The Legacy of Racist Eugenics in North Carolina under the Democratic Party

Reading The Wall Street Journal this morning during a visit to an American friend, I came across an article by Valerie Bauerlein with the headline “North Carolina Atones For Its Sterilizations” (behind the paywall, so you likely won’t be able to read it unless you are a subscriber). The upshot of it is, while most states suspended their eugenics programs in the 1940s after the Nazis discredited the eugenics movement, North Carolina actually ramped up its forced sterilization program after WWII, and continued sterilizing citizens through the 1960s before finally ending the program in 1974. While blacks made up 25% of North Carolina’s population, over 60% of those sterilized were blacks.

So me being me, I announced to my wife and friend, “I’ll bet you North Carolina was run by Democrats”. Immediately, the friend, a political “moderate”, said “you don’t know that, I’ll bet you are wrong”, the pop culture propaganda pinning racist rule on Republicans being that strong. So, I headed to Google. And lo and behold, what did I find: North Carolina was run by Democrat governors from 1901 until 1973. Yes, in the first year of a Republican governor after 73 years of Democrat rule, the forced sterilization program of largely black citizens was ended.

“OK, that’s the governors. But the legislature really runs the state. Which party was in charge of the legislature?”

Google once again: the North Carolina legislature switched from Democrat to Republican control in 2011, after more than 100 years of Democrat rule.

Further proof that pop culture propaganda usually trumps truth, that monstrous anti-human policies almost always come from the left, and that the left has always found a welcome home in the Democratic party.

UPDATE: I have been informed by the husband of the friend, a Democrat, of the following: the Democrats used to be racists, but they switched to being the not-racists when the racist Republicans took over as the racist party. Oh, the tortured logic you’re forced to believe on the left!

A blow to liberal fascism in Canada: Moon recommends repeal of 13

November 25, 2008 was a momentous day for opponents of Canada’s creeping march towards liberal fascism. A week after administrators at one of our most prestigious post-secondary institutions, Queens University, sent a gang of thought police out to campus cafeterias and lounges to eavesdrop on private conversations, the long-awaited Moon Report on the future of the Canada Human Rights Commission was released to the public (read the full report here). Despite the fact that the Commission’s own leader hand-picked the report’s left-leaning law professor writer, and paid him handsomely with Commission funds, Prof. Richard Moon made explicit in no uncertain terms in his report: the now world-famous Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act must be repealed! (More details in op-eds from Ezra Levant and the National Post Editorial Board).

Amazingly, the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s chairwoman Jennifer Lynch, seems ready to throw the report down the memory hole, and start again in her attempt to whitewash the fascism of Section 13 and preserve the legal activist community’s make-work racket. In this context, it’s not hard to understand why Canada’s “official Jews” (a term coined by Levant that I have gratefully adopted) continue to wage battle against those who wish to strip the Human Rights Act of its most heavy-handed powers of summary execution. Here’s the official response of Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress – an organization that clearly has the interests of lawyers and leftists, rather than Jews as a whole, at heart. Typical response of liberals to failure – double-down on the rejected policy, and blame the problems on “poor implementation” (reminiscent of Barack Obama’s upcoming return to the New Deal in America).

Farber may be the most egregious proponent of Section 13, but he’s not alone. Leo Adler, head of the Canadian branch of Rabbi Marvin Hier’s excellent L.A.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has tarnished his organization through vocal support. The B’nai Brith, a Jewish community and charitable organization to which I belong, has also supported the draconian speech code law. I’ll be following Levant, and doing what I can to hit these organizations in the pocketbook. I will be doing my best to participate in his “Jews against book burning” campaign, and ensure that no donated funds of mine will go to the CJC or Friends of Simon Wiesenthal (who is probably turning in his grave at Adler’s antics) until their policies change.

In the meantime, I look forward to the law’s repeal in Parliament. Get it on the agenda, Mr. Harper!

