Posts Tagged ‘Equal Opportunity’
Welcome to Post 9/11 America: The United States of Police States. An Argument for Profiling.
Posted by: William Thien on: December 28, 2010
The dictionary on my desk defines a Police State as “A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls, especially by means of a secret police force.” But it is a small pocket dictionary and does not offer a very comprehensive perspective of what a police state might be in my estimation.
And admittedly I am more concerned in this discourse with the most blatant symptoms of what a modern police state might be in such a country as The United States. First, for those of us unfamiliar with the term “police state” and to remove any logical false conclusion from the discussion which might get under foot, let me explain that a police state is not a state where only police reside. And I am not discussing the local municipal police in your community, though they do participate in the activities I describe here from time to time in an ancillary way. We can all appreciate the services of the local police. It may seem simple to you and I, but it is necessary to make those statements omitting such a potential misunderstanding in order to proceed with this argument. Now that we have that out of the way, we can get to the obvious.
The most obvious and blatant symptom of the police state in which we now reside, “The United States of Police States” it could be called, is the groping of elderly American women and men at the airport by The Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security. It is first and foremost a position by our government that everyone is suspect. It is an absolute condition of the state to which there is little or no variance. It is a “rigid and repressive” form of control as described in my dictionary’s definition of a “Police State.” This to me is the most obvious indication that we are living in a police state, although a modern form of a police state, one not clearly defined by the little pocket dictionary within reach on my desk.
One might say, well in order to be as comprehensive as possible, everyone boarding a plane must be searched. Nonsense! She’s ninety years old. Get your hands off of her you imbecile! Someone else might say, we are doing that in order not to discriminate against any other social cross-section of society; we do not want to profile. Again, nonsense! And a complete waste of tax dollars and resources. We are fighting a war and clearly losing it by those standards then, even though the declared enemy has a small, minute fraction of our forces. No, something else is going on here. This isn’t about a war against terrorism. This is about the desire for a complete and total authoritarian repression of the American public. You know this because the law extends and is exercised even upon the most vulnerable and fragile, the most cherished and harmless of us, our elderly, as if even they are the enemy. If certain segments of society were not subject to such searches, it would mean then that complete and total authoritarian control was not in effect. Simple as that. Such things don’t always seem so obvious on the surface of things. And we can’t let our fear of getting on some list or catching the attention of “the authorities” prevent us from speaking up about such behaviors by our government. That’s how it all starts. That’s how it gets out of hand. That is why we are having this discussion today.
Americans travel. We have freedom of movement here in The United States. We are a society that travels. All of the terrorists during 9/11 were of a particular social persuasion. They were not elderly American men and women. In fact, they were the furthest removed! Instead, we are searching the victims as if they were the terrorists! Such nonsense must not be allowed to persist or it will sneak up on us as a country in the future in some other form.
Our government, or some portion of our government, or perhaps a foreign or a conglomerated concern deftly manipulating our government (the most frightening aspect of this discussion indeed and fuel for another essay on the matter, I’m sure), is simply using the war on terrorism to further its war on Americans. And the groping of elderly women at the airport, whether it be by a human, or a machine, is the most obvious indication. And if it is not a war on Americans, that is the net effect of what is happening, an inwardly directed form of repression. Americans are the ones having to endure the conditions.
Often the most obvious indications are not the most insidious, the most dangerous to us and to our freedoms, however shocking to our sentiments they may be.
From my perspective, the most dangerous aspect of allowing such warrant less searches of our elderly is the mere fact that someone is probably saying, well if they will let us get away with that, we can probably do just about anything we want to them. The groping of elderly women at the airport is then a symptom, an indication of something coming, a disease of a waning, sick, once free state, now a “Police State” where more pernicious activities are sure to follow as time advances and transgressions against the citizenry become progressively worse. This to me is the most dangerous aspect of the current situation.
Welcome to post 9/11 America: The United States of Police States.
