Free Republic

ON this Martin Luther King day, it is customary to review the progress African Americans have made in striding towards a level of equality with the majority races.But I wish to speak of the unsung heros of the Civil Rights movement: Velociraptors.I, as a velociraptor in a wool suit, have experienced HORRIFIC discrimination since the day I first poked my snout out of the stout eggshell that served as my womb.The level of discrimination a dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous faces, is unreal. Hell, I walk onto a MARTA train ...and everyone screams and runs, and MARTA police are...

Orit Struk, Director of the Yesha Human Rights organization responded to the decision of the High Court to release the five right wing detainees to house arrest. “We call upon the PM and Justice Minister to seriously internalize the criticism of High Court Judge Amit about applying outdated charges against demonstration organizers. Stop the unbridled wild oppression of the right wing detainees at the hands of the State Attorney’s Office, that deals a fatal blow to the principles of democracy and...

RICH and POOR!! Spiritually and physically rich and poor. Who is really rich and who is really poor before GOD?

LET's SHOW LOVE TO PEOPLE THIS DAY and EVERY DAY!! GOD BLESS US ALL!

Let us never forget the love!! Though GOD may test us, let's never forget!!

Let us never forget the love!! Though GOD may test us, let's never forget!!

The folks at Liberal Conspiracy have asked people to put together “info-graphics and bits of information about inequality”, so I thought I’d help out a bit with this neat little graph (the little blue dots represent American states). Citing New Economics Foundation, Resolution Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Sunny Hundal points out that:

The problem is that we conservative economic thinkers have gotten ourselves into a bungle by playing on the liberals' playing field. We have accepted that government goods are to be valued for each of us individually as a function of our income. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/flat_tax_philosophy.html#ixzz1eGOEp4K0

It has been 47 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and 46 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. And yet the political leaders of this nation of liberty cannot seem to muster the courage and principle to sweep away one remaining example of institutionalized, government-sanctioned discrimination: The 1996 law that denies the right of marriage to same-sex couples. The law, the Defense of Marriage Act, was passed in the heat of election-year fear and bigotry against men who want to marry other men, and women who want to marry other women. It was a...

A recent Eagleton Institute of Politics poll found that word choice matters when gay marriage figures into the question. According to the poll, 52 percent of N.J. residents questioned are in favor of gay marriage, but the number jumps to 61 percent when the question is framed in terms of "marriage equality". Thirty-nine percent oppose legalizing gay marriage, and only 27 percent are against marriage equality. "Framing matters, and we know that," said David Redlawsk, poll director and a professor of political science at the University....

  Health Care: Quality or Equality? David C. Stolinsky Oct. 31, 2011 Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom.− Thomas Sowell Equality and freedom are both fine-sounding words, but are they equally worthy goals? This question is crucial, because equality and freedom are in conflict. But, you ask, how can this be? That depends on how you define equality. If equality is defined the way it was in my youth, it means equality before the law, and equality of opportunity. It...

As President Obama continues to base his reelection hopes on resentment toward the “1 percent” who are supposedly not “paying their fair share,” the latest evidence suggests that his attacks are still off-target. According to data just released by the Tax Foundation, the top 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans earned 16.9 percent of all adjusted gross income in the United States. While no doubt that’s a lot of money, it actually represents a decline from 2008, when the rich earned 20 percent of all income. That’s right; the rich are earning a smaller proportion of U.S. income. In fact,...

There are fewer millionaires in America today – can you hear the celebration at the Blue Heron farm on Martha’s Vineyard where the Obama family is spending someone’s millions? Obama at Blue Heron Farm - 2009 Pullout quote: For the past three decades, the political left has obsessed about income inequality. As the economy experienced one of the largest and lengthiest economic booms in history from 1982-2007, the left moaned that the gains went to yacht club members. Well, if equality of income is the priority, liberals should be thrilled with the last four years. Wall Street Journal (great article...

(And you wonder why Britain is in trouble ....) After just one day of classes at her summer school of choice, Emily Birkenshaw had already learned a crucial lesson: how to "go floppy" when facing arrest. "You're heavier then, so you can't be carried," she said, with the genuine delight of a new recruit. The 24-year-old been practising by linking arms with her classmates and singing loudly at a pretend policeman. "It just felt really empowering," she said. "If that happened [in real life] – and I hope it wouldn't – I'd know how to do it without getting hurt."...

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else; nobody was better looking than anybody else; nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

British Airways check-in clerk had been sacked for wearing 2 cm cross British Airways check-in employee Nadia Eweida is one of four Christians who have taken their discrimination claims to the European Court of Human Rights PA Christians should be given some leeway to follow their beliefs in the workplace, the UK’s equality watchdog has determined. The Equality and Human Rights Commission said judges had interpreted the law “too narrowly” in cases where Christians had claimed religious discrimination. It is backing four British Christians who have lodged religious discrimination cases with the European Court of Human Rights. They are Nadia...

