Of Torn Down Statues and Revisionist History

The objection to politically incorrect statues in the public square is that this is an inappropriate place to have statues of "world leaders....., even enemies" according to my left-leaning friends.  I'm told it's okay to have them safely tucked away in history museums where docents can 'splain to heads full of mush how evil these people were, but to have them in public without proper interpretation is, in a word, "ridiculous". 

I beg to differ.

Jefferson Davis & Woodrow Wilson are
removed from the UT Austin campus as
Republicans join in the fun and include
Democrat icon Wilson in the purge.

During my two trips to Washington DC, I enjoyed all the statues scattered around the Capital. You can't throw a cat in DC without hitting something marble or bronze. When I visited , I did find statues of some of the guys memorialized, to be of less than honorable men. But unlike my critical friends on the left, I believe public spaces should be places to preserve history. I may find Democrats like Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson and Jefferson Davis to be men I do not admire, but they were a part of our history. Someone felt strongly enough about them to honor them in stone and metal. The statues scattered around New Orleans, for instance, are a part of the city's history. Without them, it's as though the city's darker history is being swept under the proverbial rug. And it is. Look, I have no problem if a neighborhood wants to erect a statue of, say, black communist activist W.E.B. DuBois. It's their business. Should I walk past such a statue, I would be reminded of what I know about him and what he did to set his people upon an unfortunate road and to negate the work of greater men like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.

I'm sorry, but the Robert E. Lee statues I do not disapprove of. Lee abhorred slavery and believed the Confederacy should have abolished it before seceding. He felt it tarnished the cause of state's rights that was ostensibly the motivation behind secession. Stonewall Jackson feld the same way.  After the war, Lee did much to heal the rift in our nation and his example led many Southerners to reject slavery as the evil it was. Lee believed that God had abandoned the Southern cause largely because of slavery. Lee is a tragic figure and his story has much to teach us about making huge mistakes and finding redemption beyond them. 

Vladimir Lenin's statue in Seattle

Sadly, this crop of kids coming up probably don't get the lesson.  The millennial generation has spent little time even lightly perusing actual history, instead drinking in alternative (socialism-driven) history by osmosis - thinking they know the truth because Marxist professors like Howard Zinn confidently assure them that the history of the past supports the eventual rise and victory of the "progressive" socialist cause - an idea that sounds great in your head if you just don't read the actual history of socialism in the 20th century.

Everyone draws from these various monuments to men and women, great and flawed, something personal and that's not always bad. When I see Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and others, put up on pedestals by dying generations of Civil war survivors, I feel the tragedy of the Civil War in my bones. I remember how the Southern elite upper classes deceived millions as to the purpose of that war. They sold the whole "States Rights" narrative to farmers and shopkeepers who did not, nor never would own slaves and the folks Karl Marx would have called "the proletariat" fell for it hook, line and sinker. Even honorable men like Jackson and Lee who disapproved of the institution of slavery were swept along by the tide of secession against their better judgment because of a misplaced sense of loyalty and duty to their home states.

I don't think we should blot out that history lesson. Add one of those history markers to the pedestal that explains what a tragedy the whole thing was. But don't pretend the events they were a part of never happened. Don't hide the sins of the party of Nathan Bedford Forrest, James Keith, Silas Gordon, "Bloody" Bill Anderson, William Quantrill, Henry Wirz, George Wallace, and Bull Connor.  Without such reminders, I'm afraid we're going to white-wash it all to the point where kids no longer remember how a political party and it's elite cadre of upper class Americans destroyed the lives of millions of their fellow citizens through deceit and manipulation. I WANT to be reminded of that every time I walk by one of those statues that hundreds of thousands of fools believed the lies and followed these men to their deaths and that every one believed they were doing the right thing.  Moreover, I want to remember that at one time enough people admired these men enough to build statues of them.

I need to be reminded. We all need to be reminded, because it is all happening again.


© 2018 by Tom King

Resisting the New Normal

The New Normal?

As the leftist propaganda machine ramps up its efforts to "fundamentally change" American culture and values, it becomes increasingly dangerous to be a member of the resistance. Defending common sense and traditional values can cost you your job, your reputation and even get your kids taken from you. And, if you are the president of the United States, it can get you impeached - at least that's what the united progressives of the world are hoping. The latest flap over efforts by Donald Trump's INS to protect the US border is an example.

