Confucius and Clarity of Language

Brought forward from an old post:

Confucius said:

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. 


Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

The translation above makes me wonder how the end of a sentence is indicated in Chinese.  That's some first sentence.  We're really not used to long sentences these days.  I put in a paragraph separation just to make the quote easier to get through.

The piece from which this quote was taken makes some over-broad statements about government spending.   But it includes some really good points about how people have been misled about government money.  Click on the link at the bottom of the page for comments from readers which reveal some of the ways government involvement tends to make everything more expensive while sometimes making stuff seem "free".   David could tell many similar stories.  Money from government allows corrupt or astonishingly inefficient systems - public or private -  to survive much longer than they would if they had to earn their own money.

Dr. Helen has some interesting advice concerning how teachers can help their students think critically and clearly understand some of the ways propaganda works:

"  . . . in my opinion, it is not your job to decide the politics of the students in your class, it is your job to expose them to the critical thinking skills that will help them make informed decisions and back them up in a reasoned way. This is what is sorely lacking in our present educational system."

Did you know that there was a Propaganda Game ?  Some non-PC books for kids would also help provide some balance to the liberal mindset which filters down from our higher education system.

United States vs. Arizona: Politics in the DOJ

Amid Crises, Obama declares war - on Arizona.

There are several cases in which the Department of Justice seems to be choosing its cases based on political considerations rather than the law. Now the Department of Justice has filed a case against the State of Arizona concerning its new immigration law.  The President has compared the law to Chinese abuses of human rights.   He has emphasized the possibility of racial profiling in his condemnations of Arizona, but the actual case against Arizona is based upon federal preemption, and does NOT mention racial profiling, apparently. Arizona's law would short-change federal enforcement resourses in other states, or something.

But Arizona has not started enforcing the "problematic" provisions of its new law, while Rhode Island has. So why isn't the Obama crowd boycotting Rhode Island and calling them racists?

(a) Rhode Island has actually been enforcing the same procedures that allegedly make the Arizona law controversial, and (b) those features (checking immigration status when there is reasonable suspicion to do so, referring illegals to the feds for deportation) have already been upheld by the courts. (Indeed, reasonable suspicion is not even required for the police to be able to ask about a person's immigration status.)

Well, Obama has some company in decrying American immigration policy, which the administration is failing to enforce. Interesting op-ed here:

Attorney General Eric Holder finally filed that long-rumored lawsuit challenging Arizona’s new immigration law. In his opinion, only the federal government has the legal authority to “enforce” (read “completely ignore”) border security. If the Obama administration were convinced that Arizona would treat illegal immigration the same way the feds do, they wouldn’t have bothered to sue.


Unfortunately, Arizonans seem to take the rule of law seriously. And this is a big problem for Team Obama. Holder is worried that trained and knowledgeable local cops will actually prove that the law is enforceable, blowing his boss’s cover. Remember President Barack Obama’s claim last week that our borders are “just too vast” for us to secure them through enforcement, with fences and border patrols?


The border’s too big. The hole in the Gulf is too deep. The recession is too stubborn. Maybe we should find the president a smaller, easier-to-manage country to govern. You know - send him to the minors for a few years. . . .

Personally I think that the reason the Obama administration is going after Arizona but not Rhode Island is that Arizona passed its law during this administration. This is a challenge to Obama's rhetoric and plans concerning immigration. Hence the political selectivity in the filing of lawsuits by the DOJ.

Obama's positions on immigration are not totally unreasonable. And we do need an immigration law which allows for more rational legal immigration and assimilation, without people living in the shadows of society due to an uncertain legal status. But going to war against a state which wishes to help enforce federal law, misrepresenting the population and the state government as racist, is not the action an ethical administration should take.

On the lighter side: Democratic County Supervisor: "Arizona's law might have been justifiable if it was a border state". You know, like Rhode Island. Lots of other stupidity is also evident surrounding this case.

UPDATE: The Secretary of State indicates that the suit was filed under the direction of the President. No attempt to insulate DOJ decisions from the rest of the administration here.

More "racist" immigrant policies have also been in  force in the liberal stronghold of Madison, Wisconsin.    Oops.  The City Council doesn't want to be bashed like Arizona.  The threats by Holder have made them think twice about their current policies.

The Business of Government

The new mission give to NASA, as noted in Powerline, does provide a window into the thinking of the Obama administration. It also provides an example of how government becomes self-generating.

Doctor Zero:

The business of government, outside of the military and law enforcement, does not involve accomplishing missions or solving problems. Government agencies don’t view “success” as resolving the issues they were created to address, and shutting their doors after declaring victory. In fact, as you can see from the example of NASA, they would regard a tight focus on their original missions as regrettable stagnancy. Bureaucracies grow through failure. They present failure as a rationale for increased budgets, which they must spend with gusto, in order to submit an even bigger budget the following year. . . .