The Same-Sex Marriage Catastrophe: Dennis Prager on California’s Supreme Court Decision

It’s a very, very difficult thing to win an argument against same-sex marriage pushers – particularly when so many conservatives have thrown up the white flag and completely turtled on the issue (yes, that includes you, Hon. Stephen Harper). But no one is going to convince me that it is simply “progress” that must be accepted. As I’ve said on the issue for years: why do we so rashly overturn an institution that has served our society so well for thousands of years, and why can’t we have a mature conversation about it without accusations of “homophobia” being tossed in as a debate-stopping grenade?

In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s 4-3 split decision last week overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Dennis Prager, perhaps the most clear-thinking, articulate social conservative in America today, dedicated his column this week to the topic, giving an eloquent but sharp explanation as to why the concept is simply wrong, and why it still needs to be fought. Worth a complete read; particularly if you are one of those “aw, it’s no big deal” types. Some excerpts:

Since the secular age began, the notion that one should look to religion — or to any past wisdom — for one’s values has died. Thus, the modern attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian value system as the basis of America’s values, and to disparage the Founders as essentially morally flawed individuals (They allowed slavery, didn’t they?). The modern secular liberal knows that he is not only morally superior to conservatives; he is morally superior to virtually everyone who ever lived before him.

…

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

…

We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.” All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

Anticipating reactions to this column — as to all defenses of man-woman marriage — that it or its author are “homophobic,” i.e., bigoted and unworthy of respectful rejoinder, it is important to reaffirm that nothing written here is implicitly, let alone explicitly, anti-gay. I take it as axiomatic that a gay man or woman is created in God’s image and as precious as any other human being. And I readily acknowledge that it is unfair when an adult is not allowed to marry the love of his or her choice. But social policy cannot be made solely on the basis of eradicating all of life’s unfairness. Thus, we must love the gay person — and his and or her partner as well. But we must never change the definition of marriage. The price to society and succeeding generations will be too great.

And don’t forget the law of unintended consequences – no one knows the full scope of the problems that will be unleashed. And don’t tell me that “the sky didn’t fall in” here in Ontario; it’s only been a couple of years. Get back to me when a generation has been raised in a same-sex environment.

Lorrie Goldstein on Global Warming/Climate Change: The Perfect Propaganda Tool for the Anti-Capitalists

Check out this brilliant piece today by one of Canada’s best columnists, Lorrie Goldstein of The Toronto Sun. Cutting right to the heart of the issue, Goldstein identifies the one thing we know for sure about the “science” of Global Warming/Climate Change: that it is a dishonestly-manipulated propaganda tool used by the anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-American left to further its political goals:

Cool the climate hysteria

‘Every generation needs a holier-than-thou, ideological mantra … to wrap themselves virtuously’

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

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Global warming is the gift that keeps on giving to climate hysterics.

For those already pre-disposed to being anti-western, anti-development, anti-growth, anti-capitalist and most of all, anti-U.S., it’s the perfect propaganda tool.

After all, as they screech, the survival of the Earth itself is at stake and they alone are on the side of the angels. They alone care about the legacy we will leave our grandchildren.

To this crowd, the rest of us are “climate deniers,” in a league with the devil, in the pay of Big Oil and out to destroy … uh … ourselves.

Even better for climate hysterics, they will never be called to account for their simple-minded campaign to demonize fossil fuels, which is aimed more at arbitrarily controlling human behaviour — and for so-called “green” politicians, raising taxes — than reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

That’s because everyone alive today will be dead long before we know how much of the scientific “consensus” on global warming is correct.

Over the short term — and when talking about climate change, this means considerably longer than the life span of everyone now on the planet — we know that no matter what we do, GHG emissions, which are cumulative and last for anywhere from 50 to thousands of years in the atmosphere, will continue to rise for many decades, along with global temperatures. That would be true even if we were reducing emissions now, which, for all the shouting, we aren’t.

But beyond that — and that there will be a significant impact on climate, and us — the scientific “consensus” touted by climate hysterics abruptly ends.

HUGE UNKNOWNS

There are huge unknowns, competing theories and debates within the scientific community about what will happen, where, when and how severe.

The insistence of climate hysterics (and opportunistic politicians) that the debate over anthropogenic global warming is “over” — aimed at replacing rational decision-making with “do as we say” diktats — is laughable.

