Two Things a Liberal Will Never Admit Responsibility

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them." — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1821

Progressive-Liberals love to take credit for all the so called “wonderful” achievements of the past century. They will skirt things such as the racism of the Democratic Party and Woodrow Wilson and the Vietnam War started by John Kennedy and escalated under Lyndon Johnson. They will deny the failure of the Great Society. They will harp on the excesses of Joe McCarthy and his Communist witch hunts (some of which were proved to be true after the documents released after the fall of the Soviet Union but never mention the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-TX), and therefore known as the Dies Committee.

There are two things, however, Liberals will never ever talk about or even acknowledge there existence. Those two things are the banning of DDT by the newly created Environmental Protection Agency after Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring and CBS’s hack journalism by 60 Minutes and Eugenics.

Let’s look at the DDT banning first. Liberals will never take responsibility for all of the anguish and death caused by the banning of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) At least 50 million people, mainly children died from Malaria, Typhus, and Dengue fever both caused by bites from Aedes mosquitoes. When it was first introduced in World War II, DDT was very effective in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality. The WHO's anti-malaria campaign, which consisted mostly of spraying DDT, was initially very successful as well. For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about one million per year before spraying to just 18 in 1963 and 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969.

This banning of DDT began in 1962, when the book Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carson was published. It catalogued the environmental impacts of indiscriminate DDT spraying in the United States and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without a sufficient understanding of their effects on ecology or human health. The book claimed that DDT and other pesticides had been shown to cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on the agricultural use of DDT in the United States.

We recently passed the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, “Silent Spring.” Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, it was an emotionally charged but deeply flawed denunciation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects. Today, the book is still revered by many, but its legacy is anything but positive.

As detailed by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet very readable analysis, “Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic,” Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimatize “positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking.” Carson “encouraged some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world.” Meiners and Morriss state:

“Carson was a marine biologist whose earlier publications on the oceans and marine life were fine works of nature writing. Her strong reputation built upon these earlier writings led many willing environmentalists to accept the countless distortions in Silent Spring as fact.

In Silent Spring (a title drawn from her assertion that the anti-malaria chemical DDT was causing bird deaths) Carson shifted from documenting nature’s beauty to advocating positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental activist circles.”

Meiners and Morriss put it bluntly: “above all, Silent Spring is a work of advocacy, weaving anecdotes and carefully selected bits of science into a compelling brief against the use of chemicals that had already saved millions of lives at the time Carson wrote.”

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy raised substantial anxiety about DDT and led to bans in most of the world and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides. But the fears she raised were based on gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that, if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists. In the words of Professor Robert H. White-Stevens, an agriculturist and biology professor at Rutgers University, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

In 1992, San Jose State University entomologist J. Gordon Edwards, a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, offered a persuasive and comprehensive rebuttal of “Silent Spring.” As he explained in “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” a stunning, point by point refutation, “it simply dawned on me that that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about [pesticides] and that I was being duped along with millions of other Americans.” He demolished Carson’s arguments and assertions, calling attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications.Consider, for example, this passage from Edwards’ article: “This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that ‘in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.’ The World Health Organization stated that DDT had ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.’”

Edwards states in his book:

“1962, when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, I was delighted. I belonged to several environmental-type organizations, had no feelings of respect for industry or big business, had one of my own books published by the Sierra Club, and I had written articles for The Indiana Waltonian, Audubon Magazine, and other environmental magazines.

At the time, I had been engaged in field work at the University of Wyoming research station in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for three summers and I worked as biological coordinator for the National Park Service in Glacier National Park. I eagerly read the condensed version of Silent Spring in the New Yorker magazine and bought a copy of the book as soon as I could find it in the stores. As I read the first several chapters I noticed many statements that I realized were false; however, one can overlook such things when they are produced by one’s cohorts, and I did just that.

As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad.

I then took notice of her bibliography and realized that it was filled with references from very unscientific sources. Also, each reference was cited separately each time it appeared in the book, thus producing an impressive array of “references” even though not many different sources were actually cited. I began to lose confidence in Rachel Carson, even though I thought that as an environmentalist I really should continue to support her.

I next looked up some of the references that Carson cited and quickly found that they did not support her contentions about the harm caused by pesticides. When leading scientists began to publish harsh criticisms of her methods and her allegations, it slowly dawned on me that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about those topics, and that I really was being duped, along with millions of other Americans.

As a result, I went back to the beginning of the book and read it all again, but this time my eyes were open and I was not lulled into believing that her motives were noble and that her statements could be supported by logic and by scientific fact. I wrote my comments down in rough draft style, and gathered together the scientific articles that refuted what Carson had reported the articles indicated. It was a most frustrating experience.

Finally, I began to join the detractors of Silent Spring, and when hearings were held to determine the fate of DDT in various states of this nation, I paid my own way to some of them so that I could testify against the efforts to ban that life-saving insecticide. It was gratifying to find that great numbers of scientists and health officials whom I had always held in high esteem were also testifying at those hearings, in defense of DDT and in opposition to the rising tide of antipesticide propaganda in environmental publications and in the media.

In testifying and speaking in public, I frequently exposed the misleading references Rachel Carson had cited in her book, presenting her statements from Silent Spring and then reading the truth from the actual publications she was purporting to characterize. This revealed to the audiences just how untruthful and misleading the allegations of Silent Spring really were.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the controversy is still boiling about how truthful Rachel Carson was. I recently learned that a movie honoring Rachel Carson and Silent Spring is being made for television. Because I believe such a movie would further misinform the public, the media, and our legislators, I decided to type up my original rough notes from 1962-1963 and make them available. Here they are, page by page, starting with her dedication.”

…

“No matter how deceitful her prose, however, the influence of Carson’s Silent Spring has been very great and it continues 30 years later to shape environmentalist propaganda and fund-raising as well as U.S. policy.”

In addition, DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans. The product was such a boon to public health that in 1948 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Paul Müller for his discovery of the “contact insecticidal action” of DDT.

Although the use of DDT is not risk-free, there is a vast difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment — as farmers sometimes did before it was banned in the United States — and using it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects, as it is used in a handful of African and Asian countries even today. It is sprayed or dusted indoors in small amounts to prevent mosquitoes from nesting, so exposures are extremely low. The now well-known problems associated with the thinning of raptor’s eggshells – while always exaggerated – can be completely avoided by using DDT with care exclusively in residential areas, because the chemical remains largely near where it is sprayed. No study has ever linked DDT environmental exposure to harm to human health.

A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison, and with modern regimens both environmental and human exposures would be very low. But “Silent Spring” condemned essentially all use of chemical insecticides and rejected the firmly established principle that products with known but small risks can offset far larger risks and provide a net safety benefit.

Carson’s disingenuous proselytizing spurred public pressure to ban DDT in many countries, with disastrous consequences: a lack of effective control of mosquitoes that carry malaria and other diseases. Malaria imposes huge costs on individuals, families and governments. It inflicts a crushing economic burden on malaria-endemic countries and impedes their economic growth. A study by the Harvard University Center for International Development estimated that a high incidence of malaria reduces economic growth by 1.3 percentage points each year. Compounded over the four decades since the first bans of DDT, that lost growth has made some of the world’s poorest countries an astonishing 40 percent poorer than had there been more effective mosquito control.

