An Unhappy Valentine's in Afghanistan

This Valentine’s Day we were greeted with a story of two young lovers dragged out of a police station and shot to death in rural Afghanistan. The angry mob included members of the young woman’s own family.

Her crime? Trying to elope with her true love after being married to a different man against her will. Villagers were tipped off that she might be up to something when she was spotted walking by herself —a no-no for females — which lead to her arrest on suspicion of of adultery.

The tendency among many Westerners will be to conflate these so-called “honor killings” with the religion of Islam—to see this as yet another example of the hateful intolerance displayed by religious radicals.

But this is not that. In fact, it was those who forced the woman to marry against her will who violated Islamic law. This tragedy is a consequence of the twin ills of rural ignorance and ineffective civil order. The local police, whose ability and desire to enforce laws on the books is tenuous at best, allowed mob rule to prevail. The locals, hidebound by prejudice and traditions soured by decades of war, capo rule and general lawlessness, did their best impression of Europe in the Dark Ages.

This activity is not sanctioned or driven by any religious authority. The sins are more indirect—perpetuating unequal power structures across society, and an overall tolerance of the very low status of women.

Beating Back Progress in 1890s North Carolina

Holy forgotten history, Batman! In 1890s North Carolina, the Fusion coalition brought together white farmers desperate for economic reform with disenfranchised Republicans and blacks to forge a new movement countering the entrenched (conservative) Democratic Party elite. The movement won big victories, instituted educational and political reform and elevated African-Americans to elected office, including George S. White, the last black U.S. Congressman of the Jim Crow era-- this decades after Reconstruction.

So what happened? The Democrats marshaled the forces of white supremacy and race fear to regain power, warning of race mixing and "negro domination."

Blacks were disenfranchised and the racial narrative was aggressively reasserted. It was after the Fusion period that many of the Confederate Memorials seen today were erected across the state, part of a successful effort to obliterate a past that included widespread Union sentiment in N.C. during the Civil War (Google "Red Strings").

Entrenched racism overwhelmed the economic motivations that, for a time, saw diverse Tar Heels make common cause. North Carolina would not elect another black member of Congress until... wait for it... 1992.

Lessons From History

The information above was gleaned from Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name.

Americans should be made better aware of the post-Reconstruction period in the South for many reasons, but especially to counter entrenched right-wing narratives about the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction. As imperfect as it was, Reconstruction successfully laid the groundwork for black enfranchisement and political agency in the South, to the extent that these gains had to be overturned through calculated demagoguery and reactionary violence.

This counterrevolution is perhaps most starkly witnessed in North Carolina; look no further than the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898.

The Greatest Threat to World Peace

Re: Bangladesh Arrests Over 3,000 to Halt Attacks

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The greatest threat to civilization and world peace in 2016 is not totalitarianism. It is ineffective governance, official corruption and a breakdown of civil society. We see it in anarchic Pakistan, awash in firearms. We see it in Mexico, with its corrupt police and thousands of unsolved murders. Venezuela. Guatemala. The kleptocracies of the former USSR. This nightmare in Bangladesh.

Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes.

We see it here today in the U.S., in desert precincts where militiamen and Libertarians take shots (literally) at underfunded federales, and strut their stuff under the protection of Leviathan, whom they rely on every day to protect their families, their jobs and their health.

If you are an American who teds to hate secularists, religious minorities, gay activists and "followers of more liberal strains," you are of this ilk.

Princeton Professors Get Intellectually Mushy Over Abortion, Hillary

In an article this week in the Princetonian, “Key issues of the 2016 presidential election: Faculty members' perspectives,” two political scholars at the Ivy League university reveal themselves as anti-choice extremists.

Robert George, an American legal scholar, political philosopher and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, shared that “[Hillary] Clinton has never, to my knowledge, been able to think of a circumstance in which she believes that the right to life of a child in the womb should meaningfully be protected.”

Similarly, Bradford Wilson, executive Director of the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics, told the paper that “Secretary Clinton has declared in favor of an unlimited right to abort, presumably up until the day before birth.”

In fact, by expressing support for Roe v Wade, Hillary Clinton has affirmed her belief in circumstances when the life of a child in the womb should be protected. Roe v Wade’s “trimester framework” codifies the right of the state to protect a fetus later in a pregnancy (with exceptions for the life and health of the mother).

These two legal scholars seem to understand Roe v Wade less well than one might expect.

Hillary Clinton said in 2008, “I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare. And I have spent many years now, as a private citizen, as first lady, and now as senator, trying to make it rare, trying to create the conditions where women had other choices.

“I have supported adoption, foster care. I helped to create the campaign against teenage pregnancy, which fulfilled our original goal 10 years ago of reducing teenage pregnancies by about a third. And I am committed to do even more.”

West’s Weird Words

A raspberry also goes to fellow Princetonian Cornel West, who according to George, believes Hillary is not “a candidate who meets the threshold to be acceptable as the leader of our nation.”

Really? Because she was Secretary of State when four people died in Benghazi? Because she used a private email server? Because she is a lawyer? What is Mr. West’s criteria for placing an individual outside the range of acceptability for high office?

Perhaps he prefers individuals who, before running for president, had not dirtied themselves in the international political arena. Who were never subject to Congressional scrutiny or investigation before seeking office. Someone with a faith-centered political approach and a pro-life stance. Someone outside the Washington bubble.

Well, based on these criteria, I have the perfect candidate for him: George W. Bush in 2000.

The Breitbart Filter

I was curious how two stories in the news this week are being reported on Breitbart.Com, so I hopped on over to the alt-right romper room where news categories range from "big government" to "big journalism" (no "big religion" as yet).

Breitbart's chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, also runs Donald Trump's campaign. 

First I searched for Scott M. Greene, accused of assassinating two police officers in Des Moines and Urbandale, Ill.

Nothing on the home page. A search for "Greene" turned up a cursory article with very little text and two embedded videos, as well as a (broken) link to a story in a local paper. Nowhere was it mentioned that he was a Trump supporter thrown out of a football game a few days ago for waving a Confederate flag around in front of a bunch of black students. 

I then searched for news about the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss., which was nearly burned to the ground Tuesday by arsonists who wrote "Vote Trump" on an outside wall.

Nothing on the home page. A search for "Jackson" turned up articles about Andrew Jackson and the $20 bill. A search for "Hopewell" brings up news about vandals breaking the window of a home flying a Confederate flag in Hopewell, Va.

There is nothing on the site about the destruction of the church.