Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Real racist bigotry: Dems block Southern white judges

The Committee for Justice (CFJ) commented today on Senate Democrats' recent history of obstructing all white male appeals court nominees from the South, including Leslie Southwick of Mississippi, a Fifth Circuit nominee scheduled for a Judiciary Committee vote this Thursday. "Senate Democrats and their allies on the left have attacked Judge Southwick for being insensitive to 'the rights of African Americans, gays and lesbians,'" explained CFJ executive director Curt Levey. "If this sounds familiar, it's because they level the same charges whenever the President nominates a white male from a southern state to the U.S. Courts of Appeal."

"Seven times President Bush has nominated a southern white male to the appeals courts, and seven times Senate Democrats have tried to block the nomination," said Levey. "Worse yet, each of the seven have been subjected to a campaign of personal destruction. With one exception - Fourth Circuit nominee William Haynes - the attacks focus on charges that the nominee is insensitive to the rights of minorities, women, gays, and/or the disabled. Democrats and their allies cynically play to the stereotype that southerners are racist or otherwise bigoted." Examples are provided below.

Citing the nomination of Leon Holmes of Arkansas, Levey added that "the one time Senate Democrats chose to vilify and obstruct a Bush district court nominee, the victim was - you guessed it - a southern white male, and the charges were the usual ones: racism and sexism."

Levey pointed out that "Senate Democrats and their allies never let the facts get in the way of playing the race card. Just look at Fifth Circuit nominee Charles Pickering. The brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers praised Pickering for risking his career in 1967 when he 'dared to defy the Klan.' But that didn't stop this bunch from denouncing Pickering for 'insensitivity and even hostility' towards civil rights."

"Somewhere in the offices of Ralph Neas or Chuck Schumer there's probably a play book for targeting southern white men," Levey said. "After all, the process works the same every time. First, Democratic staffers and groups like People for the American Way comb through hundreds or thousands of cases the nominee has worked on as a judge or lawyer, cherry picking the few that they can distort into charges of bigotry. Then the groups publish a report denouncing the nominee's record. Finally, Senate Democrats cite the 'evidence' in the report as the reason they must oppose the nominee. Leslie Southwick is just the latest victim of this routine."

"Judiciary Committee memos disclosed in 2003 remove any doubt that Senate Democrats and groups on the left work together closely to defeat or delay judicial nominees," Levey noted. "It's one thing for these outside groups to believe that southern white men can't be fair judges, but one would hope that Democratic senators would distance themselves from such extreme views. Instead they've pandered to these groups for years now."

"The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have a chance to redeem themselves this Thursday when they vote on Southwick," said Levey. "All we're asking is that they vote him out of committee so that the full Senate can decide whether to confirm him. Anything less is obstruction. The Democrats chose not to put any southerners on the Judiciary Committee, but that's all the more reason why they shouldn't thumb their noses at the South by blocking this exceptionally qualified nominee."

Levey concluded by noting that "if Democrats kill this nomination in committee, it will be particularly interesting to see what Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott does, given that Southwick and two of the southerners targeted earlier are from Mississippi. Senator Lott threatened a 'total shutdown' of the Senate after it became clear that committee Democrats were trying to stop Southwick. As whip, he can make the shutdown happen."

Source



Does "Diversity" Turn People Into Turtles?

Post lifted from Discriminations. See the original for links

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame) thinks so.

"Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation," Putnam writes in the June issue of the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. "In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to `hunker down' - that is, to pull in like a turtle."

Putnam has been engaged in his large study of diversity for quite a while, and we have encountered findings from it before, here and here. Putnam seems quite taken with his turtle metaphor (or maybe I'm just taken with quoting him using it). In the first "here" linked above, I quoted him as follows describing his findings:

The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic."


Actually, turning people into turtles may be among the mildest effects of diversity. The New York Times Magazine linked first above, for example, also reports other, non-reptilian but even more unwelcome effects.

Studies by Wendy Berry Mendes, a social psychologist at Harvard, and her colleagues find that when research subjects play a cooperative game with someone of another race, they can show physiological signs of distress - reduced cardiac efficiency and arterial constriction, for example. On a daily basis, this alarmed reaction might make people pull inward. Putnam himself speculates that, with kaleidoscopic changes going on around them, people in diverse communities might experience a kind of system overload, shutting down "in the presence of confusing or multiple messages from the environment."