It is bad enough that the case against DDT was based on anecdote and innuendo, but Carson and Dunn and the regulators who banned DDT failed to consider the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, many of which are just as toxic to birds, mammals, fish and other aquatic organisms. And with DDT unavailable, many mosquito-control authorities are depleting their budgets by repeated spraying with expensive, short-acting and marginally effective insecticides.

Another advantage of DDT is that even when mosquitoes become resistant to its killing effects, they are still repelled by it. An occasional dusting of window and door-frames is extremely effective at keeping mosquitoes out of homes, schools, hospitals, and other buildings. When used in this way, the exploitation of DDT’s repellency also exposes people to lower amounts of insecticide than occurs with the only comparably effective alternative, bed nets soaked in various other pesticides. Moreover, limited DDT spraying does its work at a fraction of the cost.

The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives — mostly children in poor, tropical countries — have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors. This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century. It is deplorable that university students are exposed to a science that manifests such ignorance and failure to respect the norms of science.

This story is remarkable in that it demonstrates what happens when junk science is supported by scientists and media with a progressive agenda for the purpose of raising funds to feather their nests and gain political power. Liberals do this on an ongoing basis. Think Global Warming!

The next and even more egregious example of liberal and progressive thought and action is the promotion of Eugenics.

Eugenics, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization,[1] based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States prior to its involvement in World War II.

Eugenics was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany and U.S. programs provided much of the inspiration for the latter. Stefan Kühl has documented the consensus between Nazi race policies and those of eugenicists in other countries, including the United States, and points out that eugenicists understood Nazi policies and measures as the realization of their goals and demands.

A hallmark of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century, now generally associated with racist and nativist elements (as the movement was to some extent a reaction to a change in emigration from Europe) rather than scientific genetics, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population’

Eugenics, as a modern concept, was originally developed by Francis Galton. It has roots in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States in the 1860s-1870s

British scientist Francis Galton is perhaps best known for his studies that compared the behavioral differences between dizygotic and monozygotic twins, or perhaps for his statistical innovations including the concepts of chi square, regression, and correlation. What many people don't realize, however, is that Galton was also the creator of the field of eugenics. In an 1869 work, Galton assembled biographical information from obituaries and other sources and constructed pedigrees of leading English families, concluding that superior intelligence and abilities were inherited with an efficiency of 20%. From this work, he coined the term "eugenics," meaning "well born," and theorized that humanity could be improved by encouraging the fittest members of society to have more children.

Galton's ideas soon gained popularity both at home and abroad. In the United States, the eugenics movement hit its stride in the early 1900s, when increased interest in the genetics of animal breeding coincided with rediscovery of Mendel's 1865 work demonstrating the inheritance patterns of certain characteristics in pea plants. Charles Davenport, a chicken breeder and agriculturalist, was one of the first American scientists to embrace Mendelian genetics. Through his studies of large families, Davenport uncovered valuable information regarding the inheritance of conditions such as albinism and neurofibromatosis. However, Davenport's involvement in the eugenics movement would soon overshadow these accomplishments.

It is important to understand the cultural background of the era that created this field of “science.” After the Civil War, there was turbulent economy and an influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The economy of the US had rapid fluctuations and remained in this tenuous manner until WWI. As the economy became more uncertain, the social inequalities between different segments of society became more visible.

In the same era, the idea of Social Darwinism became popular and was used to explain these social inequalities. Social Darwinism utilizes the concept of natural selection from Charles Darwin and applies it to society. Social Darwinism explains survival of the fittest in terms of the capability of an individual to survive within a competitive environment. This explains social inequalities by explaining that the wealthy are better individuals and therefore better suited to survive in the uncertain economy. In terms of survival of the fittest the wealthy are more likely to survive and produce more offspring than the poor.

However, this was not occurring. The birthrate of the elite was declining while the birthrate of the poor was increasing. Meanwhile governmental social programs and aid were doing little help the increasing poverty. The government utilized the idea of scientific management, known as progressivism. Progressive reformers relied on science to control both nature and human society. This view of science as a method of reform and the newly rediscovered science of genetics gave rise to social engineering — EUGENICS.

Eugenicists believed genetics were the cause of problems for the human gene pool. Eugenics stated that society already had paid enough to support these degenerates and the use of sterilization would save money. The eugenicists used quantitative facts to produce scientific evidence. They believed that charity and welfare only treated the symptoms, eugenic sought to eliminate the disease. The following traits were seen as degenerative to the human gene pool to which the eugenicists were determined to eliminate: poverty, feeble-mindedness-including manic depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, rebelliousness, criminality, nomadness, and prostitution.

The accuracy of eugenicist methods was severely overrated. Although based on genetics, the eugenic scientists did not document any genetic relationship to some qualities that they studied, such as politeness, bluntness, etc. It is especially amazing that the scientists made such brilliant relationships between genes and behavior at a time when they did not even know that DNA carried genes, causing the researchers to treat complex behavior as though it had a single cause. Other flaws in research included the researchers did not did not take into account the impact that the environment plays into a person’s behavior. They also used culturally based IQ tests on immigrants to determine IQ. Finally, the early eugenicists made up results to give scientific results.

Many of the eugenicist's ideas came from studies of the supposed deterioration of a genetic stock over time. For example, the sociologist Richard Dugdale based his study on “The Jukes,” which is a clan of 700 criminals, prostitutes, and paupers. Dugdale believed that bad environment caused their degeneracy and could be reversed over time. A.H. Estabrook resurveyed the Jukes in 1915 but saw little improvement in the family. He concluded that several traits associated with inadequacy were inherited. However, since the eugenicists did not understand genetics and the methods of inheritance, they formed their method of inheritance. The meant that desired traits could only be spread to children through marriage between two “worthy” families. Undesired traits were always spread between “shiftless” families. A child between a worthy family and a shiftless family would be mostly shiftless but a little desirable.

Before eugenics became internationally recognized in WWII, it was a very popular movement in the United States. In fact the American Eugenics Society set up pavilions and "Fitter Families Contest" to popularize eugenics at state fairs. The average family advocated for the utilization of eugenics while educational systems embraced eugenics, which was presented as science fact by the majority biology texts. In fact, eugenics became so popular that eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-Foundation supported study in 1911, to report the best practical means for eliminating defective genes in the Human Population. Although the eighth of the 18 solutions was euthanasia, the researchers believed it was too early to implement this solution. The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a lethal chamber, or gas chamber. Instead, the main solution was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as increased marriage restrictions. However, not everybody was in favor of eugenics, Punnett at the first international congress for Eugenics in 1911 stated, “Except in very few cases, our knowledge of heredity in man at present is far too slight and far too uncertain to base legislation upon.”

The world thought Hitler was mad, but the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race was not Adolf Hitler’s. The idea was created in the United States at least two decades before Hitler came to power. In fact, in 1924, when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, he frequently quoted American eugenics and displayed a thorough knowledge. “There is today one state, Hitler wrote, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." Hitler told his fellow Nazis that he closely followed American eugenic legislation. “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”

During the beginning of the third Reich, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler’s plans as the logical implementation of their own research. Ten years after Virginia passed its 1924 sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginias Western State Hospital, complained in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “The Germans are beating us at our own game.”