The UK Government is to abide by a European ruling on the use of gender in insurance, although it says the judgment goes against common sense. In March 2011, the European Court of Justice ruled in a test case known as the Test-Achats case that from 21 December 2012 insurers will no longer be able to use gender as a factor in the calculation of premiums and benefits. The decision will affect the way insurers price life and critical illness policies, annuities, private medical insurance, travel insurance, motor insurance and other types of cover where data shows that the sex...

The other day a friend was telling me about her friend that quit her high-paying marketing job because she absolutely refused to pay her lazy husband alimony after finally kicking him out of the house. Then last night I ran across this story on The Huffington Post examining if it’s fair for women who make more money not to pay alimony or manimony as they are dubbing it? Why should it be any different than when a man makes more and divorces? From The Huffington Post: “There really are two valid sides to this argument. If you think about it,...

I’m gonna be upfront here. Don’t read this if you are faint of heart or can’t handle true things. There are gonna be things called facts strewn about and they may hurt. I’m just sayin’. I remember awhile back tellin’ my wife that I thought she was one of the reasons that our education system isn’t doing as well as we would like. She looked at me and asked “Why?” I said, “Because you are a woman.” I had to walk home, but I have my reasons. You see, in the “old days” women really were discriminated against in the...

Father of two girls, President Barack Obama says he wants to improve the status of women in the United States.

In Iowa, girls can now wrestle with boys—and not just in cars in the parking lot at the Friday night dance. But in the rings and on the mats. The news reports that one young man refused to wrestle with his female opponent in the State final. He did so because he was a gentleman of the Old School. We commend him. But his forfeit allowed the girl to “win,” thus beginning an accumulation of statistics showing equality between girls and boys. Of course, at the distant end of the 1970s at good old St. Mary’s High where yours truly...

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” These are the words inscribed on the Liberty Bell. Today they ring like feel good fluff to commemorate a nation liberated from a far away king, but that was not their original purpose, nor was it the reason they were inscribed on the bell. The words come from Chapter 25 of Leviticus. It behooves all who love liberty to read this chapter carefully, for it contains the keys to make liberty work for centuries at a time, to prevent the descent into oligarchy or the converse evils of...

In the midst of the Republican move to repeal last year’s health care legislation, several Democratic members of Congress advanced their case for the Constitutionality of the legislation. Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) sought to rebut the Republican case for repealing the law by arguing that “the right to health care is mandated by the Constitution.” As Lewis sees it, “The Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. That means if one person has health insurance then it is the government’s responsibility to make sure everyone has it.” The Congressman rejected the GOP claim that forcing a person to...

Women 'want rich husbands, not careers': New survey claims drive for gender equality is a myth By Eleanor Harding Last updated at 11:05 AM on 4th January 2011 Woman still want to ‘marry up’ and naturally choose husbands who earn more than themselves, a report suggests. The idea of most women wanting to be financially independent is a myth, according to Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics. Despite years of equality campaigning, more women are choosing to marry wealthy men than in the 1940s, the expert claims. In her report, published by the Centre for Policy Studies think...

If you do the crime, you do not do the time, you simply pay. If you pay less than all of what you made that is a good business practice today. A kid in the ghetto boosts a car and goes to Attica State Penitentiary for 8 years. Where is the equal application of the law? It simply isn’t in this time period, the darkest period of finance in human history.

Did you know that there are, "reportedly," groups that are exempt from the Obamacare requirement to own health insurance? I say this, mindful that Nancy Pelosi declared "we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it." It passed and we are still trying to find out what's in it. But, according to Sally Pipes in her book, The Truth About Obamacare, some religious groups are exempt from the mandate to own health care. Groups such as "Christian Scientists, who are uncomfortable with modern medicine, as well as Scientologists, whose criticisms are less clear, and Muslims who might...

It is time we make ourselves more equal! And perhaps relocate the UN to Somalia. The United Nations must abandon decadent New York City and relocate to some less-expensive place more in keeping with its lofty humanitarian principles. As a side benefit, the UN headquarters will become a really cool mega-mosque-community center where people of every race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and ideology can come together in peace and harmony — as they now do so effectively at the UN. Even though not as close to Ground Zero as some desire, it will be a compromise welcomed by all. Somalia comes...

"Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." — Alexis de Tocqueville Alexis (July 29, 1805 – April 16, 1859) was a French political historian best known for, 'Democracy in America' (Two Volumes: 1835 and 1840) and 'The Old Regime and the Revolution' (1856). In both works, he researched the state and...

