The Danger of a Paramilitary Police Force

Soldiers and Police are supposed to be different.

Soldiers are aimed at enemies from outside the country. They are trained to kill those enemies and their supporters. In fact, “killing people and breaking things” are their main reasons for existence.

Police look inward. They’re supposed to protect their fellow citizens from criminals, and to maintain order with a minimum of force.

It’s the difference between Audie Murphy and Andy Griffith. But nowadays, police are looking, and acting, more like soldiers than cops, with bad consequences. And those who suffer the consequences are usually innocent civilians. The trend toward militarizing police began in the ’60s and ’70s when standoffs with the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the University of Texas bell tower gunman Charles Whitman convinced many police departments that they needed more than .38 specials to deal with unusual, high-intensity threats. In 1965 Los Angeles inspector Daryl Gates, who later became police chief, signed off on the formation of a specially trained and equipped unit that he wanted to call the Special Weapons Attack Team. (The name was changed to the more palatable Special Weapons and Tactics). SWAT programs soon expanded beyond big cities with gang problems.

This approach, though, has led to problems both obvious and subtle. The obvious problem should be especially apparent to readers of this magazine: Once you’ve got a cool tool, you kind of want to use it. That’s true whether it’s a pneumatic drill, a laser level or an armored fighting vehicle. SWAT teams, designed to deal with rare events, wound up doing routine police work, like serving drug warrants.

The subtle effect is also real: Dress like a soldier and you think you’re at war. And, in wartime, civil liberties—or possible innocence—of the people on “the other side” don’t come up much. But the police aren’t at war with the citizens they serve, or at least they’re not supposed to be.

The combination of these two factors has led to some tragic mistakes: “no knock” drug raids, involving “dynamic entry,” where the wrong house has been targeted or where the raid was based on informants’ tips that turned out to be just plain wrong.

On Sept. 23, 2006, a SWAT team descended on the home of a farmer and his schoolteacher wife in Bedford County, Va. “I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted and led into the house,” A.J. Nuckols wrote to his local paper. “I was scared beyond description. I feared there had been a murder and I was a suspect.” When the couple’s three children came home, the police grilled them, too. The family was held under guard for five hours as the SWAT team ransacked the place, seizing computers, a digital camera, DVDs and VHS tapes. Ten days later, the cops returned the belongings. It turned out that a special anti-child-porn police unit had made a mistake while tracing an computer address and sent the SWAT team to the wrong home.

Sometimes, homeowners are killed in these actions; other times, it’s the officers. When a narcotics task force raided a duplex apartment in Jefferson Davis County, Miss., in 2001, they arrested one tenant, then burst into the adjacent apartment of Cory Maye. Thinking a burglar had broken into the bedroom he shared with his toddler, Maye shot the officer fatally. Maye was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, although irregularities in the trial eventually led to his conviction being overturned and a new trial ordered.

And, in a case that is now drawing national attention, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, who lived in a high-crime neighborhood of Atlanta, recently opened fire on police when they broke down her door while executing a drug warrant. They returned fire, killing her. It’s hard to believe any of this would have happened had the police taken a less aggressive approach in the first place.

It used to be that police came to the door, announced themselves and, once a homeowner responded, entered the premises. Most policemen still work this way. But an alarming number now break down doors first and ask questions later. Don’t get me wrong: Police often do dangerous work and they need equipment that’s going to protect them. And dynamic entry is valid when dealing with desperate criminals, but these tactics put ordinary citizens—and the police—at risk. And when they do, it’s often hard to get redress. Lawsuits against police and supervisors face strict legal limits in the form of “qualified immunity,” and prosecutors, who work with the police on a regular basis, are unlikely to bring criminal charges against officers who negligently kill people. But homeowners confronted with tactics like flash-bang grenades and shouting that are intended to disorient targets, tend to be held to a much higher standard. The result, as in the Cory Maye case, is that people who do the laudable thing and defend their homes against unknown, armed intruders sometimes wind up being prosecuted for murder.

Check out the article at Popular Mechanics.

Here are a couple more recent police shooting articles: NYC Police Investigating Shooting Death by Police of Groom on His Wedding Day and Police Kill North Carolina College Student Accused of Stealing PlayStation 3 Consoles

I guess I can recognize the need for SWAT teams in a major gang takedown or terrorist situation, but I must agree that it seems law enforcement groups want to use the "big guns" whenever the opportunity arises... even if it's a little old lady in her house with a freaking wheelchair ramp outside the front door.

