MLK
Posted at 11:49am on Apr. 4, 2008 RJN on MLK
By Ben Domenech
Then, and still today, there are some for whom Dr. King was not “black enough.” That note was sounded already in the mid-1960s with the rise of the “black-power movement.” Now-forgotten figures such as Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) derided King as “d’Lord.” White radicals, and radicalized liberals of the political class, cheered them on as they declared that King’s day was past. King was accustomed to receiving death threats from whites, but now he was receiving death threats from blacks who accused him of being an Uncle Tom. When Dr. King was killed in 1968, many on the left said privately, and some said publicly, that it was just as well, since he had outlived his time.
And now, exactly forty years later, these arguments are being revisited. Last Friday in this space, I wrote about Senator Barack Obama’s Philadelphia address on race. While criticizing some of the more bizarre statements of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the senator said, “I could no more disown him than I could disown the black community.” Whatever Obama’s intentions, the implication is that the Rev. Wright is representative of the black community. Thus, however inadvertently, did he and some of those who wrote in defense of his speech reinforce an ugly stereotype of blacks being just a little, and maybe more than a little, crazy. The suggestion is a vile slander of the great majority of black Americans.
Posted at 9:10am on Jan. 21, 2008 The pursuit of truth... even when it's inconvenient
By RightMichigan.com
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
Another week and another important Monday and Tuesday. Last week it was the final run-up to Michigan's Primary followed by a day at the polls that saw the Hillary Clinton train nearly derailed by some guy named "Uncommitted." This week we won't get the national attention we got seven days ago but we join the nation in observing several important dates.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I'll save the speech and the homage for men and women far more eloquent than me but if there's a day on the calendar each year worth reflecting on how far we've come and how far we still have to go as a nation, as a State and more importantly, as individuals, this is it.
I was blessed to be able to listen to another fantastic sermon from my pastor at Berean Baptist Church in Grand Rapids (best church in the world, by the way) on the nature of the man's work... the pursuit, in action, of truth, and it's implications in our lives. It's easy to claim to pursue truth. Everyone here does it every single day. Our challenge, then, is to follow that truth wherever it takes us, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.
Which leads us into January 22nd. Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the barbaric killing of innocent, defenseless boys and girls based on geography (two inches from free air and entirely without the protection of law). Medical science, common sense, the human conscience and yes, truth, cry out against this holocaust, perhaps the darkest wave of violent atrocity in recorded human history. But who is willing to pursue THAT truth?
Thank goodness there are other issues to consume us and distract us from the cancer we've created inside our own society with an organized and militant assault on my generation.
Not that those other issues aren't often important. And not that there isn't, at times, an overlap.
The Lansing State Journal, this morning, encourages it's readers to begin their preparation for the 2008 legislative elections, citing two distinct schools of thought on government spending that will, in November, collide. They pay lip service to the smaller-government crowd (that'd be us) before charging into the crux of their argument:
For those who believe the state is underachieving, the problem is equally complex. They will argue (as the Michigan Fiscal Responsibility Project did last week) that personal income has grown at nearly twice the rate of state spending. They take the position - with data to back it up - that Michiganians are prosperous enough to support a proper array of government services.
Darn it all. I knew it was a mistake for any of us to be successful. (End sarcasm)
Did you catch the insidious argument buried below the surface of that paragraph? Michiganians are prosperous enough to support a "proper" array of services. The inherent argument is that we don't currently support a proper array of services and that, more importantly (and more ridiculously) we exist for no other purpose. The LSJ just told it's readers that they exist to prop up the government. Scary. (And the media isn't liberal at all, but I digress.)
And as far as that proper array of services, once the State and local government bodies start behaving more responsibly with the cash they've already been given then and only then should even the most liberal lunatic among us (yes, I'm talking to you, Andy Dillon) talk about taxing us more.
This bulletin from the Associated Press leads me to believe we haven't quite hit that mark just yet. Looks like the Detroit Public Schools spent $1.5 million on trips and catering, about the same amount as it spent in 2006 despite pledges at the time to seriously curtail such waste.
The latest spending is for the fiscal year that ended September 1.
Superintendent Connie Calloway declined to discuss the spending. Her office referred questions to district spokesman Steve Wasko, who said nearly all these expenditures took place before Calloway came on board in July.
Mix that with a Triangle Project here and an Office of the First Gentleman there and a pandemic of State cash being spent lobbying itself it's a wonder everyone isn't whipping out their checkbook scribbling a bigger bank note to Treasury.
And Michigan, we might be leading the nation in all the wrong categories but no one knows how to misspend like the federal government. On that front, and beyond the Presidential election Michigan has something to say again too. The entire Congressional delegation is up for reelection and so is Carl Levin.
Word broke a few weeks ago that State Rep and Right Roots blogger Jack Hoogendyk was in the race and this weekend brought a "new" contestant to the primary field:
(Andrew "Rocky") Raczkowski, a 39-year-old Southfield businessman, said he will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Levin because the state has declined in recent years. He said his military service in the U.S. Army Reserves in the Horn of Africa from 2003-04 made him "realize more than ever that partisan politics isn't what's going to get the job done."
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