If it’s “over,” why are governments still spending billions of our tax dollars researching it, dwarfing anything spent by the fossil fuel industry, which climate hysterics would have us believe is funding anyone who doesn’t bow before them? The reason for all this publicly funded research is because of all that we don’t know.

But what we do know is that what the hysterics claim, that virtually any weather phenomenon today is “proof” of man-made climate change — harsh winters, mild winters, dry spells, wet spells, more snow, less snow, heat waves, cold snaps, you name it — is nonsense.

The climate is always changing and was changing long before we arrived. Plus, weather isn’t climate, something hysterics (and pseudo-green media) mention when it suits them, ignore when it doesn’t.

Ultimately, responding to global warming is a political issue.

In that context, as retired U.S. foreign service officers Teresa Chin Jones (who holds a doctorate in chemistry) and David T. Jones, wrote perceptively in their 2007 article “The Zen of Global Warming” (available at AmericanDiplomacy.org):

“It appears that every generation needs a holier-than-thou, ideological mantra … with which to wrap themselves virtuously, while belabouring their opponents as the political equivalent of demonically possessed …

“Pick your weapon/words and come out slanging. In this regard, the Kyoto agreement and global warming have become among the most knife-edged shibboleths of the current culture wars.

“To complicate matters, global warming and its political surrogate (the Kyoto accord) appear to have become aspects of bilateral differentiation between nations — distinguishing the moral, environmentally-conscious, energy-conserving Kyoto cultists, from the right-wing, gun-toting yahoos and Kyoto-deniers epitomized by the United States.”

POPULATION IS INCREASING

They argue for a pragmatic approach — energy conservation and industrial innovation to develop alternative energy sources, based on the precautionary principle that, regardless of global warming theory, we know the Earth’s population is increasing and that non-renewable energy sources (oil, coal, natural gas) are precisely that — non-renewable.

“In short, we do not need a new ‘Crusade’,” they conclude, “but rather, a new Industrial Revolution.”

Exactly. One based on technological innovation, that climate hysterics — their Luddite heads filled with dangerous notions that humanity can be returned to a pre-industrial, pastoral state — will fight every step of the way. Ironic, isn’t it?

Ottawa Citizen’s John Robson: Brilliant column on Free Speech & Radical Islam

Bravo, John Robson! I highly recommend reading this informative, hilarious, and spot-on column, “Self-censorship? Me? Absolutely!”, in which he exposes the insanity of Canada’s Human Rights Tribunals, and the sickening attack on free speech by radical Islam. (h/t National Newswatch)

Really, a masterpiece. I’m going to start looking out for John’s columns every week from here on in.

Friday, December 14, 2007

What can I say about hate speech investigations into Maclean’s magazine?

I mean that literally. This used to be a free country where we had the hard-won right to speak our minds without fear. But now the Canadian Islamic Congress has complained about a Mark Steyn piece in Maclean’s to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal and to the Canadian and Ontario Human Rights Commissions and, according to Maclean’s national editor Andrew Coyne, the first two have agreed to “launch inquiries” into the complaints while the third is dithering. The CHRC, incidentally, won’t confirm or deny this claim. Something about open government, I believe.

Now what? If I write about censorship will the censors censor that? If I were to defend someone’s right in principle to be rude about radical Islam, it might constitute my being rude in practice about radical Islam which might be misunderstood by hypersensitive types as rudeness toward Islam generally which might be misunderstood as hate speech rather than just bad manners. Who knows?

All in all it’s much safer to write about daisies. Such pretty flowers. They are members of the Asteraceae family, the second-largest family of flowering plants after Orchidaceae. You may be thinking the common daisy, white with a yellow centre, is nice but bland. But my goodness, get into African daisies and painted daisies (a.k.a. “tansies”) and the ox-eye and the spectacular Glebionis carinata and what a feast for the eye. None of them file hate speech complaints with aggressive paralegal tribunals either. What’s not to like?

The issue here is not whether I want to say, for instance, that contrary to some ignorant stereotypes the Prophet Muhammad was a really nice guy, a teddy bear in fact. It is whether if I say such a thing I may be hauled before some tribunal to answer for the fact that in Sudan I would have a mob howling for my blood, or because I didn’t say Peace Be Upon Him.