In 1934, the number of sterilizations in Germany was accelerating beyond 5,000 per month. Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans were taken from homes for the elderly, mental institutions and other state ran institutions and was systematically gassed. In all, between 50,000 and 100,000 were killed.

Number of sterilized from each condition

• Hereditary feeble-mindedness: 200,000
• Schizophrenia: 80,000
• Epilepsy: 60,000
• Manic-depressive psychosis: 20,000
• Serious physical deformities: 20,000
• Hereditary deafness: 16,000
• Hereditary alcoholism: 10,000
• Hereditary blindness: 4,000
• Huntington's chorea: 600

TOTAL: 410,600

Hitler believed that Jews were racially inferior. They played a decisive role in social degeneracy, such as prostitution, pornography, modern art, financial crimes, and the narcotics trade. Jewish people possessed no ethics or morality and that they had been engaged in a 4,000-year-old conspiracy to dominate the world pursuant to their view of themselves as the chosen people. Just like other eugenicists, Hitler believed that these characteristics and values were in the genes of the Jewish people, and therefore are able to be eradicated from the general population Hitler’s threat to exterminate European Jewry was made to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939: “In the course of my life I have often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation [Vernichtung] of the Jewish race in Europe”

Hitler attempted to succeed in this goal by annihilating hundreds of thousands of the Jewish population in concentration camps using the American favored method of extermination of the gas chambers. There were also rumors that Hitler made Lebensborn a "stud farms" where SS men and suitable young women were mated to breed a master race. However this is nothing more than a myth. Lebensborn was in fact a conservative institution with a conservative sexual code, attempting to maintain middle-class respectability.

The connection between the American Eugenics movement and the Nazi eugenic movement was further solidified in the Nuremburg trials that judged the crimes committed by the Nazis during the war. In their defense the Nazis quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes from the infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell trial. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The American elite’s pre-World War II commitment to breeding out the “unfit” — defined variously as racial minorities, low-I.Q. whites, the mentally and physically handicapped, and the criminally inclined — is a story that defies easy stereotypes about progress and enlightenment. On the one hand, these American eugenicists tended to be WASP grandees — ivory-tower dwellers and privileged with an obvious incentive to invent spurious theories to justify their own position.

But these same eugenicists were often political and social liberals — advocates of social reform, partisans of science, critics of stasis and reaction. “They weren’t sinister characters out of some darkly lighted noir film about Nazi sympathizers, but environmentalists, peace activists, fitness buffs, healthy-living enthusiasts, inventors and family men.” From Teddy Roosevelt to the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, fears about “race suicide” and “human weeds” were common among self-conscious progressives, who saw the quest for a better gene pool as of a piece with their broader dream of human advancement.

This progressive fascination with eugenics largely ended with World War II and the horrors wrought by National Socialism. But while the West has discarded the theory of the eugenics era, the practice urged by Fisher and others — the elimination or pre-emption, through careful reproductive planning, of the weaker members of the human species — has become a more realistic possibility than it ever was in the 1920s and ’30s.

The eugenicists had very general ideas about genetics and heredity, very crude ideas about intelligence, and deeply poisonous ideas about racial hierarchies. They did not have, as we do, access to the genetic blueprints of individuals — including, most important, human beings still developing in utero, whose development can be legally interrupted by the intervention of an abortionist.

Eugenics in the United States were championed by Universities such as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and the University of Indiana. Foundations such as the Carnegie Institute and Rockefeller Foundation funded research at the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory. It was at Cold Springs Between 1910 and 1939, the laboratory was the base of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) of biologist Charles B. Davenport and his assistant Harry H. Laughlin, two prominent American eugenicists of the period. Davenport was director of the Carnegie Station from its inception until his retirement in 1934. In 1935 the Carnegie Institution sent a team to review the ERO's work, and as a result the ERO was ordered to stop all work. In 1939 the Institution withdrew funding for the ERO entirely, leading to its closure. The ERO's reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees were considered scientific facts in their day, but have since been discredited. However, its closure came 15 years after its findings were incorporated into the National Origins Act (Immigration Act of 1924), which severely reduced the number of immigrants to America from southern and Eastern Europe who, Harry Laughlin testified, were racially inferior to the Nordic immigrants from England and Germany. Charles Davenport was also the founder and the first director of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations in 1925.

The Rockefeller Foundation funded eugenics research in German until 1939, the eve of WWII. This funding was carried on even after the atrocities at Hartheim Castle euthanasia was carried out on the undesirables and degenerates” in gas chambers and busses were carbon monoxide was funneled into the sealed interior. It was also during this period Germans were build concentration camps in Germany with plans to expand the program after the invasion and occupation of Poland.

Who were the most famous advocates of Eugenics in the United States? To name a few of the more notable they were:

Margaret Sanger – the Founder of today’s Planned Parenthood

H.G. Wells - author

Luther Burbank- botanist

George Bernard Shaw - author

Theodore Roosevelt- President of the United States

Woodrow Wilson – President of the United States

Oliver Wendell Holmes – Associate and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Hugo Black – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Alexander Graham Bell – American inventor of the telephone

David Starr Jordan. – Stanford professor and founder of Eugenics Committee of the American Breeders Association and ERO at Cold Springs.

John Harvey Kellogg – Corn Flakes king

Henry Ford – Industrialist

Thomas Edison – inventor

John Maynard Keynes – economist

Bertrand Russell – philosopher

In 1935, the Los Angeles Times published a long defense of Germany's sterilization policies, in which the author noted that the Nazis "had to resort to the teachings of eugenic science" because Germany had been "deprived of her colonies, blessed with many hundreds of defective racial hybrids as a lasting memory of the colored army of occupation, and dismembered all around." Not only did California eugenicists know about Nazi efforts to use sterilization as a method of "race hygiene" — targeted primarily at Jews — they also approved efforts to stop "race-mixing" and increase the birth rate of the "Northern European type of family." The chilling words of Progressive reformer John Randolph Haynes anticipated the Nazi regime's murder of 100,000 mentally ill patients: "There are thousands of hopelessly insane in California, the condition of those minds is such that death would be a merciful release. How long will it be before society will see the criminality of using its efforts to keep alive these idiots, hopelessly insane, and murderous degenerates. Of course the passing of these people should be painless and without warning. They should go to sleep at night without any intimation of what was coming and never awake."

At the height of the movement, 30 states had adopted legislation that legalized the sterilization of individuals deemed unfit for reproduction. In most states, that meant the mentally ill or mentally deficient. By the time all was said and done, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 people had been forcefully sterilized in state-sanctioned procedures. In some states, such as California, sterilization records are incomplete or often altered, making it impossible to truly know how many people were subjected to the procedures. It was done to men and women, Caucasians as well as individual from other and mixed races. State laws in California included permissions for those who were in prisons to be eligible for sterilization, as well as those found to have any chance of carrying hereditary dementia or insanity. The laws also removed the patients’ rights to contest the procedure, although it was still necessary for parents to consent to the sterilization of their minor children. In the years between 1921 and 1950, roughly 450 people were sterilized in California each year. California still practices forced sterilization of women in prison.

