Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Or…we could research into the ongoing Internet feud about whether Martin Luther King was a Republican or a democrat. Seems there isn’t any definitive evidence on that question going in one direction or the other, so it drags on a bit. Although it has not escaped my notice, that those who insist King was, would be today, or should have been a democrat, seem to be simply reaching the conclusion they want. They start with a premise of “democrats good, Republicans bad,” and quoting from Martin Luther King III, who is just doing more of the same.
On discrimination, which ties into this, let’s first define what it is.
1. an act or instance of discriminating, or of making a distinction.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit:
“racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.”
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment:
She chose the colors with great discrimination.
The definition of note, here, would be the second one: Making a distinction on the basis of class rather than on individual merit.
Would Martin Luther King be a democrat today? I have a tough time buying that, because I think even democrats would admit this would require King to morph and mutate his own understanding of discrimination, according to what the party apparatus told him to do. From the famous Dream Speech:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream…I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
The observation we can make today, that I’ve made before, is that when democrats and left-wingers accuse Republicans and right-wingers of discrimination, when you look into it awhile you find they are not accusing the opposition of straying from King’s dream, that we join hands as sisters and brothers, the ugliness of the past put forever behind us. On the contrary: When you look into it, you’ll invariably find people on the left today are accusing people on the right of failing to discriminate the way the left-wingers want the discrimination to be done. They don’t put it that way, of course, but that is the structure of the complaint. Has someone got an exception to offer against that? I haven’t seen any.
The problem Martin Luther King emerged to confront, existed in the first place because of an ancient denial-against-definitions very much like this one, and King made reference to it in the excerpt above: “Live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘…all men are created equal’.” Out of political expediency, in order to get the American Revolution underway, the founders of the republic had to say one thing and do another. They had to act like liberals, applying “liberal” definitions of things, in this case, “equal.” This directly led to all the ugliness that followed. And here we notice that some things haven’t changed, in all that time. We manage to agree, across the political spectrum, on verbiage alone, and then the disagreement comes about when our friends the liberals start to play games with definitions. Equal doesn’t really mean equal, so equal treatment doesn’t really mean equal treatment. Discrimination actually is non-discrimination. All sorts of things start to become opposites of themselves.
And then they keep on keeping on. Because Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when color wouldn’t matter, and we would all join hands as a common people, the social strife behind us forever, sitting down at the table of brotherhood.
Problem is, if that’s going on, it gets really, really, really hard to get any democrats elected.
So would Martin Luther King be a democrat today? It’s possible. But if that were the case somehow, one thing we know for sure is that he’d have to be embroiled in conflict with party platform-makers, as they not only resisted the sentiment of his dream, but nurtured personal and career ambitions to ultimately defeat it.
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I think about, and practice, discrimination EVERY DAY!
- CaptDMO | 01/19/2015 @ 09:36Despite claims to the contrary, Miracle Whip is NOT “just like” Hellman’s Mayonnaise,
The mere cost, and number of functions in an automobile ceded to “computer controlled”, or “automatic” (brakes/transmission/”safety”, radio, fuel adulterated with corn squeezins’) does NOT make it “equal” to, or greater than, others.
Looks to me like you’re “discriminating” in choosing in which situations it’s okay, and not okay, to do the discriminating. Mayonnaise, good; people’s skin color, bad. How absurdly rational.
- mkfreeberg | 01/19/2015 @ 10:12Not really, because of the sad commingling of “skin color” with a particular crab pot “culture”, alas, and the refusal of Leftists to stop being Racists, leading to such things as a furlough for Willie Horton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton “If you want more of something, subsidize it.”, yes? Democrats sure subsidize the heck out of dysfunctional people (of a particular skin color)……
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 01/19/2015 @ 10:33“How absurdly rational.”
- CaptDMO | 01/19/2015 @ 17:34It’s been a slow day.
Hey, now! They subsidize dysfunctional people of all skin colors.
- Rich Fader | 01/19/2015 @ 23:52@Rich Fader,
true, so true. It reminds me of one of PJ O’Rourke’s great riffs on socialism [quoting from memory]: “Socialists are all about equality. And if everyone ends up hungry, broke, and dead as a result of their policies, well, fair’s fair.”
- Severian | 01/20/2015 @ 12:16