Duly Noted: Racial Discrimination of Dogs
From the desk of George Handlery on Sun, 2009-08-02 21:22
1. Here is good story if told as a joke. At the same time, it indicates a serious ailment. The increasingly popular four-legged assault weapons, such as pit bulls and Rottweilers, have produced – mainly to children – deaths and serious injuries here. As a result, an attempt was made to have dangerous races prohibited or to subject their ownership to controls. Instantly someone discovered that dog rights were about to be violated. The attack dogs were being proscribed because of their RACE. While only few victims on record have been torn apart by Chihuahuas or maimed by poodles, it was decided that a law restricting the ownership of canines declared to belong to dangerous races is unfair.
After all, the pooch’ race alone would have been used to impose restrictions. Therefore, since most dogs do not endanger anyone, a toothless regulation was borne. In PC terms most virtuously, all races are treated the same. So, unfair “profiling” is prevented. That means limitations for all but no preventive restriction on dangerous animals. This weekend produced another Rottweiler attack on a child. The seriously injured boy is in the hospital. However, thank you for asking, he will not die. The probable upshot might disturb equalitarians. The case could lead to a racist law limiting the ownership of attack dogs. (Forbidding children in open spaces has not yet been proposed.) So, beware! Racism is rising!!
2. The following case is presented because its essentials can be generally applicable regarding under-achieving minorities. (There are minorities, which, because of their collective traits, over-achieve. Jews and Armenians in “Europe”, overseas Chinese in south East Asia, Asian SAT takers in the USA.) Some apologists of Gypsy criminality acknowledge that, compared to the general population, they show a high rate of commission and conviction. As is the case with groups that are crime prone, their discrimination leading to anti-social behavior is brought up. Frequently chronic and wide spread unemployment is said to be the cause of criminality and crime as the evidence of society’s unfairness. Discrimination exists when, regardless of identical performance and qualifications, unequal opportunities (training, employment, promotion, salaries, and recognition) are offered. Many Gypsy leaders exploit in their PR unemployment and under representation in upper level positions. Because they make a living out of the political capitalization of failure, they condemn the majority for its unfairness. At the same time, these spokesmen do not use their influence to rally their followers to get the schooling pre-supposed by participation. Encouraging an old-fashioned life-style and its caste building, furthermore, making the refusal of even elementary-level schooling into a “defense of culture”, is frequent. The consequence creates conditions that confirm prejudices. These are judgments based on group experience applied to individuals without investigating the concrete case. Furthermore, modern employment demands modern skills. Those lacking them will wind up at the bottom of the pile. To achieve that result, none needs to resort to discrimination against analphabets to keep the uppity in “their place”.
3. Development presupposes freedom and order. Many failing societies regard these not only as separate but also as contradictory concepts. This demonstrates ignorance regarding the man-made creation of successful societies. By all the evidence, unawareness is a condition that the victim of the ailment is last to realize.
4. We have experienced a series of collapses after the US’s real-estate snafu. If the response to the predicament follows the pattern, the moment’s instance of last resort might be infected. That would be the credibility of government directed economics. If this happens, the crisis will have reached a new dimension. There will be no one left to override market-related forces. As a result, the ropes to pull the vessel from the shoals to the land will be cut. To avoid failure, an economically wise, that is profit bearing, investment of rescue-funds that are injected in the economy is needed. Bailouts dictated by political opportunism – pork – are more than ineffective. Such adventures are dictated by considerations that are the antidote of the remedy that might cure the patient.
5. Attempts to replace the market by government intervention bring a danger. It is the political control of all aspects of life. The major hazard is represented by the attitude of those that are unconcerned – if they do not actually welcome – by this probability.
6. International transactions (capital, goods and skilled people) are becoming subjected to hindrances created by shortsighted and US-led national tax makers. The high tax venue in the chain of transactions demands an undeserved tribute after low-tax locations have added value to products or services.
7. Just suppose that we admit there is a continuing change of the climate that began when the earth started to cool. Let it be assumed that, therefore, the announced climate catastrophe caused by man provokes your suspicions. Forces that dare to doubt the trend labeled as unique are skeptical regarding some of the proposed counter measures. Now a forecast can be risked. The policies advocated now will be declared to have been successful. If, however, through the laws of nature nothing unusual happens, the Gores will still grab the credit. In case of a cyclical worsening – such as putting elephants back on the artic circle – the same people will be credited for having prevented much worse.
8. In traditional societies an often selectively realized past becomes enshrined which, thereby, becomes an intellectual prison. This hinders the ability to adapt and to proceed innovatively. Modern society manages to erase the real past and to replace it with a plastic version of trivia formed out of cultivated ignorance. The danger in this is not harmless nostalgia but the unnoticed restoration of the past.
9. Russia’s security interest, like the USA’s is the stop of nuclear proliferation. In Iran’s case the tactic that contradicts the strategic goal is to derail the US and to let America deal with Tehran alone. If Washington does the heavy lifting, Russia benefits from the result. Meanwhile, she can earn for her seeming neutrality Muslim gratitude. At the same time, American IOUs are collected for not interfering. This appears to be a win-win deal for no input. Actually, the game is a high-risk one in case that the tactical rival fails.
10. In the tradition that Marx represents, leftist ideology presented its case as being “scientific”. The intended implication was that the guesses were not open to discussion. After all, they represented unchallengeable valid “objective” (another favorite word) insights. This quality of the doctrine made its advocates correct and the program objective in the way the diagnosis of appendicitis can be. (The analogy is fitting as the Red program implies an operation to cut out something as a precondition for the cure.) Nowadays, leftists seem to vary the foundation upon which their truth is said to rest. The shift reflects the current mood that distrusts science and takes extra-rational mantras as fact. Accordingly, the movement sells itself as a faith validated by the alleged moral quality of the goal it set. This, in the contemptuous term of the original Marx, makes those who argue in this manner into “utopians”. The popularity of publicly or privately oriented utopias as paths to some form of salvation suggests that, there is much political mileage to be squeezed out of the once dismissively rejected utopian approach.
11. Successful action in the public or the private realm begins with a perceived opportunity. Second, there must be a sense of legitimacy attributable to the method and to the goal pursued. Here the measuring rod is the judgment of the Leaders and the public’s acceptance – by persuasion or coercion – of the right to act. This is how come that, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and bin Laden, while separated by the details of their Weltanschauung, become united in their ways of implementation.
Posts
