Remembering Freedom and Finding Truth

I started off today with a plan to do a comparison of people under tyranny and under freedom, before going down a slightly different rabbit hole. But let’s start with a few quick visuals.

I came across this photo of Girl Scouts in Iran in 1969.

Girl Scouts in Iran, 1969, before the Islamic Revolution
image found here

Somewhere near that time, maybe a decade earlier, Mr. Spherical Model’s grandparents lived in Iran for several years. Grandpa was an educator, near the end of his career (he had been president of a college), and was contributing to education in Iran. At the time, it was a modern and thriving part of the world. People looked and dressed much like people elsewhere. An organization such as Scouting could thrive and be seen as a positive contribution to society in such an atmosphere.

Then there’s this photo, from much more recently, where women not only look oppressed; they feel it. They want to throw it off, and return to the freedom they had before the oppression.

Women in Iran, October 2019
image found here

There are similar comparisons for Venezuela, before and after socialist reforms imposed by Chavez, and then Maduro. Venezuela had been the wealthiest, most prosperous and forward looking nation in South America. Only about a short decade later, toilet paper shortages are the least of their problems. People are literally starving, while the nation’s wealth has disappeared, offshore, into accounts belonging to the rulers' family members.

Destitution in previously thriving Venezuela
photo by Claudia Guadarrama/Polaris/Newscom, found here

In a 2018 piece on socialism, David Harsanyi says this:

After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.

In both the Iran and Venezuela cases, the implementation of tyranny happened quickly enough that the memory of previous freedom and prosperity remained. But, in time, would the societal memory disappear? Then what?

A comparison of North and South Korea can give us a pretty good look at the differences between relative freedom and tyranny. The ethnicities and cultures started out the same. The dividing line is artificial. The North has almost no access to the outside world, or any news beyond what the government tells its people. And this has been going on for 70 years, pretty nearly a lifespan. In other words, anyone who remembers previous freedoms has probably died off by now. Societal memory is virtually gone.

North Korea, left; South Korea, right
comparison photos found here

In our social media world, we often see funny memes comparing things to olden days—when we didn’t have internet, and phones were connected to the wall, and you went to the library or opened the set of encyclopedias to look up information. Enough of us remember those “olden days” that it’s still societal memory.

Lately there have been memes talking about the good old days of 2019, back when we used to go to restaurants or get together with friends.

I was thinking through these comparisons when a friend posted something about a Scott Adams podcast from Saturday, October 24. My friend pointed us to around minute 16. So I listened. I’ll summarize the data afterward, but it’s fun getting the data a bit at a time, with a tad of misdirection and suspense, as Adams reveals it. So here’s a transcript of that section. He’s talking about national daily polling numbers, by Rasmussen, for black likely voter job approval for the president:

So these are likely voters who are also black, how much they approve of the president. Back on—this is just not long ago; this is October 19^th, not that long ago, right? Just last week? Black likely voters have a 25% approval rating for the President, which would be crazy, like off-the-charts crazy. Because he only got like 11% of the vote, so you’d expect his approval would be closer that 10% range, right? 10-11%. But 25%! Last week? That close to the election?

Oh, I’m not done yet. That was last week. So, that was the 19^th. On the 20^th it dipped a little bit. OK, that’s back to normal; it dipped to 24%. Still really high, but at least you can see it trending down where you’d expect it to trend, right? You kind of expect it to sink back down.

Except, oh, what happened on the 21^st? Huh. It reversed directions and went to 31%. What? Thirty-one percent of black likely voters have given the President—who is considered by his enemies the worst person in the world—they’re giving him 31% approval? On the 21^st? That was only a few days ago.

But, you know that’s not going to hold, right? That’s the kind of number where, you hear it, and you say, “OK, that’s not gonna hold.” And it didn’t. It didn’t hold.

So, the very next day it was pretty different. It was up to 37 frickin’ percent. Black likely voters, 37% approved of the President, on the 22^nd. What’s today? Today’s the 24^th. That was only 2 days ago. 37% of the black likely voters approve of the President? What’s happening here?

