“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”


"This report is maybe 12-years-old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people . . . better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." ~ Captain Malcom Reynolds

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Clueless of the day

I generally try to stay away from the politics on my blog, because most folks do it much better than I do, and I don't feel like getting into comment wars.

However, this quote today (from Yahoo News/Christian Science Monitor) on the investigation into voter intimidation and Justice Department policies managed to annoy the crap out of me:

The case could damage the Obama administration, says Mr. Lichtman at American University. But he also argues that most Americans understand that the Voting Rights Act was intended to correct gross and historic injustices, not nit-pick along partisan lines.

"You can try to force [the Voting Rights Act] to be equal, but it's not," he says. "If these are the worst examples you can find, then, by God, white people in America are pretty safe."


Mr. Lichtman, your ideas and theories there are completely clueless, inept and wrong - to put it nicely. The whole intention of the Voting Rights Act is the same as the legislation which provided minorities and women the right to vote in the first place - the very same as the other protections under the Bill of Rights and throughout our government. The intention is absolutely for all Americans to be equal under the law - for black, white, brown, red, yellow, blue, purple or any other shade you choose to differentiate people with.

It is double standards like this which have done more to continue racism (in all directions) in this country than anything else in the past 40 years I have been alive.

We are a nation of equal laws - and I for one am sick and tired of the "some animals are more equal than others" attitude which has infected our society. Whether race, social class, gender, sexual/food/exercise/other preference, geographic location, education or whatever - none of the above ENTITLES you to anything more than equal protection and equal opportunity to succeed or fail on your own merits.

Rant off.