Posted on 05/04/2015 4:41:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Baltimore burns, shops are looted, rioters attack firefighters with bottles and bricks. And amid all the violence and ruin, what drives the chattering class into a froth of indignation? That anyone would use the word "thugs" to describe the vandals and criminals reducing Baltimore to rubble.
As berserkers ran amok Monday, the city's mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, deplored the destruction: "Too many people have invested in building up this city to allow thugs to tear it down."
That set the hounds baying. Rawlings-Blake was accused of using a racial slur. Baltimore City Councilor Carl Stokes angrily told CNN that calling rioters "thugs" is just like calling them the N-word. The Rev. Jamal Bryant, who delivered the eulogy at Freddie Gray's funeral, repeated the accusation: " 'Thugs' is the 21st-century word for the N-word," he said Wednesday, "and it is repulsive and it is offensive." Wale, the popular Washington, D.C.-based rapper, told Baltimore teens that Rawlings-Blake owed them a direct apology for saying something so "stupid." Others piled on.
It didn't take long for the mayor to surrender. "We don't have thugs in Baltimore.... We have a lot of kids that are acting out," she told a group of church leaders. For good measure, she blamed her "little anger interpreter," pointing to her head in self-abasement. There was more apologizing online. "I wanted to clarify my comments on 'thugs,'" she tweeted. "When you speak out of frustration and anger, one can say things in a way that you don't mean."
So now in Baltimore, which has the nation's seventh-highest violent crime rate, the nonracial word "thugs" is banished as racist — even when spoken by a black mayor. Thus the degradation of the public discourse proceeds.
Meanwhile, Rawling-Blake's forced walk-back was nothing compared to the self-mortification of Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, two gay hoteliers in New York who hosted a small reception for Senator Ted Cruz on April 20. The business partners, longtime backers of gay-rights causes, strongly disagree with Cruz on same-sex marriage, but share his views on foreign policy. They invited a dozen guests to meet the Republican presidential hopeful over dinner for a discussion of politics. Apparently they were under the impression that in America it is permissible, even admirable, for voters to talk to politicians, exchanging thoughts on a range of issues.
They know better now.
Reisner and Weiderpass were savaged for having hosted the dinner for Cruz. Activists organized a boycott of their hotels, threatening to "shut the place down" as punishment for talking to the enemy. Within days, the businessmen were begging for mercy, berating themselves as if they were inmates in a North Korean slave-labor camp, forced to confess their crimethink in public.
"I am shaken to my bones by the e-mails, texts, postings and phone calls of the past few days," groveled Reisner on Facebook. "I made a terrible mistake. I was ignorant [and] naïve.... I sincerely apologize for hurting the gay community and so many of our friends, family, allies, customers, and employees. I will try my best to make up for my poor judgment." Weiderpass followed suit, flagellating himself for a blunder that may have "nullified" his 20 years of supporting gay rights.
More and more, this is what the marketplace of ideas is turning into. The ruthless determination not just to silence opposing points of view, but to humiliate and crush even allies willing to hear an opposing point of view, violates every liberal principle of tolerance, reason, and dialogue in the public sphere.
The language police in Baltimore and the auto-da-fé of Cruz's dinner hosts are but two fresh examples of a phenomenon rising all around us. Commencement speakers are disinvited from college campuses. Mozilla's CEO is forced to resign over a donation made years earlier to a ballot campaign supporting the traditional definition of marriage. Hillary Clinton declares that abortion rights must be defended with the "political will" needed to change "deep-seated ... religious beliefs." Speech codes and "trigger warnings" are deployed to enforce a spurious — but expanding — right not to be offended or disturbed.
Increasingly, the censors and silencers are at work, stifling ideas, demonizing speakers, ostracizing open-mindedness — decreeing even certain words beyond the pale. It is a dangerous, illiberal, antidemocratic trend. If we don't rouse ourselves to reverse it now, we may never get the chance.