So what are my conclusions? First, what has happened essentially is that our government has labeled everyone “a suspect.” They have done this not to catch terrorists or to prevent terrorism, it is perhaps to place themselves above us in order to maintain their perception of control. They are after all the experts on security. Right? Secondly, our government has labeled everyone “a suspect” to justify their existence. Without the so-called necessity to search everyone, even our most elderly, World War Veterans, you name it (our government does), there would be no need for such massive blanket, warrant less searches. In other words, if they only have to search a small fraction or a segment of our society, we don’t need them. And as a result, if we don’t need them, we also don’t need the massive expenditures involved.
Here is what we must do:
We must start profiling once again. Why, if profiling is racist? Because searching elderly women and men at the airport is worse, it is indecent, it is un-American, and it is just as if not more importantly, inefficient. We search them regardless of the race or denomination, by the way. So, as a matter of such profiling being racist, the point is invalid.
You might say, well how would you like it if they profiled you? They probably already do. The government at every level has never liked my rhetoric. If you think I wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, read my “About” page. You might add, aren’t you afraid someone will play the “race card” and accuse you of racism? No. I’m not afraid of “the race card.” And we cannot make security policy based on fear of one social group or another screaming racism if it opens up a defensive hole to us all as a country, as a society to which a terrorist can pass through. What is the greater danger? Everyone is already searched anyway. I’d be more than willing to endure a search at the airport to relieve others of it if the profile was “white males,” but it isn’t. That’s all. If it were males of another race I should hope they would have the intestinal fortitude to accept such profiling instead of dragging the rest of us into the organized chaos within which we reside today.
Secondly, the cost to the taxpayer of such blanketed searches is tremendous and counterproductive. What do you mean it is counterproductive?
If one fights a war, one does not concentrate all of its resources on non-combatives. That is the surest way to lose the war. But that is exactly what is happening. 99.9999999999 percent of people who pass through security at an airport, for example, are not terrorists and have no such inclinations. But all are searched. This is nonsense. The government knows these people are not planning on blowing up the plane. But the government concentrates massive expenditure and effort to search these people. No, there is something else going on. As paranoid as it sounds, Americans are being sized up for something to come. This is perhaps a test, a test to see if they can soon be at our door and we shall not be able to stop them. They will be in our bank accounts only to withdraw. They already collect all of our credit card transactions using systems such as LexisNexis and then run them through profiling software to see if our monetary activities indicate potential terrorist behaviors (As an aside some media outlets have this access as well, and I don’t know why. It should be illegal. That is definitely an abuse of the constitution). If they are profiling all of our monetary activities, then why not selectively profile at airports?
If we allow such behaviors by our government to persist, if we do not screen the most criminal and stop wasting our resources on the most benign, we will surely pay as a country, and not just in terms of the massive tax expenditures to perpetuate the “Police State.” We may not have a catastrophic terrorist event. But the greater catastrophe is that we will be left without the country we once had. Or, isn’t that what has already happened?
Welcome to post 9/11 America: The United States of Police States.
Copyright © William Thien 2010
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Men and women are not equal.
I believe there is a natural order amongst the sexes and I believe that if society strays too far from the path of that natural order the consequences for society can be negative, substantially negative.
I’m not talking about which sex is better, men or women, who is the faster runner or who can lift the most weight, I’m talking about a distribution of responsibilities within the family or at work for example to mature, rational adults who want to be productive members of society and not social burdens.
I believe much like a factory, when certain employees complete certain tasks while other employees complete other tasks, the tasks at hand can be completed far more efficiently and with much less cost and effort, leaving more time to produce more products, work on improvements to the way things are done, or simply take a break.
You might say, who views their family as a factory? What kind of analogy is that? OK. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps viewing the members of a family as employees in a factory is a bit withdrawn emotionally from the matter. Factories are not living things, you might say, and nothing like a home.