The true business of government involves converting limited authority, granted through reason, into a limitless moral imperative. The Founders were very logical men. Both the Constitution and Bill of Rights are tightly reasoned documents. So were the original charters of government agencies which have since swollen to grotesque size. A calm, logical application of Constitutional principle would have prevented this… but when government transforms itself into a moral enterprise, people become willing to let it bypass its restrictions. Thus, NASA began with a clear mission whose success was easily measured – is space travel advancing or not? It ends in a great, gelatinous mass of international outreach and Muslim self-esteem, open-ended projects that will never require less funding in any future year.

Read the whole thing.

Some Blacks are not "black enough" to be advanced by the NAACP

Do you think that Rush Limbaugh's "NAALCP" designation for the NAACP is a "smear"?

 NAACP leaders caught on tape saying that one black man who was assaulted at a political event is not black enough to deserve protection by the NAACP:

Here it is, the day after a young brother, a young man, I didn’t mean to call him a brother, but on the front page of the Post Dispatch, ironically, he’s sitting in a wheelchair, being kissed on the forehead, by a European. Now just imagine that as a poster child picture, not working for our people.

Darleen at Protein Wisdom:

The Personal is Political mantra of the Left is no more glaring than in the realm of sex and race — what makes an “authentic” woman or “authentic” black person is determined strictly by their politics. The tactic allows the Left to keep its pet “minorities” in line with the threat of challenging their identity if they stray and it allows the Left to entirely avoid any substantive debate with non-left “minorities” because such “Uncle Toms”, et al, are just traitors to their sex/race.

The poison runs deep: J. Christian Adams, the DOJ lawyer who resigned over Black Panther voter intimidation scandal has written about the hostility of Obama’s DOJ towards “non-minority” victims. . . .

As Wretchard noted soon after this story broke,

The Black Panthers and the three men who are suspected of killing Robert Wone are not impotent underdogs. On the contrary, they wield far more power than we, in our normal lives, could ever dispose of. God grant we never meet them, for if we do, we meet them alone. . . . .

The conflict between the idea of laws built upon individual rights vs. the idea of laws built upon group rights and group equity is one of the primary ideological conflicts in our country at this time.

Israelis suspicious of Obama

And he thinks he knows why: "During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that "some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion." "

Ace observes:

It's kind of amazing that every single criticism of, or lack of proper enthusiasm for, Barack Obama is rooted in some sort of bitter, clingy ignorance and malice. Apparently not a single critique of him is well-founded, or founded upon anything at all, really, except hatred and mental retardation.

It appears that this man really doesn't know what to do if he can't make an American or a country friendly to America look bad. This seems a little odd, since he had a reputation in college of being able to make people on two sides of an argument believe that he agreed fully with both of them. And during the election, he was pretty good at making people from different parts of the political spectrum think that he agreed with them.

But things are different when you are actually expected to lead. Maybe the Alinsky model of irritating,  mocking and denigrating those "with the power" doesn't work too well when you're the President of the United States.  Remember when he refused to be seen with Netanyahu?  He doesn't think that could "lead to suspicion" on the part of Israelis? Ed Morrissey picks his statement as an"Obamateurism of the Day".

He also had a reputation for being competitive and intolerant of criticism. This aspect of his reputed personal behavior does not seem to have changed much.

NASA's new mission is studiously ignored by The Media

Scott at Powerline:

Readers who get their news from the the mainstream media are remarkably ill informed. Much of what they "know" isn't true and much of what they don't know is important. Take the case of what Byron York calls "the NASA (non) feeding frenzy."

You know the story. The guy whom President Obama has put in charge of NASA reports that he has been tasked by President Obama with missions having nothing to do with space exploration. Perhaps the foremost of these missions is to make the Muslim world feel good about itself.

York originally reported the comments made by NASA administrator Charles Bolden to Al Jazeera several days ago. Yesterday York ran a Nexis search to see whether the news had made it into the mainstream media. York's search produced this (utterly predictable) result:

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on ABC World News: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on CBS Evening News: 0.

Scrappleface got the news.

Paul at Powerline: WHY THE SILENT TREATMENT?  Perhaps because the press realizes that this is a window into the thinking of the Obama administration? Read his arguments.

"You'll be able to keep your own insurance" was the most important political lie of the last year.   But NASA's new mission is the most revealing truth. The MSM understands this, which is why it's been so resolute in keeping it out of sight.