But you pay a price for that.
” If we don’t rouse ourselves to reverse it now, we may never get the chance.”
You must be homophobic. /s
:-)
I am so sick of the fudge-packing, pole-smoking minority. Can’t they just stay in their velvet ghetto?
This has all happened before. It ends with blood in the streets.
Political Correctness has always been the Marxists method of censorship. They now have the social network as a weapon.
Pray America is waking
Good article on why no business will want to build in Baltimore.
My Baltimore Business Problem
What it’s like to operate a company 150 yards from the burned out liquor store—and why it’s hard to create jobs.
By Jay Steinmetz
May 3, 2015
Baltimore
The supply-chain management company I started in the late 1990s and lead today is in downtown Baltimore. On the night of the worst violence last month, there were more tempting targets than our cement, nondescript building, like the liquor store 150 yards away that was looted. Yet on any given day what takes place in this neighborhood is a slow-motion version of recent events. Graffiti, which anyone with experience in urban policing will affirm is the first sign of trouble, regularly appears on the exterior of our building. From there the range of crimes escalates to burglarizing cars in the parking lot, and breaking and entering our building.
City policies and procedures fail to help employers address these problems—and make them worse. When the building alarm goes off, the police charge us a fee. If the graffiti isn’t removed in a certain amount of time, we are fined. This penalize-first approach is of a piece with Baltimore’s legendary tax and regulatory burden. The real cost of these ill-conceived policies is to the community where we—and other local businesses in similar positions—might be able to hire more of those Baltimoreans who have lost hope of escaping poverty and government dependency.
Maryland still lags most states in its appeal to companies, according to well-documented business-climate comparisons put out by think tanks, financial-services firms, site-selection consultants and financial media. Baltimore fares even worse than other Maryland jurisdictions, having the highest individual income and property taxes at 3.2% and $2.25 for every $100 of assessed property value, respectively. New businesses organized as partnerships or limited-liability corporations are subject, unusually, to the local individual income tax, reducing startup activity.
The bottom line is that our modest 14,000-square-foot building is hit with $50,000 in annual property taxes. And when we refinanced our building loan in 2006, Maryland and Baltimore real-estate taxes drove up the cost of this routine financial transaction by $36,000.
State and city regulations overlap in a number of areas, most notably employment and hiring practices, where litigious employees can game the system and easily find an attorney to represent them in court. Building-permit requirements, sales-tax collection procedures for our multistate clients, workers’ compensation and unemployment trust-fund hearings add to the expensive distractions that impede hiring.
Read at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-baltimore-business-problem-1430688970
It has been demonstrated by linguists that if you don’t have words to discuss a particular issue, you are unable to even think about that issue.
People in cultures that don’t have words to indicate that a person is aware of what another person is thinking are not able to empathize with others.
Does this mean I can’t watch Gunga Din anymore?
Some night, I pull the curtains, turn down the lights, grab some firepower, just in case I’m discovered, and watch, in the privacy of my own home,...
GUNGA DIN
THE DECEIVERS
THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY.
Thoughtpolice - - totalitarian thugs... We outnumber them.
Remember Chick Fil A?
The other side - which we were told was massive and powerful - couldn’t find two gays per major city to show up for their ‘kiss in’. Even when the press promised to be there at noon to cover ‘the two’ while ignoring the thousands of conservatives.
The left could not get two people on short notice to show up at Chick fil A in a major city. ANY major city. It’s telling.
Support on the left is fake ‘friends’ on Facebook ... it’s illusion. Paid for by George Soros - amplified by idiots in the press who believe the illusions.
They are trying to put lipstick on a pig. There is no candy coating what we saw in Baltimore. The city should be embarrassed they have citizens who act like hooligans with no regard to the rule of law and the only major employer, the illegal drug industry. Baltimore is indeed the armpit of America.
I’ll be happy that George Soros makes his grand walk into eternity.
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