After World War Two and the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps became common public knowledge you could not find one supporter of Eugenics in the United States. They were all like Sgt. Schultz of the “Hogan’s Heroes” TV show — Ï saw nothing, I heard nothing, I know nothing.” Biographers of these men in most part made little mention of their participation in Eugenics or ignored it completely. In 2009 Hillary Clinton accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood — the organization founded by Margaret Sanger. During the event, Clinton said that emphasizing and promoting abortion is a key issue in President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. She said she felt honored. Yes honored to be connected with an organization that believed in the sterilization of Negro women and “undesirables” for the purification of the gene pool.

From a rigorously pro-choice perspective, the in utero phase is a space in human development where disease and disability can be eradicated, and our impulse toward perfection given ever-freer rein, without necessarily doing any violence to human dignity and human rights.

But this is a convenient liberal progressive perspective for our civilization to take. Having left behind pseudoscientific racial theories, it’s easy for us to look back and pass judgment on yesterday’s eugenicists. It’s harder to acknowledge what we have in common with them.

First, a relentless desire for mastery and control, not only over our own lives but over the very marrow and sinew of generations yet unborn. And second, a belief in our own fundamental goodness, no matter to what ends our mastery is turned.

The Tale of Two Communities

“The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.” — Thomas Sowell

Last week Bill O’Reilly kicked up a firestorm with his talking points memo on the plight of African-Americans in the United States. He blamed much of the poverty and crime on that the Black community suffers on Blacks themselves along with the race hustlers and politicians who have made a profitable industry out of ignoring the real problems in the African-American community.

O’Reilly’s main talking points were the high rate of African-American girls have babies out of wedlock (73%), the high rate of Black on Black crime, the countless fatherless homes, the narcotics trade, and the failed social welfare programs that have created a federal plantation.

In preparing to write this blog I did some research on Black on Black crime and I discovered some astonishing statistics. You constantly hear about the racism of lynching.

Violence in the United States against Black Americans, especially in the South, rose in the aftermath of the Civil War, after slavery had been abolished and recently freed black men were given the right to vote. Violence rose even more at the end of the 19th century, after southern white Democrats regained their political power in the South in the 1870s. States passed new constitutions or legislation which effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, established segregation of public facilities by race, and separated blacks from common public life and facilities. Nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 whites were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920. The whites who were lynched were those who had helped blacks, married blacks, Catholics, and Jews..

Black-on-black crime is a sensitive subject in this increasingly polarized nation. While covered in academia and occasionally addressed by talking heads on television, some believe it rarely, if ever, receives the type and depth of attention it deserves. Instead, critics argue that this national tragedy is usually swept under the rug by powerful interest groups and individuals more concerned with elevating their own racially-driven agendas than addressing the real issues at hand. The Trayvon Martin case is only the most recent example of this grim hypocrisy.

Indeed, statistics support a very different narrative than the one usually offered by “race hustlers,” as Pastor C.L. Bryant calls them, who routinely portray an America where members of the black community are selectively targeted and brutalized by white racists.

A 2007 special report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, reveals that approximately 8,000 — and, in certain years, as many as 9,000 African Americans are murdered annually in the United States. This chilling figure is accompanied by another equally sobering fact, that 93% of these murders are in fact perpetrated by other blacks. The analysis, supported by FBI records, finds that in 2005 alone, for example, African Americans accounted for 49% of all homicide victims in the US — again, almost exclusively at the hands of other African Americans. Jehmu Green, a liberal Black commentator often seen on MSNBC and Fox News has stated that 280,000 blacks have been killed by other blacks since the advent of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

To put these number in perspective, recall that over 6,400 U.S. service men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the course of a decade-long war fought in those nations. During the Vietnam War, which lasted nearly 13 years, some 58,000 Americans were killed — nearly 13 percent of whom were African American.

Extrapolating black-on-black crime data reveals that, by comparison, approximately 100,000 African Americans have been killed on our own streets at the hands of other African Americans in roughly the same stretches of time. It is difficult to find anyone who would white-wash these mind-numbing statistics.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal:

“Then there is the matter of who is dying. Although the U.S. murder rate has been dropping for years, an analysis of homicide data by The Wall Street Journal found that the number of black male victims increased more than 10%, to 5,942 in 2010 from 5,307 in 2000.

Overall, more than half the nation's homicide victims are African-American, though blacks make up only 13% of the population. Of those black murder victims, 85% were men, mostly young men.

Despite the declining U.S. murder rate, killings remain stubbornly high in poor pockets of cities large and small. In some cases, the rate is rising sharply. That increase is draining resources from police, prosecutors, social workers and hospitals.”

This begs the questions: where is the outrage from prominent members of the African-American community? Where are the words of condemnation and sorrow from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, or Rev. Al Sharpton, over the fact that members of their own communities are summarily executing each other? Critics believe that acknowledging the unfortunate, irrefutable statistical truth negates the left’s narrative about a black community selectively exploited and targeted by white racists. Some might also argue that fanning the flames of racial discontent, especially in an election year, serves a useful and powerful campaign purpose.

Thus far, hundreds of thousands of African Americans have been slaughtered at the hands of each other since the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. Is this the realization of Dr. King’s Community of Man?

The vast majority of the above statistics stem from the urban centers in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, and Newark. But there is another Black community. It’s the community of Blacks who have left these urban cities for the safety of the suburbs. This is one of the major reasons for the failure of Detroit. These Blacks have nuclear families with a father in he house. They work hard and buy homes. They are not on the dole. Their children are supervised and go to good schools where their graduation rates are the same as whites and Asians. Some of these families have mom’s working so they can send their kids to private and parochial college preparatory schools. They don’t do drugs and they go on to becomes doctors, lawyers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. They are involved in their communities and pay little if no attention to the race hustles. They even vote Republican. I know this because I have a neighbor who fits this model.

The to counter the race hustlers there are the commentators like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, David Webb, Deneen Borelli, Dr. Ben Carson, Star Parker, and the entire staff of Project 21. These are the voices of reason within the Black community that are drowned out by the voices of race hustlers that get some much coverage in the mainstream media. These are the voices urging Blacks to stop the out of wedlock births, get off he drugs, stay in school, learn to speak proper English, and learn how to work. They are the voices who identify the issues existing within the social welfare states of the federal plantation. They are also the voices most criticized by the race hustlers and Congressional Black Caucus. You see they are preaching a doctrine of personal responsibility, family cohesiveness, and self-education. They tell Blacks in the urban center not to rely on the failed government schools dominated by the self-interests of the teachers unions to open their eyes and ears to other sources of learning, i.e. read books.

It is these voices in the Black community we must listen to. They are the voice with solutions, even those solutions may seem harsh to many in the urban centers used to the comfort of the federal plantation. They are the voices the race exploiters in the entertainment drown out with their music, TV shows and films while they make millions from their exploitation. When I look at people like Allen West, Ben Carson, Deneen Borelli, and Thomas Sowell, I stand in awe at their poise, linguistic skills, and thoughtful deliberation.