OK. OK. Calm down. Let’s try this. The other night I was watching some of those beautifully filmed nature shows that air on Sunday night. The narrator was talking about a variety of animals and their courtship rituals. Some were very elaborate, some rather blunt. In one scene, the narrator talked about a land development that had changed the path of a waterway slightly, causing the male of a species of amphibian to have to change route of travel. This in turn increased the deaths in the males of the amphibian as they were now run over crossing the street which resulted in fewer couples of the species, which resulted in fewer offspring and consequently caused a crash in the population of the animal in that area. In other areas, the animal was doing fine but under observation. Later the narrator discussed a completely different problem of the same nature causing the female of the species to change its habits thereby making it impossible to rear its young. Population crash. I believe these last two examples of nature offer much better analogies rather than the factory because they incorporate a viewpoint of the struggle of living mechanisms rather than the analogy of the family as a factory. Though it can be stated that in their sexual roles, men and women have completely different responsibilities and also illustrate completely different behaviors to achieve a common goal, evidence again that there is indeed a natural order. There is in fact more obvious evidence that there is a natural order in the sexual roles of men and women than there is of any biblical explanation of human sexual behavior.
But even more significantly to come out of these observations of nature is the belief that many naturalists hold. In fact, it is the foundational belief of environmentalism today. It is quite elegant in its simplicity and even more importantly, it holds true under scientific observation. Here it is essentially in its simplest form. “If you mess with the nature, there will be negative consequences.” We have all heard that statement in some context or another. The consequences of messing with nature can be observed in such things as polluted drinking water, polluted air, problems with food containing poisons drawn up from the soil, all of them the result of lack of understanding of and the manipulation of our environment.
And I believe an analogy can be made to things such as polluted drinking water and air to a natural order amongst the sexes and such things as crime committed by juveniles who don’t have both parents at home or an increase in taxes. In fact since the sexual revolution in the 1960’s when the roles of men and women in The USA were redefined both by law and the media crime has increased in some areas thousands of percentiles as more women raise their children on their own or have children out-of-wedlock. The tax burden to simply police these areas is enormous much less to provide the partial families with social services. I don’t need to enumerate all the costs. Anyone that is reading this knows the costs unless they have been living on another planet.
Some of you may be old enough to remember the female football players that entered into The NFL for a couple of years during the height of the sexual revolution. “Don’t stay in the house” the feminists chanted, go play football, work construction. That didn’t last long, of course. Why? Because they were not designed for it by “nature.” Not by men. The fact that women are not as good at football as men has nothing to do with any societal restriction by men on the activities of women. No. And don’t even try to suggest that (this was one of the techniques of the feminist movement, to suggest that women in The USA were repressed by men as a whole). The fact that women are not as good at football has nothing to do with men. Women are not as good at football as men due to their “nature” and physical build. Men have nothing to do with that. It has to do with a “natural order.” And to the contrary, men are no good at bearing children. In fact, I’ve not heard of one case of a man bearing a child. Why? There is that natural order thing again, and again it has nothing to do with men.
I remember watching a news show during the height of the feminist movement in the 1960’s. The newscaster was interviewing a doctor who (and I’m glad I don’t have this guy as a doctor) suggested that men and women are identical, except for a few very minor differences. He had a chart with diagrams of the male and female bodies and some charts about similarities. In the time of about one minute the newscaster, a woman, and the good doctor, concluded that aside from a few very minor differences in body composition, body fat content for example, that men and women were equal, exactly equal. “Well, there you have it,” the female newscaster concluded. “Men and women are exactly alike in every way.” This was the viewpoint taken by all media networks from that point on and the federal government as well in the course of dealing with cases of discrimination on the job. Men and women from about that point on were considered equal on the job, both physically and mentally. And in most cases they are. But in many, as in the female NFL player or the man giving birth, we see they are not. The good doctor was lying to the female newscaster. Or he was an imbecile. Or he was no doctor at all. Or maybe the media has a vested interest in erasing the differences between the sexes as I’ve demonstrated in my previous posting titled “Who is Really behind the Sexual Revolution? What it is…”
Some of you may be laughing at my choice of examples, but I’ve chosen them for a reason. They are the most extreme examples, women playing football and men bearing children, and indicate what society seems to be trying to do today with “equality,” and that is to disregard nature, a natural order. And that is OK. Because we are men. We are not animals. We can rationalize our way through life. But the word “rational” means acting with “reason.”