Yes, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service removes children from adult detention facilities and places them in Dept. of Human Services facilities while their parents, who have committed a crime by crossing the border illegally are being processed. Contrary to the narrative progressives are promoting, there are not a lot of "Family Jail Cells" at the INS where families can be kept together. Adult Illegal aliens are kept in what facilities there are while names are checked. This is a difficult process because undocumented aliens are, well, UNDOCUMENTED.

So instead of keeping them incarcerated with people who claim to be their parents (again no documentation) along with smugglers, sex traffickers, drug cartel enforcers, terrorists and drug mules, INS puts them into the custody of the Dept. of Human Services, an agency experienced in protecting children. DHS keeps the kids safe until their parents can be found or the adults they came across with can be identified as their parents (instead of child sex traffickers). Once everyone is identified and processed, the families are reunited and sent home to their respective countries. And the UN Human Rights Council, which condones massive assaults on the Israeli border by waves of women and children acting as human shields for terrorist assault forces, gets it's panties in a wad because we don't leave the kids in adult jail along with potential adult abusers.

The UN Human Rights Council is the same body of politicians who remain silent when authorities jerk kids out of happy homes because their parents don't want them to be propagandized by LGBQT propagandists in public schools. In Canada you cannot adopt a child unless you're willing to support a sex change operation for a four year-old. Quite frankly, in four decades of working among abused and emotionally damaged kids, it looks to me more like LGBQT advocates are more interested in increasing the numbers of potential sex partners in the coming years than protecting anyone's rights. 

I know that sounds harsh, but when you've seen fresh-faced kids come to town on buses with a piece of paper inviting them to come to the gay bars of the big cities, I have a hard time not doubting the motivation of the folk trying to "normalize" deviant sexual practices. There are, after all, only about 3% of Americans who embrace alternative sexual lifestyles. They must have a hard time finding partners. I sometimes wonder if the drive to encourage "alternative" gender identification in impressionable children is more about trying to grow the numbers of young sex partners than it is about protecting children from bullying.

After 40 years watching this sickness being pushed on us by government bureaucrats, the media and progressive activists, and seeing the horrors being perpetrated on innocent children and confused people with mental illness by these sexual bullies, I am frankly sickened by it all. People who casually go along with this kind of "fundamental change" in American values and culture, haven't seen the parade of victims of those promoting it. I have and I can tell you, you don't want to see the human wreckage left behind.

I love my friends who struggle with sexual identity issues. I spent years helping sexually abused kids try to come to terms with family's and friends' acts of perversion perpetrated on them when they were little. The trouble with trying to help these kids is that the LGBQT advocacy folks have convinced mental health professionals who ought to know better to go along with their efforts to force everyone to agree that sexual perversions are "normal".  Therefore scientists and counselors are forbidden to explore any possible treatments to help kids and adults who do not want to be slaves to their "alternative sexual proclivities." Why would people who write books like "Free to Be You and Me" object to folks who have homosexual proclivities, trying to get some treatment. People with bipolar are not forced to "embrace" their craziness, just because a lot of important celebrities have bipolar. And by the way the suicide rate among people with sexual issues is up there with that of people with untreated bipolar disorder. The only difference is that the political establishment of our country and a medical profession which has embraced politically correctness denies treatment to homosexuals, lesbians, trans-sexuals et al.

It's a real struggle to achieve some level of recovery from sexual deviance it's true, but don't let anyone tell you that you have to act on your impulses. Having everyone pretend that sexual deviance is normal and healthy isn't going to help the suicide rate any more taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will cause a mass shooter not to act on his impulse to mow down a row of school children. Impulses may be controlled, but it's difficult once they have found a seat within the mechanism of our brains. If you are denied any help for impulses you don't want, don't like and think are wrong, it's little wonder there is so much despair among those who suffer with this sort of mental illness. And, yes , I said mental illness. I have ADHD myself. It's a mental condition. I deal with it. I got some help. Everyone should be able to get help if they want it.

Thank God that He loves us and saves us from our sins. It's the last bit of hope in a world that devil wants to be as confusing and contradictory as possible. As an old rock song once opined, "Satan is my name. Confusion is my game." Look, if abused little girls can find peace after what they've gone through, so can other victims of sexual perversions. I've seen the horrific damage done to women in their childhoods and watched the heart-breaking struggle they go through to find peace and recovery. So why by all that's holy do we deny that healing and peace to those who are the victim of other forms of deviant sexual bullying?