In reality, the Trayvon Martin case gave Obama another way to avoid dealing with issues of national and international importance. Cries of racism permit Obama to deftly avoid the penetrating questions that need to be asked about the ongoing scandals that plague this country, be it the IRS, the NSA, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the Federal Data Services Hub revelation, or the "impending train wreck" of ObamaCare.

There is no dealing with an individual who changes the rules of the game and makes them up as he goes along. When the American people understand this and liberate themselves from such race-baiting, we will be able to make some real and definitive steps to halt the ongoing assault on this country. It is an assault that hurts blacks and whites alike by a man and a party who care for neither group, except as a means to expand their grip on power.

So the next time you see a Black person walking down the street make sure you can identify the community he belongs to before to pass judgment.

Hey Eric It’s Over

“If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon” — President Barack Obama. March 23, 2012.

The harvesting of Trayvon-mania for political gain marches on, with Attorney General Eric Holder's astonishing announcement of a national tip line to solicit reports of past racist behavior by George Zimmerman. This is not just an outrageous waste of taxpayer resources, instituted by the Attorney General who hides from every scandal by claiming he doesn't know what anyone in the Justice Department is doing. It's absolutely deranged.

How many people in the nation have spent any amount of time getting to know George Zimmerman? A few dozen at most? How carefully will reports of offensive remarks or off-color jokes by Zimmerman be investigated and vetted, and how many real criminal matters will be ignored to free up manpower for the effort? How many "verified" reports of thought crime will be necessary to get a federal civil-rights prosecution of Zimmerman rolling?

This insanity is a natural outgrowth of Big Government's need to politicize everything. Holder, and the Obama Administration's media allies, have already begun using the Zimmerman trial as a soapbox to destroy the "Stand Your Ground" laws they hate, even though such laws played absolutely no role in the trial. The real people, actual events, and case law of the encounter between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin are already fading from public memory like an old photograph, because totalitarian politics sustain themselves by erasing history and editing truth.

By now most rational, thinking people should be over the verdict in the George Zimmerman case. As a liberal, feminist Tamra Holder stated in her Fox News.com article “Stop Insulting the Zimmerman Jury”:

“George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin on a dark and rainy night on February 28, 2012. Zimmerman admitted to the killing but claimed he acted in self-defense. Zimmerman was charged with Second Degree Murder.

Approximately 16 months later, Zimmerman’s trial started. The prosecution and defense mutually agreed on a detailed juror questionnaire that was filled out by 211 potential jurors. Over the course of nine days, both sides sifted through every response, whittled their way down to 40 prospective jurors, and picked a final jury of 6, with four alternates.

Over the course of 14 days, the jury heard opening statements, viewed over 200 exhibits, and listened to the testimony of 56 witnesses (38 for the prosecution and 18 for the defense), and heard closing arguments.

The jury received detailed instructions on the elements required to find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder, as well as a lesser-included offense of manslaughter.

On July 13, 2013, the jury of six women made a unanimous decision: “Not Guilty.”

The president of the Florida NAACP State Conference also chimed in: “Justice did not prevail,” said Adora Obi Nweze.

Justice did not prevail? How so?

In the same statement, Nweze said “Last year we pushed for the arrest of George Zimmerman and a thorough investigation and trial.”

Not only did “they” push for a trial, they received a trial.

Oh wait, the NAACP and other opponents of the verdict did not ask for a “fair trial.” They wanted a trial without the constitutional requirements of due process and an impartial jury.”

Normally I do not agree with anything Ms. Holder has to say during her appearances on the Sean Hannity Show but this time I think she is right on the money. It’s like the old adage that a stopped clock can be right twice a day.

It appears as though the media just can’t walk away from this case and they are continually rehashing and retrying the case from based on their personal ideology. Let’s face it, this was a simple murder case where the prosecution went for murder in the second degree and the defense claimed it was a case of self-defense. The jury believed the defense and returned a verdict of not guilty. No matter what your opinions on the case are it was a jury empaneled with the concurrence of both sides that heard all of the testimony, saw the evidence and listened to the arguments put forth by the attorneys that made the final decision. That’s how the system works.

There was an interesting article by William Saletan writing for the liberal Slate Magazine where he stated:

“But that’s how Martin ended up dead. It’s how Zimmerman ended up with a bulletproof vest he might have to wear for the rest of his life. It’s how activists and the media embarrassed themselves with bogus reports. The problem at the core of this case wasn’t race or guns. The problem was assumption, misperception, and overreaction. And that cycle hasn’t ended with the verdict. It has escalated.

I almost joined the frenzy. Yesterday I was going to write that Zimmerman pursued Martin against police instructions and illustrated the perils of racial profiling. But I hadn’t followed the case in detail. So I sat down and watched the closing arguments: nearly seven hours of video in which the prosecution and defense went point by point through the evidence as it had been hashed out at the trial. Based on what I learned from the videos, I did some further reading.

It turned out I had been wrong about many things. The initial portrait of Zimmerman as a racist wasn’t just exaggerated. It was completely unsubstantiated. It’s a case study in how the same kind of bias that causes racism can cause unwarranted allegations of racism. Some of the people Zimmerman had reported as suspicious were black men, so he was a racist. Members of his family seemed racist, so he was a racist. Everybody knew he was a racist, so his recorded words were misheard as racial slurs, proving again that he was a racist.”

Mr. Saletan’s comments as those of Tamra Holder are proof that even an unabashed liberal can see the light when it’s bright enough. They may not like the verdict but they have to accept it. Even the trial court judge bent over backwards to give ever possible advantage to the prosecution.

Now we have our Attorney General, Eric Holder, pandering to the crowd at the NAACP convention with his remarks about the case. He wants a new investigation into possible civil rights violations by George Zimmerman and a review of the Stand Your Ground Laws that some 38 states have on their books. He has even gone so far as to appoint a posse of citizens to troll for tips about Zimmerman and e-mail the “unsubstantiated evidence” that George Zimmerman was a racist to the DOJ kangaroo court.. How will that work out as every Tom, Dick and Harriet with an ideological axe to grind will get on the internet and flood cyberspace with their poison. How will that work out in our system of justice? How will he ignore the FBI reports that found no evidence of such racism in their investigation? As a Fox News article pointed out:

“Though the department announced after Zimmerman's acquittal that it would consider a possible federal case, previously filed FBI documents show agents have not turned up any accounts that Zimmerman, before the February 2012 shooting, exhibited racial bias. Sanford police detective Chris Serino also told FBI agents last year that he considered Zimmerman as having "a little hero complex, but not as a racist."

Attorney General Eric Holder, in his first post-verdict comments, confirmed Monday during a speech in Washington, D.C., that his department continues to investigate while signaling concern for the position of the Martin family and those -- such as the NAACP -- pressuring the DOJ. He said the department is "mindful of the pain felt by our nation" over the "tragic, unnecessary shooting death" of Martin.

"The Justice Department shares your concern -- I share your concern," Holder said.

He added that the shooting provides an opportunity to speak "honestly" about the charged issues involved in the case, and that "we must not ... let this opportunity pass." Holder even appeared to suggest the possibility of bias in this case, saying it's important to address "underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common incidents."

