s lives were saved by that lesson; not a single kid in my school died in a gun accident.  Zero.  There was a drowning, a couple car accidents, an alcohol poisoning, and a suicide right after graduation – but no gun accidents.

And this, in a part of the country where there are likely more guns per-capita than on bases for some branches of the military.

It’s a pretty standard program; many hunting groups, along with the NRA, teach gun safety in schools.

Y’know – because it keeps children from getting killed, accidentally.

You’d think moms (not to mention fathers) would be all over it.  And in the parts of our society ruled by common sense, they are.

But not I Moms Want Action (a wholly owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown For “Gun Safety”, the billionaire’s gun-grabber group),   To them, “gun safety” is, in their own words, “atrocious”:

Moms Demand Action’s Jennifer Hoppe recoiled at the news that Forest Hills was teaching children about gun safety. She said, “It’s atrocious to put the onus of gun safety onto children — this is an adult problem. Every gun that’s gotten into the hands of a child has first been under the control of an adult. A program that tries to dodge that is disingenuous.”

In a further effort to make her point, Hoppe added, “Accidental gun deaths among children are not ‘accidental,’” suggesting that the focus should be on how they are “preventable” if adults store guns properly.

Which is the sort of calm, cool, rational logic we’ve come to expect from Moms Want Action.  No, seriously.

Because in a world where our leftist entertainment industry gives money to gun-grabber groups with one hand, while glorifying consequence-free violence with the other, there are plenty of irresponsible parents out there, leaving guns in easy reach of kids.  And that is certainly a moral, and often literal, crime – which is nice, but what does your kid do when he or she comes face to face with their kids, acting like kids?

Question for you, Jennifer Hoppe, Jane Kay, Michael Bloomberg and Heather Martens:  would you be happier if your kid knew to stop, run away and tell an adult, or would you prefer the county attorney sort it all out after the funeral?

The article points out something I’d missed.  Usually, when a gun-grabber yaps about wanting a “conversation about guns,” what they mean is “you shooters shut up while we shriek at you”.

But Mark Kelly – wife of Gabby Giffords, and certainly no gun-rights advocate – actually indulged in that rarest of treats; he actually conversed about guns, complimenting the NRA’s exceptionally-effective child safety program.

The results were…predictable:

Ironically, it was just months ago that Huffington Post went comparably apoplectic after gun control proponent Mark Kelly praised the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program for its effectiveness with children. On April 14, Kelly tweeted: “I don’t agree w/ the NRA on some big issues, but they deserve a lot of credit for teaching kids about gun safety [via] Eddie Eagle.”

The reaction from the left was predictably emotionally-thud-witted, intellectually barren and morally bereft.

Dear Moms Want Action:  the blood of every child accidentally killed for want of commonsense gun-safety education is on your desiccated talons.

I got this via email yesterday, in response to Tuesday’s SITD Saint Paul Voter Guide:

Mitch
You are quite mean spirited aren’t you.
[Redacted]

Because in the world of the Saint Paul DFLer, dissent, satire, humor (even if not all that good) and criticism of the Dear DFL Leadership is “mean”.

Guess I’m lucky it wasn’t “hate” this time.

There’s an old saying, which experience as a conservative in a liberal city shows to be utterly true:  “Conservatives believe Liberals are wrong; Liberals believe Conservatives are evil”.

Further evidence:  Liberals are vastly more likely to unfriend social media contacts over politics than conservatives are.

I’d extend that;  conservative blogs, like mine, are highly likely to tolerate dissent in our various social media feeds; check and see how much dissent the likes of “Protect MN” or Sally Jo Sorenson tolerate in their online worlds when you’ve got time for an experiment.

A very brief experiment.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A Facebook friend told me she would vote Democrat because Jesus would support most of their platform. I suppose it’s a matter of interpretation.

See, when Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” that was not a request to let a bunch of scruffy urchins sit by him as he preached (stupid disciples were so literal); what he meant was “send Me your children when I get back to Heaven” or more succinctly “kill the children.” Plainly, that’s Divine endorsement of taxpayer funded abortion on demand, a key plank in the Democrat platform. He didn’t specifically mention carving up dead children’s corpses to sell their body parts, but presumably that’s covered by an emanation of the penumbra of actions He approved.

And when He told His disciples to sell all they had to give to the poor, He didn’t mean they should sacrifice by digging into their own pockets, He meant politicians should take Other People’s Money out of those other people’s pockets to give to the poor. Redistribution of wealth to reduce income inequality is another Democrat ideal.

