How We Got Here (And How We Got To Wise Up)

"While hanging out yesterday at Ace's yesterday as he was flogging racists, I happened to mention that many if not most black Americans view the federal government as beneficial and friendly. Some other commenters were surprised and I was surprised at their surprise, because it isn't difficult to figure out why this is. Whether it's the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.

What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black. And that is what it was supposed to do.

The present problem in my unlearned opinion is this: the federal government began overstepping its bounds during the Great Depression and did so most infamously in the late sixties via the Great Society programs. Doing more that getting local racists out of the way, the federal government sought to and succeeded in making itself the suppliers of life, liberty and, putatively, the happiness of many black Americans. (Try telling a senior of any race that Social Security is sending the country to financial ruin. You'll get an earful about her 'rights'.)

And even many black Americans who do not rely on the federal government still view the fed as our friend because of that history."

-- baldilocks

"Americans are less enthusiastic about free trade than Europeans, and their enthusiasm for free markets is at the European average. US workers strike at about the same rate as the Italians, but they are much more highly paid. To be sure, they can be fired more easily, but there are European levels of regulation on hiring them, and their workplaces are safer.

Americans take fewer holidays but it seems not to affect the national mood, for they commit suicide less frequently than most Europeans. That may be because they are generally prouder of their country. US tax, which is on the low side by European standards, is more progressive than the European norm, and tax revenue per head is higher than Ireland, Greece and Switzerland.

Health outcomes are not good, especially given the huge amounts spent. People live shorter lives (though not much – three years less than the Euro leader, Italy) and more infants die. On the other hand, cancer cure rates are generally higher and the billions spent on medical research has benefits worldwide. Crime is high, especially the murder rate, and the prisons bulge more; but there are fewer police per head than in Italy and fewer guns per head than in Finland.

The good universities are very good, with high private spending; schools are middling, as is the number of public libraries. Americans vote less, trust government more, volunteer and give to charities much more. They have more faith in God but less in astrology and homeopathy; and they are more welcoming to immigrants. At the same time, they have more gay experiences, more gay marriages and more three-in-a-bed sex than almost all Europeans.

One fact stalks these figures: it is that the black underclass accounts for many of those few areas where a stark difference exists between the US and Europe: 'Take out black homicide and the American murder rate falls to European levels. Child poverty rates...fall to below British, Italian and Spanish levels if we look at the figures for whites only.' Baldwin’s conclusion is that what most distinguishes New World from Old 'is not a grand opposition of worldviews or ideologies...it is the still unresolved legacy of slavery and its tragic modern consequence of a ghettoized and racially identifiable underclass'."

-- John Lloyd, charging Europeans flatter themselves at America's expense - he's taking information from Peter Baldwin's new book, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike - since we're "more like European countries than these individual countries are like each other", to The Financial Times.

Conclusion: we are Americans, and the government is here for our purposes (not to rule over us as they do in Europe) and once "We The People", regardless of race, decide to take control over our government - and not give our power away to it - we will once again discover the pride of knowing that, probably because of a bunch of old racists, there wasn't ever a chance we'd fall behind any other country in the world. We've just got to stop trying to be like Europe - because we ain't. We've got a different history - and a much, much different future.

It's liberal NewAge Americans, seeing race today and denying it, that's screwing us up - and European-style political correctness is, definitely, the "new racism" that's one of our country's biggest problems.

Personally, I - as a black man - don't think Barack Obama, many of my fellow blacks, or the average European, understands that,...

U Can't Touch This:

My Sister Blog (Has Got Her Panties In A Twist)

"How’s that Hope and Change working for you?  Had enough?  Still grimly resisting that urge to scrape off the bumper sticker?  It’s all right.  Nobody likes to admit they were fooled even though it’s now painfully obvious that, like many of us warned you, The Sun King Ra-Obama is nothing more than an empty suit,...What on earth is wrong with all of you?  Have you taken leave of your senses?  Who thinks up this kind of crap and more importantly, didn’t they get the memo that Global Warming, the Rock upon which the Religion of Global Bureaucracy is built, the Shining Promise to the Ruling Class of Make-Believe Jobs Now and Forever and To the Ages of Ages, is a hoax and nothing more than a shabby and now increasingly transparent attempt to put the unruly American spirit in its place?"

-- Panda Bear, M.D., getting a little weirded-out by the rest of you - as any thinking person would - and even being called "Glenn Beck" for it, when he's really my main man (AKA my sister blogger) Panda Bear, M.D..

It's About Time: Water, Water, Everywhere!

"The 1023 Campaign will be launched early in 2010 with the aim of uniting skeptics across the UK in activities to highlight the belief in magic which underlies homeopathy.

Homeopathy is an ancient, pre-scientific and absurd pseudoscience. Yet it persists today as an accepted complementary medicine, largely because people don't know what it is."

-- Bad Homeopathy

Sticking Your Ass Out (Where It Doesn't Belong)

Hey - I'm part of a conservative/liberal debate - over at the Althouse.

I'm honored - truly - but, Man, I wish I was part of one on NewAge,...

Prey

So let's start with The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, since she threw her hat in the ring with the Democratic Party's NewAge Obama cult:

"Something tells me this [current American discontent] isn't all about money. It's possible, and I can't help but think likely, that the poll is also about other things, and maybe even primarily about other things.

Sure, Americans are worried about long-term debt and endless deficits. We're worried about taxes and the burden we're bequeathing to our children, and their children.

But we are concerned about other things, too, and there are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture."

Hmmm. Now what about "our culture" could be off - that isn't showing up in political polls? Maybe something spiritual?

