CA: Arianna Huffington: "A crisis in democracy" (She Challenges Ward Connerly to a debate)

Salon ^ | 8-27-03 | Arianna Huffington

[Alia]

Editor's note: Arianna Huffington spoke to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco Aug. 27.>Sept. 2, 2003

begin snip

Let me end by saying a word about how appropriate it is that we gather here today, one day shy of 40 years since Martin Luther King led the march on Washington. Unfortunately, here in California, some still haven't taken Dr. King's message to heart.

Those who put forth discriminatory measures like Proposition 54 need to be told loud and clear, in no uncertain terms, that discrimination in any form, no matter how disguised, has no place in California. We're better than that.

From this immigrant's mouth to your ears, let there be no mistake:

Proposition 54 is bad for health care, bad for education, bad for public policy.

And if Ward Connerly is so convinced of the virtue of Prop 54, then I challenge him to a debate on the issue -- any time, any place -- so I can lay out all the evidence that his proposition is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to allow racial discrimination without leaving a paper trail.

[Alia]

.. the question is. Will she assault a microphone to grab center stage? Personally, I think Ward is too fine a gentleman to permit such an ignorant woman to embarass herself further. She is wrong about Prop 54. And, I think she intends to do the "female shrieking" thing to defend her thinking. Not even scientists can rationally, scientifically, defend "race" science.

[Rudder]

Why excerpt this one?

[LiteKeeper]

Has she read Prop 54? Is she batty?

[Alia]

I excerpted; because her speech was so long and boring and filled with emotion but not substance. I didn't think it merited full posting.

[John Valentine]

She's batty. And I'd bet that if she has read Prop. 54, she has failed to understand it.

She sure misunderstands Ward Connerly's intentions.

[dighton]

Has she read Prop 54?

Maybe, maybe not.

Is she batty?

Yes.

[Rudder]

Then I guess it also doesn't merit full reading.

[Alia]

I think she's on the same page with the Dems: Please Keep Racism Alive, or I'm out of a career!" Arianna is simply going to take the counsel of the "Universal Health Care" mentality people.. and use whatever they give her. In effect, given her rant and challenge to "debate" Ward; she's looking to B*_(& slap him rather than actually debate; and she's simply looking for how much she thinks the 54 opponents will, Might, Like her and maybe, just a little, vote for her; if they get to see her go "hysterical" on Ward. Egads... makes my skin crawl.. first grade at the bike racks...starring Arianna and her missing tap shoe.

[skr]

The difference in intellectual capabilities boggles the mind.

[Alia]

I felt bad for the people who paid to hear her speech live. I pass on posting it in full here. But YOU Can! lol

[Lancey Howard]

"Why excerpt this one?"

Maybe because this gem pops up very early:

"Proposition 54 is bad for health care...."

With that little phrase, Huffington exposes herself (yet again) as a filthy liar, and anything else that follows is worthless.

Regards,
LH

[SAJ]

Zsa Zsa Huffington is the definitive argument for A) highly detailed pre-nups, and B) not getting the second lobotomy.

[BenLurkin]

It takes a special democrat type of political trollop to say that something which prevettns discriminatory practices is somehow an act of discrimination!

[Coeur de Lion]

These fools who are opposed to Prop. 54 don't realize that their arguments for not supporting it, represent the exact reasons we should support it. That just indicates to me what "true believers" they are. They are convinced that any statistical evidence of differences between the races or ethnicities implies evidence that racism and discrimination is the culprit and responsible for the differences. That racism is a problem is a presupposition on their part and so the argument for gathering this data is because it will confirm their presupposition? This is nothing more than circular reasoning on their part. They're guaranteed to successfully prove that racism is a problem. It's not too difficult to believe that when one names a research study the "glass ceiling study" the research group isn't going to come back with the conclusion that the "glass ceiling" actually exists and it's worse then we thought.

But that's hardly science or good research!

[Rudder]

...anything else that follows is worthless.

nuff said

[goldstategop]

I'd love to see the Greek Harpy defend before an audience the racial classification system that underpinned Jim Crow in the U.S and apartheid in South Africa.

[driftless]

I don't believe in the concept of race as it is generally understood either. But liberals, being the stinking hypocrites that they are, will use "race" whenever it suits their purposes. Which is of course to promote members of their own screwball ideology. Then "race" exists. If they had used race this way back in the sixties, the civil rights movement would have collapsed.

[Alia]

Driftless -- not even SCIENTISTS can support what the left has created in re "race". And Big YEP: You are right about: "If they had used race this way back in the sixties, the civil rights movement would have collapsed."

So yes, you and I are on the same page in re race. There are some juicy and factual tidbits in the following excellent article:

http://interracialvoice.com/editor35.html

By Charles Michael Byrd

So there is no doubt amongst the IV readership, I declare my wholehearted support for Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI), which, if approved by California voters on October 7, would effectively prohibit that state from classifying its citizenry according to race, ethnicity, color or national origin.