Just sayin'.

(c) 2018 by Tom King

DNC Proposes New Cheese Labeling Standards

Proposed New Labels to Prevent Cheesy Micro-Aggressions*

Washington, DC, May 13: Democrat minority leader Nancy Pelosi proposed a House bill today that would address micro-aggressive labeling by American cheese-makers. The specific type of cheese targeted bears the label "White American Cheese Slices".  Under the new law, this product would be labeled "International Cheese with Pigmentation Impairment."  This new labeling would address the America-centric micro-aggressions that non-Americans might experience as well as the Caucasian-specific racial overtones engendered by the product label. LGBTQ Advocates have also requested a rider removing the term "Singles" due to the hetero-sexual micro-aggressions engendered by the sexist term "single" which implies a difference between unmarried and married persons, especially between hetero-normal individuals and non-traditional gender embracing persons. The LGBTQ Alliance further seeks a ban on the term hetero-normal, though for the life of them, they couldn't think of another word to use for straight people (other than "straight" which is also a micro-aggression to gender creative individuals.

Former speaker Pelosi further proposed a ban on the term "Pigs in a blanket" when referring to a popular U.S breakfast food. The DNC has petitioned the food and drug administration and the Federal Communications Commission to purge all such references from Internet food websites, recipe books, product labeling and school lunchroom menus, replacing the term with the more educational and progressive term, "white cops in a straight jacket" in order to promote awareness of the need to rein in our out of control law enforcement officers, and in particular, white officers. The petition is also supported by the National Organization of Women, The Service Employees International Union, The National Education Agency, Black Lives Matter, the International Communist Party and the former Pope Benedict.

© 2017 by Tom King

 * Just a reminder for those of you in Rio Linda, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. This post is satire. It's meant to be funny, not truth. Please do not pass this news item to your friends and fellow social justice warriors. I made it all up to make fun of you. I'm sorry, but when I was making breakfast and saw the White Cheese slices sitting there, my twisted mind was off to the races (which PETA would not have approved of, but hey). Please accept this in the spirit in which it was intended. Or better yet, you could sit on your sofa, watch old episodes of The West Wing and Madam Secretary and wallow in self-pity till your fingers get all pruney. whichever makes you feel better (or worse if that's what you are going for). Enjoy! And leave a nasty comment below if that will help. I can take it.

Would Mohamed Approve of Mohamed's Behavior?

A knife-wielding student stabbed four people on the campus of UC Merced a couple of days ago. He was identified Thursday as 18-year-old Faisal Mohammad from Santa Clara, California. Why is it so many of these terrorist incidents are committed by people named Mohammad or some derivation thereof? Mohammad apparently never developed a standard spelling for his name.


I got called on the carpet for saying that - apparently it reveals my bigotry, but that's not what I'm trying to incite here. A guy shot another guy in Lakewood and as my friend points out, his name was "Jesse". That's not the same thing at all. In that case a disturbed soldier with some serious issues shoots one guy. Single murders happen all the time and murderers have all kinds of names ranging from Bob Johnson to John DuPont. A knife attack in a school where the guy is stabbing everyone in sight? Not so much. Just seems an awful lot of mass killers (or attempted killers) of late share a common name. Even the kid with the "clock" dressed up as a bomb, who got himself arrested, invited to the White House and then moved to Qatar - home of terrorist training central, shared that same name. 

Here are a few others, just to show you what I mean:

• Chattanooga Terrorist - Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez
• Jihadi John (DC Sniper) - Mohammed EmwaziFirst Trade Towers bombing -  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• Twin Towers pilot - Mohamed Atta, (surprisingly the only one named Mohammed in the bunch)
• Khobar Towers - Abdelkarim Hussein Mohammed al-Nasse along with 5 others named Mohammed
• Beltway Sniper - John Allen Muhammad
• Kenya Garrissa University - Mohamed Mohamud
• Navy Yard Shooter - Mohammed Salem
• Arkansas Recruiting Center - Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad
• Paramatta shootings - Farhad Jabar Khali Mohammad
• Nashville drive by - Mohamed Almahmmody
• Shreveport shootout with police - Mohamed Ibrahim.
• Kansas City Freeway Sniper - Mohammed Pedro Whitaker

I'm not condemning all Muslims here, but the folk involved all come from a common place. I have had good relations with my Muslim colleagues that I've worked with in the past. They are, in my experience, a peace-loving folk, so I have no experience of Muslims who chant death to America an hate us enough to blow themselves up. Still, given the rising tide of terrorist activity, I do have a problem with the fact that we as a nation are ignoring a group, whose members all share a common ethnic and religious orientation, that has declared war on us and that apparently hate us and the horse we rode in on. And I don't think it's an accident that there are an awful lot of "Mohammeds", "Abduls", "Husseins" and "Achmeds" in that group.  Might give you a hint where to look for them.

