RUTHFULLY YOURS

Multicultural societies — from 19th-century Austria–Hungary to contemporary Iraq, Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda — have a poor record of keeping the peace between competing tribes. They usually end up mired in nihilistic and endemic violence.

The only hope for history’s rare multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious nations is to adopt a common culture, one that artificially suppresses the natural instinct of humans to identify first with their particular tribe. America, in the logical spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was exceptional among modern societies in slowly evolving from its original, largely European immigrant population to a 21st-century assimilated, integrated, and intermarried multiracial society, in which religious and racial affiliations were incidental, not essential, to one’s public character and identity.

But such a bold experiment was always tenuous and against the cruel grain of history, in which the hard work of centuries could be easily torn apart by the brief demagoguery of the moment. Unfortunately, President Obama, ever since he first appeared on the national political scene in 2008, has systematically adopted a rhetoric and an agenda that is predicated on dividing up the country according to tribal grievances, in hopes of recalibrating various factions into a majority grievance culture. In large part, he has succeeded politically. But in doing so he has nearly torn the country apart. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that no other recent president has offered such a level of polarizing and divisive racial bombast.

Most recently, without citing any facts about the circumstances of the police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, Barack Obama castigated the police and the citizenry on their culpability for racial disparity and prejudicial violence. “[T]hese fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal-justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.” Obama did not yet know the race of the policemen involved (as in the case of Baltimore, the Minnesota shooting involved non-white officers), the circumstances that led to the shootings, or the backgrounds of either the officers or their victims.

Shortly afterwards, twelve Dallas law-enforcement officers were shot, and five of them killed, by a black assassin who declared solidarity with Black Lives Matter and proclaimed his hatred for white law enforcement. That outbreak prompted Obama to take to the podium again to recalibrate his earlier message. This time he amplified his gun-control message, and somewhat delusionally added that the upswing in racial polarization did not imperil national unity — in much the same way that, in years past, he had announced that al-Qaeda was on the run, we were leaving behind a stable Iraq, and ISIS was a jayvee organization. Note the Obama editorial method in the case of police incidents, from Skip Gates to Louisiana and Minnesota: He typically speaks before he has the facts, and when subsequent information calls into question his talking points and theorizing, he never goes back and makes the corrections. Nor does he address facts — from Ferguson to Dallas — that do not fit his political agenda. Finally, a police shooting of an African-American suspect is never an “isolated event,” while the shooting of an officer by a black assassin is isolated and never really thematic of any larger racial pathology.

The murder of five Dallas policemen at a protest march is the gruesome consequence of the rhetorical war on police being waged by the progressive race industry. The shooter, of course, bears the primary responsibility for the killings. But a climate of opinion makes such events more likely, and those who create such a climate are culpable as well.

The justification for the war on police is that they gun down unarmed black men out of racial animus. The 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri sparked a nationwide movement predicated on this popular urban myth. The Black Lives Matter movement quickly came to national prominence, instigating protests over every police shooting of a black person, and popularizing their signature chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

Everything about this organization is based on a lie. Even Eric Holder’s politicized DOJ determined the Brown shooting was justified, and cleared the officer involved. Brown never put up his hands and said “Don’t shoot,” nor was he a “gentle giant,” as the race-baiters and media claimed. Nor is there an epidemic of racist police killings of unarmed blacks. More blacks than whites are killed relative to their population, but that’s a consequence of blacks being a much larger proportion of violent criminals. Race is not the issue: Whites and Hispanics are three times more likely to die at the hands of police than are blacks, and minority police officers are three times more likely to fire their weapons than are other cops. And a police officer is 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than he is to kill an unarmed black.

Despite the empirically false claims of racist police murdering blacks, the myth has attracted support from government and media. A fish rots from the head down, as the proverb has it, and Barack Obama has set the tone. He has intruded himself into interracial incidents and police shootings of blacks, whether justified or not, stoking further the racial divisions he has exploited throughout his presidency. Obama called the police “stupid” in the Henry Louis Gates incident. He said if he had a son “he’d look like” Trayvon Martin, and said of the recent shooting in Minnesota that “there’s a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same.” He also praised Black Lives Matter for doing “outstanding work,” and said that the arson and looting following the decision not to prosecute the policeman in Ferguson was “an understandable reaction” and that “the law too often feels like it’s being applied in a discriminatory fashion.”

The Black Lives Matter movement “…doesn’t care any more about the lives of black people than the Ku Klux Klan…” Sheriff David Clarke asserted during an interview with Accuracy in Media. Clarke is the Sheriff of Miwaukee County, Wisconsin.

“Black Lives Matter, which I have renamed ‘Black Lies’ L-I-E-S Matter, it’s nothing more than an astroturf operation, it’s just the latest shallow disguised, confederation if you will, of community organizers and leftists that specialize in fostering disorganization and rebellion in ghettos and other struggling areas throughout the United States of America.”

Sheriff Clarke cited “a study done by Dr. Timothy Johnson of Toledo University…” that invalidates the widespread claim that police officers practice racial discrimination. He said the study found that twice as many white men “…are killed in police use of force situations” than black men.

“There is no research, there is not one bit of research or data that supports their lie-which is why I call them ‘Black Lies’-their lie about police use of force in the United States of America.”

Sheriff Clarke calls Black Lives Matter a “hate group,” saying, “These are nothing more than riot makers and they stoke up bitterness and resentment in people; and they use the police as a distraction from the staggering failure of liberal politicians in these large urban areas where these ghettos are contained.”

Comparing Chicago’s crime-ridden culture of death to “… some war-torn, sub-Sahara African nation that’s constantly under civil war with a tribal mentality,” Sheriff Clarke confronted the movement’s passivity on this issue.

The Code of Federal Regulations comprises 50 titles, 235 volumes, over 200,000 pages, and over 1.1 million specific regulatory restrictions. Imagine that if you can.

Regulations reach into every conceivable – and inconceivable – aspect of life. Any new legislation passed by Congress is a statement of legal intention. Regulations are the snarling legal fangs of that legislation, the nitty-gritty core of the law. In practice, regulations are written by unelected and anonymous bureaucrats, “interested parties,” and lobbyists. Also in practice, regulations are not reviewed by Congress. Is it reasonable to expect our elected representatives to plow through 223 pages a day of tyrannical minutia (see below) when they don’t even bother to read the legislation that spawns it?

Let’s try to get a numerical handle on the magnitude of the federal regulations imposed during the seven and a half years of Obama’s reign, focusing on the last full year, 2015. (The figures are deficient. Like the national debt, they grow relentlessly, with no abatement.)

The Juggernaut of Federal Regulations During Obama’s Reign

Number of new regulations

20,642

Average per year

2,752

New regulations in 2015

2,353

Pages of regulations in 2015

81,611

Average pages per day in 2015

223

Average pages per hour

9.3

Untold numbers of unelected anonymous worker bees in offices public and private secretly, and without oversight, churning out over nine pages of new laws every hour, around the clock, ceaselessly, year after year. Who needs Carroll, Kafka, or Orwell?