When Equal doesn’t really mean Equal…

Or in the words of that great and under-appreciated philosopher and sophist Innigo Montoya, “I do not think that word means what you think that it means.”

I found this over at Marginalized Action Dinosaur, as part of the Candadian Charter of Human Rights:

 15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. 

(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

So, in essence, everyone is to be treated equally under the law, except of course, those people who are given special benefits and priviledges because of their status as an aggrieved minority group.  They are to treated a little, you know, more equally than everyone else.

And apparently, bitching about this kind of “enhanced equality” is considered discrimination or a hate crime, so just sort of shut up and love it…or else.

In other words, you can’t be discriminated AGAINST on the basis of sex, color, religion, etc., but you can most certainly be discriminated FOR based on these very same traits.

The fact that this implicity discriminates against everyone else who isn’t given the same special dispensation seems to sort of rather escape the brilliant progressive minds that come up with this sort of stuff.

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Thoughts for the day #875, etc.

Of course I think my religious beliefs are right, and yours are wrong.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t BE my religious beliefs, now would they?!  What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to come to the place where you can say, “All approaches to religious faith are equally valid.”  Bull-puckey.  What you are really saying is that, “Yeah, I’m probably really off base on this whole God thing, so chances are, your guess is as good as mine.”

Uh…yeah.  If that’s your approach, then you either really need to do your homework, or just go ahead and call yourself an agnostic, cuz, if you don’t have any kind of confidence in what you believe, then they aren”t “Beliefs” but rather, “generalized assumptions and half-assed guesses based on little more than feel-good groupthink.”

Which, of course, is what the anti-religionists what you to think anyway, so hey, you’re in.

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I still think that the change Obama is the most interested in is the change in my pocket, the ashtray of my car, and whatever he can shake loose from between the couch cushions.

When a bully steals a kid’s lunch money, is that still called spreading the wealth around?  If I have two shoes, does that mean I should give one of them to someone with no shoes, so that we’ll both at least have one?  And by one, I mean, one cold, bruised, chafed foot.   Better that we both be miserable than only one of us.

Of course, now that you’ve taken away my shoe, I can no longer make my deliveries on foot, which means I lose my job, and all those old shoes that I used to donate to goodwill and the church when I got new ones or outgrew them?  Yeah, those are gone.  I can’t afford to donate to the poor anymore.  But hey, now you’ve got a shoe!

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So, I have to wonder, right about the time ol’ B.O. starts cleaning house, replacing judges, and kicking people out the door left and right, will there be a great hue and cry like there was when Bush fired a few?  Will the media and lefty pundits cry foul and demand an investigation, or will they laud B.O. for his vision in clearing out the dead wood, separating the wheat from the chaff, etc?  I think we all know which one it will be now, don’t we?

And of course, I’m curious as to how Congress will treat Obama’s judicial nominees.  When they stonewalled and fillibustered Bush’s nominees, they were defending ideological purity by forestalling a wash of right-wing appointees that would upset the “balance.”   I’m pretty sure that if/when Barry opens the sluicegates on a bunch of hard-Left nominees, and the Republicans predictably balk, we can probably expect to hear all sorts of mournful cries from the Dems about PARTISANSHIP, and reactionary opposition to change, and of course, RACISM.  Just wait.  If I’m wrong, I buy the beer.

Thought for the Day # 874

Progressives do things to make themselves feel good.

Libertarians feel good because they do things.

Where’s that Theocracy now, beotches?

For the better part of 8 years, the frothing fringe Truther crowd, the associated Code Pink nutjobs and other hangers-on have been pounding the table and swearing on a stack of Communist Manifestos that ol’ G.W. was hell-bent on setting up an oppressive Right Wing Dominionist Theocracy, complete with a modern krystalnacht rounding up gays, “free-thinkers”, atheists and a whole broad spectrum of other “dissenters,”  then stuffing them in a gulag like business commuters on a Tokyo subway.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Aaaaannny second now…

Hmmm.  Didn’t happen.

So, that said, I have to ask.  George Bush was, by all accounts, a quietly devout Christian, who made no special note of his faith, but did not seek to hide or conceal it either.  But, because he was part of teh Right Winge Evil Empire^TM, he was held up as this terrifying bogeyman, who was just MOMENTS away from firing up another Grand Inquisition, burning heretics at the stake, both metaphorically and literally.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, spent 20 years of his adult life attending a radical, Bible-thumping(sorta), liberation theologist church, whose pastor has stated uniquivocally that Blacks needed to retake their country after years of oppression.  Where’s the outcry now?  Where are the shrill chest-clutchers and hyperventilators now carrying on about a burgeoning Christian Dominionist theocracy?  I guess that’s strictly the purview of the right wing?

