Christina’s Common Sense

In today’s world, everyone wants to be a victim. It’s the cool thing to do, especially if you’re gay, black, or a woman. If you’re all three, it’s even cooler. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about history becoming subordinate to victimology.

Spike Lee (black guy, film director, victim extraordinaire, and Yankees fan to add insult to injury), has recently taken issue with Clint Eastwood (white guy, film director, and conservative) for not putting any black guys in his 2006 blockbusters Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.

Lee might have a legitimate case had there been black guys on Iwo Jima. Having spent most of the spring semester researching this epic battle, I can attest that I did not run across a single book, chapter, paragraph, sentence, or footnote addressing black Marines on the island. The military was segregated in 1945, so to have blacks and whites fighting alongside each other would have been a big fat deal. Would nobody have written about it? Would those books nobody has written not be unbelievably famous? They would, because back then it would have been unprecedented. The lack of documentation is, to my mind, proof that no black men fought in this battle. That’s not racism. It’s just the truth (which, of course, is racism these days).

If you think that’s laughable, let’s address Lee’s beef with Letters from Iwo Jima, which recounts Iwo from the Japanese’s end. Do I really need to say anything here? The Japanese are the most homogeneous population on the face of the earth. What does Spike Lee want to do, dress a bunch of Kobe Bryant lookalikes in Imperial Japanese battle garb and try to pass them off as authentic Japanese men?

What’s next? Should we alter the famous photograph (over this Marine lover’s dead body) to show a few women raising the flag? Let’s Photoshop a ponytail onto Harlon Block’s head! That’ll make the professional victims happy! Hey, how about a Japanese guy jumping out of his bunker to help the Americans stick the flag on Mt. Suribachi? Then we can be really fair to everyone.

Spike Lee is revealing himself and those who agree with him to be horses’ derrieres. However, he may shut up and retreat back to his millions of dollars soon enough—the Italic Institute of America has accused him of being anti-Italian.

Next time you go through I-95 in Philadelphia, keep your eyes peeled for a white sign with fluffy white clouds that says “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.”

It’s the truth, and Steve Rade of the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason will gladly attest to it.

Of course, the billboard has spawned a lot of dissent from the Christian community, with some Christians wanting the board taken down.

This is why people think Christians are bigots. When atheists want us to shut up, we talk about free speech. But when it’s our rear ends on the line, we cry and wet the bed. Christians need to let this billboard stand and use it as an opportunity to advance our ideas. We must not let our enemies use it as a chance to advance their idea that we are closed-minded anti-intellectual losers.

The more I see of California, the more I think the movie 10.5 should become reality. At the end of it, California ends up floating in the Pacific Ocean, completely separated from the rest of the United States. That may not be such a bad fate for one of our looniest states.

The Golden State has once again demonstrated its lunacy in a state Supreme Court ruling last week. The Court struck down California’s ban on gay marriage and ruled that same-sex couples may begin to marry by mid-June.

It’s tempting for folks on my side of the aisle to blame the gay rights crowd for this. But it’s not their fault. The fault lies with us. Christians have fallen down in our duty to protect marriage. We’ve given in to no-fault divorce laws to the point that our divorce rate is as high as non-Christians’. And when asked to defend marriage, we stumble and bumble and drool all over ourselves. Is it any wonder the lefties laugh us off the stage?

It may be unpopular, but the truth is that a large homosexual population is not good for society. Since homosexual marriage has been legalized in Scandinavia, illegitimacy rates have climbed and marriage rates dropped. This has not been good for their society, so why should it be better for ours?

It won’t be. It’s politically incorrect to say this, but marriage and family are the bedrock of every healthy society. When they disappear, so does the healthy society. This has been proven again and again. Do we really want to end up like Scandinavia? Think about it.

It seems like there’s an advocacy group for everything these days. Everything from disability to skin color runs to the government for money and advocacy. The blind are no different. Yesterday, a DC appeals court ruled that the government must redo paper currency so that blind people can identify what denomination of bill they are holding.

I know I’m going to come across as heartless and cruel here, but are blind people starving to death because they can’t figure out what bill they need to pay for their lunch? I sincerely doubt it. They’ve obviously figured something out. Beyond that, how much is this going to cost? I don’t have an exact figure, but it can’t be cheap. Can blind people not think of any way to design their own system for categorizing bills?

