Category → Immigration
Want to add beauty to the world?
If you want to add some beauty to the world, and who doesn’t, then do this simple thing: Let milkweed grow on your property.
Monarch butterflies follow the world’s most incredible migration, but they are increasingly challenged by unnecessary weed control and manicured lawns that eliminate milkweed.
Why milkweed became Public Enemy Weed #1 is probably lost to early 1900s history. But the negative association in most Americans’ minds keeps it suppressed far and wide.
In an urban and suburban environment, milkweed is no worse than the ailanthus (“tree of heaven”) growing everywhere, and it provides a home for beautiful butterflies that make our summers happier and more fulfilling.
So if you see a patch of milkweed growing on your back corner, please leave it. Beauty on wings will thank you, and that miraculous journey will continue for another year.
When staying positive is challenging
Witnessing the lynch mob and witch hunt surrounding George Zimmerman, and the supposed adults leading it, and the hatred, racism, and bigotry on display at the public events purportedly against racism and bigotry and for peace and justice, it is hard to stay positive.
After all, a lynch mob is exactly the opposite of peace and justice.
What makes me so sad is that black people still inspire me. As the product of a home where racism was not only absent, it was forbidden, and where everyone of all walks of life, all skin colors, and all faiths sat at our table, I grew up with a positive fascination with blacks and a passion for their success.
To me, American blacks are the modern equivalent of the ancient Israelites. With the legacy of slavery propelling them forward, blacks were supposed to be integrated into every facet of American life, business, law, medicine, politics, you name it. Very much an American story, from rags to riches, from poverty to great material comfort, and so on. In other words, blacks embody the potential of the American dream, and that is something so many fail to understand: Whites very much want blacks to succeed. Because it is a reflection on the promise of America, a reflection on all of us.
But in my lifetime, I have seen blacks going backwards, into self-segregation, into naked, open, raw racism and bigotry against so many other groups. Hatred is justified as “justice.”
So very few of the white people I know have any inclination towards racism. Skin color means nothing to 99% of the whites I know (and whites are most of the people I know, so I know their views). And yet whites are still accused of oppressing and hurting their fellow Americans because of skin color. It’s simply not true. In fact it is racist to accuse people of racism because of their skin color.
What’s sad about this is that eventually people are going to become worn out with being accused of something they are not. Calling someone a racist will lose its meaning. Maybe that is inevitable in a country that is rapidly turning brown, but it shouldn’t happen because the accusation becomes so hollow that it ceases to mean anything.
I still hold hope that things will get better. That requires everyone to have an honest discussion about these issues.
Visiting DC? Try this landmark
With original carved woodwork, tiles, and other intact original surfaces the Christian Heurich House is worth the five bucks admission fee. The basement was built as a traditional German inn or pub, and includes the nicest torchier I have seen. Antlers linking three old halberds together, this torchier undoubtedly was part of a larger set used to illuminate the day’s take, arranged just-so on the ground after a traditional hunt. Photos are not allowed, so I did not take one. Hopefully the association will publish a book on the place where you can see it all in detail.
http://www.heurichhouse.org/
Basic math…
Flattery in Cairo + hesitancy in Benghazi = Boston ….
And more will come, hate to say
Political correctness run amok
As unbelievable as it is, mainstream media are now posing the question of motive behind the Boston bombing. Really.
What’s so sick about PC is that the more obvious something is, the less you are supposed to talk about it. Well guess what….there’s no PC here.
Like millions of Americans, I love America more than any political party, more than any social nicety, more than I fear being labeled by anti-American activists living amongst us, namely the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that operates at the highest levels of American government and which aggressively censors and cuts off debate about the role of Islam in America.
CAIR is public enemy number one, and I’m happy to say it. They will cover up the motive behind the two Muslim men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. That’s wrong and it must be confronted.
Boston Marathon: A Bomb-Free Zone, Right?
Not that reason or logic is guiding the anti-Second Amendment crusade right now, but it’s helpful to my own peace of mind to point out that the Boston Marathon is a bomb-free zone. And several bombs were exploded there, anyhow. The point being that only law-abiding people follow laws. Passing laws that infringe upon the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens, while doing nothing about crime, are by definition bad laws.