There is a certain way that philosophers talk that make them sound, to outsiders, like they’re spouting nonsense. Take David Miller, for example. He writes on the subject of equality in Philosophy and Politics: "Complex equality…recognizes a number of relevant dimensions along which individuals may be scored, but it does not insist that scores be equalized along any dimension in particular. Instead it claims that overall equality can be achieved by counterbalancing among the different dimensions. If the dimensions are independent, in the sense that there is no connections between how a person performs on one and how he performs...

"Equality" is the main justification for racist aggression.

Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany’s law requiring the mother’s approval for a single father to be granted parental rights violated the European Union’s charter prohibiting discrimination. Now Germany’s highest court has followed suit declaring the scheme unconstitutional. Read about it here (Der Spiegel, 8/4/10). As things have stood to date, a single man who fathered a child had to apply to the government for parental rights which were only granted if the mother signed off on them. Radically discriminatory as that system was, it somehow lasted until now. The government is now at work...

In general, low self-esteem and a lack of self-love are the basis for the ideology of liberals. Liberals are those who would use government to reduce the freedoms of some people to provide benefits for others. Liberals argue for fairness and equality for all people, but neither is possible. Other than identical twins all people are genetically different and without exception each has unique life experiences that are interpreted differently. We are necessarily and naturally unequal in a worldly sense. (If "all men are created equal" in a Godly sense nothing more needs to be done to ensure it.) Liberals,...

Individual liberty vs. coercive social equality -- that's pretty much the uber-debate and story of the past 220 years! Freedom for the individual to economically and socially rise or fall, based on justice and the merits -- or at least based on the fairly-reliable and relatively-fair opinions of the free market and free society -- is the great political and social goal of all time. Forced equality of the individual with his fellows -- based on some sort of allegedly-wise-and-virtuous tyrannical and coercive government social mechanism -- is the all-time great evil.

Federal Judge: Cheerleading Is Not a SportJudge Says Calling Cheerleading a Sport Violates Federal Gender-Equality Rules By RUSSELL GOLDMAN June 21, 2010 A judge in Connecticut has ruled cheerleading is not a sport -- and universities therefore cannot direct money to the activity to meet federal gender-equality regulations. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled Wednesday that Quinnipiac University violated the law when it pulled funding from its women's volleyball team to support a competitive cheerleading squad. "I conclude as a matter of law that Quinnipiac University discriminated on the basis of sex during the 2009-10 academic years by failing to...

HOW IS it,’’ the great English man of letters Samuel Johnson taunted Americans 235 years ago, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’’ His fellow Englishman Thomas Day remarked in 1776 with equal scorn: “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independency with the one hand and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.’’ That America’s founders were hypocrites, above all on the subject of race, is an enduring charge. Examples are legion. At a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society rally in 1854,...

Phyllis Chesler and I weren't the only ones talking about "honor killings" in the western world yesterday. So was John Oakley, the host of Toronto's Number One talk-radio morning show: John Oakley is seriously entertaining the question of whether Canadian judges should give those who commit "honour" killings a break because they have different "cultural practices" and may not be aware of our norms and laws; defence attorney Lawrence Ben-Eliezer thinks judges should take these differences into consideration because we have "multiculturalism". Before we had "multiculturalism", weren't we also supposed to have something called "equality before the law"? When I...

Ottawa has a new rule on the books for kids playing league soccer. Any team that goes ahead by more than five goals loses. Yes, dear reader, your eyes do not deceive you. Parents who used to shout “You can do it!” will now be required to yell, “Equality! Equality!” Kidding! I’m kidding—but only about the cheering. Ottawa club director Sean Cale said “the league’s 12-person board of directors is not trying to take the fun out of the game, they are simply trying to make it fair.” How could this have happened? Well, Ottawa is the home of Canada’s...

Behind the social justice banner lurks an ugly choice. Nineteenth century French thinker Frederic Bastiat's summation of free will is quite succinct: "Society has for its element man, who is a free agent; and since man is free, he may choose -- since he may choose, he may be mistaken -- since he may be mistaken, he may suffer." A basic understanding of free will elicits a particular truth about God's ordained relationship with man: that He wishes for us to obey Him, but for us to obey Him freely. Can a comprehension of free will -- of our relationship...

Milton Friedman gives his brilliant assessment of equality in the context of inherited wealth. Thomas Sowell ...

A female named Harriet Harman at England’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission has discovered a new method of producing inequality under the law. She has codified this method—England’s version of a legal patent—in a Parliamentary procedure called an “Equality Bill.” England, like many European countries, has proudly led the way in producing unequal treatment under the law for its citizens in the name of “Equality.” The law mandates that organizations consider the “impact” of their policies on “minority” groups. This method of inequality was, of course, already well known. Harman’s genius was to insist that any group which holds distinct...

