Forget the Old South: Trayvon Martin Was No Emmett Till

Michael Barone

8/2/2013 12:01:00 AM - Michael Barone

Why are so many people so desperate to hold onto the idea that America is as racist as it has ever been?

The phenomenon is apparent in much of the commentary on the George Zimmerman case. Facts were blithely ignored -- the fact that Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white, by current standards; the evidence that he and not his victim, Trayvon Martin, was pummeled and wounded; the failure to find any hint of anti-black bias in Zimmerman's past.

Instead there was a desperate longing to see this unhappy incident as a case of a white racist hunting down and murdering an innocent black -- with a view to establishing that this kind of thing happens all the time.

It isn't. Yes, young black men are homicide victims in large and tragic numbers. But the perpetrators are almost always other young black men, as in President Obama's hometown of Chicago, where almost every weekend there are multiple such murders.

Nevertheless, journalism is full of opinion articles, many written by people who should know better, likening the death of Trayvon Martin to the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.

Till was a 14-year-old black boy raised in Chicago who, on a summer trip to his native Mississippi, "wolf-whistled" at a white woman. Two white men abducted and brutally murdered him.

They were tried, and the all-white jury acquitted them after deliberating 67 minutes. Months later, the defendants told Look magazine's William Bradford Huie that they had indeed killed the young man.

The Emmett Till case attracted national attention, with heavy media coverage. Rep. Charles Diggs, one of three blacks in Congress, attended the trial. National magazines ran pictures of the grinning defendants.

In the process, Northerners were forced to confront the brutality with which white Southerners enforced the subjection of blacks.

This went beyond the laws requiring segregated schools, buses and drinking fountains. Also in place was an unwritten code of behavior, breach of which could result in violent retaliation.

Blacks were called by their first names and could approach whites' houses only by the back door, and black men could never, never ogle white women.

This was unknown to most Northerners. As I explain in my forthcoming book, Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics, there was almost no migration between South and North in the years between the Civil War and World War II.

Southern mores were so unknown in the North that Yale psychologist John Dollard's 1937 book Caste and Class in a Southern Town, based on five months' field work in Indianola, Miss., was hailed as a great revelation, akin to Margaret Mead's writing on Samoa.

Yet everything in it was common knowledge for every 10-year-old, black or white, in Indianola.

The great genius of the civil rights movement was to make Northerners face the reality -- and the violence -- of the segregation system. The Emmett Till case was one of the first incidents that forced them to do so. It was followed a year later by Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus in 1955 and Martin Luther King's resulting Montgomery bus boycott.

It is sometimes said that laws cannot change customs. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning racial discrimination in hiring and public accommodations, did in fact change behavior in the South. It not only ended legally enforced segregation but effectively ended the unwritten code of black subjugation.

Which is to say that the America of our time -- the America of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman -- is hugely different from and hugely better than the America of Emmett Till.

Back in the 1950s, most Americans -- not just in the South but across the nation -- opposed interracial marriages. As blacks were migrating in large numbers to Northern cities, whites moved out of neighborhoods when they moved in.

Today things are different. Our President, twice elected with majorities of the vote, is the product of a mixed-race marriage. Black presence in neighborhoods no longer results in rapid white flight.

Yet many Americans have a desperate need to believe nothing has changed. They yearn for the moral clarity that enables almost all Americans today to retrospectively condemn the old Southern code.

The irony is that those who claim they lead the civil rights movement today have a vested psychological interest in denying its great triumph.

Hillary Just Isn't All That Interesting

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, August 02, 2013

"I think she's one of the most fascinating women of our time and this world," confessed Bob Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC, as part of his announcement that his network is making a miniseries about Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with Diane Lane in the starring role.

Words are funny things. For instance, G.K. Chesterton once remarked that that the word "good" has many uses: "For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of 500 yards, I should call him a good shot but not necessarily a good man."

So it is, I suppose, with the word "fascinating." Given the perpetual soap opera revolving around the Clintons, I can understand the fascination with Mrs. Clinton. But while a soap opera can make for a compelling spectacle, that doesn't mean every character in it is compelling in his or her own right.

Quick: Can you think of a single truly interesting thing Hillary Clinton has ever said?

Before you answer, let me narrow the terms. Wildly implausible statements about how she parlayed pocket change into $100,000 in the commodities markets simply by reading the Wall Street Journal don't count. Neither do her explanations of how her Whitewater billing records miraculously appeared out of thin air in the most secure building in America. Nor do her explanations of how and why she stuck by her husband.

