2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,953
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Taking a knee to protest police brutality....is taking a knee based on a lie.......
Blame the NFL, Not Trump
I beg to differ. What is most offensive about the kneeling gesture is not the projection of disrespect for the symbols of nationhood. The brief ceremony in which the anthem is observed at public gatherings is a celebration of American ideals: liberty, equality, and the willingness to fight to defend them.
If it were true that American society was still persecuting a racial minority, that America was an imperialist monster, and that police were hunting down young black men, the celebration of those ideals would be a fraud.
A contemptuous protest demonstration under such circumstances would be not only defensible; it would be obligatory.
Yet, the fact is: It is not true. It is a monstrous lie.
At the start, the protest was explicitly directed at purportedly institutional racism in the nation’s police departments, which had supposedly led to an epidemic of police violence against black men. (More Kaepernick: “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”)
It is a specious, defamatory claim.
Police killings, as the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley notes, are at historic lows.
As I have detailed, far more whites than blacks are killed in confrontations with law-enforcement — twice as many in 2015, for example.
Police departments are more integrated than they have ever been — often overseen by African-American commissioners and political officials.
Yet, observe the numbers crunched by Heather Mac Donald at City Journal: Though they make up only six percent of the population, black males account for 42 percent of police killings; police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than are unarmed black males to be killed by a police officer.
As for the justice system, it is run by elite graduates of America’s law schools, members of the most politically progressive (and activist) profession in the country.
The thought that they would abide institutional racism in the system they control is laughable.
As anyone who has practiced in that system can tell you, extraordinary efforts are made to avoid even the appearance of racism.
Indeed, fact-pleading — agreement to a narrative of the offense that defies the evidence of the offense — has become a commonplace in order to avoid lawful sentencing enhancements . . . because the disparate-impact crowd insists that many severe sentences must be rooted in racism.
Meanwhile, violent crime is ticking up again, as prison-inmate populations have fallen.
Read more at: Blame the NFL, Not Trump
Blame the NFL, Not Trump
I beg to differ. What is most offensive about the kneeling gesture is not the projection of disrespect for the symbols of nationhood. The brief ceremony in which the anthem is observed at public gatherings is a celebration of American ideals: liberty, equality, and the willingness to fight to defend them.
If it were true that American society was still persecuting a racial minority, that America was an imperialist monster, and that police were hunting down young black men, the celebration of those ideals would be a fraud.
A contemptuous protest demonstration under such circumstances would be not only defensible; it would be obligatory.
Yet, the fact is: It is not true. It is a monstrous lie.
At the start, the protest was explicitly directed at purportedly institutional racism in the nation’s police departments, which had supposedly led to an epidemic of police violence against black men. (More Kaepernick: “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”)
It is a specious, defamatory claim.
Police killings, as the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley notes, are at historic lows.
As I have detailed, far more whites than blacks are killed in confrontations with law-enforcement — twice as many in 2015, for example.
Police departments are more integrated than they have ever been — often overseen by African-American commissioners and political officials.
Yet, observe the numbers crunched by Heather Mac Donald at City Journal: Though they make up only six percent of the population, black males account for 42 percent of police killings; police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than are unarmed black males to be killed by a police officer.
As for the justice system, it is run by elite graduates of America’s law schools, members of the most politically progressive (and activist) profession in the country.
The thought that they would abide institutional racism in the system they control is laughable.
As anyone who has practiced in that system can tell you, extraordinary efforts are made to avoid even the appearance of racism.
Indeed, fact-pleading — agreement to a narrative of the offense that defies the evidence of the offense — has become a commonplace in order to avoid lawful sentencing enhancements . . . because the disparate-impact crowd insists that many severe sentences must be rooted in racism.
Meanwhile, violent crime is ticking up again, as prison-inmate populations have fallen.
Read more at: Blame the NFL, Not Trump