So, one thing you can say for sure, again, the 25% was crazy, so you didn’t really expect that to hold. But when it reaches 37%, you know that number’s not going to stay there, right? ‘Cause that’s just crazy. It’s not going to stay at 37%. And, indeed, sure enough, the very next day, the 23^rd, it changed again by quite a bit—to 46%. Forty-six percent!

I feel like I have to keep reading this again, because you won’t believe you heard it right. Let me say it again, to make sure you heard it right. The national daily black likely voter job approval for the President, according to Rasmussen, went from 25%, which was sky high, on the 19^th, just a few days ago, to 24%, 31%, 37%, then 46%.

What the h— is happening? What the h— is happening?

Here it is in quick-to-digest chart form:

National daily black likely voter job approval for the President—Rasmussen polling
date	%
Oct 19	25%
Oct 20	24%
Oct 21	31%
Oct 22	37%
Oct 23	46%

Estimates are that, if Republicans can get 15% of the black vote, they win. So, while job approval doesn’t equal votes, it tends toward that direction—bigly, as the President would say.

Scott Adams went on to speculate about why this is happening. Maybe because of the influence of prominent blacks: 50 Cent for one—who quipped that Biden’s tax increases would make him only 20 Cent. Ice Cube for another, who asked questions of both sides and got better answers from President Trump's side. Also Kanye West—hard to tell whether his write-in campaign is to give blacks a transition alternative away from Democrat Biden, or if he legitimately wants to run, even though he has expressed great approval of President Trump in the past. And former Obama adviser Van Jones said aloud that Trump isn’t getting enough credit for what he is accomplishing for blacks.

All of that could contribute. But Adams has his own theory. He says there’s a crack in the media silo, “the news silo that keeps the left in their bubble—I feel like it cracked.” Actual news is seeping out. He goes on to talk about this theory:

My world view is that our opinions are assigned to us by our chosen media. And if the media you’re absorbing is telling you Trump is a monster, you go away believing it—and you believe you’ve made up your own mind. But you didn’t. And I would say that my world view has all of the scientific backing, that people can be convinced to believe anything, just about anything, if their news source is consistent.

And, so, my world view is completely intact. The people who watch the wrong news get the wrong feeling about the world. The people who watch the correct news, or at least they’re smart enough to recognize fake news when they see it, have not been brainwashed. And that’s it.

And that’s what we see. We see some brainwashed people, some not brainwashed people. It’s all perfectly consistent. And scientifically backed, I would say.

That part where he says “people can be convinced to believe just about anything, if their news source is consistent” brings me back to North Korea, and probably other tyrannies—where memory is gone and current beliefs are controlled by the government. I don’t think North Korean’s know the rest of the world is far and away better off than they are; they see no evidence. 

This past week we saw the blatant partisan media attempt to black out news about the Biden family crime corruption. NPR—which we taxpayers pay for—decided to avoid all mentions of the story, to dismiss it as unproven, even as one source after another comes out. And all the “legacy” media sources blacked it out or repeated the “Russian meddling with our election” line, preventing their followers from even hearing about the story—while all the intelligence say there has been no Russian connection at all.

I continue to wonder about the news related to COVID-19, the virus from China. Why has it been so difficult to get accurate, or even consistent reports? I collect data myself—I’m dependent on government sources, but at least I can see trends for myself. News lately claims we’re in an upsurge in cases right now. But the rates I’m seeing (I ignore cases, except in my own zip code) are essentially flat or lowering slightly, as they have been for months. Death rates are a lagging indicator, so I’ll have to wait to chart that. But here’s the current epi curve chart for cases, on the Harris County Public Health site, looking pretty much the way it has looked for the last couple of months:

Harris County Epi Curve of Cases Over Time, October 26, 2020
image from here

This doesn’t look like a surge in cases. It doesn’t look like we should expect a sharp rise in deaths within a couple of weeks. With the county level still at red, no matter how low the cases and death numbers, it looks like someone is ignoring the data—ignoring the science—to keep us in fear and confusion, and under control.

