It emerged this week that the U.N.’s Human Rights Council suggested that the United Kingdom should abolish its monarchy and put in place a new form of government based on a written Constitution.
The Human Rights Council, you might recall, is the U.N. body that welcomes members like Cuba and takes no action against countries like North Korea while routinely condemning Israel.
Alex Singleton, writing on the Telegraph’s politics blog, points out a few more inconvenient facts:
When people are being murdered in Zimbabwe and free speech is outlawed in North Korea, it’s good to see that the UN has its priorities right. The fact is that the constitutional arrangements of the UK actually work quite well. A written constitution, far from promoting human rights, would inevitably diminish them by promoting entitlements to resources, rather than freedoms from state interference. Besides, we already have a bill of rights (it was passed by Parliament in 1689).
So, what was the substance of the discussion?
According to this story, “Syria accused the UK of discriminating against Muslims and Iran complained about the UK’s record on tackling sexual discrimination.”
Seriously? Iran? On sex discrimination? The country that mandates how women dress and has literally codified discrimination?
If it weren’t so pathetic, it would be laughable.
More good commentary on this here and here.
Outstanding food writer Michael Ruhlman tipped me off to the story. Apparently, the Chicago City Council voted yesterday 37-6 to repeal the ban, which Mayor Richard Daley had previously called “the silliest law the City Council has ever passed.”
The Chicago Tribune has the parliamentary details, and they are interesting.
But the bottom line is that the council did the right thing, and a city with some of the world’s best and most creative chefs (I’m looking at you Chef Achatz), finally came to its senses. I’m sure there will be foie gras celebrations across Chicago in the coming days.
I shall raise a glass of Sauternes tonight to celebrate.
A few weeks ago, when the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright first hit the front pages, I wrote a post defending Senator Obama. I argued that it was unfair to hold the Senator responsible for what his Pastor might have said from the pulpit. Cam and Jim argued vociferously that the Senator’s failure to break from his pastor suggested bad judgment.
On Monday, as the whole world knows, Rev. Wright gave a speech and answered questions at the National Press Club, in which he repeated and defended his most bizarre and offensive utterances. He was joined by a cast of hundreds, including representatives of the Nation of Islam, anxious to get behind his delusional, racist and hateful views.
Yesterday, Cam published a powerful and personal post just below. And if you haven’t read it, you really must do so at once.
Cam’s post got me thinking and reflecting on my earlier defense of Senator Obama (one I’ve repeated, by the way, to incredulous looks from friends over the past few weeks.) For me, this is the central point of Cam’s post:
I’m starting to wonder if your comments distancing yourself from Reverend Wright are really sincere. I’m also wondering if you were really that close with him to begin with. I’m wondering a lot of things about you, but it boils down to one concern: are you lying to us now, or were you lying to us all along about Reverend Wright? Either way, it would make you the worst kind of politician. You know the stereotype: slimy, oozing with contempt for the voters, willing to say anything to get elected. The exact opposite of how you present yourself, basically.
And I don’t know how you get beyond that Senator. You’re either A) the worst judge in character the world has ever seen or B) another lying politician who just wants to get elected and thinks Americans have the intelligence of tree stumps. Either way, when it comes to the content of your character… you fail. You could have walked out of that church at any point over the past twenty years. You could have used your big speech in Philadelphia to put to rest this issue, not claim the Reverend Wright as a member of your family. Because of your failure of character, you’re now merely following the conventional political wisdom instead of exhibiting true leadership and principle.
Having reflected on this, and heard Rev. Wright’s expanded views on Monday, my own concern is actually somewhat different. I’m now wondering if Barrack Obama is a racist the way his pastor evidently is.
Let me step back for a second.
The speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered in Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 is justifiably one of the most famous ever given. In it, he articulates his vision for race relations in America. The central passage won’t be unfamiliar to anyone:
Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
It’s this last point that has always had the strongest, most emotional impact on me. “They will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Dr. King said. For me, Dr. King’s ideal was simple and wonderful: that race would, someday, simply no longer be a factor. Some have called this the dream of a colorblind America.
At the time that Dr. King delivered his speech, white America had a long way to. In the speech, he focuses on the south, but the race riots of the later 1960s and 1970s revealed divisions in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington and almost every major city across the country.
I’d like to think that we’ve come a long way, but, to be sure, we haven’t achieved Dr. King’s dream.
For that, I increasingly point the finger at people like Dr. Wright, Al Sharpton, and others who try to channel anger and leverage hate and fear for their own personal gain. For me, they aren’t just holding back progress. They are actively contributing to a culture of racism that they claim to deplore. They aren’t after equality. And they are openly hostile to Dr. King’s dream that “little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” By implication, Dr. Wright and his ilk want to return America to the days of separation.
For me, Senator Obama seemed like just the opposite. Even though his political record suggests that he is a conventional liberal, his rhetoric was soaring and hopeful. His stark repudiation of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s approach to campaigning — refusing to campaign as a black man and instead propounding a vision of hope for all Americans regardless of race — was and is very appealing to me.
