VENEZUELA'S LOSS IS AMERICAN'S GAIN: Venezuelan exodus to Florida expected to increase after Chávez's election victory

 
By David Paulin

Hugo Chávez's reelection victory and subsequent pledge to deepen "21st Century" socialism in Venezuela has produced a predictable result -- yet another exodus of Venezuelans is expected to head to Florida. Like early waves of Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s communism, these Venezuelans are members of their country’s business, professional, and entrepreneurial class. They could, to be sure, have been part of the solution to Venezuela’s poverty and dysfunction. But Chávez saw them as part of the problem as he created class divisions; nationalized large swaths of the economy; and implemented currency exchange and price controls that strangled the economy and even produced food shortages.

  

The ongoing exodus of Venezuela’s best and brightest – and the increase that's expected after Chávez’s reelection -- is the subject of an article in the Miami Herald describing how South Florida immigration lawyers and real estate agents are gearing up for visits from Venezuelans who have decided it’s time to get out. They're looking to buy real estate and start businesses in South Florida, with the hope of gaining residency and starting new lives. After suffering 14 years of Hugo Chávez – and facing six more to come – they decided to join the estimated 200,000 or more Venezuelans already in the U.S. – 57 percent of whom live in South Florida. 

 “Nothing surpasses fear as a cause for capital flight,” Enrique García, a Key Biscayne council member and real estate agent, told The Herald. Citing immigration statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, The Herald noted that the “total number of Venezuelans who have received permanent residence has been growing year after year — from a little more than 5,000 in 2002 to more than 9,000 in 2011.” 

 During the era of soaring oil prices in the 1970s, oil-rich Venezuela earned a nickname: “Saudi Venezuela.” But easy petro-dollars not only contributed to corruption, they fostered a culture of populism and paternalism -- what Venezuela’s poor majority expects today, and what Chavez has promised to deliver.

On the other hand, the Venezuelans settling in the U.S. are educated and can make their own way. They need no lessons in democracy, as underscored by the thousands of Venezuelans who on election day rode in bus caravans to New Orleans, where they stood in long lines at Venezuela’s consulate to vote for opposition challenger Henrique Capriles.

They couldn't vote in Miami because Chavez had closed the consulate there earlier this year, following a spate with Washington over the State Department's expulsion of Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera. It concerned recordings of her allegedly discussing an Iranian plot to carry out a cyber-attack against the U.S.        

That created a problem for 20,000 Venezuelan voters in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina who'd registered to vote at the Miami consulate. Accordingly, 8,500 of them cast their ballots at Venezuela’s consulate in New Orleans -- virtually taking over the city as they waited in long lines to vote, and passing the time by singing their country's lovely national anthem.

 

This YouTube clip provides a look at some of the Venezuelans whom Chavez has demonized and intimidated in his quest for “social justice” and “21st Century” socialism.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

Why did Hugo Chavez endorse President Obama for a second term?

 
By David Paulin

The answer to that is easy -- anti-Americanism. Hugo Chavez, after all, has made anti-Americanism a cornerstone of his leftist policies. And this can’t be ignored when explaining why Chavez endorsed President Obama for a second term.

"I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama," Venezuela's socialist and firebrand president declared during a television interview. Calling Obama “a good guy,” Chavez also opined that if Obama were a Venezuelan, he would vote for him too.

All in all, it was a remarkable endorsement given that soon after Chavez took office 14 years ago – during Bill Clinton’s second term – he started to rail against Yankee imperialism; cozied up to Cuba's Fidel Castro and various Middle Eastern strongmen; and praised Venezuelan-born terrorist Carlos the Jackal as a "worthy heir of the greatest [leftist] struggles."

So how come Chavez considers himself a kindred spirit with Obama? It no doubt has much to do with the similar world views both share. Chavez, for example, believes that America is responsible for all the world’s ills – and so in his mind this justifies his efforts to build anti-American and anti-Western alliances. It would not be enough for him to merely concentrate on Venezuela’s soaring poverty, crime and endemic corruption – for all these things are for him related to the poisonous world order for which America is the No. 1 villain. One of Chavez’s favorite books is the paranoid anti-American and anti-European screed “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” – a book he presented to Obama at a Summit of Americas conference in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Obama, for his part, has tacitly embraced significant aspects of Chavez’s anti-American world view – reflected in his deep bows to foreign leaders; his demonization of Wall Street and financially successful Americans (the “1 percenters”); and in his Middle East apology tour. Above all, Obama seems to believe America is a declining power and must maintain a lower-profile in the world; this for him is the best way to avoid international conflicts and create a peaceful world.