Finally, the story of the Good Samaritan is not about one stranger helping another, it’s a lesson about affordable health care. How much clearer could Jesus be: God approves the Obama-care individual mandate?

You know, she might be onto something. If I vote Democrat, I not only get to be on the winning side of a Minnesota election for once, my salvation is also assured, all without lifting a finger. Tempting.

Joe Doakes.

Amd the whole Lowes and fishes thing? That’s right – supports and was spending without regard to the source…

I thought I’d post a quick guide to every single debate every single Real American has with every single gun-grabber.

Note that not all Grabbers go through all four rounds; the less-depraved and less-vacuous they are as people, the earlier they drop out.

Round 1:

GUN CONTROLLER:  <Starts with a round of “facts” that may or may not be in context, or even remotely true>

2ND AMENDENT ADVOCATE: <Debunks the first round of “facts” with actual facts, without breaking much of a sweat if it’s not their first time at the rodeo>

Round 2

GUN CONTROLLER:  “But we’ve got to doooooooooooooo something”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  “Crime is down 50% in 20 years; no single problem in society has responded as quickly and effectively as crime has responded to what we’re already doooooooing – which is liberalize gun laws for the law-abiding, and increase penalties for the criminals”.

Round 3

GUN CONTROLLER:  <Insert one of the following>:

• Ad Hominem: “You’re paranoid”
• Strawman:  “You care more for your guns than the lives of children!”
• Non-Sequitur:  “What’s wrong with common sense gun control?”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  <Points out that each is not only a logical fallacy, but still easily debunked on factual grounds>

Round 4

(Note:  Only the most logically depraved Grabbers get to this point).

GUN CONTROLLER:  “Clearly you’re compensating for something”

2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE:  “Yes – the presence of evil in this world”, usually followed by checking out of the “Debate”.

And SCENE.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Catholics in Medieval times had to do penance for remission of sin every so often, lest they die in a state of sin and be denied heaven.  The penance was usually some physically unpleasant thing like kneeling for hours in prayer or wearing a scratchy shirt all day. That was a nuisance for the penitent and helped nobody else, so the Church decided it’d be okay to pay money for forgiveness instead doing penance.  The practice died out after a certain German priest threw a fit about it, but the precedent is there.

Minnesota lawyers must sit through two hours of penance every three years, lest they perpetuate Bias In The Legal Profession.  It’s not physical but being harangued by harridans is still unpleasant. That’s a nuisance for busy people and helps nobody else.  It’s time to resurrect the old system of selling indulgences – I’ll send them a check, they’ll pretend I’m cured of bias.  Think of all the money we could raise, all the lawyers we could hire for poor people.  And their children!  Do it for the children.

Joe Doakes

They’ll have the children in those classes before too long.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

America was founded on the belief that people were endowed by their Creator with certain rights, including the right to life, which carries with it the right to defend one’s life from those who would take it.  A gun-free zone denies effective self-defense which jeopardizes the right to life; it is an unjust law.

 

The classical philosophers from St. Augustine and Abraham Lincoln through Thoreau, Martin Luther King and Gandhi agree we have a moral duty to obey just laws, and a moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

 

Turns out, guns are common on that Oregon college campus despite the gun-free policy.   Lots of classical philosophers there.  Good for them!

 

Joe Doakes

That may be the best hope for democracy that we have; much of our society – at least between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre – is becoming in tune with the idea of nullifying laws by ignoring them.

At least when it comes to gun free zones, speed limits and the like.

You gotta start somewhere.

The NYTimes has favored us with a piece by one Brian Lombardi of De Freaking Kalb Illinois, on “27 Ways to be a Modern Man“.

And I must have missed the vote when all of us guys voted for Mr. Lombardi to write up the spec sheet, and for that I apologize – but I will reserve my right to confirm or veto as appropriate.

And it is oh, so appropriate:

Being a modern man today is no different than it was a century ago. It’s all about adhering to principle. Sure, fashion, technology and architecture change over time, as do standards of etiquette, not to mention ways of carrying oneself in the public sphere. But the modern man will take the bits from the past that strike him as relevant and blend them with the stuff of today.

Although the “principles” Mr. Lombardi “adheres” to seem to be more about “being a modern NYTimes / MPR fan” than being a man.

1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.

It’s both harmless, good marriage tactics…and kinda trite, doncha think?

2. The modern man never lets other people know when his confidence has sunk. He acts as if everything is going swimmingly until it is.