So it is, therefore, exceedingly difficult to resolve these views which Senator professes with his decision to sit for twenty or more years in the pews in front of a man who seems so full of hate.
On this basis, Cam wonders if Senator Obama is being insincere in his views or lying about his relationship with Rev. Wright.
Let’s consider, briefly, the implications of both possibilities.
If Senator Obama is being insincere, then we can assume that he shares his pastor’s views, at least on some level, but by definition, it’s impossible to know to what degree. That leaves me in a troubling quandary, because I certainly don’t want to put a paranoid hate-monger in the White House. (And to be clear, I’m not saying that he is. Just that it might be an open question.)
If Senator Obama is lying, and he contrived the depth of his relationship with Rev. Wright as a political convenience, perhaps to ingratiate himself with the black community in Chicago, his claim to be a “different kind of candidate” is revealed to be a simple falsehood as well.
In either circumstance, I am compelled admit that my earlier defense of the Senator was a mistake.
In the practical world of politics, however, Cam might be right when he suggests with a touch of irony that “we’ll be too distracted by American Idol and the price of gasoline to remember any of this come November.”
I certainly hope not. This episode may provide our first window into the real Barrack Obama, the man who might be our President. We would do ourselves a grave injustice if we manage to overlook it.
UPDATE: The first thing Mike Huckabee has said in this campaign that I agree with:
“[Obama’s] campaign is not being derailed by his race, it’s being derailed by a person who doesn’t want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country,” Huckabee told reporters. … “Jeremiah Wright needs for Obama to lose so he can justify his anger, his hostile bitterness against the United States of America,” Huckabee said.
Well said, Governor.
According to this story from the Associated Press, “A “fat tax” on salty, sugary and fatty foods could save thousands of lives each year, according to a study published” by Oxford University researchers.
Know the difference between liberty and tyranny?
Liberty is having the freedom to make our own choices.
Tyranny is having the government make our choices for us.
And that’s exactly what these nanny-staters are proposing in yet another effort to have government save us from ourselves. Well, you know what? I don’t want to be saved. Indeed, I don’t think there’s a role for government to play in the obesity discussion. If I want to eat unhealthy food and die young, that’s my decision and, more importantly, it’s my responsibility.
Cam: Amen to that. When I got fat, it wasn’t the government’s fault. It was my own. And it wasn’t the government that’s making me lose weight, it’s me (and my wife, but whatever).
Michael Barone calls it:
Akin to this is the feeling shared by most Democrats and, it seems, by most American voters, that if we can just get our troops out of Iraq all will be well in the world.
I recall reading a few weeks ago an article on Democratic fund raising that quoted a woman as saying that “we were very safe under the Clinton administration.” No, we weren’t “very safe” — we just thought we were. Bill Clinton knew we weren’t “very safe,” and he took some steps — unfortunately, not enough — to make us safer.
You can say the same of George W. Bush during first eight months in office. There are evil leaders out there — the mullahs of Iran, Assad and his thugs, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his pal Fidel Castro — who hate the United States and want to do us as much damage as they can.
They don’t hate us just because the Republican Congress didn’t raise the minimum wage or because George W. Bush has a stubborn streak and speaks with a West Texas accent. They hate us because of our freedoms and because we have worked to export those freedoms around the world.
Friendship, hope and a determination to be on the road to peace are not enough to protect us in this world. A speedy exit from Iraq might make many Americans less unsettled while watching cable news — for a while. But it wouldn’t make us safer. It will just leave us more likely to face the kind of surprise we had on Sept. 11, 2001.
I’m starting to approach the conclusion that a big chunk of our friends on the other side of the aisle just cannot, and will not, see the world as it is until we have another great trauma, on par with 9/11. They insist that we can defuse all of the tensions in the world by altering our behavior; that all of those who are currently denouncing America have legitimate grievances.
They insist that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, who is most likely in Pakistan, is simply a matter of moving manpower and armored vehicles to the mountains of Afghanistan (where they can’t operate well anyway).
They insist that Syria’s Assad will come around if we just play nice with him, and that we should talk to the Iranians and Ahmedinjiad, because they’re really reasonable and rational. That we can achieve any of our policy goals if we just try hard enough.
I’ve been trying to come up with a way to express my thinking about the capture of 15 Royal Marines and sailors of the Royal Navy. Luckily for me, someone else captured it for me:
It’s been over 200 years since the Royal Navy placed a frigate and a fighting captain in every part of the world’s oceans deep enough to float one in order to frustrate Napoleon’s imperial ambitions and safeguard the Home Islands. It’s been almost a hundred and forty years since Parliament sent a combined force 0f 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers and 40,000 animals led by General Sir Robert Napier on a 400 mile trek across some of the harshest terrain in Africa to rescue a handful of British diplomats and missionaries held hostage by the mad king of Abyssinia. The flower of a generation was cut down on Flanders fields to safeguard the continent from Prussian militarism, and even at their darkest hour, the bravery and pluck of the British citizen following the debacle at Dunkirk and during the Blitz was never in doubt.