When Obama was elected, Chavez briefly toned down his anti-American broadsides and insults, saying: “I am ready to negotiate with the black man in the White House.” (It sounds a lot funnier when said in Spanish.) Since then, however, Chavez has tossed occasional barbs at Obama -- though he  hasn’t demonized him to the extent he did Bush.

Ultimately, though, it would be a mistake to take Chavez at his word when he sings Obama’s praises. He may believe what he’s saying on a certain level. But ultimately, Chavez and his leftist soul-mates hate the United States for what it is – not for what it does.

But don't expect Obama to understand that. He'll see Chavez's endorsement as evidence that he's doing something right -- rather than reflecting an embarrassing truism: "Show me your friends, and I'll tell you who you are." 

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

Cuba's new travel law a cynical ‘survival tactic’

By David Paulin

 

Cuba’s new travel law, announced on Tuesday in Cuba’s official newspaper Granma, is being spun by the Associated Press and others as a historic first by the communist regime – a long-overdue reform giving Cubans the freedom to travel abroad for the first time in more than 50 years.

 

In reality, the new law is a survival tactic by the Castro regime.

 

It's part of the same cynicism that was behind the Mariel boatlift in 1980 when 125,000 Cubans sailed to South Florida aboard private boats -- including criminals and mental patients whom Fidel Castro had set loose. It's part of the same cynicism that Castro demonstrated during the summer of 1984 -- when he looked the other way as tens of thousands of Cubans built rafts to escape their tropical prison.

 

So says a clear-eyed analysis of the new travel law by Fabiola Santiago in today’s Miami Herald, “New travel law just another survival tactic for Castro.”

 

As Santiago writes:

 

And now comes Raúl Castro, re-inventing his brother’s sure-footed strategy to send the enemy into exile — and relieve the pressure on the government to undertake meaningful reforms — by making it easier for the disenchanted masses to leave while retaining control of who travels.

 

While this may seem a blessing to a people without hope, when Cuba talks “immigration reform” and “new travel measures,” only one thing is certain: There will be major — and unfavorable — implications for the United States, particularly for South Florida.

 

Clues to Cuba’s intentions are in the details of the new rules.

 

They exempt medical professionals, scientists, and other desirable skilled would-be emigrants, and the military. They sweeten the offer to the Revolution-bred masses by assuring them that they would be welcomed back to Cuba and could retain their resident benefits as long as they return every two years.

 

In other words, travel to the mythical Miami, city with streets paved in exile gold; become a resident after a year under the Cuban Adjustment Act and be eligible for U.S. benefits; send thousands of dollars and goods to Cuba; come vacation in Varadero — and even collect a few pesos (those $20-a-month Cuban pensions), rent or sell your home and keep your old Lada.

 

“This is a way to get rid of Cuba’s population because they cannot meet the economic needs of the people,” says Andy S. Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “They do it with bad intentions. They know that the young people of Cuba are looking for any opportunity to leave the country…. As a young woman told me in Santiago de Cuba, ‘Anywhere but here.’”

 

It’s also no accident that the new travel rules are timed to go into effect on Jan. 13, days from the U.S. presidential inauguration.

 

No matter who wins the election, Cuban officials will be able to peddle their brand of truth to the Cuban people — particularly the disenchanted youth — that it’s not their government prohibiting travel, but the imperialist monster to the North. Another ploy to force their way into the American agenda.

 

And so, then, forget about the positive spin being put forth about the new travel rules. The devil is in the details. 

 

Originally published at The American Thinker

Hugo Chavez: 'I am not a socialist!'

By David Paulin

Yes, Hugo Chavez really said it: "I am not a socialist!" Not recently, to be sure, but 14 years ago when Chavez - as a cashiered Army paratrooper who'd led a failed military coup in February 1992 -- was making a run for Venezuela's presidency.

"I am not a socialist!" he said during a television interview, wearing a suit and speaking in reasonable tones. This was when he was trying hard to convince voters - especially middle-class and well-off Venezuelans who were leery of him -- that he'd definitely cast aside the bullet for the ballot. Chavez, at the time, claimed he was an idealistic moderate who would pursue a "Third Way" between capitalism and socialism. He pledged to reverse wide-spread poverty, clean up endemic corruption, and restore the oil-rich but impoverished South American nation's national pride - a nation that, during the era of high oil prices, was a beacon of democracy in the region and, many Venezuelans believed, was poised to attain first-world status. Back then, the country was dubbed "Saudi Venezuela."