I think the SWAT teams should give more warning and be more recognizable as law enforcement officers. Many a robber will impersonate a police officer in order to have his way with a victim.

I have no reason for the police to raid my home, so I'm automatically assuming that anyone kicking down my door is intent on harming me or my family members... I'm taking him down. So, what if he turns out to be a cop acting on a false tip? I'm justified in protecting my home, but he's justified in defending himself from me... my death would be a justifiable police shooting, but his death would be a murder and I would go down for it.

Police have to know that this is not a Police State! This is a free country, with law abiding citizens who will defend their homes with deadly force. Police must effectively announce their presence and distinguish themselves from the average thug with a uniform. This isn't rocket science, it's just common sense. I refuse to give up my rights to accommodate an oppressive police force!

It's Better to Die on Your Feet than to Live on Your Knees!

Check out my previous post regarding Non-Lethal Weapons.

LSU Tigers Reach #5 in the BCS!

LSU’s football regular season may be over, but the Tigers are still playing like a hit song: rising up the charts and getting a ton of airplay.

In the wake of its 31-26 victory Friday at Arkansas and several key upsets this weekend, 10-2 LSU rocketed up five spots to No. 5 in the penultimate BCS standings and replaced the Razorbacks at No. 5 in the major polls.

It is LSU’s highest ranking of the season. The Tigers started No. 8 in the preseason Associated Press poll and got as high as No. 6 before losing to Auburn on Sept. 16. LSU moved steadily from 18th to 10th in the six previous BCS rankings, the first of which was released on Oct. 15.

LSU rose from No. 8 in the Harris Poll and the USA Today coaches’ poll, both of which comprise one-third of the BCS formula.

In the other third — the combined computer rankings — LSU is also at No. 5. The Tigers are ranked No. 5 by four of the six BCS computers (Sagarin, Anderson & Hester, Massey and Wolfe), are No. 6 according to the Colley Matrix and No. 8 according to Billingsley. Each team’s highest and lowest computer ranking is discarded.

LSU got some highlight time on TV Sunday as Fox revealed the BCS top five, led by No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 USC. The Trojans switched places with previous No. 2 Michigan after USC beat Notre Dame 44-24 Saturday.

Florida is at No. 4. The Gators (11-1) will play Saturday in Atlanta in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game against 10-2 Arkansas, which fell from No. 6 to No. 9 in the latest BCS standings.

After that game, part of college football’s final regular season weekend, the bowl parings will be announced. The BCS selection show is set for 7 p.m. Sunday on Fox.

While the Tigers aren’t going to Atlanta — for the SEC title game or the Chick-fil-A Bowl — LSU does head into the bowl season with its highest ranking since being No. 2 in the BCS and the polls at the end of the 2003 regular season.

That ranking guaranteed LSU a spot in the Sugar Bowl — that year’s BCS national championship game. Unfortunately for the Tigers’ BCS hopes, their current lofty rankings don’t assure LSU of anything.

Because it can’t win the SEC, LSU is trying to snag one of the at-large BCS bowl berths.

LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman expressed interest after Friday’s game of going to the Rose Bowl because of the rare opportunity to play in the game. LSU has never been invited to the Rose, which typically pits the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

I don't care what anyone else says, that's one helluva great season, Tigers... We have a great team with a great record who deserve to play in a great BCS bowl game!

UPDATE 12-4-06: BCS pairings have been announced:

National Championship Game (Jan. 8th):
#1 Ohio State vs. #2 Florida (GO GATORS!)

Allstate Sugar Bowl (Jan. 3rd):
#4 LSU vs. #11 Notre Dame (Geaux Tigers!)

Rose Bowl (Jan. 1st): #3 Michigan vs. #5 USC (GO Wolverines!)

GEAUX TIGERS!!!

UPDATE 1-9-07: The Top 5 rounded out at:
#1 - Florida Gators (SEC)
#2 - Ohio State Buckeyes (Big Ten)
#3 - LSU Tigers (SEC)
#4 - USC Trojans (Pac-10)
#5 - Boise State Broncos (WAC)

Check out the AP Poll article at Fox Sports.

Check out my 2007 Sugar Bowl post: SWEET Domination!.

Check out my 2007 National Championship post: Welcome to SEC Football, Buckeyes!.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day in America is a time to offer thanks, of family gatherings and holiday meals. A time of turkeys, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. A time for Indian corn, holiday parades and giant balloons.

