The Senseless Drive To Break America Apart

On August 15, 1996, as with each presidential convention, the focus of Bob Dole’s acceptance speech invariably touched on an “America only the unknowing call a myth.”

The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view.

But if there's anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the Party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

And though, I can only look up at a very steep angle, to Washington and Lincoln, let me remind you of their concern for the sometimes-delicate unity of the people.

The notion that we are and should be one people rather than "peoples" of the United States seems so self-evident and obvious that it's hard for me to imagine that I must defend it. When I was growing up in Russell, Kansas, it was clear to me that my pride and my home were in America, not in any faction, and not in any division.

In this I was heeding, even as I do unto this day, Washington's eloquent rejection of factionalism. I was honoring, even as I do unto this day, Lincoln's word, his life and his sacrifice. The principle of unity has been with us in all our successes.

The 10th Mountain Division, in which I served in Italy, and the Black troops of the 92ndm Division who fought nearby were the proof for me once again of the truth I'm here trying to convey.

The war was fought just a generation after America's greatest and most intense period of immigration. And yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American.

And when I think how we learned this lesson I wonder how we could have unlearned it. Is the principle of unity, so hard-fought and at the cost of so many lives, having been contested again and again in our history, and at such a terrible price, to be casually abandoned to the urge to divide?

The answer is no.

Must we give in to the senseless drive to break apart that which is beautiful and whole and good?

And so tonight I call on every American to rise above all that may divide us, and to defend the unity of the nation for the honor of generations past, and the sake of those to come.

How Far Must We Fall?

A wounded city is about to lay to rest one of its finest on Saturday.  The other officer’s funeral awaits the arrival of his relatives from China.  Some 20,000 to 25,000 police officers and law enforcement officials from across the U.S. and Canada are expected to attend the funerals of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

For months we have witnessed the disintegration of civil society stemming from the death of a young black man in Missouri to the chokehold death of a black man selling loose cigarettes on the streets of New York.  In both cases, a grand jury returned a “no true bill” of indictment against the officers involved in those deaths.

During a press conference New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio brought up his son, Dante, who is of mixed race and implied that he was concerned that his son might be the victim of police misconduct from the NYPD:

“I've said very, very clearly in these last days, let's be clear this is not based on decades of racism, this is based on centuries of racism.”

"So I've had to worry over the years. Chirlane's [de Blasio’s wife] had to worry. Is Dante safe each night? There are so many families in this city who feel that each and every night. Is my child safe? And not just from some of the painful realities—crime and violence in some of our neighborhoods—but is safe from the very people they want to have faith in as their protectors.”

“We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” 

The ravings of protesters spurred on by racial huckster Al Sharpton and the incendiary remarks following the grand jury announcement in the Eric Garner case saw two police lieutenants attacked by a City University of New York adjunct professor and an organizer for the Service Employees International Union on the Brooklyn Bridge.

de Blasio callously praised the protesters even as some chanted, “What do we want?  Dead cops!  When do we want it?  Now!”  The mayor said the attack was “an incident in which a small group of protesters allegedly assaulted some members of the NYPD.”

Someone at The New York Daily News offered a powerful suggestion that the injudicious mayor “bring his teen son Dante to the funerals of Ramos and Liu to witness firsthand the tragic human side of the police experience. Let Dante meet Ramos’ teenage son. Have Dante greet the shattered families, weeping cops mourning fallen brothers in blue. Let Dante understand the unspoken fears of a son every time his dad puts on his blue uniform and goes out to protect high-crime neighborhoods filled with kids who look a lot like Dante.”

This is a suggestion that I wholeheartedly admonish him to consider.  If Dante would exhibit even a fragment of character, he would tell the world his dad was wrong to associate with Al Sharpton and he was wrong to tell him to fear a civil society.  His words might sway those who have hardened their hearts and degraded the value of human life and incited violence.  He would know that each killing, whether black or white, hastens the next killing.

Ain’t It Rich? The Insufferable Airhorn And His Insufferable Hubris

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.” ― Thomas Sowell

Many people read with great disdain the long and tedious puff piece by David Remnick in The New Yorker wherein the ridiculous assertion was made that racial tensions may have softened his popularity.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president. Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president.”

And now, in bonus excerpts, from the same interview Mr. Remnick foisted upon The New Yorker’s elitist readers we learn that The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer believes he’s been frozen out by none other than Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

“Another way of putting it, I guess, is that the issue has been the inability of my message to penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I’m not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I’m somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things that we’ve put in place worked better than people might think.”

It couldn’t be because he sucks at president’n.  Nah.  Perish the thought.  It’s because we’re all fucking raaaaacists.

“When the central domestic fact of your presidency was a fraud, people won't listen to you anymore,” opined Peggy Noonan.  She continues—“He has been for five years a non-stop windup talk machine.  Most of it has been facile, bland; the same rounded words and rounded sentiments, the same soft accusations and excuses.  I see him enjoying the sound of his own voice…”

The venerable former psychiatrist, Charles Krauthammer, clinically diagnoses TWMDCO’s delusions of grandeur in this way:

“Look, it’s rather unseemly if you are the commander-in-chief, the leader of the free world and the most powerful man on earth who can reduce pieces of the planet to a cinder on his command, to get so whiny. You know when you pull the camera back and you look at the media landscape—on one side you got those elements in the media that are sympathetic or even worship at his feet.  You’ve got ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, of course MSNBC. You’ve got Hollywood that’s sympathetic, the television/entertainment side. I mean, you got the major newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post.  It’s what Lenin would call the commanding heights of the culture—are all on one side. And what do you have on the other side? Fox News and talk radio. And you’ve got a president of the United States complaining that that explains the failures of his administration.” 

“It goes way beyond that.  This is the best example you can find of Obama's political and ideological self-righteousness. He truly believes that the way he sees the world, he says in this little snippet of the interview, that it's pragmatic, it's rational, all he wants to do is help the folks. And of course, anybody who is on the other side, anybody who sees say the biggest stimulus in American history or the takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy—with a scheme that is completely irrational and collapsing around him—anybody who says this is not working can only be either acting against the national interest or being suspicious of him without any reason.” 

“He simply can't accept the fact or at least in public he doesn't accept the fact that one can actually have a view that contradicts his, that is in good faith, that is patriotic, and that also seeks the good of the country.  So if you think as he does, self-righteously, that there is no way to oppose him and be honestly patriotic and sympathetic to the American people, then of course you have to attribute all of these evil motives to the other side who are preventing the people from receiving the message. I think it is a myopia, rather it is unbecoming, and in fact it often becomes repulsive. It is a refusal to give respect to the other side.”

Woof.  They don’t call him “The Hammer” for nothing.

Photoshop™ Of The Day: Let’s Have That Conversation About Race

To CNN, ABC And NBC: Behold The Monster You’ve Created By Ginning Up Racial Division