Many commentators have noted the irony of anti-bullying “expert” Dan Savage’s “bullying” (as defined by his ilk) of high-school students at a recent journalism conference in Seattle, Washington. Yet it seems that the most important points about the matter have not been made.
In case you missed the story, homosexual activist Savage called two dozen students “pansy-a***d” as they were walking out of his anti-bullying presentation last month. Their offense? They took exception to his profanity-laced criticism of Christianity, in which he equated biblical condemnations of homosexual behavior with the prohibition against eating shellfish and said “We ignore the b******t in the Bible about all sorts of things.”
Now, I could emphasize that Savage targeted minors with his bile, which was reminiscent of the 2000 Democratic National Convention attendees who actually booed a contingent of Boy Scouts who appeared on stage. And this typical leftist lack of class, self-control, and sense of propriety brings us to the first point. It’s not just that Savage issued intellectually vacuous criticisms of the Bible, conflating ceremonial and moral law, which was bad enough. It’s that he couldn’t even — while speaking to kids — manage to mind his tongue while doing it. He’s a good example of why adults no longer command youths’ respect: Adults are no longer respectable.
Savage’s criticism was motivated, ostensibly, by his belief that biblical condemnations of homosexuality lead to the bullying of homosexual kids. Okay, perhaps. But then doesn’t it follow that his ilk’s condemnations of Christianity could lead to the bullying of Christian kids? For that matter, all the fashionable criticism of obesity could beget the bullying of fat kids; anti-white and anti-conservative messages have led to the bullying of white youths and conservative ones in school; anti-corporate and anti-fur sentiments have inspired the firebombing of fur stores and a McDonald’s and the burning of SUVs, and anti-Giants messages have led to an attack on Giants supporters by Dodgers fans. Clearly, the only option is to avoid expressing any opinion about anything, anytime, anywhere.
As someone once said, stigmas are the corollaries of values: If certain things are to be valued, it follows that their opposites will be devalued. Thus, whenever you espouse a belief — any belief — it’s a given that someone, somewhere will be inspired to act wrongly based upon it. This is why our guiding principle for speech cannot be whether something is “offensive,” which is thoroughly subjective; it cannot be the idea that something inspires hate or hurts feelings, because invalid and valid ideas both can do that. The guiding principle for speech is a simple one: Is it true?
And how does one remedy the matter if the Truth sets a few off as it sets most free? With more Truth: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
(Some punishment doesn’t hurt, either.)
The answer also isn’t “anti-bullying programs,” and this brings us to the main point. We all probably knew what bullying was when we were five years old. We’ve all seen it; many of us have been bullied, some have been bullies ourselves and a handful have been both. So why do we suddenly need anti-bullying programs, experts, seminars, and laws?
Part of it, of course, involves our overall moral decline, which breeds increasing misbehavior across the board.
Recently, an anti-bullying video ran on the Cartoon Network. In the video, kids were instructed not to call others hurtful names like “stupid,” “fat” and “jerk.” During a Q & A following a screening of the film, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked for her advice to kids being bullied, and that advice included telling the bully in question to “stop it, you’re being a jerk.” Huh?
Along those same instructive lines but infused with much more anger we find this lesson that bashing anyone just because of their beliefs or who they are is considered bullying — unless those people are Christians who follow the “bulls*#t” in their bibles:
As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy assed.”
The speaker was Dan Savage, founder of the “It Gets Better” project, an anti-bullying campaign that has reached more than 40 million viewers with contributors ranging from President Obama to Hollywood stars. Savage also writes a sex advice column called “Savage Love.”
Savage, and his husband, were also guests at the White House for President Obama’s 2011 LGBT Pride Month reception. He was also invited to a White House anti-bullying conference.
Savage was supposed to be delivering a speech about anti-bullying at the National High School Journalism Conference sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association. But it turned into an episode of Christian-bashing.
[...]
“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” Savage said as other students hollered and cheered. “It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy-assed people react when you push back.”
Play the video below to unleash more straw men than showed up for Victor Fleming’s casting call for the part of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Savage also somehow managed to get in a shot at Callista Gingrich. Feel the love (language warning):
*
Did you feel the negative energy that can lead to bullying magically evaporate during that speech? Me neither.