What I mean is: Have you ever heard her speak, as a politician in her own right, and been wowed by her eloquence or floored by her insights or even particularly impressed by her raw political skill?

I'm hard-pressed to think of any examples. I suppose her famous dismissal of any interest in how, on her watch, four Americans were murdered by terrorists -- "What difference, at this point, does it make?!" -- could count as fascinating in its brazen indifference and staggering cynicism. But c'mon.

The simple fact, by my lights at least, is that Hillary Clinton is not a compelling personality in her own right. Even Bill Clinton's harshest critics have to concede that he was a masterful politician, a jazz impresario mixing deep insights, policy minutiae and folksy cornpone peppered with compelling half-truths and daring outright lies. Barack Obama isn't nearly as gifted as Bill was on the stump or in the backrooms, but the man has political talent. Hillary's a very solid policy wonk, but the only thing that makes her a rock star is that people keep calling her one.

The same goes for her career. Quick: What has the woman done? As a lawyer, what important cases did she win? As a first lady, her only major "accomplishment" was a failed health-care reform scheme that didn't even get a vote in the Senate. As a carpetbagging senator from New York, what historic legislation did she shepherd? Most of her party, including the President, repudiates her vote for the Iraq war. Pretty much the only thing her biggest supporters can tout about her tenure as secretary of state is that she "traveled a million miles," which strikes me as the ultimate triumph of quantity over quality (particularly given the hot mess that is American foreign policy).

In other words, what fascinates me is the fascination with Hillary. I don't deny that it exists, I just don't think she warrants it. Also, I don't think finding Hillary Clinton deeply interesting necessarily means there's a deep interest out there in the American public to see her become president. Huma Abedin, the humiliated wife of Anthony Weiner, is interesting for many of the same reasons Hillary is; that doesn't add to Abedin's qualifications for high office.

And this is one reason why I think all of the talk about Hilary's "inevitability" is misplaced. Yes, she's way ahead in the polls. But she's also been out of the line of fire in domestic partisan politics for a long time. That softens people's attitudes until they are given a reason to change them. (George W. Bush's popularity has gone up markedly for similar reasons.) When the Benghazi scandal was in the news, her favorability dropped. You can be sure it'll happen again if she runs and stakes out positions.

Sure, the smart money is on her to win the Democratic nomination if she runs. But, then again, the same smart money went to Clinton in 2008. Clinton lost to Obama for several reasons, some of them tactical. But trumping all of the others was that Obama was a more compelling candidate.

And that's Clinton's Achilles' heel: Candidates matter.

Is Populism Dead?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Thursday, August 01, 2013

Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not seem to have made inroads with the traditional Republican and Democrat establishments.

Gas has gone up about $2 a gallon since Barack Obama took office. Given average yearly rates of national consumption, that increase alone translates into an extra $1 trillion that American drivers have collectively paid in higher fuel costs over the last 54 months.

Such a crushing burden on the cash-strapped commuter class is rarely cited in the liberal fixation on cap-and-trade, wind and solar subsidies, and the supposed dangers of fracking.

When the president scaled back the number of new gas and oil leases on federal lands over time, he was appealing to his boutique base -- not to those who can scarcely meet their monthly heating and cooling bills.

Should there not be an opening for a conservative populist response?

Unfortunately, pro-drilling conservatives sound more like spokesmen for oil companies than grassroots champions for strapped motorists.

Total student debt is approaching $1 trillion. That is an unsustainable burden for recent graduates under 25 facing an adjusted youth unemployment rate of over 20 percent.

Yet the well-off are more interested in ensuring that their children get into tony, name-brand colleges than in fretting about how to pay for it -- a fact well known to our price-gauging universities.

On the other end, need- and ethnic-based scholarships and waivers have made college more affordable for the poor than it is for the middle classes. The parents of the latter make enough to be disqualified from most government help, but not enough to afford soaring tuition.

Banks find student loans backed by government guarantees profitable.

Top-heavy universities assume that there will always be more income from the subsidized poor and the rich. Again, middle-class students are caught up a creek without the paddles of wealthy parents or a generous government.

There is also a populist argument to be made against the farm bill.

There are more than 48 million Americans on food stamps, an increase of about 12 million since the beginning of the Obama presidency. At a time of record-high crop prices, the U.S. government still helps well-off farmers with some $20 billion in annual crop payouts and indirect subsidies.