 My suggestion would be to band together with Muslims who wish to live with us in peace and declare all-out war on the forces of darkness who use that religion (or any religion) as an excuse to terrorize, murder and force others to submit to their will. I think the Muslim community would go for that. It would certainly leave a lot of empty seats in the halls of power that could be filled by honest, peace-loving Muslims. That's really the only way to do it. You have to remove the killers and give the power to honest, peaceful leaders and then you have to back them to the hilt.  You can't just pull out. Every time a terrorist organization rises up, you have to go after them with everything you're got until they are eliminated. You do that by partnering with people you know believe in peaceful coexistence. We did it in Germany and in Japan after WWII and we stood by the South Koreans after the Korean conflict. We didn't do that in Vietnam and hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were slaughtered when South Vietnam fell to the communists.  You can't get away with destroying your enemy and then leaving a hole in the ground. You have to stay with the job and you have to assure those who help you that you are not going to go off and abandon them.

It's time for the Muslim world to choose sides and for us to make a commitment to those that choose to be with us.
 
I do realize that a comment like mine can incite bigotry in the weak-minded and that, for that reason, I probably shouldn't point out that all those killers were named Mohammed. HOWEVER, that said, we are in a war that the president is ignoring if not abetting. It's never a good idea to pretend your enemy isn't shooting at you.

One bunch of mass murderers we've seen lately are certifiably insane, and there's plenty of talk about what to do about that. Recommendations from strict gun control to loosening the laws on committing folks with severe mental illness have been put forward. This is good. We should talk about ways to prevent severely ill people from shooting their neighbors and families.

BUT, we should, also be dealing with the second problem, which is that there are terrorists among us and they are being recruited and dispatched from specific organizations who have declared war against our country. Pretending there is no war is just stupid. These organizations occupy ground throughout the Middle East and claim to be acting as the leaders of their religion. During George W. Bush's tenure, there were no Muslim attacks on the homeland after 9/11. We took the battle to them so they had no resources to send weapons and recruits here when they were barely staying alive over there.  We did a lot of good, taking out tens of thousands of jihadis and their leaders in the process. We did not, however, finish the war. President Obama simply left Iraq. It's no accident that ISIS is now set up in Iraqi territory.  I like Ben Carson's suggestion for solving the problem - to prosecute war against these people until absolute victory is won. We go to fight a real war; not a ten year police action but an all out attack with the full might and power of the free nations of the Earth.

Also, to a person, every non Muslim mass murderer in the US in the past couple of decades I have found in my research, seems to be a registered Democrat or an avowed progressive socialist, save one notable paranoid schizophrenic whose family had been trying to get him committed for years and the government wouldn't cooperate. Perhaps we need to look at the mental stability of that group instead of training our police and military incessantly to subdue an imaginary terrorist threat from the Tea Party.

In pointing out the Mohamed thing, I'm just saying that some folk out there are making Mohamed look bad.  And in case you want to point out that the Roseberg Oregon college shooter wasn't named Mohamed, that's true. Interestingly by the way, the kid hated Christianity and lined up and shot anyone who admitted he or she was a Christian in the head. So he had that whole "kill Christians" thing in common with the Jihadis who are exterminating Christians across the Middle-East. 

The thing is there are a couple of common threads in these mass shootings that it would do us well to pay attention to and to explore with the whole problem of mass murder. If we're going to reduce the incidence of this sort of violence, we're going to need some tools besides political correctness, denial and bending over backwards not to offend anybody to address the problem.  

Gun-free zones surely aren't working.

And by the way - Mohamed, if his actions and statements in the Koran are to be believed would thoroughly approve of the actions of all those Mohameds out there engaging in terrorism. I've read it in their own book. It's true that the Koran is all about peace - peace, that is, once all us infidels are dead or have submitted to Shariah law. These guys have a different definition of peace than I do.