I guess he will handle those reports in the same manner as he did with Fast and Furious and the James Rosen cases — just ignore them as they do not match the narrative he wants to sell the public. This what worried our Founding Fathers the most — government overreach and mob rule.

Here are a few articles and columns I came across that I feel are worth sharing. In an interview on CNN and reported in The Blaze juror B37 shed some light on the trial, evidence and how the jury came to their not guilty verdict. The juror in the George Zimmerman trial said Monday that the actions of the neighborhood watch volunteer and Trayvon Martin both led to the teenager’s fatal shooting last year, but that Zimmerman didn’t actually break the law:

“The woman known as Juror B37 told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Zimmerman made some poor decisions leading up to the shooting, but that Martin wasn’t innocent either.

“I think both were responsible for the situation they had gotten themselves into,” said the juror, who is planning to write a book about the trial. “I think they both could have walked away.”

The juror said Sanford Police Detective Chris Serino made a big impression on her, because he would have been accustomed to dealing with murders and similar cases. He would have known how to spot a liar, and yet he testified that he believed Zimmerman, the juror said.

Legal analysts agreed that Serino’s testimony was a blow to the state’s case.

The juror was not impressed by the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, who was talking with Martin by cellphone moments before he was fatally shot by Zimmerman in February, 2012.

“I didn’t think it was very credible, but I felt very sorry for her,” the juror said. “She didn’t want to be there.”

…

“The interview came two days after the six-woman jury acquitted Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch activist, of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Martin in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. Martin was black, and Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic. Zimmerman was not arrested for 44 days, and the delay in charging him led to protests from those who believed race was a factor in the handling of the case.

While prosecutors accused Zimmerman of profiling Martin, Zimmerman maintained he acted in self-defense.

The juror said she didn’t think Martin’s race was the reason that Zimmerman followed him. She said she also believed Martin threw the first punch and that Zimmerman, whom she referred to as “George,” had a right to defend himself.

“I have no doubt George feared for his life in the situation he was in at the time,” the juror said.

Juror B37 also outlined to CNN the process she and the other five jurors went through in their deliberations. She said they spent the first day electing a foreman and getting organized. She said the jury instructions weren’t immediately clear and the evidence was in no order whatsoever.

Juror B37 said all but one juror believed it was Zimmerman screaming for help on the 911 call based on the medical evidence and testimony submitted in court.

Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder, but the jury also was allowed to consider manslaughter.

Based on an initial vote, three – including B37 – were in favor of acquittal, two wanted manslaughter and one wanted second-degree murder. She said the jury started going through all the evidence, listening to tapes multiple times.

“That’s why it took us so long,” B37 said.

When they started looking at the law, the person who initially wanted second-degree murder changed her vote to manslaughter, the juror said. Then they asked for clarification from the judge and kept going over it again and again. B37 said some jurors wanted to find Zimmerman guilty of something, but there was just no place to go based on the law,

B37 said jurors cried when they gave their final vote to the bailiff.”

There is also a similar article on this on Fox News.com

“We are so programmed by our history with race in America that reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin depends largely upon one's individual, even group experience.” writes Cal Thomas on Fox News.com:

“If you are African-American, you might react like former Washington, D.C., homicide detective Rod Wheeler. Appearing on Fox News, Wheeler said many blacks look at quarterback Michael Vick, jailed for taking part in an illegal dog-fighting ring, and wonder why Zimmerman gets away with killing a young black man.

If you are white, or Hispanic, you could possibly see the trial as something whipped up by the always racially conscious media and rhetorical bomb-throwers like Rev. Al Sharpton.

You might conclude that if the victim had been white and the perpetrator black the media would have shown little or no interest.

Your view would be reinforced by a case in Georgia in which four African-American teenagers beat a 36-year-old white man as he emerged from a gas station convenience store. While trying to escape, the man stumbled into the middle lane of a highway where he was struck by a car and killed. The Marietta Daily Journal reported that the four are charged with felony murder, aggravated assault and violation of the Georgia Street Gang Act. The incident occurred two weeks ago, but I have seen no national media coverage.”

…

“What helps keep us divided is our propensity for labeling and categorizing. Certain behaviors and language are tolerated, while others are not. Some people can get away with language that others cannot. Some faiths can be disparaged while others are insulated from criticism. What is needed is one standard. One national identity. One America. We're not there yet.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon Martin's family, compared Trayvon's death to those of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. Any attempt to turn Trayvon into a civil rights martyr similar to Till and Evers goes well beyond the apples and oranges analogy.

More to the point was a comment by Zimmerman's attorney Don West: "The prosecution of George Zimmerman was disgraceful." The defense believes he should never have been brought to trial. Co-defense counsel Mark O'Mara speculated about "how many lawsuits will be spawned by this fiasco."

Probably quite a few, given our never-ending racial double standard. As both sides have noted, there are no winners in this case.”

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. A jury of six in Florida has determined it was not criminal, but George Zimmerman will forever be the man who killed a 17-year-old.

No one can be happy about what happened other than, for Zimmerman and his family, that a jury believed him.

Now the NAACP and others are calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to file charges against George Zimmerman. Never mind that federal investigators looked into the matter and concluded Zimmerman did not engage in racial profiling.

Should the U.S. Department of Justice decide to pursue charges, it would not be double jeopardy. The state and federal governments remain separate entities with separate jurisdictions. A trial in one does not preclude another.

But in this case it should.

Our system is not perfect, but it is preferable to rule by the mob. Juries are not perfect, but they are better than the court of public opinion.

Many will feel justice was not served, but it was. Justice does not mean getting the outcome one side desires. Even so, those who are glad of the verdict should try to understand why so many feel so cold by what has happened and some see injustice.

I see too much politicization by too many people on more than one side. A boy is dead. A man's life ruined. And too many are trying to capitalize on the politics of now.

As the president said yesterday, a jury has spoken. It is time to respect the verdict of that jury and move on. Trayvon Martin will never come back and George Zimmerman may be free, but it will be a long time, if ever, before his life returns to normal.

Then we have the hoodlum element “protesting in the streets of Los Angeles and Oakland. These hoodlums are burning cars, closing down freeways and trashing stores like Wal-Mart. It is really no different than the same gangs of ne’er-do-wells, gang members, and vandals burring cars and trashing businesses when their sports team win a championship. After all when the Lakers win the NBA titles it’s appropriate to burn a car.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said violence and vandalism in city streets resulted in 13 arrests in protests over George Zimmerman's Florida acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Speaking at a news conference with Garcetti late Monday, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said about 150 people broke off from a larger, peaceful protest and began walking through the streets, committing multiple acts of vandalism and several assaults.

The officials didn't elaborate on the assaults or any potential injuries.

Beck said more than 300 officers were called to the scene. They were slow to directly engage the protesters in an attempt to allow a peaceful end to the demonstration.

He said police would take a much stricter posture if the protests continued for another night.

Protesters ran through Los Angeles streets, stopping traffic, breaking windows and at one point raiding a Wal-Mart store, and a major freeway was blocked in the San Francisco Bay Area in the third night of protests in California over George Zimmerman's Florida acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Several hundred mostly peaceful protesters gathered Monday night at Leimert Park southwest of downtown Los Angeles, many of them chanting, praying and singing.