So here for your entertainment are some fun Holiday things for you and your family. We've got stories of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, turkeys to take home, holiday pictures for the kids to print and color, tasty holiday recipes and e-greeting cards to send your friends and family. We hope you find something you like!

Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November, which this year (2006) is November 23rd.

Check out the Thanksgiving page at Holidays.net.

Between all of the good food, good times with family, football games and afternoon naps... be sure to take a moment to give thanks!

JFK Assassination still topic of hot debate!

Though the tall professor hulks over the lectern as if he were attempting to shove down a new foundation for the building, he speaks of the mundane: “The final exam is coming up before you know it.”

Then, Michael L. Kurtz begins to talk about Lee Harvey Oswald’s mysterious trip to Mexico City. He tells of a city that in the early 1960s was a center of espionage for the hemisphere.

In the classroom, heads that had appeared to have had insufficient caffeine for a morning class begin to rise. A coed who has been writing checks stops to listen.

Kurtz talks of Oswald’s visits to the Soviet Embassy. He talks of “an Oswald imposter.” He speaks, too, of Oswald’s “ties with intelligence operations.”

As Kurtz spins a tale of Oswald’s “double life,” a hand jumps up, then another.

Soon Kurtz’s lecture gets derailed. Students are asking questions — intelligent questions. The earlier semblance of a normal undergraduate class gets spirited away by the kind of earnest discussion expected in a graduate seminar.

That may be fitting, since Kurtz, who just published “The JFK Assassination Debates,” is also dean of Southeastern Louisiana University’s Graduate School.

Kurtz has been teaching the John F. Kennedy assassination course for more than 30 years and has never lacked for students, said Christina Chapple, an SLU spokeswoman.

Some things about the students have changed, Kurtz concedes. Unlike his first students, today’s students would only laugh if asked where they were when they heard JFK had been shot. They hadn’t been born when a still-debated number of shots were fired on Nov. 22, 1963.

Kurtz said he now has to spend time explaining to his students the naiveté with which most people viewed their government at the time of Kennedy’s assassination.

What hasn’t changed, Kurtz said in an interview, is students’ fascination with the multitude of mysteries surrounding that day in Dallas and subsequent days of “cover-up” and “abuse of power” by those wanting to conceal the truth.

Kurtz rips into failures and “deliberate distortion” by the Warren Commission in its subsequent investigation of the assassination.

He talks of the seeds of change that the Kennedy assassination and its investigation sowed in the minds of Americans, who, at the time, generally had an unwavering trust in their government. In coming years, those seeds would be watered and fertilized by the Vietnam War, Watergate and other events, the historian says.

As he navigates the numerous conspiracy theories and the idea of a single gunman acting on his own, Kurtz sometimes articulates his personal beliefs, but usually points them out as such.

Most of his students come away with a theory about the JFK assassination, but those theories usually are more tempered and realistic than the ones they brought with them to class, Kurtz said.

But, as he warns his students in the first session of the course, when they put down their pencils at the end of the semester they still won’t know with certainty what happened in Dealey Plaza 43 years ago today.

Read the article at The Advocate.

I will definitely be checking out Professor Kurtz's new book, The JFK Assassination Debates.

I read a very interesting book a few years ago on the subject, titled Passport to Assassination. I highly recommend it.

For more information about JFK assassination theories, check out the article at Wikipedia.

Hubble Space Telescope to get upgrade!

The terrific thing about NASA chief Michael Griffin’s decision to launch a Hubble servicing mission—the telescope’s fifth since 1990—isn’t simply that the spacecraft will be able to limp along for another four years. After astronauts visit Hubble on this latest mission (set to launch no earlier than May 2008), the telescope will be more powerful than it has ever been, thanks to some incredible new instruments being tested now.

The first is a replacement for Hubble’s main camera, the 13-year-old Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The new camera, cleverly named the Wide Field Camera 3, will do everything the old camera did, but better. It’s like keeping all the lenses from your old film camera but upgrading to a professional-model digital SLR body.

I was lucky enough to be at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center yesterday right after the announcement was made, and I spoke with James Green, principal investigator for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph project, the other major upgrade scheduled for the servicing mission. The COS had just been loaded for testing into a sort of three-story-tall, 50-foot-wide Thermos that’s designed to replicate the vacuum and temperature extremes of space. It will pummel the COS for the next two months.