Tom King
(c) 2015

Secret Service Takes One in the Name of Diversity

Secret Service Director Pierson. One wonders whether she can
open the president's limo door........or not. Enquiring minds?

The United States Secret Service, one of the most storied United States federal law enforcement agencies has been in the news of late due to several rather spectacular failures that have drawn attention to a steady breakdown in management, morale and performance at the agency. The clearly deteriorating condition of the United States Secret Service has forced the resignation of the director, Julia Pierson, whom the president hired to fix the most pressing problem at the agency - the lack of diversity. She pretty much had to fall on her sword in the wake of growing problems and incidents involving Secret Service.

• Omar Gonzales, a 42 year-old Iraqi War veteran jumped the White House fence, overpowered an agent and made it to the East Room armed with a knife
• Secret Service agents preparing for the president's visit to Columbia apparently hired prostitutes and threw themselves a party the night before the president's arrival.
• Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service, claimed one female Secret Service agent on the president’s detail is "so out of shape that she literally cannot open the heavy doors to exit the president’s limousine."
• At a White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, presidential staff insistence, that people who looked like they belonged at the party not be "harassed", contributed to Secret Service uniformed officers’ reluctance to turn away anyone who showed up at the event and allowed two uninvited guests to crash the party.
• Agents complain that they are not allowed time for regular firearms requalification or physical training. Agents frequently work 18 hour shifts or more for days at a time. They are told to handle the missing firearms and physical training simply by filling in their own scores to make the paperwork look right.
• Protective teams have been reduced or told to stand back because staff are concerned that if doesn't look good to have too many Secret Service agents among guests at White House and even on-the-road events. Staff have even insisted that Secret Service agents maintain their distance from protectees on the grounds that the protectees don't like it.
• Agents complain that the agency doesn't back them. If powerful staff members don't like a secret service agent's security restrictions or if they refuse to violate Secret Service policy on command, an agent can be fired or reassigned. It's apparently happened quite a lot.

None of these things appear to be important to the agency's management, however. Diversity has been the "big problem" faced by the agency since the beginning of the Obama administration. In 2009, the Secret Service said in its annual report - FY2009, our recruitment staff attended 370 job fairs aimed to attract applicants with varied education and experiences, as well as diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Liberal news site, the Huffington Post piled on in 2012 with an article calling for "efforts to close the gender gap" at Secret Service. Huffpo echoed the administration's concern that only about a tenth of field agents and uniformed officers were women. Even though the shortage of women probably had more to do with the travel demands of the job than any pro-male bias, the liberal press, in the wake of the Columbia prostitution scandal, called for recruiting more diverse candidates as Secret Service agents in an effort to prevent the agency from being seen as "unfriendly to women".

Democrat Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "I can't help but think that there would be some progress if there was more diversity and if there were more women that were there."  Doesn't look like that strategy has helped much - at least so far as protecting POTUS is concerned.

Since president Obama moved into the White House, the Secret Services recruiting mandate has been abundantly clear. The agency has aggressively recruited women and other minority group, initially targeting female-oriented career fairs and sending brochures to college women's groups and organizations.

In the meantime, the agency has encouraged "diversity" by making things easier for agents who meet diversity quotas.  Instead of removing the overweight female agent who couldn't even open the president's car door or at least making her pass the physical fitness test that all agents are supposed to take every three months, Secret Service management, instead, told drivers to "try to park so it would be easier for the vehicle door to swing open for her." To make things even more surreal, the flabby agent is a SUPERVISOR.

Yikes.

Many former Secret Service agents complain that the agency has developed a fixation with diversity. Even though Secret Service has some excellent female and black agents, management assigns some agents who are not well-qualified to guard the president to meet targeted racial, ethnic and gender quotas for the sake of making Secret Service look diverse.  One veteran agent says, “They want the optics to look good, regardless of their actual job skills.

The recently resigned Secret Service director, Julia Pierson was tapped by the president for the job in March of 2013, not to beef up the agency's capability to do its job, but to change the culture of the Secret Service in the wake of the Colombian prostitution scandal. Pierson, herself, is not exactly the poster girl for the fitness and skill levels one would expect of a Secret Service agent, even if he or she was part of management.

