The Internet home for American gay conservatives.
Somebody went on a Smart car tipping spree in San Francisco, in the last couple of days:
Motive is unclear. Some are trying to make it into a social-conflict story, but this fun-looking example from 2011 looks to me like young guys doing it “because they can”.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll cites it as an example of the Luddite Left. Sorry, Ed. I know that the Luddite Left is real, but let’s not over-interpret. Smart cars are surely too lame to have inspired any serious Luddism.
The sexy up-and-coming political movement, “the wave of the future”, is (almost by definition) the one where the young, hot women are. I don’t know where they are now, except Obama ain’t it. As just one illustration, here’s Carey Wedler, a former Obama groupie burning her 2008 campaign T-shirt.
Her list of specific disappointments with Obama is pretty left-wing, but she has some pro-liberty ones in there too, and she comes to a libertarian-anarchist conclusion: “The institution of government is the problem.”
UPDATE: More signs?
John Hayward at Human Events reviews all three. Here’s the state of play:
As to the Knockout Game, Hayward links Thomas Sowell, who says:
The New York authorities describe a recent series of such attacks and, because Jews have been singled out in these attacks, are considering prosecuting these assaults as “hate crimes.” …this “knockout game” has been played for years by young black gangs in other cities and other states, against people besides Jews — the victims being either whites in general or people of Asian ancestry. Attacks of this sort have been rampant in St. Louis. But they have also occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Illinois the game has often been called “Polar Bear Hunting” by the young thugs, presumably because the targets are white…
“White Girl Bleed A Lot”…a book by Colin Flaherty…documents both the racial attacks across the nation and the media attempts to cover them up, as well as the local political and police officials who try to say that race had nothing to do with these attacks. Chapter 2 of the 2013 edition is titled, “The Knockout Game, St. Louis Style.” So this is nothing new, however new it may be to some in New York, thanks to the media’s political correctness.
Sounds like a ‘social phenomenon’, to me. At any rate, many of the attacks are on video (and/or documented in police reports) and, as such, are facts that can’t be wished away.
Heard of the Knockout Game? A couple of news reports at the link say it’s real: young guys in New York attacking Jewish strangers, trying to knock them out with one blow.
Al Sharpton gets so many issues wrong that I’m in the mood to acknowledge him for speaking out rightly on this one:
“This kind of behavior is deplorable and must be condemned by all us,” he said at his weekly National Action Network meeting in Harlem. “We would not be silent if it was the other way around. We cannot be silent or in any way reluctant to confront it when it is coming from our own community.”
On Monday, Sharpton and other leaders plan to discuss a “next move.”
“Kids are randomly knocking out people [from] another race — some specifically going at Jewish people,” he said. “This kind of insane thuggery — there is nothing cute about that. There is no game play about knocking somebody out, and it is not a game. It is an assault and is bias, and it is wrong.”
Not ‘that Rand’ (although he is often right), but the other one.
Many have noted how life today has come to resemble the corrupt, ever-decaying crony socialism depicted in Ayn Rand’s lengthy second dystopian novel. Now it’s even coming to resemble the demented communalism of her first dystopia, Anthem.
Anthem depicts a frightening future society which has de-valued the individual, replacing “I” (or “me”) with devotion to “We” in every possible aspect of life. The society’s philosophy is captured in sayings like these:
We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE: one, indivisible and forever.
We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist through, by and for our brothers who are the State. Amen.
Some people might agree with the above sentiments, for real. Have you ever heard of We Day? Watch the video at the link; it shows a vast, cheering orgy of thousands of “Me to We” activists celebrating their awesome We-ness.
Mixed in with calls to help The Children, some of the speakers bark sentiments and commands that would fit well in Rand’s dystopia. Just upgrade the event’s arena another notch (fill it with another 20,000 people) and it will start to resemble the North Korean Mass Games.
As for their desire to feed hungry children: Don’t get me wrong, of course that’s nice. I’m all for people helping other people – at their own expense.
But this gang (featuring Al Gore, for example) shows no understanding of what it would take to actually feed the world’s children. What it would take is: universal protection for individual rights to life, liberty and property under the rule of law – so that productive people, working hard for their own gain (not for the great “We”), will then produce, sell and distribute food on a large-enough scale.
More kids go hungry in countries that habitually interfere with production and trade; countries that don’t respect the individual who works to support her own life, liberty and property. Sadly, the Left has turned America into one of those countries, which means we will be cursed with increasing poverty and hunger in years to come.