"I am not a socialist!" Chavez's words now figure prominently into a powerful YouTube video - "Yo no soy socialista" - that juxtaposes Chavez's original campaign pledges against his leftist rhetoric that started soon after he took office in 1999. The video comes as Chavez, 58, is in a close election race against 40-year-old state governor Henrique Capriles.

You don't need to understand Spanish to understand the video in which El Presidente -- who now speaks of creating a paradise of "21st Century Socialism" -- extols the virtues of "fatherland, socialism, or death" ("patria, socialismo o muerte) to an audience. At another point, he declares: "I am a true revolutionary!"



 In the mainstream media's Venezuela coverage, an important piece of context is often omitted regarding Chavez's rise to power - it's erroneously suggested that only Venezuela's poor voted for Chavez, who won the second-largest popular vote ever, 58.4%, in 1998. In fact, many middle-class and well-off Venezuelans voted for Chavez. They didn't see him as a messiah as did Venezuela's poor, to be sure. But they did regard him as a sincere reformer -- a political outsider not associated with Venezuela's traditional parties, a man who would be an antidote for Venezuela's decline.

But as the YouTube video dramatically shows, Chavez carried out a monstrous bait-and-switch after becoming president. Declaring himself a revolutionary socialist and adopting an anti-American foreign policy, despite Venezuela's historically close ties with the U.S., Chavez consolidated his power by rewriting the constitution and packing the Supreme Court and other institutions with his supporters. He demonized anybody who disagreed with him. It happened because of Venezuela's weak checks and balances and the popular wave of support on which Chavez was riding.

As a Caracas-based journalist at the time, I was impressed at the way some prescient Venezuelans, a minority to be sure, avoided group think. They saw Chavez as a wolf-in-sheep's clothing from the start. Even before Chavez's landslide election victory, for instance, many upper-level executives in state oil company PDVSA were resigning -- making plans for early retirement abroad, with Miami being a popular spot to weather the storm. Many were among Venezuela's best and brightest. They had wanted to be part of the solution to Venezuela's problems. But Chavez, a class warrior instead of a uniter, saw them as part of Venezuela's problems.

Ultimately, Chavez took three bad ideas from Venezuela's past - statism, authoritarianism, and bread-and-circus populism - and took them to new heights. He stoked anti-Americanism like never before, traveling frequently abroad as he made alliances with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Middle Eastern strongmen. He even praised Venezuelan-born terrorist Carlos the Jackal as a "worthy heir of the greatest [leftist] struggles."

As for PDVSA, it used to be one of the world's most respected state oil companies, a vital source of income. Under Chavez, it has become rife with political cronyism. Oil production has declined significantly, according to many observers. It's thought the Chavez administration's mismanagement was responsible for a huge refinery explosion last month - whose flames, as shown in the "I-am-not-a-socialist" video, look like scenes from hell. It's an apt metaphor for what "21st Century socialism" has brought to Venezuela.

In his reelection campaign, Chavez has had a clear advantage. He controls the levers of power and has no qualms about using state resources to aid his campaign, as was underscored on Tuesday with a report from television news channel Globovision: It showed PDVSA vehicles driving around with Chavez campaign stickers.
  
Capriles is good looking compared to the puffy-faced Chavez who claims to be in remission from cancer; and in Venezuela -- home to many beauty queens -- looks matter. Capriles has connected with audiences by hammering away at Venezuela's epic levels of corruption, mismanagement, and Chavez's willingness to use Venezuela's oil to support leftist political goals abroad -- all while Venezuela has suffered regular electricity outages, food shortages, and one of the world's highest murder rates.

What will happen when Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday? It may be ugly. Chavez, after all, sees himself as being on a divine mission, a veritable reincarnation of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, his hero. He believes the ends justify the means. Most ominously, Chavez and his senior advisers have asserted that Venezuela will suffer violence and political instability if he's not reelected. All of which raises fears that the country is poised for a social explosion, with Chavez's most fanatical supporters and government forces taking to the streets. This would be in response to a Capriles victory - or perhaps in response to a Chavez victory that's regarded by enraged Capriles' supporters as being rigged.

