#3
The funny thing is that I agree with these people that race is a subjective construct, and heck, if they want to claim to be aborigine, why not? The point at which we part ways is whether this claim of status gives them any sort of leg-up, subsidy, advantage, or material distinction. You can call yourself whatever the hell pleases you, so long as you don't expect a benefit based on that label.
But I don't *like* the logic that flows from the insistence on the objective reality of race - in fact, I called Ann Althouse racist yesterday for making that very truth-claim, in an argument over the relative immorality of race vs. class hatred. Which I suppose is ironic because I do so love to hate on her New Class snobbery...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
10/21/2011 11:14 Comments ||
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#4
He probably didn't write his article in the right way, which would be to accuse both the "white aboriginals" and the left of blatant racism and stealing money from "real aborigines".
To prove his point, he could demand, in the name of "fairness", that those claiming to be "white aborigines" must take DNA tests from an impartial lab, and if found to not be of aboriginal ancestry, to face charges of criminal fraud.
To put things this way, he could claim to the court that first of all, he was working in defense of real aborigines; second, that he was a whistleblower against potentially felonious criminal activities; and third, that he was very likely unmasking "racists".
Importantly, part of this argument would be the typical one, that *anyone* who challenged him in this was likely *both* a racist, and either a criminal, or complicit in criminal acts.
In the law, this would strongly trump any charges of libel, as well as cast his accusers in a very negative light, as well as any judge who took up the case.
#5
I'm just entertained by the notion that the Left(tm) that denounced the formulas used by the 'racist' South African apartheid government is so comfortable in employing basically the same thing themselves, for the same reason - power.
#1
One key point: The U.S. government is not responsible for all the ways in which the world was menacing then and is menacing now, of course. Regardless of what America did, China's challenge to the post-1945 Peace of the Pacific was going to become more serious. Vladimir Putin's neo-Soviet Russia was not and could not be anything but a major bother. Western Europe would be living off civilizational capital it had lost the will to replenish, irrespective of any American deeds or entreaties. The Muslim world would be choking on the dysfunctions inherent in its government and cultures.
But U.S. policy has made things worse because the liberal internationalists, realists, and neoconservatives who make up America's foreign policy Establishment have all assumed that Americans should undertake the impossible task of changing such basic facts, rather than confining themselves to the difficult but vital work of guarding U.S. interests against them.
#2
even had the transformation of the armed forces secured victory in that war, it still would have materially crippled America's capacity for dealing with any other kind of war.
This is one of the major concerns I have had since the GWOT started. However the degrading of our military capabilities started under Clinton. The problems this article describes were well underway by 2001.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
10/21/2011 14:46 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