But it appears perhaps that the last of that Britain may have sailed home victorious at the end of the campaign to wrest the Faulkland Islands back from Argentine aggression. The Iron Lady may not have “been for turning,” but the wheel turned on without her. What was Britain seems to have become Europe.
When in times of old the British lion did roar, the world would tremble. Now the commodore of a royal fleet with a 1000-year history, and a man commanding a ship belonging to that fleet - a fleet, by the way, which seems to be evaporating before our very eyes - suffers 15 of his people to be illegally seized without firing a shot. Having placed them in danger in a war zone without, it would appear, having even been in the position to support them. In much the same waters where a previous insult was issued three years ago.
I don’t know how I feel about a shooting war with Iran. But if a bunch of vessels come alongside some of your folks sitting in a couple of rubber boats, and you’ve got weapons aboard, it seems obvious what your course of action should be.
There was a time — before satellite communications and GPS — that Royal Navy Captains, Commodores, Admirals and Commanders-In-Chief has absolute authority to act, so long as they did so within the confines of their orders from the Admiralty. And acting in ones’ own defense was always permissable. Now, the Admiralty is excerising tactical command of individual vessels at sea from cushioned chairs in London. And that’s obviously to the detriment of its sailors and Royal Marines.
Indeed, looking back to the days of Nelson and Napoleon, if a Royal Navy officer hauled down colors and surrendered his ship and his men without firing a shot, he would likely as not have been court martialed and set on the beach, at half pay and without a ship for the duration of his life.
Where has that spirit gone?
First foie gras, then trans fat. Now they’re after our iPods?!
I noticed this story while browsing around Pat Cleary’s ShopFloor blog, and it took my breath away.
From the Independent (of London):
A member of the [New York] state Senate, Carl Kruger, has declared war on “iPod oblivion”, introducing a draft law that would make it an offence for anyone to be plugged in when they are crossing the street, punishable with a $100 (£51) fine.
I’m SO glad that the NY General Assembly is here to protect me from myself. Soon, they’ll have done such a good job of protecting us that we’ll be living in small, padded rooms, looking forward to our state-mandated 3 meals a day.
More coverage from Wired and the Associated Press.
Sheesh.
Jim: Has any local lawmaker ever lost their job for proposing a stupid nanny-state law?
Really, I hate to be such a nattering nabob of negativity, but are stories like this reinforce my cynical suspicion that a generation’s worth of failure in America’s schools has purposely generated an unthinking, sheeplike public that wholeheartedly believes that there is a legislative solution to every problem.
“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand,” said Kruger in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Okay… no. Hear that? No. NO. NO. We do not have “a major public safety crisis.” You want to see a major public safety crisis? Hurricane Katrina. 9/11. The L.A. riots back in 1992. The blackout. Anthrax in the mail. THOSE are major public safety crisis. People getting hit by cars because they don’t hear them coming is Darwinism at work.
In a decent society, state senator Kruger would be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables during every public appearance for clogging the state legislature and wasting the public’s time with this inane psychotic power grab, that literally assumes the authority for the state government to approve of the way we cross the street. Mom and Dad gave up that regulatory authority when I was like, six.
Cam: From my cold dead ears, good sirs. From my cold dead ears.
Earlier this week, Rep. George Miller (D-CA-duh), introduced a bill that would effectively divorce union authorization elections from any notion of democracy. Needless to say, dozens of pro-union Democrats instantly signed on in support of the bill.
Pat Cleary has all of the details, but it comes down to this: the unions want to do away with the secret ballot when workers are deciding whether or not to authorize a union to represent them.
It’s a terrible idea, but unfortunately, precisely the kind of thing we’re likely to see more of from the union-owned Democrats in Congress.
Ah, but this story has a delicious angle. It seems that not too long ago, Congressman Miller and some colleagues dispatched a letter to a Mexican provincial government urging them to adopt secret ballots in union elections. Hmmmm. I hope you got a good price for your principles, Mr. Miller.
UPDATE: Pat Cleary, the master of all things card check, has his “master opus” on the issue up at Human Events here.
Do you value your First Amendment right to free speech?
I certainly do, but John McCain doesn’t. He’s been gradually undertaking a step-by-step repeal of the First Amendment for years.
Fortunately, my friends at the Center for Individual Freedom are on the case.
And with McCain now campaigning for President once again, they’ve launched a new blog titled, brilliantly, “$traight Talk?”.
It’s been up for a couple of weeks now, and the coverage is awesome. They’re going to hold McCain accountable for each and every one of his hypocritical anti-freedom rantings. (It must be nice to have an infinite source of content.)
Check in often. Heading toward 2008, it’s an essential resource.