Favoritism, incompetent management, disregard for safety of protectees and a general shifting of the agency's mission away from protection toward political posturing has created problems with low morale and high turnover. The Secret Service has deteriorated to the point that their weapons are outdated, competent personnel are in short supply and the agency so politicized that it can no longer do its job as advertised.

And speaking of advertising:

In 2013, there were two movies about attacks on the White House in which Secret Service agents featured prominently. This was NO accident. Hollywood has always been anxious to help out Democrat presidents and causes. In December of 2012, I was asked to write reviews of both movies, neither of which was even out yet. The "reviews" were to be designed to appeal to "twenty-something young men with an interest in video games and action movies".  The contractor? The US taxpayer through the White House. As near as I could tell, the Secret Service was funding it. The effort to stack the movie reviews for these two films was, according to the information we got from the client designed to encourage young male video-gamers and action movie fans to apply for jobs with the Secret Service. I'm not sure how many of these phoney reviews were written, but the content mill publisher I worked for on occasion had stacks of these jobs available before both White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen.

One wonders how many other core Democrat voting groups have been recruited to the Secret Service, not because of their law enforcement, weapons and security skills, but because they look right, are the correct gender or can be counted on to be politically reliable.

How's that working out for you guys at Secret Service. I'll wait for an answer till you get a new director. Good luck finding a Marxist lesbian, black, female, twenty-something gamer for your new boss. And after all, why worry about your primary job of protecting the president. If you do fail at that job, there's always Joe Biden waiting in the wings.

© 2014 by Tom King

Embrace Your Inner Redskin

Embrace your inner cowboy.....
or Redskin for that matter.

The Power of Language to Change Perception - The Washington Redskins Conundrum

As the NFL football season approaches, everybody's all up in the air about whether or not the Washington Redskins should change their name in order to avoid offending Native American people. Some sportscasters have vowed not to use the R-word during broadcasts. Some tribes have sued the NFL. Others have taken the side of the team and call out the PC police for creating what they call a phony issue designed to make another whole race of people into victims.


The authors of the controversy say that changing the team's name will unite Americans in peaceful coexistence and harmony. How's that worked out for them?  Really, all they've managed to do is to divide the country and cast aspersions on people whose politics they don't like.

So, how about letting the people who are being slurred determine whether or not "Redskins" is a slur or not. Let's get the guys out of it who are third parties with no skin in the game other than to make themselves feel better about their own moral superiority over the stupid rednecks who call their football team the Redskins? And don't forget the would-be law-suit millionaires; they'll be suing for "damages" next. They have a vested interest in keeping the issue stirred up.

Not all Indians/Redskins/Native Americans are offended by the name of the Washington Team. Some of us find the name Redskins applied to a sports team, to be a tribute to our warrior ancestors, worthy adversaries who stood bravely against an unjust genocidal war waged against us by the racists and greedy bloodsuckers of the time (You know who you are). We know that the depredations against the red man by whites in the 19th century were by no means approved of by the American public in general. The country was sharply divided. Many people were sympathetic with the plight of Indians and found some of the government's "military" actions to be quite appalling. For the past century or so, Congress has hardly ever passed an appropriations bill or funding package that doesn't include money for the tribes in it. We feel bad about how some of our people treated the noble Red Man (that was the language the whites who sympathized with the tribes used at the time). There were powerful voices raised against our mistreatment of the Indian nations In Congress too (mostly Republicans by the way - just a little historical note).

Every race has its predators. Some of my own Native American ancestors could have handled their relations with whites a whole lot better. The truth is some of the tribes were more like roving gangs of thugs than they were like civilized people. This behavior reflected badly on all the majority of the rest of us who were peaceful. Some of the "warriors" who made themselves famous - were, quite frankly the terrorists of the Old West.

My ancestors lived in tents. Others were abused by the British and hunted across the peat bogs of Ireland. Others stood firm on the bridge at Culloden. My grandparents proudly chopped cotton. Some slept most of their lives under the stars and lived in the saddle. We farmed, we hunted, we preached and we made brooms for a living. One of my kin (to our eternal shame) was an English country squire.

I have enough native American blood that if I had the same amount of black blood in me, I'd be considered an African American by the Social Security Administration. My Indian ancestors have this wonderful belief that if you have even a relatively small amount of tribal blood in your veins, you're one of the tribe. Only white racists believe that a drop of some "other" blood makes you tainted. That's why I dislike being sensitive to the use of Native American symbolism. It smacks of paternalism - the idea that the tribes are so weak and pathetic that we must protect them by making it wrong to use their names and symbols if they're not part of some officially sanctioned Indian organization, group or activity.