Yes, but John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart taught us this 80 years ago.

3. The modern man is considerate. At the movie theater, he won’t munch down a mouthful of popcorn during a quiet moment. He waits for some ruckus.

That’s a good one.

4. The modern man doesn’t cut the fatty or charred bits off his fillet. Every bite of steak is a privilege, and it all goes down the hatch.

Again – 50% “well duh” and 50% trite and cloying.  I suppose it’s a little more couture than having a “princple” about bacon, though.

5. The modern man won’t blow 10 minutes of his life looking for the best parking spot. He finds a reasonable one and puts his car between the lines.

I can get behind this one.

Better still?  The Modern Man doesn’t ever combat-park in a crowded parking lot.

6. Before the modern man heads off to bed, he makes sure his spouse’s phone and his kids’ electronic devices are charging for the night.

Spouse?  Again, just good marital tactics.

Kids?  Baloney.  Kids gotta learn some things by themselves.

7. The modern man buys only regular colas, like Coke or Dr Pepper. If you walk into his house looking for a Mountain Dew, he’ll show you the door.

Dr. Pepper is a cola?

And no.  Just…no.

8. The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.

Seems like an odd litmus test, don’t you think?

9. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.

Presumably Mr. Lombardi and his Times-reading friends are the first men ever to have daughters.

10. The modern man makes sure the dishes on the rack have dried completely before putting them away.

I’m not a betting man – but I’d wager real money that when people beat Mr. Lombardi up in high school, the teachers figured it was justifiable.

11. The modern man has never “pinned” a tweet, and he never will.

No, Mr. Lombardi; the mondern man doesn’t know what “pinning” a tweet is.

12. The modern man checks the status of his Irish Spring bar before jumping in for a wash. Too small, it gets swapped out.

A quick reminder:  this is being printed in the New York Times.  The Newspaper of Record.  All the news that’s “fit to print”.

Acres and acres of gatekeepers.

13. The modern man listens to Wu-Tang at least once a week.

I’m looking for the bourbon now.

14. The modern man still jots down his grocery list on a piece of scratch paper. The market is no place for his face to be buried in the phone.

This modern man would buy a copy of the NYTimes on paper, and jot down his grocery list over Mr. Lombardi’s

15. The modern man has hardwood flooring. His children can detect his mood from the stamp of his Kenneth Cole oxfords.

No man, modern or not, gives a rat’s ass about the brand of any shoes that doesn’t have steel reinforcement in the toes.

16. The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away.

“Get away?”  To where?  Does the modern man’s bedroom have a back door?

And in view of Mr. Lombardi’s #25, we can presume that the Modern Woman is pretty much dead meat if an “intruder” comes through the door.

17. Does the modern man have a melon baller? What do you think? How else would the cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew he serves be so uniformly shaped?

Nothing about knowing how to navigate.  How to make a plant grow.  How to fix a flat or change his own oil.

Melon ballers.

Yep.

18. The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn.

The modern real man has no shoes that need more than one hand to put on.

19. The modern man buys fresh flowers more to surprise his wife than to say he is sorry.

In other words – the modern man has common sense?

Well, perhaps.  Mr. Lombardi, on the other hand…

20. On occasion, the modern man is the little spoon. Some nights, when he is feeling down or vulnerable, he needs an emotional and physical shield.

While there might be a place and time for being the little spoon, it’s got nothing to do with being any kind of a man.

21. The modern man doesn’t scold his daughter when she sneezes while eating an apple doughnut, even if the pieces fly everywhere.

One wonders what prompted Mr. Lombardi to discover this timeless, vital truth.  Also, what is an apple doughnut?

22. The modern man still ambles half-naked down his driveway each morning to scoop up a crisp newspaper.

What the hell is this “newspaper” he’s yapping about?

23. The modern man has all of Michael Mann’s films on Blu-ray (or whatever the highest quality thing is at the time).

The smart modern man has 2-3 of Mann’s better films tucked away behind his Complete Works of John Ford or Billy Wilder.

24. The modern man doesn’t get hung up on his phone’s battery percentage. If it needs to run flat, so be it.

Words to live by.

25. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.

Because the Modern Man is, apparently, expendable.

26. The modern man cries. He cries often.

No.  Men do not cry.

Ever.

That is all.

27. People aren’t sure if the modern man is a good dancer or not. That is, until the D.J. plays his jam and he goes out there and puts on a clinic.

So according to the NYTimes, the “modern man” is is a slave to marketing, technically hapless, literally helpless.