When I went to sleep last night, little did I know that while outside sirens competed with car alarms in the symphony that is New York City, I had already been declared a hate group.
Being declared a hate group wasn’t in my plans for the day, but like winning the lottery, it seems to be one of those things that happens when you least expect it. Except that as the little bald man in front of the bodega tells you, you have to play to win, but you don’t even have to buy a ticket to be declared an official hate group.
My first response on finding out that I was now a hate group was to look around to see where everyone else was. A hate group needs the group part and one man and a cat don’t seem to be enough. Even when the cat is a well known bigot who hates mice, birds, car alarms that go off in the middle of the night, the plumber and sudden noises.
Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed, “Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield” as one of their Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups, alongside such other vast organizations as “Faith Freedom”, a website for ex-Muslims, and “Casa D’Ice Signs”, the signs on a bar located on K-Mart Plaza in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Someone with less faith in the fact checking abilities of the Southern Poverty Law Center might have thought that whoever had made up this list had no clue that “Casa D’Ice” was a lounge with signs outside, that there was no such group as “Casa D’Ice Signs” and that signs are pieces of plastic and not a hate group. But I had faith that the Center knew more than I did. Perhaps its crack team of researchers had learned that the signs had come alive and formed their own hate group, somehow arranging their own letters to form messages about illegal immigration and the need to get out of Iraq.
My first thought was to wonder whether some mistake had been made in my own case, but the Southern Poverty Law Center people are experts on hate groups, even if they don’t seem to know what the definitions of “hate” or “groups” or “hate groups” might be. Even if they seem to have copied their list off a forum somewhere at the last minute to have something to show the donors. Clearly I was now a hate group and with tax season upon us, I called my accountant to find out if there was a tax deduction for that. There wasn’t.
As a consolation though, I was listed as “active”, which I took as a compliment because I had jogged a few miles yesterday and clearly the Southern Poverty Law Center had noticed. They also listed me as being in New York, which showed that the Center was well aware that it was aggressively trespassing above its jurisdiction below the Mason-Dixon Line and invading the north.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” (TM), which is either a map of hate groups or a map of groups that the center hates, had me floating somewhere in the East River next to the National Black Foot Soldier Network and the National Socialist Movement in Long Island.
“This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.” So spewed the attackers of Melissa Coon’s 13-year-old son, as they doused him with gasoline and set him alight.
Police, they say, are “investigating” whether this is a hate crime.
Yes, and I’m investigating whether the media is biased and if hate-crime law is applied equally. I’ll get back to you on that — in about two paragraphs.
The attack on the boy took place on the east side of Kansas City, Missouri. Fox 4 Kansas City provides some (sanitized) details, writing, “The victim is a student at East High School and regularly walks home after class. When he reached his porch, two older teens grabbed him, pinned his arms behind his back and then poured gas from a gas can on the boy. They then set the boy on fire.”
Thankfully, the teen victim had the presence of mind to pull his shirt up over his head and snuff out the flames. He was treated at Children’s Mercy hospital, having suffered first-degree burns to his face and head. And police said they were concerned about possible damage to his eyes and lungs.
The concern, however, isn’t translating into national media coverage — or honest coverage anywhere.
Of course, if you scrutinize the few local outlets reporting the story and cut and paste, you can piece the picture together. The Fox article I excerpted above provides only the vaguest hint of the attack’s racial nature by quoting Mrs. Coon as saying that her family was told “it’s a hate crime.” KCTV 5 did a bit better, reporting that the victim was white and the assailants black; however, while they quoted the attackers as stating “This is what you get,” for some reason they omitted the “white boy” part. Then there was KMBC.com, which presented the latter but neglected to explicitly identify the race of the criminals, leaving the reader to wonder if the attackers were self-hating Norwegian immigrants. But I’ve played the game and figured out that Colonel Mustard did it in the library with the candlestick.
But we’ve seen this bias before. It’s much as when Muslims rioted in France a couple of years ago and burned thousands of cars, and the media reported the rioters as “youths.” Yes, just teen angst, I suppose.
Some may say that the media are reluctant to stir up racial unrest, but this never seems to stop them when the races of the victim and attackers are reversed. Could you imagine the hue and cry if two older white teenagers had set an innocent black child alight while saying, “You get what you deserve, black boy”? The headlines coast to coast would be cast in neon, and the media would love it — it would give them another chance to agitate for more hate-crime legislation.