But a smaller group of about 100 people splintered off and began blocking traffic on nearby Crenshaw Boulevard, some of them jumping on cars and breaking windows.

At about 10 p.m., a few hours after the splinter protest began, police declared the group an unlawful assembly, and many in the crowd began to disperse.

Several protesters ran into a Wal-Mart store, where they knocked down displays before store security chased them out, and police began guarding the door.

TV news helicopters showed some people apparently throwing punches along the street. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

"I commend the prayer rally attendees in Leimert Park for practicing peace," tweeted LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, who returned early from an East Coast visit. "I call on people in street on Crenshaw to follow their example."

In Oakland, dozens of demonstrators briefly blocked all lanes of Interstate 880 at the tail end of rush hour Monday evening, stopping traffic in both directions for several minutes before they were cleared by authorities. Several protesters laid their bicycles on the ground in front of stopped cars.

"You've got to go. You will go to jail," one police officer shouted at demonstrators who were blocking traffic, the Oakland Tribune reported. However, police decided not to make arrests as the marchers, chanting "Justice for Trayvon Martin," were directed back to surface streets.

Later, another group tried to march up the onramp to Interstate 580 before being turned away by Oakland police and California Highway Patrol officers.

The freeway protesters broke off from a larger group organized via social media that gathered at Oakland City Hall about an hour earlier. Several people were arrested for acts of violence and vandalism while marching from City Hall, authorities said.

Jonathan Cohen writes in American Thinker that more lies from the main stream media about the Zimmerman case are still obfuscating the truth.”

“Today's Chicago Tribune editorial on the Zimmerman verdict repeats some of the lies and misrepresentations that have helped create so much of the anger over this case for the past 16 months. The editorial which urges acceptance of the verdict none the less begins with the following quote:

"Are you following him?"

"Yeah"

"Ok. We don't need for you to do that".

The quote leaves out Zimmerman's reply of ok, an editorial decision that changes the clear meaning of the exchange which is that Zimmerman accepts the advice. More properly, what the transcript of the call reads

"Are you following him?"

"Yeah"

"Ok. We don't need for you to do that".

"Ok"

The first paragraph of the editorial then repeats the lie that Zimmerman was told not to leave his car. In fact what the transcript of the call shows is that just prior to this exchange, the dispatcher tells Zimmerman "just let me know if this guy does anything else. A few seconds later after Zimmerman says that Martin is running the dispatcher asks him "which way is he running." It is sometime in this period that Zimmerman sounds like he has gotten out of his truck. For the next five or ten seconds there is a sound of wind that is followed by the exchange in which the dispatcher advises him he doesn't need to follow Martin. At no time anywhere on the call does the dispatcher ever tell him not to leave his car or return to it. These five to ten seconds are the only time in the whole encounter in which there is any evidence of Zimmerman following Martin on foot. And since there is so much misinformation about what happened it bears repeating.

Zimmerman was never told to stay in his car and was never asked to return to it!

No evidence at all is ever produced that Zimmerman followed Martin after the above exchange with the dispatcher. In fact, towards the end of the call, Zimmerman tells the dispatcher that he has lost sight of Martin. Clearly Zimmerman could not follow Martin if he couldn't see him. Further evidence of this is that Rachel Jaentel's testimony indicates that Martin had likewise lost sight of Zimmerman until shortly before the start of the confrontation. In other words, after telling the dispatcher "ok", Zimmerman did not follow Martin nor did Martin perceive he was being followed.

The claim that Zimmerman was at fault because he pursued Martin after being told not to has absolutely no basis in fact. It is a made up assumption that has been repeated so many times by the media that people actually believe that is what happened.

The 911 call that was placed by Zimmerman is on the web in both audio and written transcript form. It was played numerous times at the trial. There is no excuse for continuing to lie about the evidence. The Chicago Tribune should know better than to continue to perpetuate lies that have fueled so much anger over this case.”

Then there is a good exposé of the prosecutorial misconduct by the Florida State’s special prosecutor Angela Corey and how many more Black juveniles than whites were arrested and tried as adults in Florida:

“There are many unanswered questions in the handling of the persecution of George Zimmerman by the State of Florida but two of the salient questions are why was Angela Corey, who is noted for her intemperate personality, selected to prosecute the case and why Angela Corey dismissed an impaneled grand jury to wildly overcharge George Zimmerman with second degree murder on her own volition?

I believe if we use Ockham’s (or Occam’s) Razor the answers will become obvious: racial politics.

I think everyone can now agree on one thing, Angela Corey was possibly the worst possible choice for a high profile prosecution.

She has a sense of entitlement that is so typical of small people promoted to jobs that are well above their level of competency but who lack the self-awareness to recognize what everyone else knows. (You need look no further than her bizarre post-verdict press conference that she treated as though it was an Academy Awards acceptance rather than a repudiation to see that she occupies a different reality than most.) In Angela Corey’s world, criticism of her is a basis for legal action. She has threatened to sue Harvard if it did not fire Alan freakin Dershowitz after he pointed out her lack of legal acumen and ethics. In Florida she is something of a legend for threatening her critics.

Her lack of concern for the rule of law was almost immediately apparent. Shortly after she received the case she gave a press conference in which she disclosed that she was not seeking justice, but “justice for Trayvon”:

Corey: The first thing my team and I did upon being appointed was to meet with Trayvon’s family and pray with them. “We opened our meeting with prayer.” Also, Ms. Corey thanked “all those people across this country who have sent positive energy and prayers our way,” and she asked them to continue to pray for Trayvon’s family and for her team. “Remember, it is Trayvon’s family that are our constitutional victims….”

Startling statistics reveal that between 1980-2008, African-Americans were six times more likely than whites to be victims of gun violence and seven times more likely to kill with guns than whites, according to the Justice Department. African-Americans represent a mere 13% of the US population yet more than 50% of federal prisoners are black. You can claim racial bias in the judicial system, but that doesn't explain all of it.

Why aren't so-called black leaders outraged and marching over the recent shooting rampage in Chicago. During the 4 July holiday weekend, including the Wednesday leading up to it, 62 people were wounded by gun violence in Chicago and 12 others killed. The holiday shooting spree raised Chicago's homicide tally to 200 for the year. Last year about 500 people were killed, and most of those killing and being killed in Chicago are black. According to the Chicago Tribune, "blacks make up about 33% of the city's population, they accounted for nearly 78% of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012".

With the mainstream media's national attention on the Zimmerman murder trial, I think it's stunning that scant, if any, attention was given to the violence raging in Chicago or other cities across the country. As I've said in previous blogs Americans, especially black Americans, have come to accept blacks killing other blacks as normal.

When a white person is accused of killing a black person, African-Americans seem to care more and cry racism, allowing race baiting voices like Al Sharpton, who's a reverend as much as I'm a progressive liberal (hint: I'm not), to organize marches and rallies. The same is now true when a non-white like Zimmerman is accused of killing a black 17-year-old like Trayvon Martin. Last year blacks even got the news media to basically convict Zimmerman as a racist murderer in the court of public opinion before the trial even began.

