The question for me is: who are you and where are your sensibilities? If you're part of a left-wing bias and want to turn what I say in favor of someone on your agenda, I would say I don't want to talk about it with you. It's difficult for me ... because I see so many people go in the wrong direction. I see it all the time and it's very, very disturbing. What's being said in so many places in the country is just dangerous.
Convinced that she had almost certainly found the cause of her illness, she ordered, from the internet, some special rolls of foil wallpaper and a fabric called Swiss bobbinet - a netting made from polyester filaments dipped in silver.
Both promised to "shield" her from any emissions from phone masts or wireless broadband systems.
Within a few weeks of the wallpaper going up and the windows being hung with netting, she began to feel better.
Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.
A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.
Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.
The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.
She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.
Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new "poodle" was also a sheep.
One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.
The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.
This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.
I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
On Jan. 16, 2002, Peter Odighizuwa, a 43-year-old student from Nigeria, walked into the Appalachian School of Law offices of Dean Anthony Sutin, 42, a former acting assistant U.S. attorney, and professor Thomas Blackwell, 41, and opened fire with a .380 ACP semi-automatic handgun – shooting them at close range.
Also killed in the same building was student Angela Denise Dales, 33. Three others were wounded.
As soon as the gunfire erupted, two students acting independently of one another, Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, ran to their vehicles to retrieve firearms. Gross, an off-duty police officer in his home state of North Carolina, got his 9mm pistol and body armor. Bridges got out his .357 Magnum.
Bridges and Gross went back to the building where the shots were heard and as Odighizuwa exited, they approached from different angles. Bridges yelled for him to drop his weapon and the shooter was subdued by several unarmed students.
Gross went back to his car and got handcuffs to detain the shooter until police arrived.
Most news reports of the incident failed to mention the presence of two armed students and their role in subduing the shooter, saying only that he was tackled by bystanders.
"When people are on a public wireless connection, they have the same expectations about privacy as when they are on the Internet at home," said Cheung, 32, a computer security expert and an editor for TG Daily, a technology news website.
"But it doesn't work that way. Someone could be listening in."
Cheung was using a "sniffer" program that intercepted online signals as they flew back and forth from the laptops to a wireless modem hidden somewhere amid the coffee paraphernalia.
Professor Olle Johansson, of Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institute, who is deeply concerned about the spread of Wi-Fi, says there are "thousands" of articles in scientific literature demonstrating "adverse health effects". He adds: "Do we not know enough already to say, 'Stop!'?"
They’re not “children.” The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.
It is not often we learn things from a definition, but George Matheson defined gentleness for me, and now I know what it is. He said, "Gentleness is strength held in check." I cannot quote his actual words here, but only his thought. One speaks of the gentleness of the brook. There is no gentleness in the brook. It rushes and presses, laughs and roars, and does all it can by it's puny strength. There is no gentleness there. But if you will stand by the mighty ocean when there is such a tide as "moving seems asleep," and the great waters kiss the shore, and your little one paddles upon it's edge, and is kissed by the crest of the wave, that is gentleness. With one great uprising the sea might engulf the child, but it's strength is held in check.
In an instant, the grinding of the Earth's tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 foot).
Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.
Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.
The stench of rotting fish and other marine life stranded on the reefs when the seas receded is overwhelming and the once vibrant coral is dry and crunches underfoot.
Dazed villagers stand on the shoreline, still coming to terms with the cataclysmic shift that changed the geography of their island forever, pushing the shoreline out to sea by up to 70 metres.
There was a time when a majority of American men would almost surely have come to Clara's aid. They believed in an ethic that said, "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter." (Proverbs 24:11)
It was a day when men, recognizing the reality of evil, carried weapons that enabled them to stand in the gap for those being unjustly tormented and threatened. Virtually any man on the street could come to the aid of a victim like Clara.
That was then; this is now.
The elements are many – not only the hostage British active duty military, but the virtual inaction by the United States Congress and the U.S. administration and the inappropriate muscle-flexing by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Great Britain is a major power and this blatant violation of international law by Iran is a provocation and clearly was done with intent, likely with the assumption that nothing substantial would be done to end it.