This is exactly what happened after the horrible dragging death of black victim James Byrd by three white men in 1998; it was headline news for months and led to the creation of a Texas hate-crime law. Meanwhile, when three “youths” beat a cab driver and his passenger while shouting racial epithets in Philadelphia recently, D.A.
They’re baaaaaack. Louis Farrakhan and Michael Pfleger, the Jew-bashing, race-hustling Friends of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, reared their heads this weekend.
With demagogic pals like these…
In a fiery lecture to thousands of followers of the Nation of Islam on Sunday in Chicago, Minister Louis Farrakhan warned that racial hatred could lead to attempts to assassinate President Barack Obama.
Er, never mind that the most recent murder-minded plotter headed toward the Capitol was a Moroccan Muslim jihadist.
Watch the MSM look the other way at Farrakhan’s usual, anti-Semitic tripe. Oh, and when Obama’s friends invoke Satan? Ho-hum:
Farrakhan drew a distinction between noble Jews and followers of “the synagogue of Satan,” and he pointed to a recent incident in which the publisher of a Jewish magazine suggested Israeli security forces could help preserve Israel by killing Obama. He attacked Israeli policies, while also directing criticism at perceived Jewish influence in the U.S.
“Jewish people were not the origin of Hollywood, but they took it over,” he said, blaming the entertainment industry for degrading the country’s morality.
As he spoke, Farrakhan was flanked by dozens of associates and dignitaries, including another controversial religious figure based in Chicago: theRev. Michael Pfleger, who stood to receive praise from Farrakhan and applause from the crowd.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who recently spoke of the “edginess and lack of civility” evident “with the growth of the tea-party movement” at the same time she spoke of the Tucson-area shootings involving her friend, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
The insinuation was unmistakable. The finger-pointing at her political foes undeniable.
It was an accusation of guilt, the same accusation that President Barack Obama so eloquently pleaded with everyone to resist.
“What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other,” the president said a year ago at a gathering at McKale Center at the University of Arizona.
The messy nature of American politics is always apparent.
The loud and often angry and confrontational “Occupy” demonstrations around the country in recent months are testament to that.
Wasserman Schultz does not know what drove a madman to murder. For her to imply that she does merely constitutes one more occasion to turn on each other.
Progressives are hateful by f-king nature. And Wasserman Schultz is a horrible person.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat who chairs Democratic National Committee, blamed the Tea Party movement for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last year. She made the comments in New Hampshire this morning.
“We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords — who is doing really well, by the way, — [was shot],” she said, and then mentioned the Tea Party by name:
The discourse in America, the discourse in Congress in particular… has really changed, I’ll tell you. I hesitate to place blame, but I have noticed it take a very precipitous turn towards edginess and lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement.
You had town hall meetings that they tried to take over, and you saw some their conduct at those tea party meetings. When they come and disagree with you, you’re not just wrong, you’re the enemy.
It was determined that the accused shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, is mentally ill and unable to stand trial. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and has been undergoing forced medication in a federal prison hospital since July.
Following the shooting, the establishment media attempted to portray him as a Tea Party supporter. The media cited a Department of Homeland Security report linking Loughner to American Renaissance, which DHS claimed promotes views that are “anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG [Zionist Occupational Government], anti-Semitic.”
Following the news blitz and sensationalistic headlines portraying the shooting as political, the DHS admitted “the department has not established any such possibility, undercutting what appears to be the primary basis for this claim.” It was later discovered that the memo came from the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, not the DHS.
The insinuation by Wasserman Schultz that disagreeing with the government is akin to violence and terrorism arrives as the establishment tries to discredit Ron Paul and his supporters. In the lead-up to the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, an umber of editorials characterized his supporters as coming from the lunatic fringe, as did so-called “conservative” heavy hitters on talk radio.