I’m sure they can. But we don’t live in a society where we do things ourselves anymore. We live in a society where we run to the government and hold the rest of the country hostage when things don’t go our way. The country is now going to have to spend billions of dollars to take care of something that can be taken care of without government help.

Loss of sight is a terrible thing to live with. But so’s a learning disability. I happen to have the latter. There are certain limitations that come with it. One of these is that I will probably never be able to balance my own checkbook. That stinks! But I’m not going to go to my bank and demand that they revamp their checkbook so my life can be easier. I use a calculator, or ask my parents for help. This is part of having my particular disability, and I’ve managed it without help from Uncle Sam. Is it impossible that blind people might be able to do the same?

You can tell it’s finals week because my posts are done late at night and are of little substance…

I’m not a fan of Chris Tomlin, but this is a really nice music video done for the movie Amazing Grace. If you have not seen it, I recommend you do—particularly if you’re interested in political activism and/or the intersection between faith and politics.

Also, I have changed my blog’s format as a result of the homepage not displaying properly on my screen and this being the most legible layout for such a situation. I hope it displays properly for you, and if it doesn’t I am trying to fix it.

If you’ve never read anything by Thomas Sowell, you should. He is made of awesome. So is his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

In a subject where it’s easy to become bogged down in policy wonkery and partisanship, Sowell cuts through the horse hockey to the truth: there are two basic ideological visions that inform one’s political views. These are the constrained vision, in which men are as they are and there’s no changing it; and the unconstrained vision, in which human nature is a terrible tragedy that can–and must–be reengineered to perfection.

Whichever side of the aisle you’re on, you’ll doubtless be able to make connections to past and present situations as you read about the two visions’ ideas of man, politics, economics, knowledge, and justice. It is about the best explanation of the roots of political strife I’ve ever seen. And Sowell makes it so simple and easy to understand that (if you’re into this sort of thing, at least) it’s kind of fun to read.

I won’t spoil the rest of it for you, just know that this will not be going back to the bookstore and if you’re unfortunate enough to have me educate your young skull full of mush someday, you might just have to read it. So get a head start and read it now.

Also, the print is fairly large and the pages are small. This means the book isn’t as long as it looks. Always a bonus.

It really must be painful for a man to have to saw in half all his boy toys, rendering them fairly useless. But apparently this Serbian fellow found it less painful than having to give half the quantity to his wife in their divorce settlement.

But if you think that’s strange, check out the guy who sawed his house in half after finalizing his divorce last year.

Just another reason not to get divorced in my book!

There are numerous good things about being a card-carrying member of Young America’s Foundation. One of them is that you wander around CPAC and get free books that haven’t been published yet. Actually, I lied. Anyone could do that. But it’s still cool to be a card-carrying Young America’s Foundation member. You should look into it.

The free not-yet-published book in question is A Conservative History of the American Left by Daniel J Flynn. Having heard Flynn speak before and read some of his columns, I had high expectations. They were not disappointed.

With exhaustive research and dry wit, Flynn exposes the origins and history of current American liberalism. The history is not a flattering one—I mean, if your ideology’s history was one of racism, sexism, eugenics, and communism wouldn’t you want to forget that too? Well, if you’re a liberal, Dan Flynn has revealed that to be your movement’s sad story.

Flynn does a masterful job of showing that the current liberal ideas of big government and lack of personal freedom can trace their origins to the landing on Plymouth Rock. The current liberals use the same schemes that have been tried and have failed for centuries. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

A Conservative History of the American Left will be on sale April 29, but Amazon is currently taking pre-orders. You should order this book if you want a well-done, insightful, and accurate look at the origins of today’s loony left.

“A nation built on the principles of the Founding Fathers,” said Mitt Romney in his withdrawal speech at CPAC, “cannot long stand when its children are being raised without fathers in the home.”

For decades now, American culture has bought the lie that we can engage in, shall we say, risky behaviors all we want with no consequences. But the reality is that there are consequences for such behavior, and it’s not just the unwed mothers who are suffering them. It’s our kids too.

It’s not politically correct to say that in this day and age, but it is the truth. And it’s been said the truth hurts. But in the case of unwed mothers, the lie is just as painful. Encouraging a culture of indulgence like this exploits our children. It makes them slaves to our desires.

Gov. Romney’s insight was all too accurate. Out-of-wedlock births are a crisis for America that must be addressed, no matter how much it makes us squirm. It’s not fair to our next generation to make them subservient to our culture of indulgence. We need to put the needs of children ahead of ourselves—and we can start by not having them until we can afford them.