Who would want to control other people? Tyrants. People who don’t understand that there’s a whole northern hemisphere on the model, where you find freedom, prosperity, and civilization—those people look only at who’s in charge; and they want to either be in charge themselves, or have someone in charge who has promised them special treatment.

I believe the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization will work every time they are tried. I see evidence that bears that out. It's in our history. And it's what we see when we examine the truth in real time.

But people who never see that higher possibility are brainwashed to think that no better possibility exists. It looks like intentional blindness to those of us who see, who are trying to show them, mostly without success.

I don’t know what our country is going to look like after this election. I hope we have beautiful freedom and all that comes with it for a good and righteous people.

But if we don’t, I won’t think it’s bad luck; I will see that it is bad choices by tyrannical, corrupt overlords, who managed to get their power—not by telling the truth, but by obfuscation and outright lies.

I'm hoping that Scott Adams is right about a crack in the fake news silo—through which truth will flow. And people who love truth will move toward it, and find that truth is easier to find when their eyes are open.

Doing a Mind Meld

There’s something Spock could do, on Star Trek, that would come in handy. He used to be able to put a couple of fingers on a person’s head—or other body part if it was a headless alien—and understand what the person was thinking. When we’re as unlike one another—or at least when we think so unlike one another—as now, this would be a useful tool.

Spock doing mind meld with Horta
image found here

I can’t actually do that with people who think very differently from me. Some of them are dangerous to even be around. But I can imagine—which, in reality, is what the writers of Star Trek did; spoiler alert: there wasn’t a real live Spock, just an actor playing a part.

So we’re about to do an interview. Actually several. Sort of a poll. We’ll ask the same question—with the possibility of followup, to several different individuals, to see if we’re understanding what they’re thinking. Remember, this isn’t what they say; it’s what they actually think. My speculation of that, of course.

Then, if you get a chance to encounter one of these kinds in the wild, maybe you can help us verify, or add to our data.

The Question: What are you doing this for?

Rioter—looting, burning, destroying: We have to tear down everything. You can’t start something new unless you level everything and build from scratch.

Follow-up Q: What is it you want to build from scratch?

Rioter: A new kind of society, where we’re in charge. We’ll make it fair—to everyone who does what we say. That's the really important thing—that we're in power.

 

________________

Protester—shouting, chanting, yelling, demonstrating: We have to make everyone aware of the wrongs in this society. We have to keep this up until there’s actual change.

Follow-up Q: What is the change you want to see?

Protester: People who have been oppressed, like blacks, will never be looked down on again. They’ll have all the opportunities of anyone else. And those who haven’t been oppressed—they’ll have to be taken down from their comfortable positions of privilege.

Follow-up Q: Have you, or have you seen anyone personally who has been oppressed?

Protester: Every black has been oppressed. It’s everywhere. It’s systemic. It’s in the air we breathe.

Follow-up Q: Can you give me an example?

Protester: I don't need no stinkin' example. It's everywhere you look.

 

________________

Politician (or other elite)—claiming it’s all Trump’s fault: We have to get him out of power. That’s the only way we can have the power to do what we want to do?

Follow-up Q: What is it you want to do?

Politician: Fundamentally transform this country into a socialist nation, so it will be fair.

Follow-up Q: What would “fair” look like under socialism?

Politician: No rich or poor. Everyone the same. We decide who gets what, and who does what. It’s good for everyone who goes along with us; it might be bad for some—but only those who don’t do whatever we say. That’s how we get unity—we get rid of dissent.

Follow-up Q: Will your personal wealth be the same as everyone else’s?

Politician: Well, as an elite I’ll need some additional resources, just to make things happen, after all. You can’t expect me to let lack of resources get in my way.

 

________________

Woke Supporter—social media demonstrations and expressions of support: I’m showing I’m hearing the oppressed. I recognize I’ve been privileged, which exonerates me from the guilt that those who aren’t woke are guilty of. We need society to change.

Follow-up Q: Have you ever intentionally treated someone as less than you because of their race?

Woke Supporter: Not intentionally, no. But I’m sure I wasn’t aware of stuff I did before I got woke, so I’d be guilty of that if I hadn’t become woke.

Follow-up Q: What would a changed society look like?

