Reflections From a Murky Pond

Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is exactly what most Americans would expect it be after reading the title or seeing the cover of the book. It’s a well-crafted and articulate piece of extreme race-baiting and grievance-mongering that totally and utterly ignores reality, the antisocial, criminal, and self-destructive behaviors of the “Black Community,” and the negative consequences they suffer as a direct result of those behaviors.

The New Jim Crow is one those uncommon situation where one can judge a book by its cover.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander systematically argues that America’s judicial system “operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.” The War on Drugs, she contends, has created “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society.” Mass incarceration, and the disabilities that come with the label “felon,” serve, metaphorically, as the new Jim Crow. She further posits that “Race plays a major role-indeed, a defining role – in the current system, but not because of what is commonly understood as old-fashioned, hostile bigotry. This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial hostility – a feature it actually shares with its predecessors.”

The underlying flaw in her work and her thesis is that Mrs. Alexander willfully ignored the reality that Blacks per capita commit far more crimes than any other cultural group in America. If they being wholesale disenfranchised, and they are, it’s by their own devices and not due to any Jim Crow-esque government conspiracy of control over their population. She, like most race-baiters, Black apologists, and purveyors of “Social Justice,” always seem to see the enactment and enforcement of laws as a “lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups” when Blacks, due to their apparent propensity for criminality, are disproportionately impacted by those laws.

To follow Alexander’s logic to it’s natural conclusion we would have to declare all laws pertaining to violent crime – except, of course, any instance where the crime is White-on-Black – as racist and strike them from the books as Blacks commit approx. 50% of the violent crimes in the US despite being only 13% of the population.

However, I will without reservation concede one critical point to the author.  The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has been proven to serve no purpose and to have been a reactionary measure that needs to properly reach its sunset.

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Contrary to what one might expect, I do suggest that Americans read Michell Alexander’s work. The New Jim Crow is very well written and researched. Because it is so and because it shows exactly how professional race-baiters will match facts to their own agendas, biases, and false postulates, its an important work for Americans to read.

Tags: America | Blacks | Books & Reading | Cocaine | Crack | Crime | Drugs | Felons | Franchise | Jim Crow | Law | Michell Alexander | Politics | Race Baiting | Racial Activism | Racial Politics | Racism | Society

This entry was posted on Monday, September 2nd, 2013 at 10:07 am and is filed under Books & Reading, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

A not so fun fact of the recent 2012 Presidential Election is that Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting but narrowly “won” in several key states that did not require such ID. Conversely, Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting. That, combined with the plethora of other voting irregularities in the 2012 elections, does not look very good.

Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania total 66 electoral votes between them,don’t require voters to identify themselves, and have large population of unfranchised residents.

“Interestingly” the 66 66 electoral votes these states would, if added to Romney’s total of 205 electoral votes, would have given him 271 electoral votes, enough votes to win even without Ohio or Florida Romney, two other states without voter ID requirements and which had serious discrepancies in their voting results.

The above are the facts of the matter. That is all that they are, facts. What conclusions one draws and what actions one takes based upon those conclusions is a personal moral choice.

Tags: 2012 Elections | America | Crime | Election Fraud | Facts | Felons | Franchise | Immigration | Obama | Politics | Voting

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2013 at 9:11 am and is filed under 2012 Election. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I am always confused by the general lack of understanding of risks, threats, and dangers shown by Liberals and Progressives in their oft-times strident public discourse. They would, if they could, disarm the American population and yet, at the same time, they rant about any sort of checks or restrictions placed upon people’s privilege of voting. This makes it obvious that they have no idea of what are dangerous weapons.

A rational, thinking American can easily answer the question of which is more dangerous and has greater body count to it record, firearms or franchise. That answer, easily arrived at by normal Americans, is franchise. Liberals and Progressives, contrariwise, will look confused and say something to the effect that firearms are dangerous and kill people and voting isn’t dangerous. Indeed, if one poses one of the Left such a question they will look at you as if you’re the one who’s insane.

