Grey Matters

This day of this month always brings to mind my first awareness of the 9/11 terror attacks.

I was retired but my school-teacher wife was still working and had yet to arise. Her clock radio had gone off and the one and only local FM station was playing. On the news, it was announced that an airplane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.

In my mind’s eye, I saw a Cessna or Beechcraft, its pilot slumped over from a heart attack and haplessly colliding with one of the towers. “Most unfortunate,” I thought. “I hope there were not too many hurt.” I could never have imagined it as a deliberate act. (And I’d read Tom Clancy’s book “Debt of Honor” wherein a pilot flies an airliner into a joint session of Congress being addressed by the President.

A small plane, that’s what I thought when I heard.

Then the news announced that a second aircraft had flown into the World Trade Center and I spoke aloud, to no one in particular, “We’re under attack.”

I turned on the TV and started a couple of VCRs. I still have the tapes. As events unfolded, I predicted that we would learn all the wrong lessons from this incident. (We did.)

And every year at this time, I still remember the hole I felt in the pit of my stomach when realization occurred. And I weep.

Shame on the USA’s “first black president” (I don’t count Bill Clinton.)

One would think that a Barack Obama presidency would inevitably result in a serious dialogue on race, if not in his first term then surely in his second. Instead we have seen a president who perpetuates the problem rather than trying to fix it. Which is about what I expected from a “community organizer” whose job it was to sow disaffection, perpetuating the victim ideology of blacks and, of course, to blame whitey.

Much of America’s black community is afflicted by debilitating cultural values, all of which can be blamed on “the legacy of slavery”, we are told. Illegitimate children? — “the legacy of slavery”. High black unemployment? — “the legacy of slavery”. Children growing up without fathers? — “the legacy of slavery”. Extreme rates of black-on-black crime? — “the legacy of slavery”.

Even after generations of Affirmative Action, “the legacy of slavery” is keeping many blacks in a permanent underclass.

And I suppose that much of the black cultural problem is in fact a legacy of slavery, just not in the way most people understand. Actually, most people don’t understand how the legacy of slavery keeps black people down, they just take it for granted, unable to argue against the idea because they have given it zero thought or, afraid to argue against it for fear of being labeled a racist.

As a result of slavery, did white guilt concoct social welfare programs that cuckolded the black male, making fathers unnecessary as providers? Yes. Did this create single-parent households lacking a role model for boys and result in children far more likely to turn to gangs and crime than children growing up in two-parent households? Yes, indeed.

Did white guilt teach black people that they are victims, that the system is against them and that they cannot make it on their own? Yes, yes and yes. Have government policies born of white guilt over slavery contributed to the destruction of black cultural values? Absolutely. Does President Obama, surely an intelligent man, recognize this? Of course. And what is he doing about it?

More of the same. Piling on, actually. It’s all part of the fundamental change he wants for America. Before America can be built into the Socialist Peoples’ Paradise he and his leftist buddies envision, America must first be destroyed.

So, rather than have a serious talk about the breakdown of the black family unit, what contributed to it, and how to fix it, we get more “blame whitey”. It’s part of the destruction that must precede the rebuilding.

Rather than address the serious cultural values deficiency that makes women “hoes” and “bitches”, we get … silence.

Rather than stem the flow of illegal aliens taking the jobs needed by low-skill black youth, we get calls for amnesty and a “path to citizenship” for these people who began their relationship with the USA by violating its laws.

Instead, we get “Black Lives Matter”, a racist group premised on the notion that the biggest problem for black people is that the police routinely and without provocation kill innocent black folks.

When Michael Brown, strong-arm thug in Ferguson, Missouri, was killed by an officer whose gun Brown was trying to wrest from him, Obama sent his Justice Department to investigate, hoping, I’m sure, to find fault on the part of the officer. Failing that, Obama had to settle for “institutional racism”. Not a word about Ferguson’s blacks committing crimes at a much higher rate than its whites, only that blacks are arrested disproportionately, obviously due to racism.

Instead, we get black “leaders” calling for blacks to kill the police. We get Louis Farrakhan telling his followers: “Kill those who kill us. Stalk them and kill them.” He wants ten thousand brave men out of a million who are willing to sacrifice themselves by “killing those who kill us”.

Instead we get two (minority) cops gunned down in their car in Brooklyn, New York and another shot in the back of the head in Queens.

We get a sheriff deputy in Texas shot in the back of the head after fueling his patrol car. Police are “still looking for a motive” since the two had never crossed paths. It seems clear to me that the perpetrator drank the “Black Lives Matter” Kool-Ade. He answered Farrakhan’s call.

And what has Obama done? He seems to have tacitly approved the Black Lives Matter movement, enabling more of the same.

If you’re thinking “Shame on Obama” for squandering this opportunity for a serious discussion of race in America, forget about it. A serious discussion of race in America was never to be. The Alinsky-schooled Obama sees things going well, fundamentally changing America in just the way he and his leftist tutors intended.

Besides, he probably didn’t want to miss his tee time.

Imagine that the U.S. Department of Agriculture were importing salmonella-laced food in order to let Americans enjoy the full panoply of cuisines from around the world. Throw in some bird flu chickens, a bit of Mad Cow. Yum.

And suppose too that the Consumer Product Safety Commission not only allowed but sought out toys with lead-based paint and small parts upon which infants might choke, just so kids could be exposed to the full range of experiences from around the world.