"A number of multinational companies with operations in Venezuela (including oil companies) are updating contingency plans to pull their expatriate staff out of the country quickly if there's a sudden eruption of social and political conflict," writes blogger Caracas Gringo, a prescient American expat who writes anonymously from Venezuela.
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Whoever wins, Venezuela's sad decline will not be reversed anytime soon. 

Originally published at The American Thinker blog and FrontPage Magazine

Liberal appeals court judge removed from hearing Tom DeLay's case


Originally published at the American Thinker blog


David Paulin

Tom DeLay has been on a legal odyssey for one-and-one-half years -- a seemingly Quixotic effort to get a fair hearing before the 3rd Court of Appeals in Texas. On Friday, however, the former U.S. House Republican Majority leader won a critical legal skirmish -- the removal of Democratic Justice Diane Henson from hearing his appeal for financial and election-law crimes.

Who is Henson? Certainly no paragon of judicial impartiality. In the past, she has publicly vilified the state's Republican judges as "zealots." More ominously, she indicated a desire to hear DeLay's appeal to ensure justice was done.

All of which gives credence to Republicans who have long suspected that DeLay was the victim of a Democratic witch hunt in the liberal bastion of Travis County, where he was tried and convicted by a Democratic prosecutor

A recap of recent history regarding the DeLay case is in order. In January 2011, DeLay was convicted in an Austin courtroom of money laundering: specifically, of illegally funneling $190,000 of corporate money into campaign donations during the 2002 election. From the start, though, the charges against DeLay seemed to push the legal envelope of what constitutes money laundering -- a crime more commonly associated with drug kingpins and thugs. To the delight of many in Travis County, DeLay was nevertheless sentenced to three years in prison. He has been free during his appeal.

Which brings us back to DeLay's wanna-be Grand Inquisitor, Judge Henson. In demanding her removal, DeLay's lawyer Brian Wice of Houston raised alarm bells over a Republican-bashing speech that Henson delivered in 2006 at the state's Democratic Party convention. Henson at the time was a candidate for the Austin-based appellate court -- and she knew how to get the attention of fellow Democrats. In her very first sentence after introducing herself, Henson called attention to an interesting fact about the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals. "It is the court of appeals that would hear the appeal of Tom DeLay if by chance he was convicted," she declared.

Henson also lambasted President George Bush's criticism of activist liberal judges, telling the audience "the only activist judges we have in Texas are those conservative right-wing zealots that control our courts today, and they are Republicans." What's more, she said, the GOP has "filled the courts, our appellate courts, with extremists, with people that are controlled by special interests, big insurance companies and big corporations."

Her remarks drew shouts of approval and applause. Her performance may be seen in the YouTube clip, below:



The Austin American-Statesman broke the story of Henson removal, with reporter Laylan Copelin noting in a Sunday article that the 3rd Court of Appeals had announced Henson's removal, without explanation, on its website on Friday. In the past, Henson had not commented on Wice's motion to remove her. She also "had refused to recuse herself from the case," the Statesman noted.

Obviously delighted with Henson's removal, Wice told the Statesman: "All we ever asked for was a level playing field. That wasn't going to happen as long as Justice Henson's DNA was on the case."

To date, DeLay's quest for an impartial panel of appellate judges has been a tortuous one, but not merely because of Judge Henson. As the Statesman explained:

(DeLay's) appeal was delayed when three of the four Republican justices on the 3rd Court recused themselves from hearing the case. They gave no reason for stepping aside. That left DeLay's fate in the hands of two Democrats and a Republican.

When Wice challenged Henson, the 3rd Court was down to Chief Justice Woodie Jones, a Democrat, and Justice Melissa Goodwin, a Republican, to decide whether Henson could hear the DeLay case.

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson added a third, temporary justice to hear the motion against Henson. He appointed San Antonio District Judge David Berchelmann Jr., a Republican and a former criminal appellate justice.

With Henson now off the case, Wice said Saturday he expects Jefferson will appoint a justice to hear oral arguments with Jones and Goodwin.

Arguments in the politically charged case are expected to go forward this fall.

All in all, Henson must be fuming over her removal in light of her apparent eagerness to sit in judgment of DeLay. Previously, one of her biggest claims to fame was having written an opinion for the 3rd Court of Appeals that upheld the right of two lesbians who'd gotten married in Massachusetts to get divorced in Texas - even though Texas prohibits same-sex marriage.

