 |
|
|
Literature Discussion - Lit-Talk.com
Political Correctness vs. Profiling
Check our publications and book reviews at ReserveBooks.com
See Chris Cobar Article List at bottom of page.
Why We Should Expect Another 9/11
Article #24 –
Political Correctness vs. Profiling
By
Chris Cobar
I don’t know about you, but I am way over this “political correctness” crap. It might be because I’m 62, cranky and cantankerous, or perhaps because I’m a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and just don’t get it. Either way, it’s just boula-boula. [Boula-boula is the delightful, Tagalog word for ‘excreta de bovine’. It truly rolls off the tongue.] One might be called a “sanitation engineer,” but one does not drive a “sanitation engineering vehicle” or pick up “sanitation.” He/she still drives a garbage truck and picks up garbage.
A case in point was the 2010 Census. Despite the fact that questions were asked which were not authorized by the Constitution and therefore illegal, it was a masterpiece of P.C. ‘political correctness.’
Questions #8 and #9 dealt with, shall we say ‘ethnicity,’ the politically polite word for race. Question #8 read:
“Is Person #1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?”
It offered 4 flavours of ‘origin’ and required all non-Hispanics to also check a box. What do you do if you are a Spaniard from Madrid? Do you check ‘white’ or ‘Spanish origin’ or both? What does this make the Portuguese? Are they solely ‘white’ while the Spaniards get multiple choice? After all, they share the same peninsula.
Question #9 read:
“What is Person #1’s race?
The available boxes included:
White
Black, African-American, Negro
American Indian
6 Flavours of Asian-Americans
and
3 Flavours of various Pacific islanders
O.K., so why do Hispanic, Latino and Spanish rate ‘origins’ and the rest of us are labeled as a race? Do Hispanics, Latinos and Spanish not qualify as a race? Why is it “politically correct” to list ‘White’ and ‘Black,’ but not ‘Red,’ ‘Yellow’ or ‘Brown.’ At least the ‘Blacks’ got several options. The ‘Whites’ didn’t even get Caucasian or ‘Honky.’ What am I missing?
Most of the time, I find ‘political correctness’ mildly amusing, like “virgin wool” and “genuine leather.” How do they know that the ewe was a virgin? What in God’s green acre is “genuine leather?” Does this mean that there is some leather out there misrepresenting itself as the “genuine” article?
Sometimes I find it stupid or offensive. However when it gets into national security, it becomes a major threat, as Churchill once said: “That is “something up with which I will not put.”
9/11 happened because our collective intelligence community got caught with their pants down, due to their own bureaucratic boula-boula. Well, if it was the bureaucracies, which broke our security in the first place, why, in God’s good name, would one add another layer of bureaucracy (Department of Homeland Security) to the mix?
Somehow, America managed to survive and thrive for over 200 hundred years without the need for a Department of Homeland Security. Why all of a sudden do we need one now? If the other intelligence agencies had gotten it right in the first place, there would be no need for a Department of Homeland Security. Doesn’t that tell us something? If we’ve already got problems with the bureaucracies, do we really need another one?
Our esteemed DHS has ordained that there will be no profiling on terrorists, since it is not politically correct. And what is their alternative? Nothing.
I’m sorry but you’ve got to be jerking my chain. Every responsible country on the planet profiles, and that includes terrorists. In America, we profile rapists, serial killers, arsonists and child molesters, so why not terrorists? Are terrorists so much more deserving of politically correctness?
I gotta tell you, if an analysis and profile of potential terrorists showed that deeply religious, single, Catholic women were most likely to be responsible, I would stake out every convent within a 1,000 mile radius???
As we know, not one Christian, Buddhist or Hindu has every participated in a terrorist attack. But we can’t profile?
Of the 18 hijackers of 9/11, all were male, all were Muslim, all were under the age of 35, 14 were from Saudi Arabia, 3 were from the UAE and 1 each from Egypt and Lebanon. Damn, did I just ‘profile?’
Does this not tell us something? Should we still watch all the planes coming in from Tokyo, or should we perhaps begin to fine tune our process a little?
By the way, someone needs to notify the Bureau. They obviously didn’t get the memo. They still have a “Profile Unit” at Quantico, as does every major police department in the country. And the difference is?
I did a brief survey of other countries, including Israel, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United Kingdom. No one practices ‘political correctness.’ How fortunate for them; they don’t even understand the concept. (Then again, I don’t either.) Not one other country is ‘politically correct.’ P.C. is purely an American invention. Why is it all right for the rest of the world to be ‘politically incorrect,’ but not for America? What am I missing?
We’re at war with an enemy that is devilishly hard to identify and track down under the best of circumstances. Our track record proves that we have not smothered ourselves in success. However, the DHS says that it is more important to be politically correct than profile people who plan on doing harm to our country and citizens? I hope someone can explain it; I can’t.
War is war. The Marquess of Queensbury’s rules do not apply. This is a matter of life or death; ‘political correctness’ be damned.
Until next time,
CC
Thanks for your comments, please keep them coming –
Chris Cobar: rajamuda001@aol.com
Please visit my new blog, www.terrorlog.com
P.S. For those of you who want more than a snappy synopsis of the whys and wherefores of 9/11, I refer you to www.intelwire.com. It is managed by a good friend, John Berger. He is a certified terrorist consultant, who documents his colons and commas. If it's there, you can take it to the bank.