This is more than a little strange since the only Republican they’ve ever claimed to have liked, President Lincoln, is often misquoted by them as saying that, “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

There defense of free and unrestrained or controlled voting and attack upon most, if not all, forms of civilian ownership of firearms is also strange and either stupid or hypocritical in the light of their still ongoing attacks upon President George Bush, Jr.. They still, to this day, call him a war criminal and a mass murderer; “Bush lied and people died!” is still their refrain, and their boy, Obama, successfully got their votes by campaigning against President Bush twice, even though in neither case was President Bush his opponent. As President Bush was elected to office, as were the Congresses that approved all of his actions, the Liberals’ and Progressives’ attitudes make no sense at all.

Insofar as I can see, if these Leftists really wanted to restrict access to dangerous weapons, they’d be willing to start with restricting access to the ballot instead of the bullet as elected officials are far more dangerous than any man or woman with gun.

Tags: America | Crime | Death | Firearms | Franchise | Gun Control | Gun Rights | Hypocrisy | Law | Liberals | Progressives | Stupidity | Voting | War

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2012 at 7:54 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Any discussion of gun control is fraught with controversy, angst, and outrage rage; that’s just the way it is in American society where Liberals have consistently tried to disarm the law abiding gun owners while decrying sterner punishments for illegal purchase, ownership, or use of firearms.

Reasonable minds, however, understand that there is room for debate and even compromise.

For example, requiring backgrounds checks for all firearm purchases and closing the “gun show loophole.” This is reasonable and can, with a little due diligence, be accomplished without trampling the Constitutional Rights enumerated in the 2nd Amendment and protected by the exercise of the same.

I’d be all in favor of this if the following preconditions were met:

1. Multi-State background check databases were made easily accessible and commercially viable portable checking “kiosks” were developed so that the requirement for a background check didn’t de facto constitute a Prior Restraint on American’s right to keep arms.
2. The exact same requirement and methodology for background checks is implemented by law at the polls for every election or referendum ballot.

The above are just simple compromises and pragmatic preconditions necessary to ensure that reasonable protective measures are emplaced on two perilous activities that Americans regularly undertake, purchasing firearms and exercising their franchise.

It seems to me that there’s little, if any, room for rational complaint about making sure the same provisions that cover firearm purchases also cover voting in elections or referendum ballots.

If the requirement for a background check is not a Prior Restraint upon American’s 2nd Amendment right then it obviously isn’t an illegal imposition on American’s privilege of voting.

Similarly, the rationale for such background checks is essentially the same for both firearms and voting. Society has long ago decided and codified into law that felons and the mentally infirm should be denied the ability to do either because either action entails significant dangers to society when undertaken by these individuals.

It’s a simple compromise that has the elegance of solving two problems with a single methodology, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing costs to all. It also has the key benefit of having checks and balances built into it since any changes to the system or procedures that might negatively impact either firearm purchases or voting would similarly affect the other.

Firearms and franchise – the more people understand the similarities between the two, the greater chance there is of a reasonable and rational set of laws regarding either or both.

Tags: 2nd Amendment | America | Conservatives | Crime | Franchise | Law | Liberals | Politics | Society | The Constitution | Voting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Universal suffrage has not served America well. It was a foolish dream to think that it would once the masses learned that they could vote themselves “bread and circuses.”

This idea that most all titularly adult American citizens should be granted their franchise without any regard for any sort of merit or flaw whatsoever is an idea that reached fruition in 1965. It’s done little but harm since then.

It is past time for America to put this damaging foolishness behind us and to recommence correctly thinking of suffrage or enfranchisement as the privilege to be earned and a duty to be exercised instead of a right to enjoyed by any and all.

Currently American law states that no US citizen having attained the age of 18 years can be denied their franchise due to their religion, race, gender, age, or failure to pay taxes or fees. These are all laudable provisions of the law because not a single one of those criteria has anything to due with personal merit or the ability of the person in question to responsibly exercise their franchise.

There are still a plethora of means by which we can regulate suffrage in order to ensure a baseline competence and responsibility within the electorate, all of which are based upon non-discriminatory displays or proofs of merit.

Tags: America | Civil Rights | Franchise | Politics | Society | Suffrage | Voting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 11:18 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.