While we’re at at, let’s import motor vehicles cobbled together from bicycles, washing machine parts and whatever else can be found on scrap heaps of third world countries. We’d be appalled. We’d demand heads on a platter! The job of the government is to protect us from such things, isn’t it?

And yet we import defective immigrants from all over. It’s been policy since 1965 and continues today. It’s taking its toll.

Shouldn’t we be importing immigrants that make America better? Shouldn’t that be Job One of America’s immigration policy? Why then are we importing massive numbers of people from backwards countries, people with nothing to offer, people that harm America?

I can feel the ground tremble as all those knees jerk reflexively (He’s a racist!) but I assure you that I’m against clubbing puppies to death even by white immigrants. Or white Americans, for that matter. I’m four-square against any clubbing of puppies, unlike the Humane Society whose spokesman came down on the side of the immigrant clubber, saying that people objecting to animal sacrifice are racists. I’m guessing that instead of objecting to the clubber’s practice, we need to “respect his culture.”

In his defense, the immigrant that clubbed the puppy to death explained that his wife was sick and he had tried all the usual cures the shaman recommended, including burning currency, and his wife was still sick. (Imagine that!) It was time for an animal sacrifice. No quick throat slitting would do, a baseball bat was employed. Neighbors noticed.

“Respect his culture”? Hogwash. His culture has no place in the USA. Kids should read about his culture in their Social Studies texts, not observe it in their neighbor’s back yard.

There are citations for this event and far too many other outrageous incidents in Ann Coulter’s latest book, “¡Adios, America!” (At the mention of “Ann Coulter”, there were no doubt more knees jerking uncontrollably.) If you think that America’s immigration policy is not destroying the country, I challenge you to read just one chapter of “¡Adios, America!“. The iBooks store at Apple makes the first few chapters available free as a sample. Perhaps Kindle does as well. After The Donald made his remarks about illegal aliens, I decided to look into it a bit myself and found Coulter’s book. I couldn’t put it down. My blood boiled. It’s a problem that’s way, way beyond “Press one for English“.

Read the book to find out why Ann Coulter says that the (first) World Trade Center bombing was committed by “two farmers, a student and a tourist“. (Oh, and all four were in the country illegally, using our own system against us.)

Officials tell us that we somehow benefit from having such people here due to the “diversity” they bring. Diversity is not a good thing. Diversity divides. What made America great was not the diversity we gained from immigrants in the past but that they came here to be Americans. They embraced the American Dream, worked hard, supported the Constitution, learned English and had something to offer. They assimilated and became part of a greater whole. What made America great is what we had in common. The differences we tolerated, because tolerance is one thing we share. But it is insane to tolerate everything.

Primitive peoples from a tribal culture do not come here to be Americans, they come here and game the system. They live in enclaves of their own culture, perpetuating that culture, committing crimes far out of proportion to their numbers (compared to Americans) and taxpayers foot the bill. Such people have nothing to offer and should not even be in the country.

Far too often, our current immigration policy brings us people from misogynistic cultures where rape, including child rape, incest and gang rape are common and tolerated, even expected. When, inevitably, rape happens among such people we have allowed into our country, Politically Correct defense attorneys make “cultural differences” excuses and courts actually fall for it, letting perpetrators off with a slap on the wrist — for gang rape!

I’ll say it again: such cultures have no place in America. The goal of “diversity” will reduce America to a third world country of warring tribes with a standard of living to match.

Go ahead and read the free sample of Coulter’s book.

I think that boosters of “diversity” are thinking only of skin color or race. They are not looking at the bigger picture. It’s not about race or skin color. These are superficial things. Frankly, I cannot understand why so many people are hung up on something that is so superficial.  It’s about culture, and culture goes all the way to the bone.

Diversity of culture leads to conflict. But “diversity” boosters see any conflict between persons of different skin color as “racist” — at least that’s the charge they level. “You think Obama’s handing of the economy has been poor? You’re a racist!” “You think clubbing a puppy to death is bad? That’s racist!”

We should not automatically be condemning any conflict between persons of different races as racist. And we should not be automatically accepting otherwise unacceptable behavior just because the perpetrator is a “person of color”. The race of a person is inconsequential. The culture is everything. I’m still awaiting the day when we judge someone by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. We still obsess over skin color.

We are told, and are supposed to blindly, unthinkingly accept, that “diversity” is desirable. Some go so far as to ridiculously declare that diversity is a strength. No one ever offers examples as proof.

Let me offer examples of diversity and you can decide whether the diversity was a good thing or a bad thing.

• Quebec nearly seceded from Canada over language;
• Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland;
• Whites and American Indians;
• Whites and blacks;
• Bloods and Crips;
• Genocide of Kurds in Iraq;
• Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda;
• Christians and Muslims;
• Muslims and Jews;
• Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims;

To save time, just do a Google search for “ethnic conflict”. It is amazing and appalling the degree to which peoples in conflict have more in common than with which they disagree. The divisions, though sometimes minor, are enough to result in armed conflict, in mass killings.

And officials want to bring more people of widely different cultures to live here in America?

“MEXICO CITY, Jan. 5 – The Mexican government drew fire from American advocates of tighter borders on Wednesday for publishing a pamphlet that instructs migrants how to safely enter the United States illegally and live there without being detected.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/world/americas/a-mexican-manual-for-illegal-migrants-upsets-some-in-us.html>