Ethnic Studies in Space: NASA's New Mission - Muslim Outreach

Powerline:

OBAMA TASKS NASA WITH BUILDING MUSLIM SELF-ESTEEMIn the video below, Charles Bolden, head of NASA, tells Al Jazeera that the "foremost" task President Obama has given him is "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." Thus, NASA's primary mission is no longer to enhance American science and engineering or to explore space, but to boost the self-esteem of "predominantly Muslim nations."

Watch the video. He's so ernest. Charles Krauthammer is not impressed.

The brilliant Michael Ramirez illustrates.

Captain Ed:

NASA’s spaced-out mission no longer includes … space

Jules Crittenden:

NASA chief says his “foremost” mission is to explore old worlds, to seek out global jihad and 14th-century mentalities, to go boldly where man has spent the last millennia trying to get the heck out of.

OK, that’s not exactly how he put it . . .

Maybe it’s like a time-travel project. The best way to learn how to exploit intergalactic wormholes is to dive headfirst into our own local time warp.

Some people might see it as a little patronizing, patting the Muslim world on the head and telling it what a good mathematician it used to be 800 years ago. But I dunno, I’m wondering how the Muslim world is going to feel about being treated like an alien planet that we need NASA to get in touch with. Seeing how the Islamic world glommed onto that Avatar thing, I’m not sure encouraging them to view the United States as a visiting space power is such a great idea.

Tim Blair:

Forget space travel. Iran is still trying to cope with mullets. . .

Another contribution to science, math, and engineering:
Muslim fanatics in Kerala on Sunday chopped off the right hand of a college lecturer, accusing him of setting a question paper with a derogatory reference to the Prophet.

I left a comment on the Australian's site:

This whole “Muslim self-esteem through identification with ancient, more successful relatives” thing reminds me of the worst of the Ethnic Studies myths which came out of the 60s and 70s in the US: Like the one where black and brown people are warm, wonderful “sun people” and white people are cold, murderous “ice people” who steal the inventions of the “sun people”.

The child psychologist Haim Ginott, decades ago, identified “desirable” types of praise which would help children develop self-esteem and “undesirable” types of praise which could lead to distrust of the praiser, anger and insecurity. The type of esteem-boosting proposed here falls in the second category.

Do we really need more distrustful, angry Muslims?

SOME COMPREHENSIvE COMMENTARY: Mona Charen:

It’s not really surprising that President Obama told NASA administrator Charles Bolden that his highest priority should be “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science . . . and math and engineering.” It fits with so much that we already knew about the president.

It is consistent with his wildly exaggerated concept of governmental and presidential power and competence. Samuel Johnson wrote: “How small, of all that human hearts endure / that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Mr. Obama believes the opposite — that his presidency can be a transformative moment not just for the nation, but for the world. . .

Read the whole thing. More:

To treat the Muslim world as a vast ocean of African Americans in need of respect and encouragement from us is both arrogant and incredibly solipsistic. In fact, large swaths of the Muslim world feel inexpressibly superior to us — particularly morally and spiritually. . . . . Osama bin Laden boasted in 2000 that he had defeated the Soviet Empire and that it would be a small matter to defeat the American one. Again, he may have been deluded, but he was not a candidate for assertiveness training. Nearly every Muslim child is instructed that his is the true faith, superior in every way to the errors that came before — Judaism and Christianity — and infinitely above paganism or atheism. Jihadis are taught that their shining pure religion requires no less than the mass murder of infidels and unbelievers.

It might just be that Muslim self-confidence is more dangerous to us than imagined Muslim feelings of inadequacy. . .

"There are a lot of people with high self-esteem. Mass murders, prisoners, gang members, and delinquent children all have higher self-esteem, on average, than people in the general population of a similar age."

Elliot Abrams gives some history of NASA, then says,

This quote is entirely believable. Mr. Bolden was not told that he must advance American interests in space, but instead to become part of the big Obama program of engagement with the “international community.” His achievements will be measured by whether he can “reach out” to make people “feel good,” and those people aren’t even Americans; no, his “perhaps foremost” job is to make Muslims around the world “feel good” about their past.

A more serious task might be to make them feel terrible about the present level of education in Muslim lands, not least for women and girls, in the hope that we could spur them to reform and improvement. The dismal state of science, math, and engineering in Muslim nations is quite clear, but Mr. Bolden isn’t assigned to improve their performance (which would presumably be the job of USAID, but whatever). No, he’s to be another Dr. Feelgood, a sad assignment for this former astronaut. Mr. Bolden should not be criticized for telling the truth about his job, for the problem is at the top, not at NASA. The space program is being transformed into a tool of Obama foreign policy, which views American national greatness as an anachronism.