The left mythicizes food-stamp recipients almost as if they all must be the Cratchits of Dickensian England.The right romanticizes corporate agriculture as if the growers all were hardscrabble family farmers in need of a little boost to get through another tough harvest. Those in between, who pay federal income taxes and are not on food stamps, lack the empathy of the poor and the clout of the rich. Can't a politician say that?

Illegal immigration is likewise not a left vs. right or Republican vs. Democrat issue, but instead mostly one of class.

The influx of millions of illegal immigrants has ensured corporate America access to cheap labor while offering a growing constituency for political and academic elites. Yet the earning power of poorer American workers -- especially African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans -- has stagnated.

The common bond between the agendas of La Raza activists and the corporate world is apparently a relative lack of concern for the welfare of entry-level laborers, many of them in America’s inner cities, who are competing against millions of illegal workers.

Given the slow-growth, high-unemployment economy, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, interest on simple passbook accounts has all but vanished.

The poor are not so affected. They are more often borrowers than lenders, and they are sometime beneficiaries of federally subsidized debt relief. The rich have the capital and connections to find more profitable investments in real estate or the stock market that make them immune from pedestrian, underperforming savings accounts.

In other words, this administration's loose money policy has been good for the indebted and even better for the stock-invested rich. But it is absolutely lousy for the middle class and for strapped retirees with a few dollars in conservative passbook accounts.

The aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown followed the same script. The crisis arose from a strange connivance between loans to the unqualified and huge profits for Wall Street. Its remedy was to have the lowly taxpayer pick up the walk-away debt of the former while offering bailouts for the latter.

Polls show the president's approval numbers are tanking. Congress can hardly become any more unpopular. Maybe one reason is that neither seems to care much about those who are not rich and not poor.

America has plenty of community organizers and agitators, and even more smooth corporate lobbyists, but populist politicians disappeared long ago.

Al Qaeda is Back

By Cliff May

Thursday, August 01, 2013

By all accounts, the attack was planned with care and executed with precision. At two notorious Iraqi prisons, Abu Ghraib and Taji, al-Qaeda combatants last week used mortars, small arms, suicide bombers, and assault forces to free 400 prisoners, including several who had been on death row. AQ spokesmen hailed those released as “mujahedeen,” holy warriors, who will rejoin the jihad on battlefields throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Soon after, we were seeing headlines such as this: “Al Qaeda Is Back.”

Where had al-Qaeda gone? Dig deep in the memory hole — all the way to last summer. At the prestigious Aspen Security Forum, Peter Bergen, CNN’s national-security analyst and a director at the New America Foundation, gave a talk titled, “Time to Declare Victory: Al Qaeda Is Defeated.”

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lynch III (retired), a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, was writing and speaking widely on the same theme. And President Obama’s reelection campaign was making similar claims, e.g. “The tide of war is receding,” “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Mitt Romney hardly attempted to rebut the thesis.

I don’t like to say “I told you so” — oh, who am I kidding? Of course I do. But in this instance there is more than ample justification. Scholars at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in particular Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, have argued consistently and forcefully, based on solid evidence, that the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, followed by the elimination of other al-Qaeda leaders, did not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean the demise of al-Qaeda.

Instead, it led AQ to adapt, evolve, and morph. It is essential to study these changes and probe their strategic significance — an assignment unlikely to be seriously undertaken by those convinced al-Qaeda swims with the fishes.

On July 18, Joscelyn testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, attempting to make clear to members of Congress that AQ has become “a global international terrorist network . . . that, despite setbacks, contests for territory abroad and still poses a threat to U.S. interests both overseas and at home.”

The nodes of AQ’s network are affiliates that pledge bayat, unswerving allegiance, to “core AQ” while retaining substantial operational autonomy. That makes them harder for intelligence operatives to monitor, penetrate, weaken, or eliminate. Nine years ago, FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer wrote a book called Al-Qaeda’s Armies predicting that such AQ affiliates would increasingly constitute the organization’s “outer perimeter and the pools from which new terrorists can be drawn. Indeed, al-Qaeda affiliates, in the Arab world and beyond, represent the next generation of the global terrorist threat.”