The DNC boss Wasserman Schultz did not mention Ron Paul, but her side swipe of the Tea Party serves as an indirect attack on the Paul campaign. Although much of the Tea Party has been hijacked by establishment Republicans, there is still a large contingency that supports Ron Paul and his call for a return to a constitutional republic.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (above, right… no wait, left… I think) is a demagoguing bottom-feeder even by DNC standards. A lone deranged freak committed a horrible crime that forever changed the life of one of DWS’s colleagues as well as many others, so blaming a group of people who had nothing to do with it, purely for political reasons, is her definition of helping tone down the rhetoric? That sounds about right:
We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords — who is doing really well, by the way, — [was shot],” Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair said during a “Politics and Eggs” forum this morning. “The discourse in America, the discourse in Congress in particular . . . has really changed, I’ll tell you. I hesitate to place blame, but I have noticed it take a very precipitous turn towards edginess and lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement.”
To add insult to injury, DWS also blamed the Tea Party for her teeth and hair. Now that’s a low blow:
While we’re waiting for Debbie Downer to apologize, enjoy the crickets:
(h/t for the “separated at birth” pic to Moonbattery)
I was looking through some past articles on Krugman and I came across this piece that did a good job of summarizing my views on Krugman’s after the Tucson shooting earlier this year. It was amazing that within just a couple hours after the attack, with no evidence, Krugman was already assigning blame.
HOW did a deadly shooting spree by a disturbed young man with the typically inscrutable politics of political killers turn into a crazy referendum on the state of American political discourse?
Mere minutes after the identity of the alleged Tucson gunman hit the wires, partisans began a reprehensible scramble to out Jared Loughner as ideological kin to their political opponents. Actually, well before that time, some left-leaning opinionators began suggesting that Sarah Palin’s now-infamous crosshairs map probably had something to do with the shootings. At the very least, intemperately fiery right-wing rhetoric probably had something to do with creating a cultural “climate” unusually encouraging to would-be assassins. Before anybody really knew anything, some people seemed to have become convinced that if not for the heavy weather of partisan antagonism summoned by intemperate tea-party types, Gabrielle Giffords would not have got a bullet through the brain.
In a blog item on Saturday, before any significant details about Mr Loughner’s motivations had come to light, Paul Krugman wrote:
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
This struck me as irresponsibly premature, and one might have thought that, given a little more time and information, Mr Krugman would change his tune, or at least turn down the volume. Nope. . . .
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters had strong words for the Tea Party Saturday, saying they could go “straight to hell” for impeding job growth.
Speaking at a forum in her California district, Waters vowed to push Congress to create more jobs, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“I’m not afraid of anybody,” Waters told the crowd. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. As far as I’m concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell.”
For decades, this nation has been held hostage by countries that do not like us. Over federal regulation has created a wall between our God given natural energy resources and energy producers. We must tear down this wall! The "Made in America" energy plan will make this country energy independent, and we can do it in 9 years! www.cainconnections.com
Catch Kevin
If you like facts over fiction, reality over rhetoric, and truth over tradition, tune into my radio show, “Catch Kevin: Unscripted & Uncensored!”
Chuck Baldwin Live
Dr. Baldwin’s messages from Kalispell, MT, will be livestreamed on this page every Sunday afternoon at approximately 2:30 p.m. MST.
Clash Radio
Listen to Doug Giles Live Monday – Friday at 11am – 12pm[est]
Our Sponsors
Get in on the modern Gold Rush. Call now to buy gold bars from The U.S. Gold Bureau.
![bookmark](http://island-adv.com/wp-content/plugins/share-and-follow/images/blank.gif" height=){kind=small}
Recently, an anti-bullying video ran on the Cartoon Network. In the video, kids were instructed not to call others hurtful names like “stupid,” “fat” and “jerk.” During a Q & A following a screening of the film, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked for her advice to kids being bullied, and that 
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (above, right… no wait, left… I think) is a demagoguing bottom-feeder even by DNC standards. A lone deranged freak committed a horrible crime that forever changed the life of one of DWS’s colleagues as well as many others, so blaming a group of people who had nothing to do with it, purely for political reasons, is her definition of helping tone down the rhetoric? That sounds 
Catch Kevin
Chuck Baldwin Live![Clash Radio Listen to Doug Giles Live Monday – Friday at 11am – 12pm[est]](http://island-adv.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/clash_logoreverse.png "Listen to Doug Giles Live Monday – Friday at 11am – 12pm[est]")
Clash Radio