Woke Supporter: Everyone gets along. We’re all happy all the time. No one says anything that offends someone else. All the un-woke people just shut up.

 

________________

Always Been a Democrat—voting Democrat: We’re the good guys. We’re for the little guy. We’re against unfairness.

Follow-up Q: How do you know what the Democrats pursue is good for the little guy and against unfairness?

Always Been a Democrat: It just is. By definition. Republicans are racist, bigoted, xenophobes, homophobes, and fascists. They’re the bad guys.

Follow-up Q: What Democrat policies show they’re the good guys, and what Republican policies show they’re all those bad things?

Always Been a Democrat: I don’t get into the details. But that’s just common knowledge. All the news says so.

 

I already know what I think. But I’m interested when I hear someone unexpected—someone who looks like they ought to fit into one of the above categories but doesn’t—say what they think.

There was a video I came across this week. The interviewer is Jess Weber. He’s at a freedom rally in Beverly Hills, CA. And he’s talking with four black men, two wearing MAGA hats, asking them about interactions they had with protesters earlier. 

 

screenshot from here

They’re articulate. They’re clear. And they’re absolutely not oppressed. Here’s some of the exchange.

Interviewer: Tell me— The BLM movement was here earlier. What were you guys all debating about? What was the problem?

[There’s a call to let a man speak. I think they call him The Slayer. But I’m not sure, so I’ll just call him Man 1. He's the one in sunglasses.]

Man 1: He wanted to talk some nonsense about where this country really is, that it’s stolen land. I asked him, “Well, then, who do we give it back to?” He had no answer, which—most of their arguments have no answer.”

[footage from earlier, then back to main interview]

Interviewer: He kept saying that he built this land.

Man 1: Yeah, he didn’t build anything. He did build— I mean, right now, if you want to build something, you get a job, so you put your taxes back into your city. That’s called building something. Or start your own business. That’s what this country’s about. It’s not about getting some kind of like minimum wage job that you hope pays for your life. It’s about you getting out there and making your own way. But if you look at—where is it harder to make your own way? Blue states. Where they’re making it hard?

I talked to a guy last week that was going, “Well, the only reason our jobs went up is ‘cause the regulations got cut.” I go, “Yeah. More people got money in their pocket, huh?” Right?

 

Then they discuss the wrongness of being forced to honor people who were actually criminals.

Man 1: They want me to say some guy’s name who multiple, multiple times beat up his girlfriend. Multiple times, sexual assault.

Man 2: He’s not my Martin Luther King. He’s not my Martin Luther King.

Man 1: That’s who I’m supposed to die for? That’s who I’m supposed to sit there and get in a fight with my fellow citizens for?

 

They get into examples of other black lives that really should matter. Here, he’s talking about kids in Chicago who have been killed.

Man 1: Teenagers. In Chicago that died just in the month of July alone. Thirty-eight, if no one knows, 38 children in Chicago alone through this defunding BS that Black Lives Matter has been pushing. 38 kids in the month of July.

Man 2: What about those black lives? What about those black lives? What about all black lives?

Man 1: When have you seen a poster? When have you seen any of those faces on the cover of any magazines? But Oprah Winfrey is going to put someone on there who was working with her boyfriend in the drug trafficking trade down there. But we don’t want to talk about that.

 

The interviewer turns to a really big guy in a MAGA hat behind the others, refers to him as Megahulk. I don’t know if that’s his name, but it will do for now.

Interviewer: Megahulk, you almost turned green over there. Now, I want to know, what were you telling those guys?

Megahulk:  Well, I was trying to get them to understand, like, just, first, answer the question. We would give him a question, for him to answer, you know, ‘cause— “Donald Trump is racist.” “So, how is he racist?” “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.” That’s it.

[footage from earlier, then return to main interview]

Megahulk: That’s it. And then they just repeat it and repeat it. I’m like, “Look, just answer the question.” But they can’t answer the question, because they have no facts on their side. They have no facts. They don’t do any research. They don’t do any type of higher learning when it comes to what they believe. All they know is what the media narrative tells them to believe, and that’s all they parrot.