I’m proud to be a Paleomale.

PS:  A much better response, from Stephen Miller in NRO.  All of them great – especially #27:

The modern man knows he can’t dance, and refuses to attend any event with a DJ instead of a live band, on principle

I can’t believe I missed that.

PS2:  Larry Correia’s fisk is even better.

Next week:  the real rules for proud paleo men.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Got a note from a colleague saying, in effect, “You know real estate law, you’d be an asset to the group, why don’t you participate in more bar association stuff?”   I’d respond but I can predict how the conversation will go:

I’m not in The Liberal Lawyer’s Club because I’m not a Liberal lawyer.

It’s not a Liberal Lawyer’s club, it’s for all lawyers, but even if it were, you should be a Liberal;  all lawyers should be Liberal lawyers because we’re so welcoming and tolerant of diversity.

No, you’re only tolerant of things that don’t matter.  For things that do matter, you’re shunning and intolerant.  For example, a case comes to court, the Plaintiff is White and the Defendant is Black, who wins?

The color of the parties doesn’t matter, only the facts and law matter.

Okay, second example, the Plaintiff’s lawyer is a Straight man, the Defendant’s lawyer is a Lesbian, who wins?

Again, the gender and sexual orientation of the lawyers doesn’t matter, only the facts and law matter.

Yet the bar association is obsessed with color, gender and sexual orientation.  You have committees and outreach programs for every one of the Things That You Say Don’t Matter.  But half the state voted for Conservative Norm Coleman over Liberal Al Franken so half the lawyers in the state ought to lean Conservative, too.  But there are no programs for Conservative lawyers, no committees, no outreach to the half the lawyers in the state who are not bar association members, perhaps because you’re not open and tolerant of diversity of opinion, perhaps because Conservatives are not welcome?

Well, of course we don’t welcome haters, sexists, bigots and homophobes.  If that’s the kind of horrid person you are, we wouldn’t want you to participate in bar association stuff.

Exactly . . . .

It also works for Saint Paul community council groups.

“Black Lives Matter” has announced that they intend to protest at, and attempt to block, the Twin Cities Marathon.

Let’s make sure this is clear; after months of protesting at things that the DFL elites in Kenwood and Summit Avenue revile (the Mall of America) or are outside their frame of reference (the State Fair, the Green Line during a Vikings game) or that isn’t part of their lives (or rush hour on I94 in the Midway, I35W in South Minneapolis, or Snelling Avenue), they may have finally gone a bridge too far; they’re not just inconveniencing the proles this time; they’re going to mess with one of those things of which white, upper-middle-class, MPR-listening, St. Olaf-alumniing, Volvo-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping Minnesota is most proud; an institution that is one of the A-list faces of the part of Minnesota that wants to look at the rest of the world and say “yeah, we’re a little like New York!”.

As I started thinking about writing, I got an email from a regular reader:

I’ve been minimally following the BLM plans to protest the marathon.  I know people who run the marathon who have never supported BLM, so their reaction is obviously anger.  However, secretly I kind of like that the group is finally disrupting something other than poor and working class people getting to and from work.  Especially when I read comments on Facebook that suggest the mindset of “why are you protesting us?  We support you.” to which BLM protesters respond with something like “if you support us, what have you done to make real changes?” (not exact quotes, but enough similar sentiments on the Facebook pages that [the operator of a local political discussion listserver] linked to) Liberal types who tend to think they’re helping by voting for all of the stuff that Liberals like probably are scratching their heads at that, which at least makes this protest fun to follow.

It’s more than just Schadenfreude, of course…

…although there’s plenty of that, too.

For example:  what must it be like to be Betsy Hodges or Chris Coleman, right now?  They’ve bent over 90 degrees past backwards for BLM – who, being liberal and (partly) black, they consider their electoral property – allowing them to block city streets numerous times without the protest permit every other group would need to bet, much less blocking interstate highways and mass transit over and over again.  And now – after all those favors – BLM ungratefully wants to screw with one of Hodges and Coleman’s marquee events?

Will either of them decide to “get tough”, as the eyes of the marathon-running world are on them?

But beyond that?  As the emailer pointed out – how will “progressive” Minnesota react to their own hypocrisy being sent up on a world stage?

Since the story of Ahmed “Alarm Clock” Mohammed broke, half of America has become demolitions experts.  Charles C. W. Cooke – one of my two favorite political writers in America today – notes that Ahmed Mohammed’s clock looks a lot more like a bomb than a chewed-up pop tart looks like a gun.  He’s half-right; the poptart wasn’t a gun; the clock looked like a prop from a community-theater production of “24”.