In a World gone mad with diversity, perhaps it is time to introduce a modicum of discretion. Perhaps in a World of universal acceptance, the time has come to find a place for discrimination. Before anybody starts screaming, “Bigot, hater, racist, Neanderthal, knuckle-dragger,” or whatever epithet is in vogue for those refusing to fall before today’s universal thought police, let me point out that once upon a time having a discriminating taste for certain things was considered prudent and the sign of sophistication. By discrimination I mean setting standards to be met, another concept that has died in this equal...

A recent flap in a Berkeley high school reveals what a farce “fairness” can be. Because this is ultra-liberal Berkeley, perhaps we should not be surprised that a proposal has been made to eliminate four jobs as science teachers and use the money saved for programs to help low achievers. In Berkeley, as in many other communities across the country, black and Latino students are not performing as well as Asian and white students. In fact, the racial gap in academic achievement at Berkeley High School is the highest in California — no doubt a special source of embarrassment in...

Pope Benedict XVI speaks with Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown during their meeting at the Vatican Feb. 19, 2009. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters) Pope Benedict XVI has again shown just how necessary and effective it can be to speak out in the face of unjust legislation against the Church. The British government today backed down from pursuing parts of its Equality Bill, legislation which would have removed the Church’s right to refuse employing certain lay staff including, for instance, the right of a Catholic school to employ a Catholic as a head teacher. The government’s decision came after a...

The mayor of San Diego testified Tuesday that his views on same-sex marriage evolved after he learned one of his daughters was a lesbian. Mayor Jerry Sanders took the witness stand on behalf of two same-sex couples suing to overturn Proposition 8... "I had been prejudiced," he said. "I was saying one group of people did not deserve the same respect, did not deserve the same symbolism of marriage, and I was saying their marriages were less important than those of heterosexuals."... Sanders, a Republican, now believes it's in the interest of government to support same-sex marriage. A former police...

England is about to—it hurts to type this—Unleash Aspiration! According to the Daily Mail: Labour will declare war on the benefits of a middle class childhood today as Gordon Brown spells out the latest steps in the government’s equality crusade. Top lawyers, accountants, bankers and doctors will be ordered to draw up plans to make sure that their professions become less elitist – so they employ fewer middle class children. Professionals will be told that poor children must be helped into the top jobs, at the expense of those who have benefited from their personal connections or education. Universities will...

Soaring expectations about the effect of the first black president on U.S. race relations have collided with a more mundane reality, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. On the eve of President Obama's inauguration a year ago, nearly six in 10 Americans said his presidency would advance cross-racial ties. Now, about four in 10 say it has done so. The falloff has been highest among African Americans. Last January, three-quarters of blacks said they expected Obama's presidency to help. In the new poll, 51 percent of African Americans say he has helped, a wider gap between expectations and...

Barack Obama’s quest and campaign promise to “fundamentally change the United States” is in full swing. It is not a new effort and the change has been underway for years. The changes are simple; what is underway is a redefinition of the term equality in the American psyche. Equality is defined as a state of being essentially equal or equivalent; equally balanced; “on a par with the best.” Our founding documents are sprinkled with the sentiment of equality. On par with the best, particularly, harkens to the development of a society where no matter your station of birth one could...

A philosophically contradictory, but the most desired, definition of equality is with respect to outcomes. Applied to individuals unconditionally, equality fails immediately for the obvious reason that no two individuals can be identical, and therefore they can never be equal. For example, and trivially, they cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. Sensing, but not explicitly acknowledging this, equality mavens shift the burden from individuals to groups of individuals. Equality, or the lack of it, then becomes a statistical phenomenon, and logically possible, however unlikely. Suppose we are interested in the equality of outcome for some specific measure, say, a score...

LONDON (CNS) -- The Catholic bishops of England and Wales said they could be at risk of prosecution under a proposed law unless they accept women, sexually active gays and transsexuals as candidates to the priesthood. They made their claims in a briefing for Catholic members of the House of Lords, Britain's upper political chamber, ahead of a scheduled Dec. 15 debate on the Equality Bill, which aims to stamp out discrimination in the workplace. The bishops said the bill defines priests as employees rather than officeholders. Under the terms of the bill, the church would be immune from prosecution...

WND reports that "A school district in Arizona has come under fire after a newspaper columnist highlighted the district's newly adopted racial policy and called it a "two-tiered form of student discipline: one for black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else." According to the columnist [Doug MacEachern] "TUSD [Tucson Unified School District] principals and disciplinarians…are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students…Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student's skin." School district officials claim they are just trying to correct racial discrimination in...