So I refuse to be drawn into any sort of debate about what might be causing image problems for the Islamic faith. Not that it has any. My lips are sealed on such questions as dishonour killings. I’m sticking to flowers. Or favicons, you know, those cute little icons that appear next to some of the items in your browser “Favourites” list. How, I ask you, can a business in this day and age not have a favicon? A nice blue one with white letters, or a flag, or a tiny building or something. You can even have your own picture. Unless your faith forbids depictions of the human face.

Gaaack! I didn’t say that. Nor would I dare suggest that these human rights tribunals, at once prosecutor and judge, are alien to our constitutional order and should be abolished. You see, section 48 (1) (2) of the Canadian Human Rights Act stipulates, respecting the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (to which the CHRC may refer obstinate defendants), that “Persons appointed as members of the Tribunal must have experience, expertise and interest in, and sensitivity to, human rights.” If you think that means sensitivity to ancient rights like free speech, you’re about ready for some “sensitivity” training. Not for me, thanks. I’m doing daisies.

Besides self-preservation, I’m skipping this issue because Maclean’s is a large, established organization with lots of money. Some of my media colleagues are startled that not even the big guys are immune which does, I suppose, show how the appetite grows with the eating. But I say thank goodness the Star Chambers have gone after a wealthy organization that can fight back.

No, sorry, I don’t say that. Nor would I dream of claiming it is not against the law to be rude, that it is illegal to incite violence or engage in conspiracies but it is not a crime to be impolite nor should it be. If I weren’t such a coward I might find myself hollering three once-familiar arguments about freedom of speech at legislators, judges and everyone else who supports this latter-day censorship. First, sunlight destroys evil; that is, open debate reveals which beliefs are false or odious. Second, by debating things instead of just reciting them we come to a more vigorous appreciation of those beliefs we decide are true. Third, if people are neither good nor wise enough to be entrusted with sorting out truth from falsehood (and frankness from rudeness) they cannot possibly be permitted to elect governments to do it for them.

Luckily I’m too smart to say anything of the sort. The essential point here, the legal crux of the matter, is that Canadian Islamic Congress National President Mohamed Elmasry’s feelings are hurt. Egad.

Daisies. White, purple, yellow, pink. So pretty. And freedom of speech may soon be pushing them up in this country.

John Robson‘s column appears weekly.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

Un-Chartered Waters: The Ontario Education Debate

The Ontario election campaign has heated up over the issue of education funding. John Tory came out swinging with a plan to bring religion-based independent schools into the public system – a big-government solution that should send conservatives running for the hills, and independent school administrators cowering in legitimate fear of having educrats from Queen’s Park meddling into their business.

Premier McGuinty returned with, to use a tennis metapor this U.S. Open season, a volley that caromed off his racket and into his own face, when he attacked Tory’s plan for being “divisive”. Andrew Coyne beautifully eviscerates McGuinty and his hypocricy in today’s National Post:

The position he is attempting to defend is that public funding should be available to schools professing the Catholic faith, and no other. The opposition Conservatives’ position, that funding should be available equally to all religious schools, is consistent, at least as between faiths — though why religious schools should be preferred to secular is a question the Tories might wish to answer. But the Liberal position is simply incoherent.

With Tory now in the ridiculous position of having to invent a creationism policy on the fly, it’s time to ask the question that, for all the hundreds of articles written to date, I haven’t seen asked: WHAT ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS? It’s the ultimate conservative solution to public education: let parents and communities decide how to educate their children, within the boundaries of a charter of responsibilities that include testing on the basics of the provincial curriculum.

I can only guess as to why Tory chose the big-government educrat policy over Charter schools or, at the very least, a return to the Harris/Eves tax credit scheme that was overturned by McGuinty his first days in office.

• He believed that Charter Schools were somehow “right-wing radical”, and chose what he felt was a more moderate position;
• Certain faith-based school administrators, tired of raising money privately and faced with budget crunches, convinced him that feeding them a regular stream of public dough was a great idea;
• He calculated that overturning the constitution to remove Catholic school funding would be too politically difficult, but fixing the unfairness issue this way was the next-best thing.
• He is simply another nanny-state liberal who believes that government is the answer!