What's ironic is that the same group winding up about offending Indians is the same group that calls dumping a cross into a jar of urine "Art" and says we Christians have no right to be offended.

I wouldn't complain much if the team changed its name to something else just to make the whiners stop whining. Let's make it the Washington Rednecks. That tactic would role model how to deal with racial slurs. Instead of whining like little girls, embrace the name and make it your own. Be proud of it. Black people almost did that with the n-word up until whiny white liberals got into the act and made the word unspeakable.

Of course, if we did change the name to "Rednecks", then some ambulance chaser would file suit on behalf of offended "indigenous southern peoples" and there would go a perfectly good word and with it Jeff Foxworthy's career. The PC police are already calling Robin Williams a racist for his "Welcome to Iraq. Help me" joke that Billy Crystal showed at the Emmys.

How about let's take a vote among the tribes? Not the tribal politicians, the ones making their living off of lawsuits and white guilt, but the rank and file members of the Nations. Ask them if they want the image of the Native American forcibly removed from the sides of football helmets. Then shall we get to work on with the logos of the Atlanta Braves, The Kansas City Chiefs, The Cleveland Indians, The Florida State Seminoles and the Chicago Blackhawks? The Golden State Warriors have preemptively removed any Native American symbolism from their logo, so unless bridge-builders or superheroes who dress all in black get offended they should be okay.

83% of American Indian respondents to a Sports Illustrated poll said that professional teams should not stop using Indian nicknames, mascots or symbols. But what do they know? They aren't wealthy white liberals.

I feel the same way about the use of Scots-Irish symbols - The Fighting Irish, The Boston Celtics, The UP Edinboro Fighting Scots and my personal favorite the University of Northern Colorado Fighting Whites!  That last one would probably have to be changed because some moral cop would see it as promoting the idea that whites are racially superior, just like using an Indian team name promotes the idea that Indians are racially inferior.......................................uh, what?.

You see what I'm talking about. It's a descent into madness. I say, we all get us some "I am a Redskin - Hear me whoop!" T-shirts and make some noise. The more our tribes symbols get out there, the more likely we will not fade into historical obscurity.  Who in the world would remember the Illini tribe if it weren't for the Univ. of Illinois "Fighting Illini"?  I say plaster Indian symbols everywhere. Let's remember them and never allow thugs and bullies to ever do harm to any other group of people again.

Look, the other side of my ancestral gene pool managed to turn the classist slur "Redneck" into a badge of pride (and THAT was a word created by nose-in-the-air white liberals specifically to disparage poor Southern working white folk - the same morally self-important folks by the way, who are now having heart palpitations over white people using Indian symbols for sports teams).

To me, Indian-named sports teams are a tribute to a brave people who have been done wrong. The use of the name keeps their memory alive. We have always named sports teams after things we hoped would capture the bravery, physical prowess and skill of the people or animals symbolized and imbue that spirit into the team. The Steelers weren't trying to offend union iron-workers by their choice of names. They were trying to say they admired and wanted to emulate the toughness of the iron-worker.

I don't think the Redskins management was trying to insult Indians. I think they enjoyed the idea that every Thanksgiving, the Redskins would take a shot at defeating the Cowboys. How much fun is that?

I embrace the name "redskin" in the same way I embrace "redneck". Yeah, buddy, I am one and if you don't want me going all warpath (or redneck) on you, you'll treat me with some respect.

If I had a sports team I'd name them "The Nerds" and make them the trickiest, most deviously intelligent team in the league. I'd have a guy with black glasses with tape on the bridge as our symbol. It's a kind of defiance. I wish more people could see it that way. The English Language is one of the best languages in the world for taking words and making them mean what we want them to mean. The best way to neutralize a slur is by making it a source of pride.
The sports world is in an uproar over the name of the Washington Redskins. NFL announcers promise not to use the R-word this season. Some of the tribal leaders have filed suit hoping to collect big on the controversy.

So is "Redskins" a slur? Yep. It was. For some it still is. The jury, as we say, is still out. But if the PC police want to eliminate the name as a racial slur, there is a much better way. Do what Rednecks did. Embrace the slur!