Furthermore, I implore every religionist across California to assist in the push to approve RPI as its passage will help elevate the populace from the mundane, contaminated state of race-consciousness to the supreme platform of God-consciousness. As much as some hate to admit it, religion and the social construct of race have been inextricably intertwined for centuries.

Europeans engaged in transatlantic enslavement had to find a justification for subjugating their fellow humans while remaining faithful to their "religious" beliefs. To that end, they championed the idea of a superior white race that, for the sake of maintaining "purity," should never mix with Africans -- whom the slavers designated as sub-human beasts of labor. It therefore followed, at least in the slavers’ minds, that if Africans were not human, it would be no affront to God to enslave them to make the New World plantations profitable.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other priestly strategists that prosecuted the "righteous war" that was America’s civil rights movement, however, failed to engage the final battle of deconstructing the race notion. Race became the building block not merely for social programs and legal redress but for "black" self-esteem and "black" political power, and we see other "minority" communities copying that model. Few people saw race-consciousness -- along with the omnipresent human vs. non-human background noise -- as the evil it was and still is. Indeed, they reveled in it and continue to do so.

At a time when quantum physicists are telling us that our bodies are vibrating fields of invisible energy and that the vibratory rate produces the illusion of solidity, can we not make the case that supporters of racial identity -- who decree that people must identify with the temporary body instead of with the eternal spark of consciousness or spirit-soul animating same -- are essentially atheistic?

Negativists caution that Joe Six-Pack is too ignorant to comprehend such transcendental meditations as they are too highly advanced and do not satisfy his emotional needs. Contrariwise, I believe every Joe is capable of comprehending "complex" spiritual philosophy -- the notion that he is not his body or a member of a racial grouping.

Race and ethnicity boxes serve only to divide society into voting blocs agitating for one kind of political legislation or another, regardless of whether the individuals within those blocs deem themselves part of the group in the first place (e.g., this country’s burgeoning "mixed-race" population) -- much less whether they agree as to the appropriateness of the proposed policy. As long as these groups continue groveling and fighting over government largesse and attempting to intimidate others into staying within the fold, the ability of Americans to construct a true national identity -- what to speak of a heightened spiritual awareness -- is ripped to shreds.

We do a disservice not only to ourselves but also to the world when we think in terms of race and ethnicity. Violence begins at home, and if we identify with our bodies, we commit the greatest violence to ourselves and to others as well; we see ourselves as something other than what we are, and neglect our eternal connection with all that lives. Bona fide spiritual masters know this to be the beginning of all violence -- even of war.

The failure of far too many ministers, reverends, pastors, priests, fathers, rabbis, imams, gurus, etc. to combat race-consciousness is astonishing, yet we can stem the tide of pushing the race drug to our children.

Religionists can assist us in recognizing our spiritual birthright, our relation to every living being in existence. Religionists can assist us in recognizing our common Father, for if we do not recognize Him, we recognize nothing. Religionists can assist with this important recognition as well as with RPI’s passage, but will they?

PASS IT ON!

--end of article

[Alia]

It most certainly would be a spectacle. lol

I gotta tell you tho, Ward Connerly is one of the truest -- all the way through-- gents I've known or gotten to meet over the years. Plus, I've witnessed how blunt he can be in live debates with the cranially-impaired opponents. Don'tcha think Arianna needs a few synapses to at least order the limo driver to take her places?

[Alia]

Good post!

You are right. I must remind here, however, opponents are not really interested in "race" -- but money. I've just heard from two different families, over past 3 days, who have KAISER as their "medical" place. Kaiser Permanente is a major opponent to Prop 54. Anyway..

ANECDOTAL DATA: both families are having very big difficulties getting the Kaiser Doctors to actually recommend MEDICAL tests. The families are flummoxed. Until they were told to contact the PATIENT ASSISTANCE desk and present their case. Both families had been informed by Kaiser Permanente insiders that Kaiser is now charging doctors (or their departments) for ANY MEDICAL TESTS they order for patients.

Another poster reported here of his "discussion" with a Epilepsy "medical researcher" who conceded that Epilepsy had no "race" link; but yet the research and funding was being done so through the "RACE BOXES".

This is all about race? Prop 54 asserts that solid medical issues associated with race stay as is with passage of Prop 54..... SooooOOO? Why is, for example, Kaiser and the entire "HMO" leviathan here in CA AGAINST Prop 54? Oh. The two families: One is Caucasian; the other - the mother is caucasian but the son (the patient) is biracial. At this moment in time, pre-54 -- wouldn't it be interesting to see Kaiser's stats on the "races" of those who have to brawl for medical tests through the Patient Assistance Office -- versus those who pass the "lookism" test of the construct of "race boxes"?

The amazing thing to me is... when Prop 54 passes -- one might not so readily be able to tell (stat-wise) if those who look "white" are being treated less "efficiently or fairly" than those who do not look "white". Kaiser is adamantly against Prop 54; while asserting they are trying to save minority lives... Hmm... what's odd about this picture?