Diversity for its own sake? Why?

With a woman on one ticket and a black on the other, let's not forget that the popular slogan that "diversity is our strength” rests on a historically and empirically unwarranted premise. The notion was started by the Marxist in the 1950’s as a divide and conquer strategy, no more no less. I remember going into the Communist Party bookstore in San Francisco as a college junior to load up on stuff for a class I was taking at Berkeley. (In those days it wasn’t completely taken over by the Marxists as it is now.) I remember seeing the “Hero Negro” comic books they’d pass out to blacks. If the Feds photographed everyone who went in and out, I’m probably on the list.

Ever since then, the Marxists have successfully pitted various groups against each other: ethnic groups, young against old, poor against the rich, gay against straight, town vs. country, anything they can find and exploit. They get all these groups discontented and clamoring for their entitlements, creating disunity. Sound familiar, say in the Obama campaign? This Marxist premise has been virtually unchallenged over this ensuing generation.

Remember Rep. Pat Schroeder’s pressure on the armed services to insert women into positions of authority in the early 1980s, just for the sake of it? This notion has spread up the chain until we see what we have today even at the presidential level.

So in the present situation, if we’re going to assert that this notion “diversity is our strength” is detrimental to the country, we will have to start at a much more foundational level than McCain’s choice for VP.

Ask any woman what she thinks of the Sarah Palin VP choice. I would wager she has a positive feeling about it. I know my wife was in tears of joy when Palin gave her acceptance speech. McCain’s political calculation is to capitalize on the discontented Hillary voters. We will see quickly what the progressives do to counteract this. You can bet they will marshal great resources to quash this threat: ** Dig dirt ** Strategic disinformation ** Put the word out to Al Qaeda in Iraq to capture or kill Palin’s son to grieve and destabilize Palin emotionally. Doing this before November 4th would be the most effective. ** Do something to destabilize her marriage, such as siren seductresses targeting her husband, lonely with the Mrs. away for weeks at a time, complete with hotel rooms with hidden video cameras to record the proceedings.

In the long run, if we have a President whose response to a crisis is to burst into tears and cease to function, then the Marxists have succeeded, and we’re fornicated. But we’ll see. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meier were pretty good leaders, so I am cautiously hopeful.

$10 gas okay with Salazar

Today's entertainment is a video clip from the floor of the US Senate that looks like an absurd skit, but it's actually Sen. Ken Salazar refusing to contemplate more drilling even if pump prices reach $10 a gallon. No kidding; see for yourself. More proof that today's omnipresent videocams are the bane of politicians who say dumb things. More proof that YouTube rocks. More election-year misery for the Democrats. Here's the Grand Junction Sentinel story with Salazar's lame excuses.

Hat tip to State Rep. Rob Witwer, who caught up my radio listeners last night on this howler from early August.

Dressed for the War Room

If you haven't visited the GOP War Room, McCain's rapid response media facility at 2810 Speer Boulevard, it's worth a look today or tomorrow as the DNC approaches its climax (orgasmic pun intended) with Obama's big stadium speech. I stopped by there on Tuesday to gather news, not make it, but Myung Kim of the Rocky was intrigued by my pro-Bush tee shirt and posted this short item about it. She also snapped a photo, but since that didn't appear, here's one of my own:

[photopress:10_of_10_terrorists_082608.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

The War Room is an impressive operation and was buzzing with activity when I was there. Mitt Romney was in front of a bunch of TV cameras in the inside studio, and Rudy Giuliani was in front of a bunch more outside, sweltering in his NYC dark suit. The place is a bit tricky to find: go north on Speer from I-25, past Zuni, then right on Firth, which curves into a sort of alley from which you enter the 2810 building on the rear, away from Speer.

As for my "10 of 10 Terrorists" shirt, the last time I wore it for anything but yard work was at the 2007 Bolder Boulder, where I figured it would stir conversation among fellow runners -- and perhaps incentivize me to run faster, lest the Bush-haters beset me. And it must have worked; I almost ran my age, 64 minutes for the 10K. Here's hoping it brings my side good luck in the much bigger race of these next ten weeks.

The myth of white racism

Editor: Is Obama in the position of Jackie Robinson, needing only tolerance from bigoted whites in order for his genius to prevail? Such was the implication, intended or not, of a Dan Haley column in the Denver Post 8/26, with which I sharply disagreed. Below, my colleague Ken Davenport deflates a far more blatant version of the same fallacy, this one from Jacob Weisberg. Of related interest is John Dendahl's post earlier this week (scroll down on our home page) flagging an important National Review piece about the darkly race-colored glasses with which the "real" Barack Obama views America and the world, according to his own autobiography.