The issue has done nothing to help Tory’s fortunes. It has opened up a can of worms that has made both parties look bad to various constituencies. But with the power of incumbency and the powerful inertia of the status quo behind him, a draw on this issue means McGuinty, for all his hypocricy, wins.

Where, oh where, does a small-government conservative turn? I’ll still turn to Tory. Demonizing religious education as “divisive” is as low as McGuinty has ever gone – this crass, soulless politico simply has to go. And implying that Jewish or Protestant schools should be thrown into the same category as Islamic Madrassas – that’s simply beyond the pale.

Free Speech Under Attack: Human Rights Complaint on FreeDominion.ca

 

In solidarity with my fellow Canadian bloggers, I’m re-publishing the following comments that originally appeared on FreeDominion.ca, Canada’s answer to America’s venerable but equally sensory-overloading FreeRepublic.com.

Connie Wilkins, proprietor of FreeDominion.ca, has been served with a complaint by the Human Rights Commission, a complaint initiated by a left-wing rabble-rouser named Marie-Line Gentes. She is being forced to answer for the comments of one Bill Whatcott, a notoriously hard-edged social conservative commenter. Here are the “offending” comments. (If you can figure out what the problem is here, let me know):

03/09/06 “To see the original hitting Edmonton mailboxes tonight. (warning disturbing but necessary photo) http://takebackcanada.com/whatcott.html ”

04/24/06 “I can’t figure out why the homosexuals I ran into are on the side of the Muslims. After all, Muslims who practice Sharia law tend to advocate beheading homosexuals.”

03/09/06 “I defy Islamic censorship and speak about what I believe is the truth about violent Islamism and its threat to religious liberty in Canada.”

These she added with no accreditation, but she doesn’t seem to be attributing them to Whatcott:

“How many of us pay nothing but lip service to the Muslim threat here in Canada?”
“Probably everyone want to jail a Muslim.”
“I have to ask why we are importing them here?”
“Islamic fundamentalism and its threat to Canada’s religious and civil liberties.”

Listen to an interview with Ms. Wilkins here on Rob Breakenridge’s show, linked on The London Fog. Listen to another interview with Ms. Wilkins on Michael Coren’s show here on Bluewavecanada. Read Kathy Shaidle’s Relapsed Catholic blog for more updates.

The leftist-Islamist alliance can kiss my ass!

Robert Fulford: “Ontario’s Whiff of Totalitarianism”

As I ease into my blogging career, I’ll start by simply promoting the latest column from Canada’s official B.S. detector, the legendary Robert Fulford. The ultimate lifelong insider of Canadian journalism, Fulford cast off his elite liberal credentials late in his career, and took his new-found skeptical conservatism to a regular column in Conrad Black’s upstart National Post.

Fulford’s latest column, “Ontario’s Whiff of Totalitarianism”, exposes a bizarre new waste of Ontario taxpayers’ money – “EqualityRules.ca“, which is intended to teach youngsters how to talk to one another without being mean. Fulford skewers the totalitarian impulse of Canadian liberalism:

Possibly, there are citizens who see nothing wrong here. In eroding the line between public and private life, the Ontario Women’s Directorate and Sandra Pupatello, the minister responsible for women’s issues, may reflect widespread opinion.

Officious, intrusive and presumptuous, the campaign carries more than a whiff of totalitarianism. Political reshaping of private lives has an ugly record. The Soviets believed they were creating, through education and mass media, a New Soviet Man, an industrious Marxist-Leninist whose dedication to communism would outweigh loyalties to religion, region or ethnicity. It was all a question of social engineering. Josef Skvorecky expressed that notion when he titled his much-admired 1993 novel The Engineer of Human Souls, referring to Stalin’s insistence that novelists recreate humanity in the Soviet style.

Possibly, there are citizens who see nothing wrong here? I would go even a step further. The majority of Ontario residents would find nothing wrong with this campaign. In a culture where the sanctimonious do-gooder is king, this is exactly what the people expect of their government. Thank God our liberal politicians aren’t serious Stalinists – they don’t believe in enforcement, only really stern talkings-to.