Above the din of the vacuum pumps, Green explained that the COS will be the first instrument that will allow scientists to track the 95 percent of normal matter in the universe that doesn’t glow—the interstellar gas clouds wafting between stars and galaxies. It will look at distant quasars and trace how these clouds absorb the quasars’ light. In this way, scientists can tell what elements and molecules the clouds are made of, and hence can map the hidden structure of the universe.

If all goes well, the servicing mission should keep the new, improved Hubble working until 2013, when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is set to launch.

Check out the article at Popular Science.

Click Here to view the Hubble Slideshow!

I am so happy that they've decided to fix the Hubble Space Telescope! It has given us so many beautiful images, and taught us too much to just ditch it. Bravo NASA!!!

Check out my previous space posts: Space 15, Space 14, Space 13, Space 12, Space 11, Space 10, Space 9, Space 8, Space 7, Space 6, Space 5, Space 4, Space 3, Space 2 and Space 1

Honor Our Veterans!

Through the generations, America's men and women in uniform have defeated tyrants, liberated continents, and set a standard of courage and idealism for the entire world. On Veterans Day, our Nation pays tribute to those who have proudly served in our Armed Forces.

To protect the Nation they love, our veterans stepped forward when America needed them most. In conflicts around the world, their sacrifice and resolve helped destroy the enemies of freedom and saved millions from oppression. In answering history's call with honor, decency, and resolve, our veterans have shown the power of liberty and earned the respect and admiration of a grateful Nation.

All of America's veterans have placed our Nation's security before their own lives, creating a debt that we can never fully repay. Our veterans represent the best of America, and they deserve the best America can give them.

As we recall the service of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen, we are reminded that the defense of freedom comes with great loss and sacrifice. This Veterans Day, we give thanks to those who have served freedom's cause; we salute the members of our Armed Forces who are confronting our adversaries abroad; and we honor the men and women who left America's shores but did not live to be thanked as veterans. They will always be remembered by our country.

With respect for and in recognition of the contributions our service men and women have made to the cause of peace and freedom around the world, the Congress has provided (5 U.S.C. 6103(a)) that November 11 of each year shall be set aside as a legal public holiday to honor veterans.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim November 11, 2006, as Veterans Day and urge all Americans to observe November 5 through November 11, 2006, as National Veterans Awareness Week. I encourage all Americans to recognize the valor and sacrifice of our veterans through ceremonies and prayers. I call upon Federal, State, and local officials to display the flag of the United States and to support and participate in patriotic activities in their communities. I invite civic and fraternal organizations, places of worship, schools, businesses, unions, and the media to support this national observance with commemorative expressions and programs.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

-PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

Read the press release at The White House website.

Do not forget to honor our veterans on this most important holiday. If not for these brave souls, we might not have the freedom to celebrate it!

Check out the Veterans Day page at Military.com for some great info, and children's Veterans Day activities.

Monster Storm Spotted on Saturn

Cassini stares deep into the swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows. Such a storm, with a well-developed eye ringed by towering clouds, is a phenomenon never before seen on another planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds.

The "hurricane" spans a dark area inside a thick, brighter ring of clouds. It is approximately 5,000 miles across, or two thirds the diameter of Earth.

"It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there."

A movie taken by Cassini's camera over a three-hour period reveals winds around Saturn's South Pole blowing clockwise at 350 miles per hour. The camera also saw the shadow cast by a ring of towering clouds surrounding the pole, and two spiral arms of clouds extending from the central ring. These ring clouds, 20 to 45 miles above those in the center of the storm, are two to five times taller than the clouds of thunderstorms and hurricanes on Earth.

Eye-wall clouds are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean's surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Though it is uncertain whether such moist convection is driving Saturn's storm, the dark "eye" at the pole, the eye-wall clouds and the spiral arms together indicate a hurricane-like system.

Distinctive eye-wall clouds have not been seen on any planet other than Earth. Even Jupiter's Great Red Spot, much larger than Saturn's polar storm, has no eye or eye-wall, and is relatively calm at the center.

This giant Saturnian storm is apparently different than hurricanes on Earth because it is locked to the pole and does not drift around like terrestrial hurricanes. Also, since Saturn is a gaseous planet, the storm forms without an ocean at its base.

Check out the article at Spaceflight Now.