Thus far, the Iranians were correct. A Western battle of words, or toothless demands, mean nothing to them. Such limp responses to an affront of this magnitude are a clear sign of weakness – of Britain, the U.S. and the West.
It's a perfect example of how the thinking of the West and East are diametrically opposed. It's also why the West will lose this battle against militant Islam unless it faces the truth of the enemy, their tactics and their goals.
Parkhurst was home alone Friday afternoon eating a snack of sliced apples when one became lodged in her windpipe. After smacking herself against a chair to dislodge it, she started beating herself on the chest, which she thinks alerted Toby to the problem.
"The next think I know, Toby’s up on his hind feet and he’s got his front paws on my shoulders," she told the Cecil Whig. "He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest."
It is part of a war on truth, a war on God and a deliberate war on history. And, more to the point, it is an illustration of how there are many Americans alive today who are active America haters.
To be perfectly blunt with you, if Americans forget how God has blessed them throughout history, we seal our doom.
As has been widely reported, Gore's Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the energy of the average home in that state. But it's OK, according to the priests of global warming. Gore has purchased "carbon offsets."
It took the Catholic Church hundreds of years to develop corrupt practices such as papal indulgences. The global warming religion has barely been around for 20 years, and yet its devotees are allowed to pollute by the simple expedient of paying for papal indulgences called "carbon offsets."
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see;
they have ears, but they do not hear; they have noses, but they do not smell;
they have hands, but they do not handle; they have feet, but they do not walk; they do not mutter through their throat.
The ones who make them are like them, and everyone who trusts in them. Psalm 115: 4-8
"We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."
But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."
The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Fadhel al-Maliki, 35, was detained at passenger screening at the airport just before 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
The bomb squad was called as a precaution and authorities said they found wires in his clothing and a magnet inside a lower body cavity.
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John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
Our founders intended for us to have a limited republican form of government where rights precede government and there is rule of law. Citizens, as well as government officials, are accountable to the same laws. Government intervenes in civil society only to protect its citizens against force and fraud, but does not intervene in the cases of peaceable, voluntary exchange. By contrast, in a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. The law is whatever the government deems it to be. Rights may be granted or taken away.
As March of Dimes researchers put it, "Changes in diagnosis account for the observed increase in autism." Sure enough, California data show the rise in autism diagnoses almost exactly matches a decline in cases of retardation.
"People that we once called quirky or geeky or nerdy are now called autistic," Dr. Offit said, "because when you give that label of, say, autistic spectrum disorder, you allow that child then to qualify for services."
Imagine that. A trendy diagnosis being driven by government-paid services.
It is safe to say that the happiest Germans were not those who joined the Nazi Party. Nor did the happiest Europeans become Communists. And happy Muslims are not generally among those who extol death. The motto of Hamas and other Islamic groups engaged in terror, "We love death as much as [Americans, Jews] love life," does not appeal to happy Muslims.
Cults, hysteria and mass movements all appeal to the unhappy far more than to the happy. It is one more example of the genius of America's founders to include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. No other major civilization so enshrined happiness as a core value.
The pursuit of happiness is not the pursuit of pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is hedonism, and hedonists are not happy because the intensity and amount of pleasure must constantly be increased for hedonism to work. Pleasure for the hedonist is a drug.
But the pursuit of happiness is noble. It benefits everyone around the individual pursuing it, and it benefits humanity. And that is why happiness is a moral obligation.
Howard, a steadfast supporter of President Bush in the Iraq war, insisted his criticism of Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops in Iraq by March 31 next year was in Australia's national interest because Obama's plan would represent a defeat for Australia's most important military ally.
While the locals believed that it was a meteorite, the police said the blast may have occurred due to the explosive scrap that the nomads had collected.
This was one of the most frustrating experiences of my career, knowing full well that the person is innocent and not being allowed to provide logical proof.
If there is an appeal and the defense is allowed to show the entire results of the forensic examination in front of experienced computer people, including a computer literate judge and prosecutor, Julie Amero will walk out the court room as a free person.
Let this experience stand as a warning to all that use computers in an environment where minors are present. The aforementioned situation can happen to anyone without fail and without notice if there is not adequate firewall, antispyware, antiadware and antivirus protection. That was not provided by the school administration where Julie Amero taught.
