Posted on 05/28/2009 5:18:52 AM PDT by kellynla
I know this is ancient history by now — we are now in the Time of Sotomayor — but I’d like to glance back at President Obama’s Notre Dame speech. You remember: abortion. A big-deal speech and occasion.
Obama was given credit far and wide for being gracious. He was serene, civil, understanding. He called for lowered voices and mutual respect. His message, in effect, was “Can’t we all get along?” (which is Rodney King’s line, I realize).
Fine, fine. But it’s easy to be gracious when you are getting your way, 100 percent. Abortion-on-demand is high in the saddle. Partial-birth abortion. Federal funding. Everything. Embryo-destructive research, to boot. The pro-choice side has everything, and the pro-life side has not a crumb.
(As I usually do, I use each side’s preferred label. Please don’t write me. Thanks!)
Again, when you get things 100 percent your way, it’s easy to say, “Okay, let’s all be cool now.” The likes of Obama tell pro-lifers, “You get nothing — zero — but if you’ll just not bitch about it, we will be gracious toward you. You don’t want to be disruptive, do you? We don’t want raised voices, do we?”
Obama’s peace is something like submission — the submission of his opponents.
Apparently, the president is cutting health-care workers some slack, if they oppose abortion. This is the area known as “provider conscience.” You don’t have to participate in an abortion if you don’t want to. And Obama gets great credit for cutting these people some slack.
But, to me, it’s a little like saying, in pre-abolition times, “I know you have this moral hang-up and all. You don’t have to whip them yourselves, you know.”
I will say once more: It’s easy to be gracious — and to call for calm and mutual respect — when you get your way, 100 percent. Try being gracious when you have to give a little, or even lose. That is something harder, and deserves more credit.
The news is drenched with Sotomayor now, and also drenched with the word “Hispanic”: She’s Hispanic, you know. She would be the first to tell you (though maybe she would say “Latina”).
An interesting word, and concept, “Hispanic.” I have many Cuban-American friends, in South Florida and elsewhere. They rarely call themselves Hispanic, and they, in turn, are rarely called Hispanic. Why? Well, it’s kind of a political term, isn’t it? It relates to the grievance culture, to affirmative action, to apartness. “Hispanic” is not so much E pluribus unum as “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” “Hispanic” is for those who don’t want to melt into the pot.
Some years ago, I did a piece on Indian Americans — not Cherokees and the like, but those with roots in India. My theme was the Republicanization of Indian Americans. There are some of their number — just a few — who want to be known as “Asians,” and who want to be part of the grievance culture. They want to grouse about The Man and so on. Other Indian Americans just think of themselves as Americans, or people.
All of this relates to another interesting word: “minority.” Funny what groups are called “minorities” and what groups are not. I never hear Jews spoken of as a minority, or Japanese Americans, or Chinese Americans (or Indian Americans). Sometimes, you even get women thrown in — as in the phrase “minorities and women.” What kind of women are those? The kind like Ellie Smeal, I would say, rather than the kind like — oh, Laura Bush.
And that reminds me of a bumper sticker, seen in the ’08 campaign: “She’s Not a Woman, She’s a Republican.” The “she” in question was Gov. Sarah Palin.
And you remember that delicious fact from the Michigan Law School affirmative-action case? The question arose, in the school’s admissions office, whether Cubans were Hispanic. And one official said, “But they vote Republican, don’t they?”
Some on the left like to say that “race is a social construct.” I think that, to a large degree, they’re right on that. Some other things are social constructs too. And wouldn’t it be nice if people thought of themselves as people, or — in certain circumstances — Americans? Especially when they’re going to serve on the Supreme Court?
To hell with “wise Latinas.” Our simple requirement is wise people. Justice is supposed to be blind, including colorblind. Not in today’s America, it isn’t — and so many people are proud of that.
Aung San Suu Kyi is a very popular dissident. I’m glad she is, too — she is a great woman, and she deserved her Nobel Peace Prize (unlike some other winners). But it’s kind of funny who gets popular and who doesn’t. Two days ago, President Obama made a strong statement, calling on the Burmese government to free Suu Kyi. He was right to do so. But would he ever speak for a Cuban dissident, or a Chinese one?
