Month: November 2017 – כ״ו במרחשוון תשע״ח

Walter Williams: American Blacks Are Useful Idiots for Socialism

Stalking Horses

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November 15, 2017

When hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their prey. They would synchronize their steps on the side of the horse away from their prey until they were close enough for a good shot. A stalking horse had a double benefit if the prey was an armed person. If the stalkers were discovered, it would be the horse that took the first shot. That’s what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America — stalking horses. Let’s look at it.

I’ll just list a few pieces of the leftist agenda that would be unachievable without black political support. Black people are the major victims of the grossly rotten education in our big-city schools. The average black 12th-grader can read, write and compute no better than a white seventh- or eighth-grader. Many black parents want better and safer schools for their children. According to a 2015 survey of black parents, 72 percent “favor public charter schools, and 70 percent favor a system that would create vouchers parents could use to cover tuition for those who want to enroll their children in a private or parochial school” (http://tinyurl.com/y7d57cbg). Black politicians and civil rights organizations fight tooth and nail against charter schools and education vouchers. Why? The National Education Association sees charters and vouchers as a threat to its education monopoly. It is able to use black politicians and civil rights organizations as stalking horses in its fight to protect its education monopoly.

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 was the nation’s first federally mandated minimum wage law. Its explicit intent was to discriminate against black construction workers. During the legislative debate on the Davis-Bacon Act, quite a few congressmen, along with union leaders, expressed their racist intentions. Rep. Miles Allgood, D-Ala., said: “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” American Federation of Labor President William Green said, “Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.”

The Davis-Bacon Act is still law today. Supporters do not use the 1931 racist language to support it. Plus, nearly every black member of Congress supports the Davis-Bacon Act. But that does not change its racially discriminatory effects. In recent decades, the Davis-Bacon Act has been challenged, and it has prevailed. That would not be the case without unions’ political and financial support to black members of Congress to secure their votes.

Crime is a major problem in many black neighborhoods. In 2016, there were close to 8,000 blacks murdered, mostly by other blacks (http://tinyurl.com/y8snbfga). In that year, 233 blacks were killed by police. Which deaths receive the most attention from politicians, civil rights groups and white liberals and bring out marches, demonstrations and political pontification? It’s the blacks killed by police. There’s little protest against the horrible and dangerous conditions under which many poor and law-abiding black people must live. Political hustlers blame their condition on poverty and racism — ignoring the fact that poverty and racism were much greater yesteryear, when there was not nearly the same amount of chaos. Also ignored is the fact that the dangerous living conditions worsened under a black president’s administration.

There are several recommendations that I might make. The first and most important is that black Americans stop being useful tools for the leftist hate-America agenda. As for black politicians and civil rights leaders, if they’re going to sell their people down the river, they should demand a higher price. For example, if black congressmen vote in support of the Davis-Bacon Act, they ought to demand that construction unions give 30 percent of the jobs to black workers. Finally, many black problems are exacerbated by white liberal guilt. White liberals ought to stop feeling guilty so they can be more respectful in their relationships with black Americans.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

How Charedi Politicians Are Born and Stillborn

Charedi politicians; where do they come from? Not all of them had money, not all of them were bench-warmers in Yeshiva, not all of them had connections.

It appears many of them started out managing a Gemach (money or item loans), as a Gabbai of a Shul, as a Gabbai of a Rebbe (with variations), etc.

So if you know a young member of a Charedi party, with a flair for organizing and managing and the will to power, I would recommend starting the opposition research early. This can be used simply for convincing them to stay away from politics. Play the long game.

A word to my wise readers…

Jews Have What to Learn from the Bedouin

Protecting our honor

There once lived a rich and powerful man. One day, bandits stole a water jug; but instead of taking it back and punishing the bandits — which would have been easy, since he had many sons — he said “it’s only a jug, it’s not worth a fight. Anyway, I have more jugs.” Then they took a goat. “Oh well, I have more goats, and after all the bandits were hungry,” he said. The next day he woke up to find himself outside his tent, and that they’d killed his sons, and taken his camels, his goats and his wives to boot. Then, since he had no goods, no sons and no honor, they killed him. – Bedouin story

And as everyone knows, Israel was the only country out of the 48 that competed that was not permitted to have her flag on their uniforms or to have her national anthem played when they won. Instead, our athletes were required to compete under the flag of the International Judo Federation (IJF). The name “Israel” or our flag does not appear in the tournament’s standings on the IJF website, where Israel is listed as “IJF”.