The other half?  They seem to think they’re clairvoyant; the loathsome Richard Dawkins, for starters.

I’m not a Donald Trump fan.  I disliked Trump even before it was cool – going back to the ’80s, even, when I thought his “if you’re not a billionaire, you’re a loser” schtick was too stupid to take seriously.

I still do.

But today, in USA Today, we see Trump being blamed for…

…a question asked at a Trump rally?

“We got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. (Trump: We need the question.) But anyway. We have training camps brewing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?”

Trump didn’t directly address what the man said about the president — nor did he correct him — and replied:

“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people are saying that. A lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking into that and plenty of other things.”

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the likelihood that the “questioner” was a plant; our experience during the Tea Party, when lefty provocateurs were busted red-handed posing as Tea Partiers, bringing signs, is still fresh in my mind.  Back then, there’d be an occasional ring of fringies around the edges of the protest, who’d gravitate toward the cameras – unless the rally made a point of publicizing that its security people would be taking pictures of provocative signs to crowdsource; they tended not to show up.  Candid shots of “racist tea partiers” tended to turn out to be slumming lefties.

No, we’ll leave that aside for now.

It’s a Republican event – and no Republican, least of all Trump, is immune to what seems to the great truth of American politics and media in the 21st century

1. Nothing any Democrat says, or does, up to and including violating federal law and national security, will ever be held against them
2. Anything untoward done, said, hinted at, or speculated to have been done, said or hinted at by any Republican officeholder (no matter how obscure or inconsequential), candidate, party official, contributor, voter, supporter, rally attendee, or putative supporter, contributor or rally attendee, or anyone claiming or reputed to be or to have at any time been a Republican party member, supporter or sympathizer, will not only be treated like it’s evidence in a federal trial, but imputed to every conservative, anywhere, regardless of its context, accuracy or even truthfulness.

Oh, yeah – and the story will focus exclusively on violations of political correctness, and studiously ignore any actual issues that may have been addressed.

This behavior is so pervasive and predictable, I have canonized it as “Berg’s Seventeenth Law“.

I’ve been a presbyterian  my entire adult life. This has been for a number of very good reasons; I have been blessed to know a number of fantastic ministers – and the Presbyterian liturgy is notable in putting far putting less temporal BS between man and God than most other denominations.

(Your mileage may vary, of course, and everyone can believe what they want; these are mine, and while I can perhaps believe other, no one has come close to convincing me in close to 40 years).

But the nations largest Presbyterian denomination – the Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA) is collapsing before our very eyes; it is on track to complete disappear before 2040.

Not Presbyterianism, mind you – just the PC USA.

Why?

“Ministers” like this – for lack of a better term – godforsaken hamster, for starters.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Two teachers at Washington State University will lower grades for students who say “illegal alien” or “male” or “female” or if they fail to “defer” to non-white students.  Tuition and fees range from $15,000 (in-state) to $25,000 (out-state).

You get what you pay for?

Joe Doakes

Well, the taxpayers sure don’t.

A couple of elderly Holocaust survivors assaulted in a genuine hate crime in the Netherlands:

Samuel (87) and Diana (86) Blug, two elderly Holocaust survivors, fell victim to a vicious and violent anti-Semitic attack at their home in Holland a month ago.

According to a Yedioth Ahronoth report on Sunday, the couple were only able to come forward now and recount what happened to them.

The Blugs say two men, who looked to be of Moroccan descent, knocked on the door to their apartment, claiming to be the police and demanding entrance.

As soon as Samuel opened the door, the nightmare began. Two men dressed in black barged into the apartment and started severely beating the couple.

The assailants threw the couple on the floor, kicked them repeatedly and shouted: “Dirty Jews – from now on your property is ours.”

After tying up the badly injured couple, the thieves ripped Diana’s jewelry off her body. At gunpoint, they forced the couple to tell them where the rest of the valuables in the apartment were located.

Samuel was blinded in the assault and suffered a broken femur. Both he and Diana, who were living independently before the attack, are now confined to wheelchairs at a rehabilitation center in Amsterdam.

“Those bastards have destroyed our lives,” Samuel said in tears to Yedioth Ahronoth. “I have severe pain. I’m completely broken inside,” Diana added.

Emmanuel, the couple’s son, has offered a prize of ten thousand euros to anyone who can provide information that will lead to the arrest of the assailants.