Drawing a parallel here with gun control laws, obviously. Not advocating bombs for everyone, obviously.
My heart goes out to the victims of today’s bombing. Hopefully, this administration will focus on Islamic terrorists and stop trying to prove that everyone else is really the threat to America.
Islam, you’ve got a problem
Watching videos from the Syrian civil war (Youtube has all you’ll ever need or want to see), it’s hard to conclude that either side is pure. Videos showing the most graphic torture of captured rebel fighters, summary executions of small children, and kangaroo courts pronouncing and then implementing the death penalty upon captured soldiers all point to a main problem: Islam.
Not one Islamic country is or has ever been peaceful. All have been violently expansionist and imperialistic. None have been kind to minorities.
Syria is a good example of what France, England, Holland, and many Scandinavian countries can expect once Moslem populations reach large enough sizes.
I’m saddened and work hard not to puke on my feet over what’s happening in Syria. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of pure men over there. Bashar Assad’s cruelty led to the uprising, and his willingness to destroy his own country rather than leave it is, well, it’s destroying his country in a way no other kind of conflict can achieve. But his opponents know not much more about treating fellow people kindly.
Let’s pledge to make sure this dynamic doesn’t come to America.
Once Every Blue Moon I Agree With the ACLU
Blurring the lines between policing and soldiering is an increasing problem best witnessed by YouTube videos showing police officers needlessly Tasering and beating innocent civilians. Now the ACLU is beginning to dig into the transmittal of huge amounts of military hardware from the Department of Homeland Security, of all places, to local police departments around the nation.
Read more here: http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/a-c-l-u-has-concerns-over-military-weapons-used-by-local-police/
MY Question is this: Why and how is the US Dept. of Homeland Security dealing in military weapons and gear? America has always maintained a strong wall between the military and the police. That is clearly being dissolved. Is the DHS becoming the Big Government Big Brother we worry about? Liberty, folks, America is all about individual liberty, and these sorts of policies corrode, erode, and undermine individual liberty one small step at a time. Push back. Elect citizens to office who disagree with these sorts of policies and who will work hard to eliminate them and make them illegal.
Good movies hard to come by
Zero Dark Thirty takes its name from the old saw that military duty usually begins at some dark hour long before dawn, when most people are fast asleep in cozy beds.
The movie by that name contains the same message: Americans live comfortably, while brave warriors place themselves at great risk for the greater good, often without thanks or recognition.
It’s certainly a timely message, as our current president is reluctant to lead or give credit to those who do. Americans are in grave danger around the planet, and thankfully we have citizens who still believe in the greater good, even if their current political bosses do not.
Like the movie Act of Valor, Zero Dark Thirty gives a glimpse into the harsh reality of battlefields far away from daily American life, but without which our happy existence would not be possible.
A good message, a necessary movie.
Merry Christmas to one and all
Somehow
Somehow, wishing Merry Christmas to your fellow American has turned into a big time no-no. Out of fear of “offending” someone, I suppose.
Since when was a human culture based on not possibly offending someone, even unintentionally? The French culture is based on insulting and offending everyone. Like Africans, the Germans pass right by offending and go right for invading and killing.
The British snub everyone in every way, the most popular being the genteel way, of course. Etc.
Americans are so programmed to not offend the many cultures, ethnicities, and religions that make up our nation that now there’s a taboo against wishing someone Merry Christmas. What if they don’t observe or do Christmas?, goes the thinking.
Well, folks, Christmas is our national holiday. And it has become so commercialized and popularized that you don’t have to worry about someone wishing you a Merry Christmas and then in a fit of joy forcing you to eat something you detest, like pickled fish (Norway), blood pudding (Britain), etc. or that the well-wisher’s intent is to either convert you to a different religion (Mormonism) or to belittle your own beliefs.
Since when did wishing cheer and good will among men and women add up to an insult?
I’ll tell you where. In the minds and practices of America’s cultural police, who also promote atheism as America’s official religion, that’s where.
It’s not coming from a healthy place, this new taboo against wishing someone Merry Christmas. And therefore, it is with great relish that I wish all of you dear readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year!