Generation Opportunity, “a free-thinking, liberty-loving, national organization of young people”, has set up OptOut.org to let young people know that they needn’t (and probably shouldn’t) sign up for Obamacare. Their current ad for young women:
(Male version, here.)
Now for the ‘media bias’ angle. I learned about this from Yahoo! which, naturally, has titled their article “Creepy Obamacare ad hits college campuses”.
In other words: Even after all the government-spying scandals, Big Government-run health care (that costs a young woman far more than she’ll get from it, despite the fine they’ll extort for her saying ‘no’) still doesn’t strike Yahoo! News as creepy. But ads against it, they’ll suggestively title as ‘creepy’.
FROM THE COMMENTS (thank you Kurt): Get ready for Obama(care) to ask detailed questions about your sex life. Umm…I thought that was only supposed to happen under the Religious Reich Theocracy that the Left always warns us against?
The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary…
Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments…
…the new requirements are turning it “into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential.” Lack of confidentiality is what concerned the New York Civil Liberties Union in a 2012 report…
Privacy and confidentiality will just be for the rich:
The administration is ignoring [various] protests from privacy advocates. On Jan. 17, HHS announced patients who want to keep something out of their electronic record should pay cash.
“Thanks, Obama!”
Recent-ish, and I found them worthwhile:
Shelby Steele on The Decline of the Civil Rights Establishment. “The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power…based on the presumption that [blacks] are still…victimized…This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a ‘poetic truth.’ Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth…[listeners] say, ‘Yes, of course,’ lest we seem to be racist…this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth…One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family?” – Read the whole thing.
A good piece from Cathy Young reviewing the depth of the Established media’s malpractice in this case, and one from Bill Whittle expressing his outrage over that malpractice.
Now old, but: Video of the jury reading the Not Guilty verdict. (Just to see the moment. And sorry, but there is no honest way to force Zimmerman into a ‘white’ identity; by conventional standards, he seems clearly a Latino / person of color.)
BONUS (from Kurt in the comments): Bryan Preston critiques how Obama has cast his lot with the race-baiters. “In Florida, blacks benefit from ‘stand your ground’ laws more often than whites do…[and] the president went on to acknowledge that…’stand your ground’ was not invoked in Zimmerman’s defense, [but said] we should re-examine such laws anyway. Logically, why?”
UPDATE: Zimmerman helps people, despite the nasty death threats that Trayvon Martin supporters have inflicted not only on him, but even on strangers who (say) happen to have a phone number similar to his.
As Dan has noted, some 35 Gay Left advocate groups have signed an “open letter asking for justice for Trayvon Martin”. Justice is a crucially important value, so let’s give that suggestion its due, by considering what it could mean.
Since the groups were prompted by the Zimmerman verdict: perhaps they mean that bad things, such as imprisonment, should happen to George Zimmerman. But why would any reasonable person think that? A jury of his peers looked into the matter as intensively as any people on Earth, and found Zimmerman not guilty of breaking any laws. The jury felt that he bore Martin no enmity and saw a strong possibility that Zimmerman acted in legitimate self-defense.
We will never know, to a certainty, what happened the night Martin was killed. But Martin’s friend, Rachel Jeantel, has stated her belief that Martin must have thrown the first punch. (Also, she has stated her belief that Martin had profiled Zimmerman as a gay rapist – which, if Martin had, would make his attacking Zimmerman first an anti-gay hate crime.)
Jeantel has also expressed a belief that Martin did not mean to kill Zimmerman; that Martin would have stopped short of killing him, just in time. But Zimmerman could not possibly know that, as his head was being slammed into the concrete.
For sake of argument, let’s believe Jeantel for a moment, on those two points: that Martin did attack Zimmerman, but without meaning to kill him. Then any reasonable person must agree that Trayvon Martin did not deserve to die.
But people die all the time, who don’t deserve it. The only people who deserve death are the very few who have committed the most heinous crimes. Everyone else’s death is a tragedy, including Martin’s.
Without casting aspersions on Zimmerman, and based on the available evidence: real “Justice for Trayvon” would be if Martin and Zimmerman had both kept their lives that night – and Martin had then been arrested, charged and put on trial (perhaps in juvenile court) for the crime of assault.
It’s strange, how the “Justice for Trayvon” advocates always manage to leave out that last part.
The LGBT advocates’ letter does say:
Every person, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, must be able to walk the streets without fear for their safety.
We can agree on that. But the JfT advocates need to remember that the “every person” includes George Zimmerman – a Latino neighborhood resident who was patrolling his community to help it deal with a crime wave; not a gay rapist, and apparently, not anyone who deserved to have his head slammed into the concrete.