He also circulated pictures of the beaten Diana and Samuel, urging “the world to see what they did to my parents.”

Americans are a nation of migrants and, in many cases, refugees.  We tend to be the most generous nation on earth.  Most of us – and I include myself – would love to be able to help the refugees.

But the stories coming from Eastern and Central Europe are in all too many cases not the stories of people coming to free lands for fresh starts.

And before anyone says it – yep.  American natives have said the same thing about pretty much every wave of immigration i American history.  And they’ve been right, to an extent; each wave of immigration changed this country.

And it’s not as if every wave of immigrants came here with clean hands and no grudges; Scots and Irish came here with bones to pick with the Brits; French and Germans came here fresh from innumerable European battlefields; Russians, Poles and Jews – the pogrom thrower and the pogrom victim – all came here, as did the Armenians and the Turks.  And somehow, after a generation or two, most of them pretty well fit in as Americans, and buried their squalid ancestral squabbles and hatreds, and got down to work.

The difference is, every previous wave of immigrants has, inside a generation of two, assimilated to American life.

But at the same time as our government has officially switched from emphasizing assimilation in favor of integration – they’re very different things – we are faced with a wave of refugees that, as their numbers crept well out of the 1-2% range in Europe, have shown no desire to assimilate, and who seek integration on their own terms, making their neighborhoods in London and Stockholm and Paris and Hamburg effectively off-limits to the rest of society.

All of them?  Certainly not.  But enough of them to where “assimilation” looks like a dim prospect, ever.

And with that in mind, I think it’d be just an outstanding idea if Minnesota’s congressional delegation slowly stepped back and thought for a moment; are they being compassionate, or giving into irrational, PC exuberance?

One of the primary tenets of conservatism is that we sit on the shoulders of giants, and th burden of proof for “improving” a good idea is necessarily and justifiably high.

With that in mind:  James Bond is getting a 21st-century update:

In a new book, however, James Bond will be getting a dose of modern morality, as author Anthony Horowitz reveals the tricks he used to drag the spy kicking and screaming into the era of political correctness.
Horowitz, the writer of new Bond novel Trigger Mortis, said he had worked carefully to preserve Ian Fleming’s original character and ensuring his 1950s attitudes remained in tact.
But he has introduced a cast of new characters to point out the error of his chauvinistic ways, including messages about smoking causing cancer, women who give him a run for his money, and an “outspoken” gay friend.

So there’s kind of a theme coming out of  “Black Lives Matter” here in the Twin Cities.

Last week, Rashad Taylor, one of the organizers of Saturday’s protest that’ll be starting a few blocks from my house and proceeding up Snelling – the busiest street in the state during Fair time – to the State Fairgrounds, hinted that there juuuust might be some violence at the protest:

“We’re gonna disrupt [the fair]. There’s nothing they’re gonna be able to do about it…. If we’re met with any resistance or threatened with any resistance, we’ll meet them with that same resistance.”

Huh.

And on Facebook, Nekima Levy-Pounds – the leader of Black Lives Matter in the Twin Cities, and a woman with a PhD and a lifetime tenure-track job in a make-work academic discipline, who nonetheless complains about “white privilege” – posted:

Friends, Please pray for those brave and courageous souls who will be participating in the ‪#‎BlackFair‬ demonstration outside of the State Fair on Saturday. The level of racial hatred and animus that has come to the surface in Minnesota is appalling. These racist attitudes are typically hidden behind a Minnesota Nice facade. Now, we are able to see the truth of how these folks really feel about blacks and other people of color.

Some have taken these statements as a threat of violence.

Call me a pollyanna if you want; maybe, more accurately, you can accuse me of transposing my own motives on those of others. I read these statements, and I see a couple of people saying “Heeeeey, news media! Make sure you got plenty of cameras lined up on Snelling this Saturday. You wouldn’t wanna miss another…Ferguson or Baltimore, would you?”

Am I wrong?

Was there a time when being published in The New Yorker meant you were a better, smarter, more capable writer than, say, a liberal blogger?

I dimly remember such a time.

But in reading Kalefa Sanneh’s “The Hell You Say” – an apologia for gutting the First Amendment and letting government decide how much freedom of speech we really need, because that’s the way Europe does it.

It’s a target-rich environment of bad research and lazy writing, a bit of journalism of entitlement that would fit in on Minnesota Progressive Project.

Yep.  That bad.