There are, of course, foreign-policy considerations. No one wants to ruffle PRC feathers — no one. The PRC is the most coddled oppressor on the planet. And Obama would rather make nice with the Castros than speak for democrats and liberals in their dungeons.
But a peep in behalf of a Chinese or Cuban would be nice now and then. Would a Chinese or Cuban — a Gao Zhisheng or Oscar Biscet — ever win the Nobel Peace Prize? Oh, please. (Grow up, as Joan Rivers used to say.)
Saw a headline: “Beijing Lawyers Beaten for Representing Falun Gong Case” (over this article). I thought, “Thank heaven there are lawyers in China willing to defend Falun Gong people. Those lawyers must be among the bravest people on earth.” And our sleeksters fancy themselves virtuous and heroic for defending Guantanamo terrorists. They risk nothing, our sleek lawyers; the Chinese ones risk everything.
I see that President Obama will be visiting Saudi Arabia on June 3. Practicing his bowing? (Yuk yuk.) (Or is that yuck, yuck?)
This is just about my favorite kind of story: one that involves a clash of liberal pieties. Oh, is this story delicious. Eating the heart of a seal is bad, right? But what if it’s done by “a woman of color”? And what if it’s done in honor of “Inuit” traditions? What’s a liberal to do, or think?
Oh, what a delicious story. The liberal pieties clash so loud, it sounds like 50 hard-smacked cymbals.
Was reading Commentary’s blog — this item, here — which sent me to another blog: two items from it, here and here. And those items spoke of the jihadists who plotted to blow up synagogues in the Bronx. The writer was saying, in essence, “They’re such sad sacks — more to be pitied than to be hated and feared. They were just some schmoes who were sort of led down the garden path . . .”
And I was immediately reminded of something Michael Chertoff once told me. You may remember that he was the secretary of homeland security. And allow me to excerpt from a Davos journal, here:
Also, says Chertoff, the papers are full of hapless-looking arrestees. They have families; they seem disoriented, pathetic. Remember the shoe bomber? He looked like a homeless guy. The subtext is, “These guys aren’t very smart — how can they really be dangerous?” But, says Chertoff, “I spent a lot of years as a prosecutor,” working on organized-crime cases. “You don’t have to be smart to be a killer. Most of the killers we caught were pretty stupid.”
Nor does it take a lot of brains to detonate a bomb. But what these killers and terrorists have in common is “a psychopathic remorselessness.” They don’t look like James Bond, or like Carlos the Jackal, when he’s portrayed at his most glamorous. They look more like the shoe bomber. But that doesn’t mean they can’t kill hundreds or thousands of people at a stroke.
Actually, everything Chertoff had to say was quite interesting.
I see in this article that a Republican congressman wants to make 2010 a Year of the Bible — and that this has brought scorn from the usual quarters. (Does human life ever seem to you unchanging?) Let me take you back to another article — this one called “Being Sharansky,” here. I wrote it after a long talk with Sharansky, in a New York hotel.
When he was in Gulag, he was allowed for a time to study the Bible. He did this with a Christian fellow prisoner named Volodya. And this is what Sharansky said in his memoir, Fear No Evil:
We called our sessions Reaganite readings, first, because President Reagan had declared either this year or the preceding one (it wasn’t exactly clear from the Soviet press) the Year of the Bible, and second, because we realized that even the slightest improvement in our situation could be related only to a firm position on human rights by the West, especially by America, and we mentally urged Reagan to demonstrate such resolve.
A little language? I read a very strange and almost grisly news story the other week: A waitress in a waffle house shot a customer. But I was reminded of how much I love the American language. Simply love it, with all my heart. Am glad I have been born into it.
Let me reproduce the article, italicizing the lines that lifted my heart a little, subject matter aside:
Clarendon County (WLTX) — A Clarendon County waitress is accused of shooting a customer at the restaurant after the two had a dispute.
Yakeisha Ward, 29, is charged with assault and battery with intent to kill.
An early morning run for breakfast at the Waffle House on Paxville Highway in Manning turned terribly wrong for Crystal Samuel.
“I thought I was gonna get me an All-Star,” says Samuel. A popular meal on the menu. “Grits, sausage, toast, eggs and a waffle,” says Samuel.