It's thus no surprise, and maybe even a good thing, that campuses that fetishize "diversity" are often the ones sporting the most racially segregated dorms, dining room tables, lounges, etc.


In my first discussion of Putnam's research, linked above, I commented:

If we're going to set aside the formerly fundamental principle barring discrimination against any person based on race in order to bask in the benefits provided by "diversity," shouldn't we at least begin seeing, sooner or later, some research demonstrating just what those benefits are?

That now seems too mild. Let me rephrase: shouldn't we at least begin seeing some research demonstrating that "diversity" doesn't turn people into turtles or sick, arterially constricted, stressed out humans?



The Leftist love of regulation leads naturally to regulation of religion and speech

When I was in college ages ago the truth in advertising and lending and such measures were high on the agenda of modern liberals. Oddly, they were the same people, usually, who declared themselves to be loyal champions of free speech, defenders of an absolutist stance on the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But not when it came to commercial speech. You know those people in commerce-all chronic cheats and liars, of course. (The modern liberal's hatred of commerce trumps their most cherished ideals!)

One time when this campaign against commercial speech was in progress, I walked by a church that featured a huge sign saying "Jesus Saves." My mind immediately started to consider, well why not truth in religion? Why only commerce? Indeed, isn't religion far more important to most people than mere business? If modern liberals insist that the task of good government is to be our nanny, to engage in paternalistic-what is now often dubbed "precautionary"-public policies, why don't they all advocate strong federal regulation of religious speech?

After all, nearly everyone believes that those who peddle religious ideas they do not share are charlatans, liars and cheats. And what they peddle, of course, is far more harmful than anything put into an advertisement, something most sensible people realize is filled with hype, gimmickry and not statements of purported truths. All those religious charlatans-I leave it to the reader to pick his or her own list-are misleading thousands, millions of human beings about what is by many people regarded of the utmost importance, namely, how to secure their everlasting salvation in the afterlife. If one is mislead about this, one won't just purchase hazardous goods or services but lose forever one's chance to attain the greatest prize of all! Surely this, more than anything else, requires some solid, conscientious federal, state, county, and similar government intervention.

But no. Entirely inconsistently, modern liberals-and, indeed, many folks of all ideological positions-insist that when it comes to this absolutely vital aspects of their lives-actually, their everlasting existence, here on earth and thereafter-people may be trusted to their own resources. They and their family and friends and fellow parishioners and such are entrusted fully with the job of taking care of all this, without introducing the state. Indeed, this last is deemed by most modern liberals-and, again, by many others-as completely anathema to what government's role is in human community life. Other than outright attacks upon people, deliberately devious fraud and the like, government must stay away. It would be totally perverse to have government act in a precautionary fashion, as it is urged to do when it comes to innumerable other aspects of our lives (most notably, these days, how we related to the environment).

Yet this is totally absurd. And there is also the absurdity, when one considers the modern liberals case of government regulation and licensing and inspection and quality control-the stuff done, at the federal level, by OSHA and dozens and dozens of other agencies-that the profession of journalism ought to be exempt from precautionary public intervention. Just watch and read the news and commentaries-they are filled with malpractice! Journalists routinely rush into print with items they have only the faintest ideas about, for example, in various branches of the sciences.

They report on matters of no importance at all and treat various people as if they deserved the attention of their customers, viewers and readers. Yet, modern liberals and other champions of government's role as our protector against the possibility of malfeasance do not advocate the establishment of departments of journalism at the various levels of government.

I must be careful. Someone I knew once quite well, the Louisiana attorney and politician Louis "Woody" Jenkins tried to demonstrate the absurdity of government regulation to members of the state government by proposing, of all things, the regulation of water diviners. Lo and behold, too many of them didn't get the point and nearly enacted the measure into law!

Source



Crippled by paradigm paralysis

The media and governments get the terror threat. Too bad our academics and think tanks don't, writes Greg Sheridan from Australia

THE arrest by Indonesian authorities of Jemaah Islamiah terrorists Zarkasih and Abu Dujana is of the greatest importance for Australia. It is a stunning achievement by the Indonesian police. If anyone ever doubted the benefit to us of having a competent, moderate government in Jakarta led by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, they should doubt it no longer.

Al-Qa'ida is enjoying success in the Middle East but it is suffering real setbacks in Southeast Asia, substantially because of the Indonesian Government, which has arrested 200 terrorists and put many of them through open, credible trials.

