Muslim Ellison should not sit in Congress
Short and sweet, eh? How about "Catholic Kennedy Shouldn't be President?" Or "Jew Brandeis Shouldn't be on Supreme Court?"
Can a true believer in the Islamic doctrine found in the Quran swear allegiance to our Constitution? Those who profess a sincere belief in Allah say "no!"
In that case, why not let the Congressman do what he wants, since he clearly doesn't agree with those folks?
Our Constitution states, "Each House [of Congress] shall be the judge ... of the qualifications of its own members." Enough evidence exists for Congress to question Ellison's qualifications to be a member of Congress as well as his commitment to the Constitution in view of his apparent determination to embrace the Quran and an Islamic philosophy directly contrary to the principles of the Constitution. But common sense alone dictates that in the midst of a war with Islamic terrorists we should not place someone in a position of great power who shares their doctrine. In 1943, we would never have allowed a member of Congress to take their oath on "Mein Kampf," or someone in the 1950s to swear allegiance to the "Communist Manifesto." Congress has the authority and should act to prohibit Ellison from taking the congressional oath today!
Hey Jackass Lake! Make room!
Also, Burt Prelutsky almost makes a good point. Almost.
If a black person tells the truth – namely, that in 2007, 99 percent of black problems are self-inflicted – he is, like Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell, dismissed as an Uncle Tom. If a white person tells the truth – namely, that with a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, no amount of government handouts will do anything but provide the cancer victim with a very expensive band-aid – he's condemned as a racist.
Excuse my poor liberal brain, but what does illegitimacy have to do with anything? Alexander Hamilton was an interracial bastard, and he turned out pretty well. And no, people shouldn't be condemned for telling the truth, but neither should these complex problems be reduced to simplistic answers- presumably, some combination of government and self/community assistance would work best. I'm not convinced shaming black parents for letting their kids wear baggy pants is particularly effective.
When blacks say they wish to have a dialogue with whites, it only means that they want a forum at which to bash whites, while their victims provide a Greek chorus of mea culpas, provide the coffee and Danish, and drop a little something in the collection plate on their way out.
There is such a thing as white prejudice. No doubt about it. But it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with character, culture and values. What blacks refuse to acknowledge is that whites are intolerant of crime and the creeps who commit it, be they black thugs or white trash.
Hey, let's oversimplify SOME MORE! All blacks want are handouts and accolades, and all whites want are for blacks to stop speaking ebonics. Man, Burt, I don't know why you started this column with that caveat; this race stuff actually sounds pretty easy!
But if a person such as Bill Cosby says he's ashamed of the promiscuity, drug use and illiteracy that plague the black underclass, he's called names. The real shame should be that millions of black kids are fatherless; that their taste in music is for anything that's crude, lewd and loud; that their role models are too often basketball players who make more babies than baskets; whose language skills are embarrassingly abysmal; and that, although most of the street punks are peddling drugs for roughly the minimum wage, they regard it as a worthier, more manly pursuit than working at a 7/11 or, God forbid, going to church, school or a library.
I don't know of anyone who denies that serious problems exist in the black communities of America. The question is what the root causes are and, more importantly, what are the best ways to fix them. Frankly, some of your explanations sound downright moronic. Blaming rap music for being "lewd and loud"? Are you serious? Lewd music is the least of the problems here. As far as role models- maybe basketball players aren't great, but I'd argue they're a lot better than the local drug hustler. Who were your role models growing up?
Actually, what most whites are is cowardly. When we see black kids with the top of their baggy pants drooping somewhere south of their butts, annoying people with their ear-splitting boom boxes, saying "they be" when they mean "they are," and we pretend that theirs is a different but equally fine culture as our own, we're no better than those enablers who give money to drug addicts or booze to alcoholics.
Music is relative. Fashion is relative. I can name tons of white fashions, contemporary and earlier, that I believe were and are godamn idiotic. Baggy pants and loud boomboxes are not the reason that black kids are getting arrested and not getting educations. Stop focusing on unimportant bullcrap. Yes, cultural relativism can be a slippery slope, but ultimately, this doesn't have much to do with the real problems facing American blacks. Or, to invert the question- what effect will cranky white people bitching at black teenagers on the bus to turn their boomboxes down really have?
When we finally stop patronizing loafers, louts and criminals, stop encouraging people who were born 120 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 20 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, to pretend that their sloth and ignorance are the fault of whites, only then will blacks come one step closer to having that colorblind society they claim they want.
I agree that problems should not all be laid at the feet of white society, but there are legitimate obstacles standing in black youths' way today, and suggesting that they should just "get over it" hardly seems useful. To say nothing of conflating all the elements of black culture that personally "bug" you with actual criminal behavior. If you don't like baggy pants and loud music, just be honest about it, Burt. Don't give us this BS about "when you don't tell them to get a haircut, you enable criminals." Putz.
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