Editor's note: Also see an earlier American Thinker article, "Tom DeLay and moral equivalence in Travis County, Texas."

'Blobfest' in Phoenixville, PA, honors 1958 horror film seen as metaphor for 'creeping communism'

Originally published at American Thinker blog on July 13


By David Paulin

This evening around 7:30 p.m., things will be hopping in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In the normally sedate hamlet, hundreds of people will be screaming and running about -- women, children, and men. Many will be dressed in clean-cut 1950s-era garb.

But, no, this has nothing to do with guns and religion: what inside-the-Beltway liberal sophisticates believe obsesses hayseeds in places like Phoenixville (pop. 16,440) -- situated 28 miles northwest of Philadelphia at the junction of French Creek and Schuylkill River.

This evening, Phoenixville kicks off one of small-town America's wackiest summer festivals: Blobfest. It's been going on for 12 years now, and is inspired by the 1958 science fiction/horror film "The Blob," which was widely seen in cold-war America as a metaphor for creeping communism (in spite of the filmmaker's assertion that it was really a biblical parable). Filmed in and around Phoenixville, "The Blob" starred a yucky and murderous alien glob and a young Steve McQueen, in his debut movie role, playing a clean-cut teenager.

Given "The Blob's" fanciful plot, it's no wonder the low-budget film was seen, in 1958, as a warning against creeping communism -- or perhaps creeping socialism today?

Here's the plot: As Steve McQueen's character and his gal make out in the front seat of a hot-rod in lover's lane, a meteor-like object lands nearby. The couple investigates -- and soon discovers that an alien has dropped from the sky. The Blob creeps menacingly through town -- greedily consuming its hapless victims, incorporating them into its malevolent presence. In the process, it grows bigger and redder and more powerful. Sound familiar?

One of the movie's most memorable scenes takes place at Phoenixville's storied Colonial movie theater. That's where the Blob creeps into the projection room, consumes the projectionist, and then oozes into the theater -- sending hundreds of terrified patrons screaming out the front door.

This evening, residents will recreate the famous run-out scene, part of a stage show at the Colonial. In recent years, the theater has been getting an ongoing restoration led by civic-minded residents who are determined to reinvent Phoenixville, settled in 1732, once an important industrial center and now an increasingly popular bedroom community. The town -- or borough to be precise -- took its name from the Phoenix Iron Co..

After this evening's run-out reenactment, there will be a "retro party" with music from the 1950s. Screaming contests, sci-fi movies, and hot-rod car shows -- all have been among the staples of the 3-day festival over the years. For a full schedule, click here.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political writer, traveled through Pennsylvania in the early 1800s when researching his remarkable two-volume work, "Democracy in America." No doubt, he would feel right at home in Phoenixville or at a screening of "The Blob" -- for he'd encounter plentiful examples of upbeat Americans, imbued with the sorts of civic-engagement values that so impressed him in the new nation he admired.

How, incidentally, was the Blob finally defeated? Actually, it wasn't defeated -- just put to sleep. After Phoenixville's citizens and police mobilize, the Blob is frozen with blasts from hand-held CO2-loaded fire extinguishers. It's a remarkable example of civil defense, with air-raid sirens wailing. Even a kid with a cap gun takes some shots at the alien. Then, the Air Force transports the Blob to the North Pole.

The movie concludes with the words "The End" - which slowly turns in a question mark. To view the movie's introduction with theme music, click here.

Sorry, but readers who'd like to participate in this evening's run-out scene and retro ball will have to make reservation next year. Tickets are sold out. However, you can view last year's run-out scene below, set to "The Blob's" tongue-in-cheek music by Ralph Carmichael Burt Bacharach. Enjoy the fun.

Texas Republicans savor ouster of DA involved in wrongful conviction

By David Paulin

If you want to understand Texas Republicans, forget about the GOP primary race pitting Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst against Tea Party-backed former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz -- the contest spotlighted by the national media.

The most fascinating race in last week's primary was in fact the contest for district attorney in staunchly conservative Williamson County (pop. 422,679), part of the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area in Central Texas. It pitted long-serving incumbent John Bradley -- a smooth and patrician lawyer endorsed by Gov. Rick Perry -- against Jana Duty, a young county prosecutor whose experience included prosecuting juveniles and dealing with family violence cases.