In a second scene, with the battle all but over, another platoon surrounds Saigo. Deranged by grief, he attacks the platoon with a shovel. Instead of shooting him, as the soldiers have every right to do, they disable him with the butt of a rifle.
The final scene, a telling one, finds a smiling Saigo lying on a stretcher at the edge of the beach amidst a row of identical stretchers bearing Americans. He has found a place among a people who respect his humanity just as they do their own.
"It is Eastwood's queasy triumph," writes Scott Foundas of the Village Voice, "that, when we hear those words, ['Do what's right ...'] regardless of what language we speak, they have rarely sounded more foreign."
As Foundas' churlish little remark makes clear, these critics fail to understand "Letters from Iwo Jima" because they fail to understand America.
They're walking into speeding cars. They're walking into buses. They're walking into one another and it's creating a number of fatalities that have been documented right here in the city."
We need to read our history. We need to rediscover our Founding Fathers. We need to recognize what a unique breakthrough in liberty they inspired. It's their vision to which we need to rededicate ourselves. It's the biblical values they held that caused the greatest outbreak of freedom the world had known.
By the way, they weren't conservatives.
They wouldn't even know the term.
Instead, they laid out a radical break from the past – a new way of thinking about freedom and independence and strict limits on government.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and John Adams were not conservatives. These men risked everything in the hope of changing the status quo. They fought a War of Independence from the Old World. They fought a revolution against the assumptions of the past.
They did this, by the way, at a time when life was not so bad. But they were wise enough to see a better way for themselves and their posterity. Thank God they did.
It's time for conservatives to stop being conservative. It's time to get radical. It's time to remember our heroic heritage. It's time to take risks. It's time to stop business as usual. It's time to stop repeating the mistakes of the past. It's time to see we're losing ground.
It's time to fight for something worthwhile – not just the preserving of freedom, but the expansion of freedom.
My grandfather brought to this country his personal, wonderful tradition, which was the art of wine-making. And he couldn’t have picked a better part of the world to ply this skill, for he settled in New York State, home to some of the best wine-making grapes in the country.
He held nothing back when pursuing this passion, including a trip to the country to buy fresh grapes and carting them back to his basement in town. I remember the elaborate apparatus where he squeezed the juice from the grapes, the fermentation process, and the barrels of red wine that were the result.
One time – I must have been eight or nine years old – I was rummaging around his house and coming across a gallon jug into which he had drawn some of his new wine. There was no one around, so I got to wondering how the stuff might taste. Was it sweet? Was it smooth? What was the fascination that adults held for this homemade concoction? So I took off the cap, tilted back, and let the light red fluid pass my lips and touch my awaiting pallet.
I distinctly remember my reaction: “How can anybody drink this stuff?” My eight-year-old taste buds revolted at the dry bite. A good wine was something that I just wasn’t capable of appreciating at the time.
It is curious that Jesus compared his blood to the fruit of the vine. His blood was shed for us, but to many this idea pure foolishness. Just like wine, one must develop an appreciation for it, and that can only come through age and experience. Rummaging around the attic and stumbling across it is just not enough. It must sink down to our innermost being, and we must savor it sip by sip.
Along with the Apostle Paul, I must admit that when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away the childish things. And I came to a deeper appreciation for the need of a Savior. My tastes were more attuned to the nuances of the blood of Christ.
These days a good bottle of wine is part of the enjoyment of life. It took time to develop the taste for it. I would give a lot to go back and sample my grandfather’s creation and experience it with a more appreciative attitude. That opportunity is gone. But the cup from which I now drink is richer than any cup my grandfather could have given me.
Lenny Cacchio
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said.
He continued: "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option."
-- We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.
-- The terrorists are counting on us to lose our will and retreat under pressure. We're in danger of proving them right.
-- A member of Lebanon's parliament recently told me that Lebanese Sunnis, Shiites and Christians are lining up with Iran and Syria to fight against Sunnis, Shiites and Christians who want to stand with America. When I asked him why people were lining up with Iran and Syria, he said, "Because they know Iran and Syria aren't going anyplace. We're not so sure about America."