Awesome imagery! It's amazing how much information we're learning in such a short period of time. Just imagine how much we'll know about our solar system in ten years!

We can only hope that we never see a storm of this magnitude here on Earth!

Check out my previous space posts: Space 14, Space 13, Space 12, Space 11, Space 10, Space 9, Space 8, Space 7, Space 6, Space 5, Space 4, Space 3, Space 2 and Space 1

Voyaging to Interstellar Space

Voyager 1 logged yet another milestone in space history August 17 when it crossed an invisible boundary that marks 100 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun -- about 15 billion kilometers (9.3 billion miles) out there -- farther away than any human-made object has ever gone in space. It's headed now for interstellar space. Voyager 2, at 80 AU, is about six years behind.

Nearly 30 years after the twin Voyager spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral, the mission has become a legend in its own time, rewriting the planetary science books, and introducing us to our own diverse neighborhood. The twins, meanwhile, have become the poster children of space exploration, still communicating after all these years and sending data home regularly via the Deep Space Network.

“One of our objectives was to explore interstellar space, and following the successful Saturn flyby in 1981, the mission was renamed the Voyager Uranus Interstellar Mission," said Voyager Chief Scientist Ed Stone, professor of physics and director of the Space Radiation Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where the mission was designed and is being managed. "This was a boldly optimistic goal because we knew neither how long it would take to reach interstellar space nor how long the spacecraft would continue operating beyond their original 4-year mission to Saturn which is only 10 AU from the Sun. It is indeed remarkable that the Voyager spacecraft have already operated 7 times longer and 10 times further from the Sun than originally planned," he said.

"With some luck, the two will reach interstellar space while they still have electrical power," continued Stone, who has been the project scientist on the mission since 1972, overseeing the efforts of 11 teams of scientists in their studies of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. "Whether they reach interstellar space or not under power, they will be -- and [Isaac] Newton tells us this -- humankind's first interstellar probes, the first objects launched from Earth to reach interstellar space. Crossing into interstellar space will be a major milestone in our journey from Earth into the Milky Way."

Check out the article at The Planetary Society.

Together, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 -- twin probes launched on September 5, 1977 and August 20, 1977 -- represent the most successful planetary exploration mission of all time. In their flybys of all the outer planets, and dozens of other planetary bodies, the Voyagers set the benchmark in planetary exploration on an undertaking that has come to be deemed as one of NASA’s greatest triumphs.

The two 1-ton spacecraft returned more knowledge-changing data than any mission before or since: stunning photographs that consistently revealed our solar system to be much more diverse, complex, and beautiful than anyone ever imagined, and a veritable bounty of scientific information to go along with them.

Even now, both Voyager spacecraft are still communicating with Earth. Many of their instruments are still functioning, as the two spacecraft head in different directions out of the solar system on their "Interstellar Mission." Voyager 1 has now passed the termination shock, where the solar wind abruptly slows down as it pushes against the interstellar medium.

Check out my previous space posts: Space 13, Space 12, Space 11, Space 10, Space 9, Space 8, Space 7, Space 6, Space 5, Space 4, Space 3, Space 2 and Space 1

Idiots Stuck in Iraq?

I don't know about idiots in the military,
but we sure have a few stuck in the Senate...

"John Kerry, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the 'blame America first' crowd, they want to blame Iraq on the president, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and everyone else," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, referring to his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate. "Why don't we blame it on the terrorists, the people who killed 3,000 people here in New York? Let's not blame it on everybody else.

"Let's blame the terrorists for the problems that we have. ... They want to blame America for the terrorists coming here and attacking our country. We have no choice but to take on these terrorists to defeat them," Boehner said.

"I spent three weeks in the Florida recount by Hillary Clinton's good friend Al Gore who wanted to be president. How? By suppressing the vote of the overseas military serving this country," said Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind. "So the Democrat elite have a record here of not supporting our military, and they sure did not like that exposed five days before an election."

Vice President Dick Cheney also was not about to let Kerry's remark and subsequent Web-only apology for a "bad joke" go quietly into the night.

"You remember John Kerry — the senator who voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it, the guy that was always lecturing us about 'nuance.' He's the one, you'll recall, who last year said that American soldiers were terrorizing children in Iraq," Cheney said at a campaign event in Montana Wednesday night.

"Of course, Senator Kerry said he was just making a joke, and he botched it up. I guess we didn't get the nuance. Actually, he was for the joke before he was against it," Cheney said.