 

We need to get to the other man in the group; I’ll call him Man 3. His is good. He’s saying Black Lives Matter is not about helping black lives at all.

Man 3: The whole organization is fake. I believe, I personally believe that the BLM movement is fake. It has nothing to do with advancing the lives of black people.

Man 1: They actually say they want to break up the family home.

Man 3: Exactly. Like, their main goal is to break up the patriarchal, like, nuclear family. They want the men removed out of the family, which is what Democrats want also.

If BLM really cared about black lives, why would it be solely isolated to incidents where a black life is taken at the hands of a white cop? That happens less than 1%....

Now, I like to equate this to— It’s the same as if I’m in a horrific accident. I have a massive head wound. I have a leg fracture, and a scratch on my finger. And here come the first responders, and they want to tend to the scratch on my finger. And I’m telling you, “What about the wound on my head? What about my fractured leg?” That’s what the BLM movement is. They’re tending to the scratch on my finger, and that’s not even what it’s about.

If you want to help us, let us tell you how you can help us. Don’t come in and tell us how you want to help us.

And don’t tell me that I’m oppressed. Because I’m not oppressed. I’m a black American. I’m a proud black American. And I’m not oppressed. I am not oppressed. I’m one of the freest persons on this world.

Man 1: I kneel for no man. I only kneel to God.

There’s a good finale to the whole segment.

Man 2: As you can see, black conservatism is the new punk rock. You know what I mean.

Megahulk: We’re the rebels. We’re the rebels. You want to be cool? Come join our cause.

Interviewer: One question: Who are we voting for in 2020?

All: Trump 2020!

 

This kind of clarity, this kind of positive energy—from people who are so much like me in ways that matter—this makes me happy to see.

Sometimes Spock was able to mind meld to place his thoughts into the minds of others. It would be handy to be able to do that. Take the thoughts from these positive, articulate men, and place them into the minds of people who are calling them—and us—all kinds of negative names. I don’t think that would overcome the rioters, the protesters, or the political elites. But it might have a persuasive effect on the woke supporters and the Democrats who do what they do because they don’t know better.

Of Two Minds

The other night my son Political Sphere was commenting on the oral arguments on Obamacare from that day, and he made an amusing observation, about why he feels sympathy for Solicitor General Donald Verilli, who was tasked with defending the so-called Affordable Care Act:

I have to say, though, I feel for General Verrilli. He has been put in a terrible position. On day one he had to argue that Obamacare was not a tax. On day two, he had to argue that Obamacare was a tax and furthermore that the individual mandate was necessary (or inseparable, non-severable) from the rest of the act. Then, on day three, he was require tos ay that the individual mandate was severable in case it was determined unconstitutional. Meanwhile his opponent showed confidence in his argument and was allowed by his employer to keep a consistent argument throughout all sections of questioning.

It is possible (although I don’t see how) that Verrilli wasn’t bothered by his conflicting tasks. Truth, to some, is relative and malleable. But the flexibility of his “truth” seemed to strike even the liberals on the court as contradictory.

Ben Shapiro, waiting to speak
at King Street Patriots

This difference of how liberal minds work reminded me of something I wanted to share from Monday night’s interview with Ben Shapiro. Again, as I mentioned Wednesday, he was on a book tour, for his new book Prime Time Propaganda, which he did indeed talk about. But this is yet another tangent (these are from my notes, so a paraphrase of Shapiro, not a direct quote):

There is a fundamental distinction between how conservatives and liberals view rights. Conservatives believe rights descend from God, not the state. Liberals believe rights come from the state, so the bigger the state, the more “rights” it gives.

I have known this difference for a long time. But something about how he said it made me feel like I was discovering it for the first time. Liberals have a completely different way of thinking. This means we have essentially no common ground except that we believe we should have rights—whatever they are.

There is something of an innate sense of the right to ownership, found even in toddlers. If something is yours and someone takes it without your consent, you feel righteous indignation—you have been wronged. Liberals can’t win on basic economic issues, because they lose. So they tend to push social issues. And they tend to persuade using emotional stories and images rather than facts or reason. For example, a captioned photo I saw on Facebook yesterday showed a bald woman in a hospital on life support. The caption reads, “No matter how you say ‘Obamacare,’ ‘Let her die’ sounds worse…” [the ellipsis dots are part of the caption, for grammatical reasons unknown].