Embracing a slur is the best way I know to silence bigots and racists.

"You stupid redneck!"

"Yeah, and....."

Call me a couch potato and I go out and get a couch potato t-shirt and wear it with pride. You can't use the word "Texan" as a slur (and plenty of people, mostly liberals, have tried). We Texans are proud of who we are. We even named our entire state after a tribe of friendly Native Americans that we admired. They called us Texicans for a while to try and insult us by inferring we were part "Mexican". It did not work. We like our Tex-Mex culture so we didn't mind. Hey, we ARE Texicans. Get over it.

We're also "a bunch of cowboys." The media pundits and diplomatic corps tried to make that word offensive by calling President Reagan a cowboy. Reagan just put on a white hat for the cameras and grinned.

I recognize that some slurs are beyond the pale, but let's save our energies for eliminating those. Personally, I'd like someone to get outraged by musicians calling women b's and h's. People who use those kinds of slurs should lose their record contracts and be shamed out of the public eye. Now that's a political correctness I could get behind.

- Tom

Be Careful Little Hands What You Sign

I got an e-mail from Change.org this morning asking me to sign an "important" petition to protect our children. "What could it be?" I asked myself. Is the government threatening to force my children to be indoctrinated in schools with socialist, atheist or communist propaganda?

No. It's even worse!

Are they threatening to burden my children with a national debt they will never be able to pay off in a dozen lifetimes?

No, not that. The petitioner didn't want you to think about that.

Here is the burning issue our nation faces - the threat to the well-being of children (and I quote):

• Target is contributing to gender stereotypes and gender segregation by having pink and blue pegboards to identify particular toys (and aisles) as "girl toys" and "boy toys". It has been proven that not only is this bad for our childrens' self-esteem and intellectual prowess, but also contributes to bullying and ostracism.

Okay, let me valve off a little steam slowly so that my head does not explode. The opening paragraph of this petition starts off with a totally unsupportable statement linking genderized colors not only with the destruction of children's self-esteem, but also apparently with brain damage and social violence.

Perhaps the petition should also call for the removal of blue and pink from the crayon box. Maybe we also need to remove such colors from the sky in order to protect the environment from segregating us all by gender every time we look up.

What a flying crock of hoo-doo!  When you look at unbiased studies of the role of toys in gender identification, you find a different story. The entire diatribe that goes along with this bogus petition accuses retailer Target of promoting sexism because it uses color cues to show boys and girls which have the toys that intensive marketing research shows that boys and girls want. These studies are very scientific as the bottom line of a huge corporate retailer is at stake here and Christmas is only 8 months away. Got to be ready for those kids looking for toys they like.

Target will cave, of course. They are, after all, Walmart for liberals, but just for fun let's look at a the result of a real study. Back when I was in grad school studying psychology I ran across a study on toys and gender. I can't find it anymore. It was likely suppressed as politically incorrect.

Anyway, in this study, the researchers decided to provide children with toys not specific to their gender. They wanted to see if it was the kinds of toys kids played with that influenced the gender stereo-types they embraced as they grew up. They gave boys Barbie dolls and Easy Bake ovens. They gave the girls building blocks, Army men, trucks and cars. What they discovered as a result of months of intensive research was that if you bend Barbie at the waist and grab her by the legs, she makes a usable six-gun and that the Easy-Bake Oven will partially melt down smuggled in Army men so you can make your own dead guys. And you can build play houses out of Legos and park your dump trucks in front of it so your Army Men can come to a tea party.

We are biologically imprinted from birth to take on certain roles for which our sex qualifies us - at least those of us who don't have some kind of genetic misfire. Removing sexual identity cues from our children's worlds and even removing normal sexual cues and replacing them with non-gender or opposite gender cues serves only to confuse children.

We need our blue shirts and pink skirts. It's how we learn who we are and what we are in this troubled and confusing world. Trying to force some sort of artificial gender neutrality on human beings doesn't work unless, of course, you adopt the "Nebuchadnezzar method" and that only works with men. And remember why old Neb used to do that particular out-patient surgery. It was to remove any ambition from his male harem guards, slaves and clerks.

Are we really going to add one more artificial, politically correct prohibition to our culture that confuses young children? I'm not signing this petition. I'd rather barbecue a steak in an Easy-Bake Oven.

© 2014 by Tom King