Check out the article at Fox News.

The Democrats are all about degrading our country's leadership, military and citizens. I'm tired of the constant trash talking from them! Why can't this country be unified? It's sad to say, but it was nice to see the unity immediately following 9-11... it's a shame how fast it faded. Never Forget 9-11

John Kerry doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground! I thank God every day that this moron wasn't elected in '04! What kind of joke was that to tell about our military?

Well, our troops aren't laughing, our Republican Congressmen and Senators aren't laughing, I'm not laughing, and you shouldn't be laughing either!

Then, to illustrate just how much this guy flip-flops... after he refused to apologize to anyone for his comments, he finally released an apology to our troops and their families. Well, I should hope so - he basically said that they're uneducated idiots who joined the military as a last resort. That's one helluva joke to tell, John!

This should show you, if you didn't know already, just what sort of ideals these Democrats hold: Blame America First

I commend the statement released by the White House:

Senator Kerry's apology to the troops for his insulting comment came late but was the right thing to do. Our military is the best and the brightest — the most courageous and professional of any military in the world. President Bush is honored to be their commander-in-chief.

White Pride

UPDATE: Due to harsh commentary and varied opinions that I have received via blog comments and e-mail (hysterical anti-white racists), I feel it necessary to explain my position in further detail. My original post follows below, starting with the quotation.

I am not a white supremacist - indeed the phrase "White pride" has been marred by those people, but I use it in a different context.

I have been proud of my heritage and ancestry since I was a young child, for me White pride is not a reactionary impulse. Are you not proud of your heritage? I believe almost every human being on earth is proud of who they are, and for good reason!

I would like to point out that White pride is different for every person, just as Black pride, Asian pride or Gay pride is different for each of them. I personally am proud of my Scotch/English/German heritage. I personally am proud of the way our ancestors beat back the Roman oppressors. We do, in fact, have a shared history that goes back a long way, all the way to another continent.

Every person who is proud of anything is proud for their own reasons. All blacks did not come from the same place, they came from different tribes, different parts of the world. The ONE thing that they do have in common is that they are all black. I respect that, it gives them a sense of unity, of belonging... just as White pride does for me.

It's not about putting anyone else down, it's about not buying into the hype that whites are bad because they oppressed minorities in the past... well shame on those bad examples of white history for their oppression, there were plenty of whites against slavery, you know. Shame on the oppressive black African tribes who murdered, raped, brutalized, captured, enslaved and sold rival African tribe members to whites in the first place. Shame on the terrorists for making Muslims look bad. There are bad examples in every race, but entire races should not be denied their right to pride because of a bad few.

I do not oppress anyone - I respect everyone and am proud for them when they speak of Black pride, Asian pride, Gay pride or whatever - as I would hope they'd be proud for me. We all have reasons to be proud, role models to look up to in our own race - this is a good thing. I personally have black friends who have viewed my blog and who agree with me. They are proud to be black, I am proud to be white... we are proud to be Americans - the great melting pot.

I encourage EVERYONE IN THE WORLD to be proud of who they are and where they come from. If not for that pride that we all hold at some level, what kind of world would this be?

Original post:

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, etc. and then there are just Americans.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You call me "White boy," "Cracker," "Honkey," "Whitey," "Gringo," "Caveman" and that's OK
But when I call you Nigger, Spic, Towelhead, Sand-Nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Kike, Gook, or Chink you call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month
If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.

You have the NAACP
If we had any organization for only whites to "advance" our lives, we'd be racists.

You have the United Negro College Fund
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US, yet
if there were "White only colleges" that would be a racist college.

You have BET
If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) we'd be racists.

You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You have Yom Hashoah

You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi

If we had a White Pride Day you would call us racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce - and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that?

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights
If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it
When we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us - When a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist. see example

I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists?

Anti-white racists become hysterical whenever the subject of white pride comes up; they consider white pride illegitimate.

The French have a saying; "all nations believe they are the best, and all nations are right."

In other words, Blacks think they are the best and they are right; Jews think they are the best and they are right; Arabs think they are the best and they are right; Whites think they are the best and risk persecution for it.

The dictionary defines "racism" as discrimination based on race. Everyone can be proud of their heritage except whites. This is discrimination based on race. So the issue is not why whites think they are the best, the issue is: Why are you so racist that you discriminate against whites by denying them equal rights?

Check out this article about racism.