And when I look at my wallet, I see it’s not working, we are not acting with reason as a society because I keep paying for so many things, women having children out-of-wedlock for example, in the form of taxes to which I do not benefit. Because my taxes are going up and up. And much if not most of it has to do with addressing “irrational” or violent human nature, the result of tinkering with a “natural order,” to which of course I believe I have clearly demonstrated there is a natural order. And if someone is not happy with their nature, I don’t think I should have to pay for it.
It’s one thing to work for equality. It’s an entirely different thing to disregard the truth entirely, that men and women are completely different and society works best when both bring their differences together to achieve a common goal.
Men and women are not equal. And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s the best thing about it. Once we realize that again as a society, things will get better…and much less expensive, for everyone, men and women both.
Copyright © William Thien 2010
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Since the 1960’s something has been happening continuously to the relationship between men and women in America called The Sexual Revolution. It involves frequent, fluid changes, often legal changes to the way men and women address and deal with each other at home, in the work place, in public. The sexual revolution is an offshoot, a facet perhaps of the feminist movement.
But is the Sexual Revolution good or bad for women, for America? And is it really a revolution at all?
Well, for the most part, though I will answer that question to some extent later, that is not why I am talking to you today. I merely want to examine the Sexual Revolution for what it is, not for what we are told it is by say, the corporate media, for example.
Many people think it is the women of America that are the principal players in the feminist movement. It stands to reason, does it not? Feminist movement and women. Feminine, female, feminist movement. It is so darned obvious. Why…it has to be the women behind the feminist movement and The Sexual Revolution, who else could it be?
I am here to tell you that I think it is something different. Yes, women want to improve their lives. And who can blame them?
But the so-called feminist movement is not what it once was, not what it is. No, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the feminist movement has been hijacked as part of a larger corporate business plan meant to sell more products and undermine the American workforce and women, and men for that matter who do not recognize it for what it is, are just the unwitting dupes. Your own champions of the feminist movement of earlier years, the Gloria Steinem’s and the like don’t even know what is happening or may even be key players in what I describe here.
Before the sexual revolution, before Gloria Steinem and the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies, the American labor force consisted of mainly men, except during times of war when women happily manned the production lines to perpetuate the war effort. Before The Sexual Revolution there was less competition for every job. But with The Sexual Revolution and the migration of the woman out of the house and into the work force there were suddenly twice the number of applicants for every job. Corporate America could do nothing but accept the Sexual Revolution with open arms, to fall in love with The Sexual Revolution, in fact it may have even been part of a larger plan. Why? Now corporate America could offer lower wages.
Hold it. What do you mean they could offer lower wages?
What I am saying is that now there were double the applicants for every job with not just men looking for that job but both men and now women, too. More competition for jobs and the wage rate goes down. People get paid less. It is a fact of economics. Now corporate America doesn’t have to pay its workers as much.
A parallel can be seen in the fact that employers like to hire illegal aliens. With more people competing for the same jobs those people will accept less pay and perhaps no benefits to obtain those jobs. That is also a fact.
The presence of illegal aliens in America, because they will work for less, also drives down the cost of labor. Employers, the more unscrupulous ones in particular, like hiring illegal aliens for that very fact, even if they know it undermines the work force and their buying power and will eventually put America out of business. Because America’s own workers won’t have jobs and won’t be able to afford to make purchases of products manufactured by the illegal aliens. It’s a short-term business plan, that one is.
But let’s examine who else benefits from having more employees, or the newly arrived women, in the work force. Automakers. Now that all of those women want to go to work, they are going to need cars. Again, there is corporate America. Before the Sexual Revolution most families had only one car. Now they have two, sometimes three. So the Sexual Revolution is good for automakers. And really, that’s good. It’s good that automakers sell more cars, good for business anyway. And what is good for business is good for everyone for the most part. More workers needing cars means more cars need to be made which probably means more workers will be needed. It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. Though, read on.
And if there are more cars on the road, well those cars are going to need what? That’s right, gasoline. And who makes gasoline? Oil companies. And oil companies epitomize corporate America.