Ken Davenport writes:

The Wall Street Journal highlights in its editorial today a quote I've read often over the past few days. It's from a piece by Jacob Weisberg that appears in the current Newsweek -- that supposed "mainstream" newsmagazine. Weisberg says this about the possibility that Obama might lose the election against John McCain:

Only some "crazy irrationality over race" could prevent Mr. Obama from winning the White House. If he does win, America will have reached post-prejudice Nirvana. "If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth," Mr. Weisberg continued. "To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline." Wow. Vote for Barack, or America is as irredeemable as many foreigners believe.

Wow is right. According to this narrative, a common one among Obama supporters, the sole reason that Obama might lose is because he's black -- and the fact that he's black should be a primary reason to vote for him in the first place. It makes little logical sense, of course -- to say on the one hand that he's the victim of prejudice and then to say that prejudice is a perfectly good -- even necessary -- justification to elect him. But so goes the emotion-powered politics of the left.

We know, of course, that racism is being practiced in this campaign -- but it isn't white racism. Its black racism, aided and abetted by a core of guilt-ridden whites like Jacob Weisberg. Blacks voted for Barack Obama 90:10 over Hillary Clinton in the primaries not because they had analyzed the Obama platform and policies and preferred them over those of Hillary Clinton, but because of the color of his skin. Period.

Obama is, in fact, largely where he is today because he is black, not in spite of it -- though as Geraldine Ferraro found out, you can't say that out loud even in today's America. So sensitive are we to even the suggestion of race that we simply can't be honest about it. And neither can Jacob Weisberg -- who suggests that America is so backward still that if Obama loses, it will be a sign of our nation's "historical decline". Oh, please.

I believe that white racism in this country is largely a myth. Yes, I admit that it still exists in the deep south to some extent, but not to the degree that the left says it does. As the Journal points out:

Virginia elected a black Governor two decades ago, and Illinois has had two black Senators. America has had two black Secretaries of State, and major corporations are run by black CEOs. No other Western democracy has done as well at opening up political, business and other arenas to minorities.

The truth is that white racism is part of an Obama narrative that is designed both to mobilize whites into casting "guilt votes" to prove our "progressiveness" as a culture, and to inculcate Obama from criticisms of all kinds and on all issues. Part of the lasting bitterness of the Hillary Clinton supporters is that every time Clinton tried to hammer Obama on policy, his supporters subtly trotted out the race card to blunt her attacks. Now that McCain is attacking Obama on taxes, energy policy and national security, you can bet that they will again be trotting out the "racism" charge against McCain in an effort to intimidate him.

It won't work, because McCain -- like an increasing number of Americans -- understands that the stakes are simply too high in this election to avoid a serious evaluation of Barack Obama on the merits. McCain knows he hasn't a racist bone in his body, and he will not be falsely bullied into changing his campaign to one of softballs and cream puffs, though the left will try and force him into just such a move. He will persist in hammering Obama on the issues and on his (lack of) experience, and will be justly rewarded for it -- because Americans instinctively know that this country is not "racist to the core". A racist nation would hardly nominate a black man for the nomination of the Democrat Party, would it?

Perhaps Jacob Weisberg should take off his own shroud of guilt and consider this: Is it not possible that if Obama loses in November it will be because he is simply not qualified to be President of the United States?

Barack's great deception

In 1995, Barack Obama published an autobiography that has sold like hotcakes and helped make him and his wife quite wealthy people. Titled Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama's book got rave reviews, just like the national address he delivered in defense of his 20 years following the spiritual leadership of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I wrote at FamilySecurityMatters.com about the Wright speech when it was delivered back in March. Now a writer with the pseudonym Michael Gledhill has written a devastating comparison of the Barack Hussein Obama appearing in Dreams and the one now appearing regularly on your TV screen and about to be officially the Democratic Party's candidate for president. It is titled "Who Is Barack Obama?" and can be found in the September 1 print issue of National Review and at this link.

Numerous analysts of Obama's writing and speechifying have noted the same strength and weakness: well-formed rhetoric pleasing to the eye or ear but lacking substance. Dreams is full of substance -- but little or none that a patriot would recognize as suitable background for a U.S. senator, let alone for someone aspiring to lead our country as its president.

Just like his wife Michelle, the Barack Obama of Dreams was a bitterly race-conscious person with a high dislike for the United States. Or in the concluding words of Michael Gledhill, "Dreams from My Father reveals Barack Obama as a self-constructed, racially obsessed man who regards most whites as oppressors. It is the work of a clever but shallow thinker who confuses ideological cliché for insight – a man who sees U.S. history as a narrow, bitter tale of race and class victimization."

I am reminded of the supreme irony of the demeaning remarks Obama recently leveled at Justice Clarence Thomas. In contrast to Thomas's, Obama's youth (as well, by the way, as that of his America-hating pastor Wright) was Easy Street. As an intellectual and patriot, neither Obama nor Wright could carry Thomas's briefcase.