Categories
ideological culture

Owning Up to Racism

Last week, actress Stacey Dash tweeted her support for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. And unleashed a firestorm, including AP coverage — “Do Black People Support Obama Because He’s Black?

On Twitter, she was called “jigaboo,” “traitor,” “house nigger” and worse.…

The theme of the insults: A black woman would have to be stupid, subservient or both to choose a white Republican over the first black president.

It might behoove Twits (those who use Twitter?) to take a breath every now and then and not immediately type out the first thing that comes to their heads. Especially if they’re racists, like those who tapped out these vile attacks on Ms. Dash.

What should the president’s skin color or her skin color have to do with whether she chooses to support Obama or Romney or whomever?

Funny, while attacking her for being stupid and subservient, this “progressive” beat-​down crowd is upset precisely because Dash is smart enough — independent enough — to think for herself, refusing to be subservient to them.

It’s scary that this sort of racism is so blatant, even after the long and difficult progress made on civil rights; scary, too, that today a black person can be “high-​tech lynched” online for thinking and acting and speaking in ways not somehow assigned to his or her race.

Slavery is long over. The laws that made blacks second-​class citizens have been repealed. So, why do some progressives think they own blacks?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Liberals Against Fracking

Fracking — not just for Battlestar Galactica nerds any longer.

Colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is a process of forcing water deep into oil shale to bring up natural gas. Combined with horizontal drilling (that is, and I’m not making any of this up, drilling somewhat sideways to avoid topside damage), fracking promises to be the next big breakthrough in energy development.

Just so long as government doesn’t mess it up.

Well, there’s debate about this. Gasland, a recent documentary, cited numerous examples of contaminated well water. And yet, last week Judge Nancy Freudenthal reversed federal government regulations against fracking, dismissing Gasland-promoted harms as “speculative.”

Anti-​factual? Anti-science?

Not according to science writer Ronald Bailey, who has argued that fracking itself is harmless. Things can go wrong in any industrial process, and in cases where substantial damage has occurred because of negligence or incompetence, major judgments against energy companies have been awarded to their victims.

Just as things are supposed to go, in a free society.

But folks leaning to the left prefer the “precautionary principle,” at least when it comes to business. “[T]he new reality,” according to a Washington Examiner editorial, is that “those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama.”

Had the Examiner used “progressive” instead of “liberals,” the irony of today’s Progressives being against progress might have unearthed one of this age’s sadder political truths. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.