You may be a Taliban if....

By that great American philosopher, Jeff Foxworthy:

"YOU MAY BE A TALIBAN IF..."

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to
liquor.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you
can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon "unclean."

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you haven't declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in
your clothing.

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than
setting off roadside bombs.

9. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at
least four.

10. Your cousin is president of the United States

From DADT to DKDC FEBRUARY 2010

This is a guest post by a frequent contributer on a wide spectrum of Navy issues both online and via traditional media, Claude Berube. Though I am in full alignment with his perspective on this issue, the following post is his.
– CDR Salamander.

President Obama’s statement during the recent State of the Union calling for the repeal to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy regarding homosexuals in the military has understandably raised the profile of a long-time controversial issue. Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen testified before Congress. But these events were preceded in Naval Institute Proceedings (Lieutenant R. Whipps, “It’s Time to Scrap Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, December 2009) who fortunately approached it from a dispassionate, logical perspective. Unfortunately, it was followed by two letters to the magazine that demonstrated that logic doesn’t always win the day. If privacy issues can be addressed – and that remains a major “if” – then the best way forward may be a more libertarian argument that changes the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to “Didn’t Know, Don’t Care” that would permit gays to openly serve their country in the military. No more, no less.

The President’s remarks may be seen by some advocates as a call for broadening regulations and reaping the election rewards of identity politics and largely using the military only for their own political goals; however, this change cannot be made for anything other than for what it is intended. That would be a mistake. In a nation where even the most liberal states have rejected same-sex marriage, openly serving in the military should not be made a cause célèbre. Nor should it be another opportunity for some offices to counts numbers and build diversity only for diversity’s sake instead of individual competency for collective capability’s sake.

A proposed policy change to Didn’t Know, Don’t Care is an inherently American libertarian approach to this issue. First, this policy would reflect our society with its capitalistic core. Capitalism works. The free market and the innovation that carried the United States from a few disparate colonies to the world’s superpower able to defeat fascism and communism, must be an integral part of this discussion. Capitalism isn’t based on guarantees, it is based on the freedom to succeed or fail and the regulations that ensure the free market doesn’t ignore basic laws. Shutting out a part of our human capital that freely wants to serve and is able to serve diminishes our ability to achieve a greater good, in this case security. A collective capability is required for the Navy to win wars and secure peace. Americans have always worked best when they have worked together regardless of differences to achieve a greater good. The denial of any individual simply because they are part of a group (or, conversely, selecting them simply because of it) is contrary to sound economics and mission success; historically, when nations ignored, purged, or expelled a portion of their population that was as much a part of that economy as any other part, it didn’t work out too well for the country.

Second, Didn’t Know Don’t Care would be based on individual competency. It would not be about special privileges for any one group. Rather, it is about the freedom of individuals to serve. There are standards in the Navy as reflected by fitness reports or other assessments. The one question we should ask is: Can this individual do the job? After the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, he was wheeled into the emergency room and jokingly said “I hope you’re all Republicans!” If a qualified health care professional said they were a Democrat, he wouldn’t have waited until a Republican showed up. The same philosophy of competence should apply in the Navy.

Third, character counts. Character is not an exclusive trait of any race, gender, or sexual preference; character is demonstrated by individuals. Once a person is deemed qualified to serve, then openly serving homosexuals must be held to the same standards and adhere to regulations as heterosexuals. If they cannot follow regulations, then they must be as accountable as anyone else regardless of race, gender or sexual preference.

Finally – if you had a son or daughter who didn’t lie, cheat, or steal; who excelled in physical fitness and academic ability; who believed that national security was the paramount responsibility of the federal government and wanted to serve, would you oppose them if they were gay or lesbian. If you have spoken about the quality of our Navy and Marine Corps, how they are the best trained, most motivated military force comprised of individuals who are willing to give their lives for their nation, would you suggest that these same young men and women would not accept a fellow equally-qualified sailor or Marine simply because they were homosexual?

Some individuals on ships can already have significant personality differences based on a number of factors, yet they do their jobs regardless of those differences. If we have done our jobs as parents, as teachers, as military leaders, then we must trust the next generation that they will all do their job as well. If we don’t have that trust, then we have far more to be concerned about with the future of our nation.

In the end, nothing matters except ability to do the job. The real eyes on the prize should be about how the Navy can optimally perform through individual performance and contributions to the whole. Modifying Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to Didn’t Know, Don’t Care would accomplish that goal.

From Liz Who Must Suffer In The Liberal Northeast...

Don't Tread On Me

How Do WE Get Ready For More Socialism?

A Dose of Reality

In The People v. Hall, circa 1854, the California Supreme Court set free a white man for killing a black man, writing in their opinion that the white man had to be set free because the only witness to the case was another black, and no black man could testify against a white. The written dismissal contained the following summation…

"a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point, as their history has shown; differing in language, opinions, color, and physical conformation; between whom and ourselves nature has placed an impassable difference" and as such had no right " to swear away the life of a citizen" or participate" with us in administering the affairs of our Government."

It’s all in the historical record, which you can read here.

Except one thing – the murder victim and the witness were not black, they were Chinese. 

I mention this because for many years now, actually ever since moving to the mainland from my family home in the mixing pot of Hawaii and being exposed to such things, I have found myself amazed, and irked, at the failure of influencers in the black community to do much more than complain about past injustices.

By contrast, the Chinese, who were also treated horribly in the brutally racist days of young America, make nary a peep about the past. Instead, they have had a cultural fixation on the future, with families urging their young to build skills to the point where members of the Chinese racial “franchise,” if you will, whether deserving or not, are now even more highly prized in the workplace than the whites that used to torment them.

And with that, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Anne Wortham, an associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University and continuing visiting scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution. 

Earlier this week, someone sent over the following introduction of her, and the text of one of her speeches on the election of President Obama. It is, in my view, a much-needed breath of fresh air on the topic of racial identity.  Here’s the intro and the article…

Anne Wortham is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.

She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the Nation al Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

The following article by her is something…

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America.

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government..

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians.. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. God Help Us all... 

Ratings Tumble, Lies Continue, Blame GWB