Rand Simberg, aerospace engineer, has been involved in an "ongoing quixotic campaign to persuade conservatives and Republicans that Obama’s space policy actually is a huge improvement over the Bush policy . . The administration hasn’t made it easy for me . . . ". He says:

As I noted above, we need to have a policy discussion based on the policy itself and its features and bugs, rather than its ostensible author (a form of the ad hominem fallacy). And such a discussion should start with a discussion of what our goals for American human spaceflight are. Do we want the continuation of the state-centralized program that we inherited from the Cold War, with a few astronauts going to space at a cost of billions each, or do we want a space program with traditional American values, in which (and for which Bolden has vocally yearned in the past few months) hundreds and thousands are leaving the planet, for their own purposes and dreams, at a cost affordable to them? Should we continue to take the failed collective approach or the individualistic one?

It is ironic that such a radical change came in this administration, which is collectivist in all else. . . Let’s just hope that Obama doesn’t realize what he’s done, or actually get interested in it.

Civil Rights Division of the DOJ "Lawless"?

It's not just refusal to support justice for all in the case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party. It's also refusal to enforce laws mandating that ineligible voters (dead, duplicate, etc.) be removed from voter rolls. Because the new goal of the Civil Rights Division in the Obama era is to increase voting by minorities - not to enforce the law. And removal of ineligible voters would decrease minority voting, or something. Is it all about maximizing the ACORN vote? ACORN is known for fraudulent voter registrations. Mr. Adams is very specific in his allegations. Watch the entire video.

“The real problem here, as I testified yesterday, is a lawlessness that’s in the Civil Rights Division that will enforce some laws and not others.”

Unfortunately, the literature on whistleblowing in general indicates that going to the media (even though Mr. Adams had to go to the "new media" in this case is about the only chance someone within a corrupt organization has of salvaging some part of their professional life after bringing to light corruption. For example, scientists who discover fraud are counseled by whistleblowing advisors not to reveal what they have discovered unless they are prepared to lose their family and have their career destroyed - particularly if the malfeasance is on the part of a superior. Note that J. Christian Adams' supervisor was removed from his post and is not allowed to testify to the Civil Rights Commission. His career at DOJ is probably effectively over as a result of his integrity. People who have already left the organization are at much less risk of personal destruction.

Based on personal (family) experience, I would counsel anyone who has discovered serious malfeasance within the organization where they work to leave the organization and become established in a new job before revealing the malfeasance. Maybe with the help of an attorney. It is also recommended that potential whistleblowers meet with friends and family first to warn them about the potential ramifications of blowing the whistle.

NAACP Lobbies in Favor of Voter Intimidation? DOJ also?

"Some people are more equal than others".

The National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People, according to management within the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice,  lobbied the government to dismiss the DOJ case against the New Black Panthers AT THE SENTENCING PHASE OF THE TRIAL. The whistleblowing attorney from the DOJ resigned in part because DOJ attorneys were prohibited by the administration from testifying before the Civil Rights Commission in this case. His supervisor's responsibilities within DOJ were sharply curtailed after he opposed dismissal of the case (he was relieved of his post).

Again, to the NAACP, "Social Justice" seems to mean special privileges for certain interest groups. The dismissal of this case treats certain victims as less important as others. "The Obama Administration is turning a blind eye to racial equality". The Department of Justice no longer supports "justice" in the traditional sense.  Transforming America.

The traditional major media did not show up at the Civil Rights Commission hearing. Fox News and the DC Examiner went.

Our country has some very deep problems.

Update: Abigail Themstrom calls for less inflammatory rhetoric by conservatives and defends (or at least tries to explain) the handling of the case. She has a few good points.  Inflammatory rhetoric is expected from liberals, but it undermines the positions of conservatives.  On the other hand,  boots do look like "jackboots" when military-style garb is tucked into the tops of them. Nightsticks are, indeed, weapons, which is why police carry them. And one of the defendants in the case is far more inflammatory in his rhetoric than any mainstream conservative has been concerning this case.

  But she  points out some far larger issues about which conservatives should be concerned if they wish to promote a race-neutral society.   She sees this case as small potatoes compared to the race-based policy changes concerning voting now under consideration. But not everyone takes this case lightly.

Jim Treacher:

Stopping a black guy from intimidating voters is racist, you racist. . . .

On a related note, a pet peeve: Could we please stop calling it “reverse racism”? Racism is racism. The only reverse racism is not being racist.

Update: President of New Black Panther Party admits voter intimidation (his little brother is the one who called for murdering white people and their babies in front of a National Geographic camera).

Update: Remember the idea behind Careful Reading Tuesday.