This is trying to say, if I’m translating correctly, that you either accept “Obamacare,” or the alternative is letting cancer patients die. That, of course, is a false choice, even slanderous. People against Obamacare are not heartless haters, but people who want a more practical way for that woman to pay for her care than having the federal government step in and take over all our health and personal life-and-death choices, which have very little connection to this woman for whom we all feel sympathy. Does my refusal to grant the federal government control of my personal health care choices and the money I spend on them mean I want unknown cancer patients to die? Of course not. But if you’re only listening to emotion, and you see the heart-wrenching image with nothing to counter it, you might believe so.

Oddly, I happened to read an opinion a week or so ago relating to former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s heart transplant. Some pundit was asking the question, was he too old to have been allowed to receive a transplant organ? (The story itself was mostly just informative; it's the title that I take issue with.) Was he worth wasting this scarce resource on at such an age? He’s 71. His first heart attack was some decades ago, at which point he stopped smoking, limited alcohol, exercised, and did the lifestyle changes that allow someone with heart disease to continue on with hope for a long and full life, which he has had so far. In addition, his wait time on the transplant list, 20 months, was some months longer than average. But the liberal media is questioning the wisdom of allowing his transplant; isn't that the job of a death panel--which comes with Obamacare?

My dad had a heart attack at age 69, never had another, but along the way had quintuple bypass surgery—without the help of Obamacare, but with health insurance. He lived to age 91. I would not have given up those last couple of decades with him by choice. He was there for the growing up years of my children. And he was able to live at home with my mother, and continued to be up and around, doing yard work and tasks around the house, up until very near the end. The odds are not in favor of someone his age living so fully for so long. So it is important that the decisions relating to his health were not in the hands of a distant bureaucrat, deciding how to dole out scare resources based not on knowing the person involved, but based on statistics and some cold calculation of  “what is best for society as a whole.”

It is not private health care choices that would ever deprive that cancer patient of the choice for life-saving care. It could only be a bureaucratic takeover that would do something so callous.

Shapiro suggested that, in order to win in the arena of ideas, when we’re dealing with so many who are emotionally persuadable, we need to make fundamental freedom the argument. Whose choice is it: mine or the government’s? On every issue. Point out where government interference always limits personal freedom.

Not everyone wants personal freedom, because it comes with personal responsibility. The liberal argument is, “You don’t deserve to be blamed for bad behavior,” and “I’m going to give you free stuff.” So there will be weak minds that will not see the truth. But among the masses subjected to liberal media images are also many who would choose freedom and its attendant prosperity if that was what they were being shown. Yes, there are two kinds of minds, but we still have a chance to win the ones not yet fully closed.

Colorful Talk

I came across a post last week (thanks to a facebook friend) that I wanted to share here. It’s the story of a black woman who converted to conservatism. It sounds like a religious conversion, and in a way it is. Her name is Providence Crowder, and her story is here: http://www.fdfny.org/blog/?p=480. Her conversion included these discoveries as she became a thoughtful adult. 

Providence Crowder

Upon a closer examination of my party, I learned that most of the Democratic Party’s platform stood against many biblical moral standards. Generally, they rejected the biblical definition of marriage and they overwhelmingly supported abortion. I learned that more often than not, when I voted for a Democratic candidate, I was voting against my family values. That troubled me greatly and I began to question my loyalty to the party; and after I began to make my way through college and learn a little about economics, I discovered that the Democratic Party’s economic policies were detrimental for not only black Americans, but for all Americans! 