I picked one bit – in which Sanneh argues that unregulated speech as we know it really only started in the past 100 years due to – wait for it – white privilege:

This, in essence, was Justice Holmes’s rationale, in 1919, when he argued in an influential dissent that antiwar anarchists should be free to agitate. “Nobody can suppose that the surreptitious publishing of a silly leaflet by an unknown man, without more, would present any immediate danger,” he wrote. Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal. But what makes them so sure? America’s free-speech regime is shot through with exceptions, including civil (and, in some states, criminal) laws against libel.

Right.  But defamation requires both untruth and actual, tangible, real damages.  It’s intentionally hard to win a defamation / libel case.  For good reason.

By what rationale do we insist that groups—races, communities of faith—don’t deserve similar protection?

Races?  Who would file the petition?

Communities of faith?  Boy, are us Christians going to go to town when we lawyer up.

Many free-speech arguments turn on a deceptively simple question: what is speech? It’s clear that the protected category excludes all sorts of statements. (The First Amendment will be of no use to someone who writes a fraudulent contract, or who says, “Hand over your wallet and iPhone,” and means it.)

And in not knowing the difference between Speech and Robbery,Sanneh has not only forever destroyed The New Yorker as a source of useful journalism, but ousted Grace Kelly from her throne as the least cogniscent writer in the world.

The howlers come with a density that I’ve only rarely encountered, much less tackled.

Indeed, so insidiously bad is the piece that Greg Lukianoff mobilized ten free speech advocates to tackle and beat Saleh’s piece unconscious.

Read Sanneh to see the id of today’s left in action.

Read Lukianoff to see it dismembered.

There’s your assignment for the day.

Manhattan; a city which was, at least below 42nd St., laid out well before the Civil War. As in, designed for pedestrians, horses and buggies. Not, really, cars.End result; it’s hard to find a parking spot anywhere in Manhattan, especially in the older parts of the city.

Unfortunately, people live there. And they buy things.

Which means things need to be delivered. Things that can’t be carried in taxis on subway cars – like shipments of food, toiletries, organic arugula, and all the other necessities of modern urban life on amid six figure income.

Hardest of all? Finding a spot to park when you are a delivery truck, hauling all of those necessities to all of the stores in lower Manhattan.

Since “widening the streets” is not an option, New York City adapted by, essentially, selling licenses to double park. That’s not really what they are – it’s basically just a special plea bargain that draws a cut rate for parking tickets incurred while delivering to stores. But it’s a market reaction, and a not completely stupid response by government, and as a result, goods actually get to lower Manhattan.

So what could go wrong?

“New Urbanists” who see more tax money to be squeezed out of the productive part of society, same as always:

The latest chapter New York’s working people and the city’s dumb, dumb urbanists:

When the city zeroes out the cost of undisputed tickets for delivery companies as part of a special program to reduce the cost of parking violations, it’s also giving them a pass on a fee required by the state. That surcharge funds anti-drunk driving programs, among other initiatives, and advocates say the city and state could be missing out on tens of millions of dollars each year.

“Missing Out” – provided one presumes that one’s money belongs to the state first, then the people and companies that earn it.

And they do presume that:

“We’ve taken issue with the stipulated fine program before,” said TA Executive Director Paul Steely White, “[for] essentially giving large freight haulers or delivery companies incentives to break parking laws.”…
Bolofsky estimates that three million of the city’s approximately 10 million annual traffic tickets go through the Stipulated Fine or Commercial Abatement programs. That means up to $45 million in uncollected surcharges each year, though the number is likely lower since not all violations are reduced to $0 under the program.
“It does appear that in their rush to give discounts to large carriers, that they have potentially been missing out on tens of millions of dollars in revenue for various life-saving programs,” White said. “It’s another reason why they should end the preferential treatment of pervasive lawbreakers.”

Oh, just wait; when the urbanists win in the Twin Cities, it’ll be the same here.

June, 2015: the American left reveres “transparency” above all things, and demands it of pretty much absolutely every institution in society.

July, 2015:  privacy – of personal conversations, and of institutional emails, anyway – is the most sacred right in our society.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Muslim nutjob shoots up Marine recruiting centers in Tennessee.  Marines killed because military policy is no weapons allowed.

Citizens volunteer to guard recruiting centers.  Marines suggest they don’t need the help:

Here is the full text of the statement from the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

“First of all, our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the Marines killed and those injured in the tragic and senseless shooting in Chattanooga.