The list of those corporations that benefit from The Sexual Revolution is myriad. I merely offer two of the most obvious and omit the others for the sake of expediency here.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with corporate America. And there is nothing wrong with the Sexual Revolution and the feminist movement. I for one think many of the resultant changes to the lifestyles of women make them more attractive and easier to have a conversation with. Before the Sexual Revolution many women would not have entered into a conversation about a variety of subjects and would have simply demurred on the matter so as to adhere to what at the time was considered socially attractive, acceptable behavior. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with their perspective on the matter nowadays, just that I have another perspective to consider.
You might ask again, then, why ask the question “Who is behind the Sexual Revolution?” And what do you mean by the statement in the title of this post “What it is…”? It was something people used to say to each other during the beginning of the sixties and throughout the seventies. It was a sort of greeting. But in this case, I say it as a question, because as you will see, what it is is usually what it does. And I believe The Sexual Revolution does something entirely different than what it says it does.
My answer is that even though many beneficial things have come to society from the advent of The Sexual Revolution, we must examine it for what it really is, who is really behind it and who benefits from it so that everyone benefits from it to some extent and not just particular segments of our society, so as not to move into something that we cannot back out of.
I believe we must ask the question who is behind The Sexual Revolution because I believe that it has created many demands on society that may not be in society’s best interest in the long run and may outweigh the actual benefits of The Sexual Revolution in the first place, substantially outweigh them. It has created demands on natural resources and changes to our tax situation that have resulted in many burdening new social programs meant to accommodate the “independent woman,” a woman who arrived as a result of the sexual revolution and who perhaps wants to have a child out-of-wedlock but can’t afford to pay for it herself and needs to fall back on public assistance, helping to raise the average federal tax rate of a family of four in 1952 from 2 percent in federal taxes to currently and frequently closer to twenty or thirty or more percent, a substantial, economy stifling burden.
Yet, even with the benefits brought forth by The Sexual Revolution and all of the wonderful changes to society, the negatives may in fact tremendously outweigh the benefits both in terms of dollars and also in terms of resources, in terms of pollution (more cars on the roads means more pollution. And cars are the major contributing factor to pollution in America), and that list goes on and on as well. Again, for the sake of expediency I won’t enumerate them.
But finally and most importantly to the women of The Sexual Revolution, I would not even ask the question. “who is behind The Sexual Revolution” had I not seen polls recently asking women if they would return to a more domestic lifestyle as perhaps housewives, again? Most answered they would not because their female peers would lose faith in them in that they accepted a so-called lesser role than they had taken before, as if there was something wrong with being a housewife.
And it’s that attitude, that of her peers who will think less of her if she returns to a lifestyle in the home, it is that attitude that tells me that even though The Sexual Revolution has brought us many great things, it has in fact not given today’s woman more freedom but less, it has shackled her mind. Because what once was a social movement designed to give a woman more power to choose what she does with her own life has in fact taken away one of her most significant choices, to take care of her own family, to do what she may very well need to do for herself and her own family by acting in their best interest.
The Sexual Revolution has in fact brought fewer choices to today’s woman, not more. And you have to ask yourself…why?
And you have to ask, “has The Sexual Revolution really been a revolution at all?”
Because what it is…is usually what it does, and The Sexual Revolution is definitely not “What it is.”
Copyright © William Thien 2010
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William Thien 
What Is It Going to Be, Equality or Diversity? You Can’t Have it Both Ways!
Posted by: William Thien on: April 29, 2015
I was around during the sixties and seventies when the great social rights movements in the country were aimed at instituting “equality.” It almost made sense. Everything was done to ensure equality and that movement carried on until recently.
Lately, everything has been about something else entirely. Realizing that the public doesn’t buy the “equality” argument anymore, that “equality” is frequently being used by one portion of society offensively against another rather than as a measure of equalization, and with the public finally concluding that nobody is really truly “equal,” they’ve changed their tune hoping to carry on with the so-called reforms.
Now, the catchall isn’t “equality” anymore, it is “diversity.” Instead of insuring equality, we are supposed to “Celebrate Diversity.”
Well, what is it? Is it “Equality” or is it “Diversity? Are we all the same or are we all different?
What’s it going to be? Because you can’t…
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