Even President Barack Obama got in on the act, stoking the racist flames before any facts were revealed, "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon". Yet Obama has been a lot less vocal on the killings in Chicago, the city from which he hales and served as both an Illinois state senator and US senator.

The tragedy is that blacks who are shouting about racism aren't offering real solutions, especially to the violence issue in African-American neighborhoods. Interestingly, Senator Mark Kirk (an Illinois Republican) has a plan to end gun violence in Chicago. Since 15-year old Hadiya Pendleton was murdered in January in Chicago after performing at Obama's 2013 inaugural, Kirk has been pushing the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors to crack down on gang violence related to drugs, which police believe is driving the gun violence.

Kirk, a Republican, wants the FBI to prosecute these gang related crimes at higher rate given that about 18,000 people belonging to the Gangster Disciple gang, one of the most notorious gangs in Chicago (and beyond). Gangster Disciple stretches into 28 states and amasses more than $100m a year by selling drugs. And that's what we know about.

In a meeting with Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy in June, the police superintendent told Kirk more than 100,000 gang members live in Chicago. As Kirk tried to tackle gang violence in his home state of Illinois, Representative Bobby Rush, a black Democrat representing the 1st district of Illinois for 20 years, which includes Chicago, railed against Kirk's plan as "upper middle class, elitist, white boy solution". Well, "the white boy" conservative is coming up with solutions while blacks like Rush and Ali stoop to calling conservatives of all colors heinous names when they highlight or offer solutions to the ills disproportionately harming black Americans.

Today the main people holding blacks back as a race and taking them back to the days of Jim Crow are blacks themselves. Self-appointed black leaders, advocacy groups like the NAACP and black members of Congress cry racist at every turn. Beyond this battle cry, they have no solutions to offer blacks a way towards greater economic prosperity and less violent lives.

The day after George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder, the President of the United States chose to stir the race-baiting pot again by intimating that America should honor Trayvon by passing gun control:

“Now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we're doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities.”

Barack Obama isn't one to hide his disrespect for federalism or conceal his contempt for the legal system or the U.S. Constitution. The statement Obama made reveals that his motivation was to once again gain personal political expediency from someone else's heartbreak.

Think about it: the president sheds tears over murdered children, but it's always attached to advancing a specific political agenda. That's precisely why, in some circles, as America's most radical pro-abortion advocate, Barack Obama has zero credibility when discussing lives lost to gun violence.

As far as Obama is concerned, Trayvon Martin deserves kudos for delivering a big bang for his anti-Second Amendment buck. Nonetheless, if the Trayvon controversy should miraculously cool down, in due time someone else will come along and provide still more political capital for the president.

Rest assured, if need be, Mr. Obama will move on quickly from Trayvon, just as he moved from Tucson to Sandy Hook to any number of other tragedies he's used as political causes.

Unfortunately, based on what went on in Sanford, Florida, certain African Americans fall into the same category as the president they blindly support.

Black Americans hung up on fomenting racial unrest or buying into the victim mentality lack credibility too, because although they cry racism over the tragic loss of Trayvon Martin, who they call one of their 'babies,' they have shed few tears over the extermination of actual babies taking place for the last 40 years in abortion clinics all over America.

While focused on Trayvon Martin, socially liberal black Americans continue to ignore the genocide that kills thousands of black baby boys (and girls) every day, many of whom, if given the chance to live, much like Trayvon Martin might have grown up to look like the son Barack Obama never had.

Does it matter that blacks constitute only 13% of the population but account for 36% of all the abortions that take place every year? Where are the tears, protest signs, and New Black Panther demonstrations for the deaths of innocent children who didn't break anyone's nose or smash anyone's skull against a sidewalk?

For perspective, 13% of the U.S. population contributed 22,000,000 of the 60,000,000 children aborted since 1973. Each and every day in the U.S., approximately 1,876 black children are aborted. And yet pro-life people are supposed to believe that the angst over Trayvon's untimely end is based on the black community's respect for the sanctity of life?

In her fight to save the unborn, Erma Clardy Craven, the late Minnesota social worker and author of Abortion, Poverty and Black Genocide, once shared that, "17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los, Angeles, California; some 12-15,000 were observed to be black." Does the president care about them? Apparently not.

While Obama is asking America to "honor Trayvon" by doing what Obama wants, we forget that none of the 15,000 black babies found rotting in that dumpster in LA got the chance to wear a hoodie, shop for Skittles and fruit-flavored iced tea, or skulk around in the dark in a Sanford, Florida residential complex.

The difference between Barack Obama and Al Sharpton is, and has always been, that Obama hides it better, he is handled better, and his coldness and lack of conscience express themselves in a manner that passes for sobriety and seriousness with some people. And he has bigger goals, which is to say a bigger ego, than the laughable Sharpton. Obama's statements on this case, from beginning to end, have been spoken like a true community organizer: use pleas for "calm" resignation in the face of alleged injustice to stir up and solidify support for your broader authoritarian agenda. This is the Alinsky way.

Having said all that, if we want to be philosophical about this, we might observe that there is, indeed, a way to honor Trayvon Martin. It is for the white-dominated American media, the white-dominated entertainment industry, the white-dominated Democratic Party, and the rest of white-dominated progressive America to stop telling young black people like Trayvon Martin that they are not "really black" unless they are fighting, using drugs, talking and acting like thugs, and citing "racism" as their excuse for everything. It is for America's first half-white president to stop treating black Americans as an aggrieved underclass that can only be protected against injustice and poverty by voting Democrat. It is for that half-white president to stop trying to earn "his props" by flaunting his friendship with the millionaire "pimps" and "hoes" of the "black entertainment industry" who sell drugs, violence, racism, and sex as the secret path to "coolness," i.e., acceptance, when in truth — as the lives of so many of these "entertainers" beyond age thirty prove -- the heaven they are selling is in fact the pit of an inescapable hell. Enough of the White House gala evenings and Michelle Obama tweetings about Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the rest of the creeps, punks, and porn stars - cum singers.

Duke Ellington brought American "black entertainment" to the heights, mixing his muse comfortably, and on a footing of real equality, with Shakespeare and Steinbeck, Tchaikovsky and Grieg, always studying, always learning — so that today, his supposed heirs can rant in a drugged-up stupor about killing cops and defiling women. Ella Fitzgerald became America's "First Lady of Song" by expanding her repertoire from the popular dance tunes of her early days to masterful renderings of Gershwin, Porter, and Ellington in the 1950s; her heiresses today slink around like strippers using words and images to enliven the basest sentiments of the perpetual pubescents that comprise today's pop music audience. Today's so-called black leaders, including their "beige" president (to use Ellington's phraseology) are firmly on the side of the glamorizers of cop-killing, rape, and prostitution. They have deliberately squandered or obscured the gains of the twentieth century for their own evil, oppressive purposes.

If you want to "honor Trayvon Martin," stop actively corrupting the character and sentiment of each new generation of Trayvon’s. Stop encouraging, excusing, and even praising behavior that causes broken families, government dependency, moral decay, illiteracy, the degradations of a permanent underclass — and, all too often, sad wastes like the "tragedy" of February 26, 2012.

In short, if you want to honor Trayvon Martin, end American progressivism now.