Since the waving of the “mission accomplished” banner last summer, AQ affiliates have killed an American ambassador in Libya, and hoisted their flag above the U.S. embassy in Cairo. They have taken the lead in the rebellion against the Assad dynasty in Syria. They have fought an American-backed government in Yemen, and they conquered much of Mali before French troops drove them back into the desert. They continue to slaughter Christians in Nigeria — more than a thousand last year. They have regenerated in Iraq since the departure of American troops, killing 700 people in July alone. They remain undefeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan, poised for the opportunity further American troop withdrawals will present. Last week, they attacked Turkish diplomats in Somalia. On Monday, AQ’s close ally, the Taliban, attacked a jail in northwest Pakistan, freeing as many as 200 prisoners.

Joscelyn and Roggio have been making another argument that has challenged the conventional wisdom: They maintain that al-Qaeda has long had a working relationship with Iran’s rulers. Two years ago the U.S. government formally confirmed that hypothesis, yet now as then many Iran experts deny the links, arguing that there is no way that Sunni AQ and Shia Iran could collaborate.

What those experts fail to grasp is that Iran’s rulers and al-Qaeda’s commanders, despite very real theological disagreements and differing strategic interests — indeed, they are literally at each other’s throats in Syria — are united in their commitment to what they see as the moral imperative of Islamic supremacy and domination. Their shared goal is a global revolution leading to the defeat or submission, or both, of those they regard not just as inferior, but also as “enemies of God.” America and Israel top both their lists.

This worldview is very difficult for Westerners to take seriously. Surely, there must be a less medieval explanation — perhaps grievances that can be addressed or fears that can be assuaged. But this conflict is deeper and more complex. Until that is understood, the U.S. and its allies cannot possibly devise a coherent strategic response — which is why 34 years after Iran’s revolution and twelve years after 9/11, we still don’t have one. That is another point that Joscelyn and Roggio have long been making, and which too many in the government and the foreign policy community have been either unable or unwilling to grasp.

Overcoming Adversity

By Ed Feulner

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Small wonder that Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera grabbed the spotlight at the latest All-Star Game. His perfect eighth-inning relief appearance not only helped the American League win the game, it showcased the kind of success story that Americans love.

Going from a life in a poor fishing village in Panama to the top of a pitching mound in New York City is pretty impressive. It’s hard not to be inspired by the opportunity that America affords people who are willing to work hard and pursue their dreams -- and wonder about those who haven’t had those chances.

The late author and paleontologist Steven Gould once said, “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweat shops.” His observation is undoubtedly true. Throughout history, many gifted people have been crushed by misfortune and never had the opportunity to exercise their talents.

What separates success from failure is how an individual transcends the circumstances that confront him. The history of the United States is filled with stories of individuals overcoming adversity that, had they lived elsewhere the world, would have been held in captivity by the circumstances into which they were born.

Take Jim Abbott. Like many boys, he loved baseball. But Jim was different. Born in Flint, Mich., in 1967, he seemed unlikely to grow up and play Little League baseball, let alone make it to the major leagues. Jim, you see, was born without a right hand, so playing a sport that required every appendage seemed to be a bridge too far to be realized. Someone forgot to convince Jim of that.

Jim wanted to play baseball and be a pitcher, so he set about practicing. He developed a system by which he could deliver a pitch and have his glove in a ready position by the time the ball crossed the plate. Jim was good. He was so good, in fact, that he was drafted out of high school by the Toronto Blue Jays, but instead opted for college at the University of Michigan.

While at the university, Jim led the Wolverines to two Big Ten championships, and he was the first baseball pitcher to be awarded the James E. Sullivan Award as amateur athlete of the year in 1987. It was a major accomplishment for anyone, let alone someone with only one hand. But Jim wasn’t finished yet.

After his amazing college career, Jim was drafted in the first round by the California Angels and spent the next 10 years living out the dream of every little boy who ever played on a sandlot. What’s more, Jim joined the exclusive club of pitchers who have ever thrown a no-hitter when, in 1993, he blanked the Cleveland Indians.

When you first hear his story without being told that Jim Abbott was born with only one hand, you would never know it, never even think it. But once the surprise of his story wears off, it gives way to an acknowledgement that it makes perfect sense. Jim Abbott, after all, is an American, and America is all about amazing stories.

Each story of an individual seizing the opportunities presented to him, or creating his own opportunities through his choices, is a testament to a nation that values individual liberty and ingenuity. Only in a society that values the individual will someone like Clarence Thomas -- a descendant of slaves, born into poverty and segregation -- have the opportunity to become an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Only by returning to our long-standing belief that we are a nation of individuals limited merely by our imaginations, and not by the government, will we continue to reap the harvest of creativity and prosperity that our system is uniquely suited to foster.