-- America deserves better. It's time for everyone -- Republicans and Democrats -- to stop trying to find ways for America to quit. Victory is the only option. We must have the fortitude and the courage to do what it takes. In the words of Winston Churchill, we must deserve victory.
America is in trouble.
Not just in Iraq and in our war against radical Islam. We are in trouble in our national soul. We are often undisciplined in the use of our endless freedoms.
Those who think a new or better government can change this are mistaken; reforming our morals and our behavior is up to individuals, families, parents, and people in positions of authority such as teachers, coaches, mentors, and role models.
We, as a country, need to look in the collective mirror and see the truth: We are becoming what we detest.
Some people seem to think that we live in more "liberated" times, when all that has happened is that one set of taboos has been replaced by another and more intolerantly enforced set of taboos.
Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.
What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.
It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense.
"Are we better off now with a permanent cease-fire, or when we had bombs, car bombs and explosions?" he asked. "This time next year, we will be better off than we are today."
The next morning, a bomb ETA had planted in a Renault van exploded in the five-story parking garage of Madrid's new air terminal, killing two people and causing tens of millions of dollars of damage to Spain's glittery showpiece of modernity.
De Carlo died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Woodland Hills
What is the rest of the world to do when they come up against the absolute embodiment of evil in a man, a nation, or a movement?
"We have answered the first question about where the dark matter is, but the ultimate goal will be to determine what it is."
Unlike the ordinary matter of the planets, stars and galaxies, which can be seen through telescopes or detected by scientific instruments, nobody has seen dark matter or knows what it is made of, though calculations suggest that it is at least six times bigger than the rest of the visible universe combined.
One of the most important discoveries to emerge from the study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible scaffold or skeleton around which the visible universe has formed.
Although cosmologists have theorised that this would be the case, the findings are dramatic proof that their calculations are correct and that, without dark matter, the known universe that we can see would not be able to exist.
"A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built,"
(Job 26:7) He stretches out the north over the empty place, and He hung the earth on nothing.
(Isa 40:22) It is He who sits on the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in;
The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we'd make if our worst enemy were in charge. My mother created a mini-version of such a rule. Sometimes she would ask either me or my sister to evenly divide the last piece of cake or pie to share between us. More times than not, an argument ensued about the fairness of the division. Those arguments ended with Mom's rule: Whoever cuts the cake lets the other take the first piece. As if by magic or divine intervention, fairness emerged and arguments ended. No matter who did the cutting, there was an even division.
As I have pointed out more than once, Israel has proven it would only use nuclear weapons in a last-resort defense of its population. Yet, Israel's enemies, personified by the suicide bombers who attack it relentlessly, would likely not even hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they ever had the chance.
But in our politically correct, multicultural world today, it is wrong to recognize differences between people - even when they are openly espousing diametrically opposite views and acting in completely different ways.
I don't expect a single moral relativist reading this column to agree with me about this. It's almost a litmus test. If you can't tell the difference between Israel and Iran, you are a moral relativist. If you can't see that Israel, with all its faults, represents a basic sort of decency and civility in the world, while Iran represents the opposite, then congratulations, you're a moral relativist. Or, maybe you're just plain evil - like the leaders of Iran.
Most of the world - or at least its leaders - fall into one of these two categories: moral relativist or evil. That's what makes out world so dangerous. And, increasingly, more Americans are falling into one of these two categories.
These people think they are making the world a safer, more secure place by advocating their foolhardy, tried-and-failed positions and attempting to impose their nebulous and evolving ideas. In fact, they are throwing gasoline on fires all over the globe.
These people also think - or say they think - that talking about our disagreements can almost always lead to resolution. Unfortunately, if you comprehend this simple message today, you need to know that these people may as well live in a parallel universe.
They cannot hear you. They do not have the ability to discern truth from lies. They no longer can discern right from wrong. They can't tell the difference between black and white, up and down, right from left. They cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.
That is the essence of our times. That is the definition of international moral relativism. That is the world in which we live.
...most people want to believe rather than to know, to take for granted rather than to find out -- James Thurber
Detailed observations from the first comet samples returned to Earth are debunking some of science's long-held beliefs on how the icy, celestial bodies form.