She didn’t get what she came for. Instead, she says while she waited for her order, her friends started eating. That’s when Samuel says she was told they couldn’t eat from carryout trays inside the restaurant.
“I said what is your fuss about. I said we haven’t paid for our food. She (Ward) said well you all got to leave. How you want us to leave and we ain’t paid for the food yet,” says Samuel.
That’s when it got ugly. Samuel says she threw a waffle at the waitress. “I did actually throw some food but it didn’t hit her,” says Samuel. “That’s when she (Ward) jumped across the counter and we got into it,” says Samuel.
Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett says the altercation continued outside where he says Ward got a gun from her car and a gun magazine from her trunk.
“It’s poor judgment on her part trying to settle this matter with a weapon. Either way she had time to think about what she was doing when she was walking to her car,” says Garrett. [That is simply hilarious.]
Investigators say Ward’s gun discharged during the altercation. They say a bullet fragment struck Samuel in the arm.
“Deputies were close by when they rolled up in the parking lot the victim and the suspect were still engaged in a fight,” says Garrett. [This is garbled, somehow, but who cares?]
Before it ended, authorities say Ward struck the victim in the head with the gun.
“She got the last lick,” says Samuel. Meanwhile Ward has bonded out of jail. On Tuesday afternoon, News 19 found her inside the Waffle House where the incident happened.
She declined to talk to us on camera but says she got out of jail after paying $500. As for Samuel, she has only one thing to say about Waffle House. “Bad customer service,” says Samuel.
Investigators say it appears that Ward’s gun was legally purchased.
I swear, the American language is one of the best things in life, anywhere. (By the way, to see that article online, go here.)
Was in an elevator in my building the other day — NR World Headquarters. A lady was holding a bouquet of flowers — roses, as I remember. I said, “What lovely flowers. Are they to you or from you?” She said, “They are to me and from me.” I said, “Wonderful, wonderful. Who says you have to wait to have flowers until someone gives them to you?” Yes, she said. She buys herself flowers regularly, because she loves them so. And why not?
“I tell men, ‘If you can’t do for me better than I can do for myself, why do I need you?’”
I felt I had encountered an exceptional spirit.
Calling all exceptional spirits — who happen to live in Phoenix. On June 18, I am speaking at the Goldwater Institute, on the theme: “Obama Time: Handling the New Political Age.” For more information, go here. See you, I hope!
In the paper the other day — or my equivalent of the paper, online — I read an obituary of Amos Elon. (Find it here.) He was an Israeli writer, and an old-school intellectual. He and his wife, Beth, were — are — friends of David and Clarissa Pryce-Jones. I met them at the Pryce-Joneses’ in Florence last year. There was an evident melancholy in Elon, cut by a streak of mirth. He obviously loved the Old World — the world destroyed by war and genocide. He wrote about it in The Pity of It All. At the same time, he, like the rest of us, had to face the present. And he had intelligent things to say.
I’m glad I met him. And I’ll see you, Impromptusites, real soon. Thanks for joining me.
I have come to the conclusion the Court should not be denied their village idiot.
He does have a point. I think it's time we conservatives bury the hatchet....right in the middle of his forehead.
Did I say that out loud?
I am prepared to deny the slightest claim made regarding Sotomayor. For one thing, she’s simply a “latino”, not a “latina” unless she comes up with some sort of evidence, and that had best be live, and in living color ~
Bravo Mr Nordlinger!
Would a Chinese or Cuban — a Gao Zhisheng or Oscar Biscet — ever win the Nobel Peace Prize?
If it was up to the left, The Nobel Peace prize would be given to Fidel Castro before even thinking about giving one to a brave man like Oscar Biscet.
Islam is the "peace of submission"...
Marx - "Peace is defined as the absence of opposition to socialism"
...Great piece...
We had a similar scenario locally a few years ago when a hearing on ocean dumping of non-toxic waste was being held. The enviro-whackos were out in force, but so were the union thugs from the garbage haulers or teamsters or whoever has the tugboat and barge crews under their thumb.
The far left against the hard left... needless to say, I was enjoying it. They didn't kill each other, though. Too bad.
The smart ones are less likely to be caught.
Just send pictures of yourself.
It is almost that way for employment also.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.
My kids school had two students on its student council that were diversity specialists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.