Apparently, this was the result of a demand by the host, the United Arab Emirates. The IJF objected but apparently wasn’t prepared to go to the mat over the issue (so to speak) by sanctioning the UAE in any meaningful way.

Some may say that the UAE is just a few camels, fancy architecture and sand floating on a lake of petroleum. Israel, on the other hand, is a world power in many fields including Judo, and there is no reason to get upset. When the oil dries up the skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi will collapse from lack of maintenance, while Israel will continue to excel in Judo and Nobel Prizes.

But this isn’t trivial and should not be allowed to pass. It should not be treated as business as usual by Israelis, who are so used to being insulted and shamed that they barely react.

This is the Middle East, and nothing here is more important than honor, whether it be the honor of an individual, a clan or a nation. A person that does not maintain his honor does not have a right to keep his possessions or even his life. A nation that loses its honor can be bombarded with missiles and can have its citizens stabbed and run down in the streets. Why not? Such a nation is nothing and its people have no rights.

Honor and deterrence are two sides of the same coin. A country that doesn’t retaliate for injuries done to its people invites more of the same.

Honor can be lost in many ways. Public insults such as the one delivered by the UAE and countless other Arab and Muslim entities around the world, day in and day out, are attacks on Israel’s honor. Palestinian Authority maps that don’t show Israel and veneration of terrorists as military heroes chip away at our honor. “Anti-normalization” activities in the PA and countries with which we supposedly have “peace,” Egypt and Jordan, constitute attacks on it. BDS tells its adherents to treat us as nothing and nobody in the hopes that if everyone did that we would disappear.

PA Arabs and Bedouins systematically steal cars and agricultural equipment and produce in Israel. What we call “crime” is often a form of warfare, because one of the first objectives of warfare in the Middle East – before the physical destruction of an enemy – is the destruction of his honor. A man or nation that can’t keep its possessions loses honor as well.

Israel’s Western idea of justice works against it. Marwan Barghouti sits in jail and could very well be freed by political pressure after he was convicted of five murders, four Jews and a Greek monk (he was accused of responsibility for 26 murders as head of the “Tanzim” organization). National honor demands a death penalty for nationalistic murders like those committed by Barghouti.

That is not the only way that Israel has diminished herself in Middle Eastern eyes. The recent debacle over metal detectors and cameras at the Western Wall – where Israel allowed herself to be forced to back down from taking very reasonable security measuresby threats of Arab violence – was simply a disaster for our honor and deterrence. And everyone remembers the deal in which Israel released more than 1000 security prisoners, including numerous murderers, as ransom for one soldier held by Hamas, Gilad Shalit.

There are even major strategic decisions that work against us. Iron Dome is wonderful, but what is the message it sends when we cower behind it instead of striking out and destroying Hamas’ ability to shoot at us? What does it mean that despite tunnel-digging and rocket manufacturing, we continue to supply necessities of life to Hamas-controlled Gaza? The message, in case it’s not obvious, is simple: Sure, go ahead, it’s OK to shoot at Jews. They don’t even shoot back.

Loss of honor is not only dangerous for us a residents of the Middle East. Europe also gets the message, despite its pretence of enlightenment. While Europeans don’t shoot bullets at us (yet), they shoot Euros by way of the countless subversive organizations they support and their “humanitarian” assistance to the PA. They know that they can do whatever they want because we don’t fight back (I try to avoid EU products in the supermarket, and you should too).

All of these decisions are “rational” ones. It would be a problem for us if we destroyed Hamas. Who would govern Gaza? There is great political pressure from families of captured Israelis; how can we abandon them? What if there are riots at the Temple Mount? The police are always short of manpower, so there is only so much they can do about car theft and agricultural crime.

All of these are legitimate considerations, but decisions are made without taking into account the intangible, but very real aspect of honor.

I am not sure what we can do to the UAE over the slight we received in Abu Dhabi, but we should find something and do it. Israelis like to say the equivalent of “don’t sweat the little stuff (and everything is little stuff).” But in this case the sum total of the little stuff is a big thing. If we don’t act, we will wake up one day and find ourselves outside our tent, with no sons, no wives and no camels.

From Abu Yehuda, here.