Hot particles from the inner solar system migrated out to the cold, outer fringes beyond Pluto where they intermingled and congealed to form a comet.
"So we're trying to, like, get rid of most of them, but without professional help we can't. So now we almost ... They're biting me!'" Molina screamed, running from the home during an interview with reporters.
He gives greatness to the nations, and destroys them. He spreads out the nations, and leads them away.
He takes away the heart of the chief of the people of the land, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no path.
They grope in the dark without light, and He makes them to stagger like a drunkard. Job 12:23-25 MKJV
"[With the Iraq Study Group report], the Americans came to the conclusion that Islam is the new giant of the world and it would be clever to reduce hostilities with this giant. In the Quran the principle of the rotation is clear and according to this principle the end of the Americans and of all non-believers is getting closer," Abu Ayman said.
"It is not just a simple victory. It is a great one. The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen (fighters). Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?" exclaimed Abu Abdullah,
Abu Abdullah said following a withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. will be defeated on its own soil.
The word tolerance sounds great, but this is really tolerance with a twist; it demands that everyone has a right to express his or her own views as long as those views do not contain any suggestion of absolutes that would compete with the prevailing standard of relativism.
Usually those who promote tolerance the loudest also proclaim that the motives of religious people are suspect and that, therefore, their views on any matter must be disqualified. Strangely, socialists, Nazis, sadomasochists, pedophiles, spiritualists, or worshipers of Mother earth would not be excluded. Their right to free expression would be vigorously defended by the same cultural elite who are so easily offended when Christians or other religious people express their views.
But this paradoxical intolerance produces an even deeper consequence than silencing an unpopular point of view, for it completely transforms the nature of debate, public discussion, and consensus in society. Without root in some transcendent standard, ethical judgments become merely expressions of feelings or preference. "Murder is wrong" must be translated "I hate murder" or "I prefer that you not murder." Thus, moral claims are reduced to the level of opinion.
Opponents grow further and further apart, differing on a level so fundamental that they are unable even to communicate. When moral judgments are based on feelings alone, compromise becomes impossible. Politics can no longer be based on consensus, for consensus presupposes that competing moral claims can be evaluated according to some common standard. Politics is transformed into civil war, further evidence that the barbarians are winning.
Proponents of a public square sanitized of moral judgments purport that it assures neutrality among contending moral factions and guarantees certain basic civil rights. This sounds enlightened and eminently fair. In reality, however, it assures victory for one side of the debate and assures defeat of those with a moral structure based on a transcendent standard.
Historically, moral restraints deeply ingrained in the public consciousness provided the protective shield for individual rights and liberties. But in today's relativistic environment that shield can be easily penetrated. Whenever some previously unthinkable innovation is both technically possible and desirable to some segment of the population, it can be, and usually will be, adopted. The process is simple. First some practice so offensive it can hardly be discussed is advocated by some expert. Shock gives way to outrage, then to debate, and when what was once a crime becomes a debate, that debate usually ushers the act into common practice. Thus decadence becomes accepted. History has proven it over and over.
I find it interesting that these people continue to demand that police be held accountable, but when will they hold themselves and their own accountable? Why is it they don't give a twit about black gang bangers killing one another, they certainly don't care about black gang bangers murdering police, as evidenced by their proud indifference to the murders of Andrews and Nemorin. Why aren't Sharpton and the so-called leaders in those housing projects identifying gangs and working with police to rid their neighborhoods of that element? Wouldn't a real man of God be more interested in reaching the people and neighborhood for Jesus than he would be in hustling the police department and mayor for filthy lucre? But then, I guess I answer my own question.
"Stop the killing!" Since 1993, 11,353 people have been murdered in New York City. The large majority of victims and perpetrators have been black. Not a single one of those black-on-black killings has prompted protest or demonstrations from the city's black advocates. Sharpton, Barron, et al. are happy to let thousands of black victims get mowed down by thugs without so much as a whispered call for "peace" or "justice"; it's only when a police officer, trying to protect the public, makes a good faith mistake in a moment of intense pressure that they rise as vindicators of black life. (As for caring about slain police officers, forget about it. Sixteen cops-including several black policemen-have been killed since 1999, not one of whom elicited a public demonstration of condolence from the race hustlers.)