In light of this tragedy, we have reviewed and made necessary adjustments to our force protection conditions.  Due to operational security reasons, we will not discuss specific force protection measures at our recruiting stations or offices.

The safety of our Marines is our primary concern and we will continue to remain vigilante, proactive, and unpredictable in order to thwart potential incidents.

We encourage our Marines and family members to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to local law enforcement.

Our Marine recruiters remain committed to the mission as they continue to seek qualified men and women interested in earning the title “Marine”.

Our continued public trust lies among our trained first responders for the safety of the communities where we live and work.

Semper Fidelis,
Public Affairs Office
Marine Corps Recruiting Command

Army (whose recruiting centers were NOT shot at) [This time – Ed.], tells Army recruiters to report volunteers to the police and immediately fill out a Security Report.

Tells you a lot about the mind-set of the people in command of the respective services: one is run by warriors; the other, by lawyers.

 

Joe Doakes

I’m going to take a while guess and assume that the officers making that proclamation haven’t been shot at lately.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is mowing his lawn.  Avery LIBRELLE, fresh from a trip on the Green Line ,ambles up the sidewalk.  

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  Societies that impose punitive taxes on cars, like Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, all have higher qualities of life than the US does!

BERG:  OK.  So?

LIBRELLE:  So we could do with fewer cars!

BERG:  Correlation does not equal causation.

LIBRELLE:  What are you talking about?

BERG:  All three of those countries have higher suicide rates than the United States.  Clearly high taxes and lack of cars make people want to kill themselves.

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate science?

And SCENE

Earlier this week, while listening to Jack and Andrew on the lesser talk station, I caught them running through this piece about 38 examples of liberal privelege on college campuses. 

The piece is very much worth a read.

Of course, if you live in a place like the Twin Cities, you realize there’d be room for a similar piece for adults in places where Jon Stewart is considered news and where chanting “settled science!” is considered an argument-ender.

I’m going to take quick shot at it, off the top of my head:  if you’re an adult in a “progressive” city…:

1. You’ve never had to learn to confront dissent as anything other than either a mortal threat to your worldview, or a joke to be scuttled away from, using ad homina if necessary.
2. You’ve never had to learn to debate at a level beyond strawmen, red herrings, and chuckling “facts have a liberal bias” as if the saying were handed down by the ancients, rather than by a mediocre comic who made a living satirizing conservatives.
3. After 12 years of indoctrination in the public schools, and often as not 4-8 years at an institution where dissent is treated as a pathology, you are utterly secure in your faith that your club is the sole source of truth.

35 more to go!

I understand the “Heritage” rationale for displaying the Confederate flag.  Southerners wish to commemorate the sacrifice if their fighting men, many of whom died fighting for what they believed was a just cause.

I understand that. I understand the First Amendment protects that view.  And I believe the move to suppress the Confederate flag over “racism” is yet another example of our society – or an intensely privileged, and overprivileged, part of it – seizing on trite, surface- y symbolism to “send a message” about a big, complicated issue.

“Messages” are easy; changing hearts and minds is hard, time-consuming, and usually fruitless in the short term.

So I get why people want to fly the Confederate flag.  And as far as it goes, I support them.

But I’m not going to fly it myself.

Still Smell The Gunpowder:  I’ve heard a few Minnesotans point out that they’d eschew the Confederate flag because of the many Minnesotans who died fighting against the Confederacy – most notably the First Minnesota at Gettysburg.  That’s fine – and not my reason; of my eight great-grandparents’ families, only two had arrived in the US before 1865, and they were from Ohio.  And the war is, in fact, over.

Squandered:  I choose to eschew the Confederate flag because they squandered a vital right and power in defending an evil institution.

The bloody war fought to defend slavery [1] served as the lead-in to the gutting of the 10th amendment, and trashing of one of the most important rights of a civil society – the right to free association. It led to the elevation of the idea that preserving the union was the single most supreme virtue.

Think about it; if the power and intrusiveness of the federal government were at one time  limited by the knowledge that states could pack up and go away, Do  you think the feds would be a lot more restrained than they are? Absolutely – and that would be A very good thing.

For staking these vital – and irreplaceable – liberties on the defense of slavery, alone, it’s time to junk the Confederate flag.

[1] Yes, it was all about slavery.  All the proximate causes of the war traced back to slavery.  The economic war was a war between industrialism and slavery.  The constitutional issue was over the treatment of…slavery.  Lincoln sought to preserve the union, which was splitting up over…causes that all traced back to slavery.  It’s really not even an argument.