Zarkasih was the emir of JI, its overall leader and in particular its spiritual leader, a position formerly held by Abu Bakar Bashir. Dujana was the head of military operations.

These arrests grew out of intelligence gleaned in arrests in March, which also yielded a huge cache of explosives. Now Zarkasih and Dujana will yield their own intelligence treasures. JI is still a formidable threat. It still has a core membership of 1000, with many more sympathisers. Its mainstream group has reportedly decided to abandon attacks on Westerners for the moment and concentrate on recruitment, indoctrination, exacerbating ethnic and religious conflict within Indonesia and preparing for future military conflict.

Its radical splinter, led by Noordin Top, is believed still to support anti-Western bombings. No one knows for sure where Top is, but he is believed to be somewhere in Java, while another key JI figure, Dulmartin, is likely to be still hiding in the southern Philippines. The Indonesian President, his Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, former president Gus Dur and leaders of mainstream Muslim organisations have all made statements welcoming the arrests.

This is central to Indonesia's success in the war on terror. The civil society is aligned against Islamist terrorism and is therefore able to deny it the social space it paradoxically finds in the failing dictatorships of the Middle East.

Indonesia's success in the war on terror is thus a direct security dividend from its democratisation nearly a decade ago.

However, these arrests in one perverse way indicate a specific failure by Australia. The Australian media's response to them was dominated by three international researchers: Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, Rohan Gunaratna, an academic based in Singapore, and US academic Zachary Abuza.

Doesn't it strike you as bizarre that there is not a single Australian researcher on Southeast Asian terrorism of international repute? This represents a profoundly important institutional failure by two groups: the first, our universities; the second, our strategic class. Six years after 9/11 and five years after the Bali bombings, there is hardly a single Australian academic working full time on Southeast Asian terrorism. Universities are funded to the tune of billions of dollars, but much of what they have come up with in terrorism research is rubbish. Much of it is postmodern theoretical nonsense about how the discourse of terrorism "demonises the other". Little of it involves traipsing around the jungles of Java or Mindanao, or the region's prisons, interviewing terrorists.

Similarly, we have two main international relations think tanks, the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and the privately funded Lowy Institute. Both do good work and we are a better country for having them. But neither has had a single person devoted full time to studying Southeast Asian Islamist terrorism.

Both the universities and the think tanks have produced some good work on terrorism. This has been done mainly by area experts, whether Indonesianists or scholars focusing on the Middle East or whatever, analysing terrorists as part of the societies they study. This is valuable. But surely Southeast Asian Islamist extremism deserves at least a few bodies actually working on it full time. If I were founding a think tank today I'd hire the best Southeast Asianists around and tell them to work 28 hours a day on this subject and dominate the Australian debate. The media is thirsty for such expertise. So is the public. So for that matter is the Government (although of course our intelligence agencies devote vast resources to the subject).

The universities have failed in part because of their postmodern and left-liberal bias, which says that the West must be the author of all sins, and therefore they don't study terrorists in their own terms. The strategic community has failed because of its continued paradigm paralysis, its chronic inability to regard terrorism as a serious strategic issue. The platonic ideal of this outlook is represented by the Australian National University's Hugh White, who declared in the June 6 issue of The Australian Literary Review that terrorism is not a threat to the international system.

He also declared, mystifyingly, that I am "confident that traditional state to state conflict is a thing of the past". As I have never uttered or written anything remotely alleging that, and it is certainly not a view I hold, this is a bit strange. I do on the other hand believe that terrorism can threaten the international system, as can state to state conflict. Where old-fashioned strategic analysts such as White are so anachronistic is in their failure to see the complexity of the interaction of these two dynamics.

Paul O'Sullivan, the head of ASIO, pointed out in a speech yesterday that al-Qa'ida does precisely want to revolutionise the international system. Apart from the question of al-Qa'ida obtaining weapons of mass destruction, O'Sullivan pointed out: "The argument that the threat from terrorism is exaggerated also ignores the dangers terrorist networks pose to vulnerable or failing states. Transnational Islamic terrorists don't require WMD to challenge the authority and legitimacy of such states, exploit their weak spots or quietly rebuild capacity under the radar."

Governments in Jakarta and Canberra and, paradoxically, the media, have to deal with the world as it is, and therefore accord terrorism the attention it deserves. Universities and think tanks can take comfort in the chummy common room embrace of dead paradigms. But, in doing so, they offer sub-optimal service to their nation.

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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