I was very troubled during the last presidential election to learn that well over 90% of black voters chose Obama—who violates their family values and the economic principles that will lead to prosperity for blacks and all Americans. It’s difficult to conclude that there was any significant reason beyond his color, because his principles simply don’t match anything like a majority of Americans, and certainly not 9 of every 10 blacks [it was blacks in California that put Prop 8 over the 50% needed to pass]. There were some other elements in the election that affected many non-blacks as well. The concepts of “hope” and “change” were so misty that many voters filled in the blanks with their own concepts without even realizing this new face hadn’t ever said that he held their worldview. It was a mistake encouraged and augmented by MSM, so while it is regrettable (and many do regret it now), it wasn’t a surprising one-time phenomenon. 

But polls show that, even with falling approval numbers in all other demographics, Obama enjoys pretty much the same 9 of 10 blacks approving of him and the job he’s doing. I find this more that just a little troubling. 

Color just isn’t something I spend a lot of time worrying about. While I feel racism coming at me from blacks, this is usually from public figures, not people I come in contact with in my private life. (Even though I live in Houston, Sheila Jackson Lee fortunately isn't my representative, and no one takes her seriously.) I live in a very diverse neighborhood, and any blacks who live here among us are middle class and share many of the same values as the rest of us. And their background isn’t particularly more deprived than the immigrants and their posterity from Viet Nam, India, Pakistan, Palestine, Colombia, Norway… (that’s just our cul-de-sac).  

For someone descended from northern European blonds, I have a surprising amount of melanin, as my mother and grandmother, as my son Political Sphere and his daughter. We think the dark caramel color is beautiful. Last year daughter Social Sphere was lamenting that she didn’t get the “tan genes,” so Political Sphere sent her a pair of “tan jeans” for her birthday; she was only semi-amused. Political Sphere also has almost black hair and dark brown eyes, so he has frequently been asked by friends what ethnicity he is. People most often guess Hispanic, but sometimes Asian, Indian, Greek, and once even black (mainly because they wanted their pick-up basketball team to all match, so they just called him black, and he said fine).  

The point is, other than aesthetic appeal, skin color just doesn’t mean very much—to us. But that is not to say that I understand what people who do feel prejudice against them because of color are feeling. By chance of birth (and that’s pretty much all), I am descended from Americans who never owned slaves. As far back as I am aware of genealogy in every line, there are simply no slave holders, back several centuries. So I won’t take on that burden. 

My daughter-in-law, on the other hand, comes from a long line of historic Texans, and among them were slave holders (including some intermarrying so that she seems to be related to everyone in her small town, regardless of color). That doesn’t make her personally a slave holder, and it hasn’t given her a financial advantage either. So, as long as her heart isn’t that of a slave holder, and neither have been her ancestors of the past century-plus-decades, should she be hated for her heritage? That seems as unfair to me as any other accident of birth. I’m with Martin Luther King in looking at content of character, rather than color of skin. 

But, I recognize that there is some taboo against someone of my fortuitous birth to advise on the issue. So I am hoping that those who do have the “moral authority” granted by birth, who have also developed appropriate character, can have the needed influence. They face a fair amount of pressure, name calling, and ostracism from others who share their melanin levels, but fortunately they have a lot of courage and often a great sense of humor, qualities which elevate and enlighten us. 

Here are a few I’ve been paying attention to, who have converted and learned to speak well—to everyone: 

• Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice (loved his memoir My Grandfather’s Son)
• Thomas Sowell (author of Basic Economics, and regular Townhall.com columnist)
• Walter Williams (another brilliant economist I quote almost weekly, and regular Townhall.com columnist)
• Michael Williams, Texas Railroad Commissioner, currently running for Congress (not my district, so unfortunately I don't get to vote for him), more info here:
• Kevin Jackson, author of The Big Black Lie, internet broadcast The Blacksphere (find it on facebook)
• Alfonzo Rachel, ZoNation on PJTV.com
• Sonja Schmidt, Left Exposed on PJTV.com
• Herman Cain, businessman and presidential candidate
• Allen West, Congressman from Florida, and possible presidential candidate
• Larry Elder, talk show host and Townhall columnist
• Star Parker, CEO of Center for Urban Renewal and Education and regular Townhall.com columnist (her current piececurrent piece is good: "The Poor Are Not Poor Because the Rich Are Rich": http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2011/08/01/the_poor_are_not_poor_because_the_rich_are_rich/page/full/)