"The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a report [that]... points out that many Americans are now choosing to 'blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs',..."

Weird. But let's not forget the #1 movie out there is alternately described as "stupid", "anti-American", and "distinctly New Agey". Do we have any other evidence it might be NewAge that's warping our culture beyond recognition? Chris Locke, AKA "Rageboy", author of The Cluetrain Manifesto (amongst other books and articles) and my fellow NewAge blogger, says he's been telling "the unlikely story of how America slipped the surly bonds of earth & came to believe in signs and portents that would make the middle ages blush".

A strange choice of words that, I would think, would be quite revealing to Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media:

"On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then, before the Caudillo had concluded his tedious remarks and long before the 'meaningful deal' between the world leaders was announced, I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.

A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340."

Wow - he can't be serious - do modern humans really think like this? Hard to tell because, as "Rageboy" says, "nobody wants to be seen as New Age because nobody wants to be seen as irreparably stupid." But if you look at how even non-NewAgers talk, you can tell something *different* is going on, something most Americans might not be aware of. It's time for Slate.com's Jack Shafer to take a turn at the mic - and, remember, he's talking about golf:

"Given how desperately we want to believe in a human god, it didn’t take much peddling from Team Tiger for us to accept Woods as a modern deity. With every new tournament victory, every new product endorsement, his divinity grew. His marketers made him a symbol of tolerance and brotherhood, and his father, Earl Woods, spoke gibberish about his son being a creature of destiny. Getting married and having children only added to Woods’ marketability. I’m divine and monogamous and the center of a happy nuclear family. And we ate it up. So now that the 'real' Woods has been revealed … we’re embarrassed by the gap between who we believed Woods to be and who he really is."

I could go on but, boy, that sure sounds like NewAge language, behavior, and beliefs to me - and also a lot like Peggy Noonan's "other things" - as well as her observation that we're worried "about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture", doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

Get a clue, people:

This is NewAge cultism in full bloom.

Nepotism Sucks (Because We Have To Look At It)

"For those unfamiliar, two of the primary participants in this video are Eva Amurri and Zach Gilford from television's 'Californication' and 'Friday Night Lights' respectively.

Amurri is Susan Sarandon's daughter that just so happens to play a student who moonlights as a stripper on 'Californication.'

Now THAT's a great role model for young people, isn't it?  

Heaven help us."

-- Noel Sheppard, recognizing a lunatic when he sees one - and, with those familiar googly eyes, who could miss it? - the product of an "open-minded" big mouth (who apparently couldn't keep her own legs closed) on NewsBusters.

Led Astray - by Oprah - Again!

"I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

-- Michael Goodwin, redeeming himself through honesty - is there any other way when you've been conned? - maybe not recognizing it as NewAge, but still standing up for all to see, at The New York Post.

The Very Definition Of A Moron

Making A Little Room (To Clear The Air)

"When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style 'Do not distribute' and 'leak' a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: 'This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.' Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing,..."

-- Gerald Warner, admitting what the believers don't want the rest of us to know - that the farce of Global Warming has become a nasty-assed fart - but now there's no escaping the stench, even if you get it by The Telegraph.

They'll Kill You Before They'll Quit (Really)

"It’s absurd – and dangerous too – that every person reading this article could set themselves up tomorrow as a practitioner of herbal medicine. They could gain access to powerful herbs such as belladonna and ephedra, and give those to patients without any training or quality control at all.

That has to stop."

-- Dr Michael Dixon, living in a dream world - NewAge cultists never just "stop" - and haven't since the days of The Telegraph.

No Wonder The Director's Known As An Asshole

"Pandora is,...inhabited by the Na'vi, a race of blue-skinned, forest-dwelling giants who don't take kindly to the invaders razing their planet and disrupting their age-old (yet distinctly New Agey) communion with nature."

-- Dana Stevens, explaining how the plot of Avatar - a Sci-Fi movie that utilizes the biggest assortment of technological advances in cinematic history - was rendered "hopelessly fruity", embarrassingly stupid, trite, cultish, and utterly useless, before anyone had even seen it, in Slate.

I saw it - gave it a "6". Sorry, James Cameron, but - when a film takes place in the year 2154 - it's not a good idea to have your main characters spouting cliché's from 2004's Iraq War and pretending we haven't evolved past "lite beer and blue jeans". That's just dumb - or assumes we are - and, if we're that dumb, then why are we paying to see your Sci-Fi movie again?

Taking our money - and insulting our intelligence? Man, NewAgers have got a lot of balls,...

Adding Sprinkles To The Chocolate/Vanilla Swirl

I remember, a few months back, I said this is now the era of the black conservative - and I specifically said it won't have anything to do with the foolishness of Michael Steele (above) who, all this time later, still seems to think the Republican Party is his own personal Def Comedy Jam - and now, here comes Lt. Col. Allen West, talking that good talk and running for Congress out of the great state of Florida:



Now that's the kind of talk that gets my attention,...how about you?

This Future Was Foretold

"A cult fortune teller is expected to appear before a federal judge Thursday on charges she organized a carjacking that mistakenly targeted a federal agent.

Claudia Cecilia Gomez Aguilar and six others allegedly held up and shot at a U.S. Border Patrol agent in June, believing him to be a woman carrying a load of drug money sent from Michigan.

Shortly after her arrest, Gomez told police that she hatched the plan after learning of [the] cash shipment during a reading with the load’s driver, according to court documents filed in her case."

-- Jeremy Roebuck, making my NewAge day - which ain't that hard - with another heart-warming tale of staggering genius, in The Monitor.