Perhaps it is that Barack’s racial identity is so much stronger than his religious identity.  The fear among the conservative table pounders is not that he will attempt to impose his own particular brand of religious extremism, but rather, that his social and political ideology are the much more dangerous things to be feared.

I don’t know.  The problem with Mr. Obama is that no one is really sure WHAT he believes in.  He threw his own pastor under the bus and distanced himself from his long-time church home when it became politically expedient.  He distanced himself, nay, completely disavowed any association with Bill Ayers and all those friends of his youth who helped him get his political feet planted when they became a liability.  If B.O. is known for anything, it’s for dropping you like a hot freakin’ potato if you might stand in the way of his rise to power.

So, in essence, I think that this is what his detractors fear the most: not that he will use the power of his office to impose the will of God on the American people, but rather, that he will use the power of his office to impose the will of Barack Obama on the people.

And my fear is that there are just enough people out there who can’t tell the difference…or don’t wan’t to see a difference.

Be Careful What You Ask For (BCWYAF).

For the good of the collective…

Update:  I’m not the only one who thinks this.

Resistance is futile?

Coming from the demographic that has historically been the most vein-in-the-forehead, screechingly, spittle-fleckingly opposed to a draft for the military, one has to wonder why the new standard bearer for the Progressive Utopian Vision^TM is now marketing the idea of compulsory service as a core patriotic duty?

Hitler Jugend

And just why do you suppose that it’s targeted at our high school and college age youth?  Via Wikipedia:

The HJ was organized into corps under adult leaders, and the general membership comprised boys aged fourteen to eighteen. From 1936, membership of the HJ was compulsory for all young German men.

The HJ was organized into local cells on a community level.

For example, many HJ activities closely resembled military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic strategy.

Me, I’m wondering why we need a civil defense service. We have the Civil Air Patrol, the Boy Scouts, the Explorer program. Against what are we defending? As well funded as the military? Isn’t that called the National Guard?  The Police? EMS?

There is only one reason you need an organized civilian “militia” made up primarily of young, energetic, and quite impressionable youth.

The HJ maintained training academies comparable to preparatory schools. They were designed to nurture future Nazi Party leaders, and only the most radical and devoted HJ members could expect to attend.

Another branch of the HJ was the Deutsche Arbeiter Jugend – HJ (German Worker Youth – HY). This organization within the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labor leaders and technicians.

One can only imagine the screeching, flailing flame wars that would ensue where a Republican President to suggest this.  Do you thing that the Nazi analogies wouldn’t be flying thick then?!

Remember towards the end of “The Sound of Music?” All the eager young men in their bright new uniforms, “watching” for “criminal” elements, as in, those who won’t get on board with the program?  It won’t be a neighborhood watch…it will be your neighbors watching YOU.

You can invoke Godwin’s law all you want, but there’s a reason the Brown Shirt analogy keeps popping up.  Or perhaps, the Young Pioneers in Soviet Russia.

Because it looks and sounds exactly the same. Does anyone really believe that this will just be a domestic peace corps, going around cleaning up graffiti and picking up trash?

Then why is it called a “defense” force? It just fits all too neatly into this grand new socialist paradigm B.O. is preaching.  Expect that this will not go away.  It is an essential element of ground-roots social re-engineering.  Otherwise known as Change^©.

It’s in the freakin’ manual. Get the youth first. 1960’s ringing any bells?

Once in power, communist leaders made the transformation of the younger generation central to the attempt to create new communist societies. Because young people lacked prior political experience and were considered more malleable than adults, communist leaders believed they could be transformed into ardent supporters of communism and builders of new socialist societies.

Watch as this idea, this program, is steadily retooled, renamed, reinvent and remarketed over time,all to make it sound more palatable and to respond to its detractors.  The words and labels will shift and change to counter opposing rhetoric by making the critics look increasingly petty and confrontational.   The consensus process will be brought to bear to marginalize dissent and encourage conformity through the use of emotion-laden catch phrases and rhetorical questions like, “Surely you care about X” or “You wouldn’t want Y to happen, would you?”  Just like it has with global warming, gay rights, radical environmentalism, and every other Progressive pet program.

It is not paranoia, political partisanship, racism, or ODS to look at the examples history gives us of “boiling the frog slowly,” to draw parallels to today’s burgeoning political trends, and then be watching and prepared for the next steps.  It is simply discernment and prudence.

And yeah, what she said.  Cuba’s “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution”

The concept behind the CDRs was to create a citizen force that would reinforce the dictates of Cuba’s government, establishing a kind of omnipresent peer pressure network among next-door neighbors. Leaders of CDRs could put Castro’s every public thought directly and rapidly into the hands of every Cuban, so the government would not have to rely solely on mass media.

So, essentially, yeah.  That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying B.O.’s new militia will become.