But unlike the race pitting Cruz against Dewhurst for the seat of retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, this contest was pervaded with the sorts of intriguing subplots found in a John Grisham thriller: two brutal murders, a wrongful conviction, and what many voters regarded as the lame excuses given by Bradley -- a former prosecutor of the year -- for keeping an innocent man behind bars.

In short, the race revolved around the case of Michael Morton -- an innocent man wrongly convicted in Williamson County of murdering his wife, Christine, in 1986. Last year, Morton was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending nearly 25 years in prison. Even more shocking, the results of that DNA test enabled police to quickly arrest and charge another man with Christine Morton's murder as well as the subsequent murder in 1988 of another young Austin mother, Debra Baker. Both were beaten to death in their bedrooms.

The case of Michael Morton electrified Central Texas, highlighted the problems of wrongful convictions in Texas (sometimes by overzealous prosecutors), and cast a long shadow over Williamson County's district attorney's race.

Williamson County prides itself on being tough on crime -- an attitude once personified by Bradley, a tough-on-crime prosecutor whom Gov. Rick Perry appointed in 2001. To be sure, Bradley had nothing to do with Morton's conviction; Morton's lawyers blame that on previous district attorney Ken Anderson whom Gov. Perry appointed to be a district judge in 2002. Anderson is now being investigated by a state "court of inquiry" for allegedly withholding evidence, including an investigator's report that Morton's 3-year-old son, Eric, witnessed a strange man kill his mom after his dad went to work.

Bradley, however, spent six years vigorously fighting efforts by Morton's lawyers to do DNA testing on a blood-stained bandana found near the crime scene. Bradley insisted it was "irrelevant" to the case, but an appeals appeals-court judge finally ordered the testing. The results lead police to Mark Norwood, a dishwasher in nearby Bastrop who had lived in Austin in the mid-1980s. He was charged in the murders of Christine Morton and Debra Baker.

In Williamson County, residents were sickened that an innocent man had spent 25 years in prison -- and angered for Bradley's role in keeping him there. Duty, for her part, said Morton's wrongful conviction on circumstantial evidence convinced her to run for office -- and she built her campaign around the case.

"I was so ashamed that I was from Williamson County because of the shame that case brought on the county," she told the Texas Tribune in a video interview.

Duty faced a formidable opponent. Bradley remained popular despite his missteps in the Morton case. After Gov. Perry appointed him, he had run a contested race for office in 2002. He was re-elected in uncontested races in 2004 and 2008.

"What I was told, repeatedly, was we don't run against incumbents in this county. And I just thought that was kinda crazy because, you know, coming from San Antonio when I moved to Williamson County, I felt like I'd stepped back in time about 50 years with the attitudes here. And so, nobody else would do it, and true to my nature, I said, 'Well, if nobody else will do it, I will.'"

Pledging to return "honesty and integrity" to the district attorney's office, Duty contended that the district attorney's office still suffered from the same flawed procedures and policies that led to Morton's conviction, despite Bradley's regrets over what happened. "The goal seems to be more about your reputation and your statistics (in winning cases) than in seeking justice," she said.

Bradley's critics also faulted his chairmanship of the state Forensic Science Commission, saying he pushed members to find no misconduct in a controversial arson investigation that led to the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was convicted of murdering his three children, and he maintained his innocence until his death.

In debates between Bradley and Duty, the name "Michael Morton" repeatedly came up -- along with Bradley's lame excuses and apologies for blocking DNA testing. He hadn't wanted testing, he explained, because the bandana was found outside the immediate crime-scene area and, moreover, it might have been contaminated because of improper handling, even if it was connected to the crime.

To the chagrin of many observers, Bradley found his campaign signs sabotaged by somebody dubbed the "Bandana Bandit" -- a trickster who tied red bandanas to signs throughout Williamson County. Duty called her campaign a "grassroots effort which relied on individuals to spread the word to their friends and neighbors that, together, we could make a change."

Since winning his freedom, Michael Morton has largely eschewed the limelight. He remained silent about the district attorney's race -- even as his shadow hung over it. Duty, once the underdog, ended up getting myriad endorsements from civic groups and law-enforcement associations. A prominent Tea Party activist, Peggy Venable, observed that Duty as county attorney had kept Williamson County's "good-old boy" system accountable and would do the same as district attorney.

Residents personally affected by Morton's wrongful convictions also offered endorsements. One came from the jury foreman in Morton's trial, Mark Landrumand. Another was from Caitlin Baker, daughter of the young mother whom Mark Norwood is alleged to have murdered while Morton proclaimed his innocence from prison.

Last Tuesday, Duty won 55 percent of the vote to Bradley's 45 percent. She will face Democrat Ken Crain in November.

The Cruz vs. Dewhurst race is headed for a run-off on July 31. But long after that race is over, Texans will be talking about what just happened in Williamson County.


Originally published at The American Thinker

Why the Left Loves the Titanic Disaster

Originally published at The American Thinker and FrontPage Magazine

By David Paulin

The Titanic sank exactly 100 years ago today – a disaster exploited over the years by Hollywood and the ideological left. Their narrative bears little resemblance to what in fact happened in the early-morning darkness of April 15, 1912.

The Titanic storyline embraced by left-leaning filmmakers, writers, and university professors is instead right out of “Das Kapital.” To them, the disaster happened because heartless capitalists put profits ahead of human lives. They falsely claim that this is why the Titanic had too few lifeboats. Above all, leftist ideologues vilify the Titanic's rich first-class passengers. They falsely claim they got first crack at lifeboats -- and as a consequence, passengers in second class and steerage died in large numbers. In this interpretation, the Titanic's legacy was not about women-and-children first. It was about first-class passengers going first.

This false narrative was embraced by filmmaker James Cameron in his 1997 epic “Titanic” -- a view that many impressionable movie goers now take as fact.

The truth was quite the opposite; and in other cases the truth continues to be elusive, the facts ambiguous.

The Hollywood narrative makes for good entertainment. But it ignores the fact that many of the Titanic's first-class passengers -- the “1 percenters” of their day -- voluntarily went down abroad the ship so that women and children could get aboard lifeboats.

Consider first-class passenger Benjamin Guggenheim, 46, the scion of the Guggenheim fortune. After the Titanic hit an iceberg and ice-cold water flooded through a gash in its hull, he was overhead to say that he and other social elites had “dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

He passed along a message to a survivor, stating: "Tell my wife, if it should happen that my secretary and I both go down, tell her I played the game out straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward."

Among other rich and famous passengers who died: American John Jacob Astor IV; Irish businessman Thomas Andrews (who oversaw the ship's construction); and American owner of the Macy's department store, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida.

Of the Titanic's approximately 2,223 passengers and crew, about 1,517 perished – and 706 survived. The ship's 20 lifeboats could only carry one third of the people on board.

For Titanic aficionados with a leftist agenda, the numbers and percentages of passengers who got to the lifeboats -- their sexes and social classes -- can be crunched to prove just about whatever one wants.

"The reality of class, selfishness, and altruism in the disaster is more ambiguous," observes Edward Tenner in his article "Titanic and the 1%" published by the American Enterprise Institute. "As Titanic scholars acknowledge, the survival rate of passengers depended in part on proximity to the boat deck. So it is no wonder that nearly all the women and children in first class were saved. Conversely, complex passageways and language barriers further delayed evacuation of third-class passengers. In all classes, as the literary scholar Stephen Cox has underscored in an essay and an excellent book, moral choices cut across social lines.

"Individual responses aside, there are surprises in the statistics. For example, women in third class were significantly more likely to survive than first-class men: 46 versus 33 percent."

He adds: “The most surprising and least known statistic is that nearly twice as many third-class as second-class men survived – 16 percent versus 8 percent – despite the greater distance of the former from the boats. Were the second-class men the most dutiful and chivalrous of all, the true unsung heroes of the tragedy? Were the third-class men simply younger and more vigorous? Or were the second-class men the middle managers of the era, either fatally deferential to the upper crust or disfavored, consciously or not, by snobbish stewards? In any case, a larger proportion of the dogs on the Titanic survived, 4 out of 13, than second-class men.”

How come the chivalry of Titanic's richest passengers failed to get proper attention in the “Titanic” movie? Because today no one would believe the truth; so says Cuban-born author and historian Luis E. Aguilar in his essay “The Titanic and The Decline of Western Ethnic.”

He explains: “The modern public; immersed in the moral relativism that justifies all conducts, bombarded by attacks on the hypocrisy of Western culture, will grasp base behavior more readily than self-sacrifice, all the faster if it denigrates the rich and the powerful. As in every Mexican TV soap opera, Titanic’s rich behave like pigs. So much so that when Chinese president Jiang Zemin watched the movie, he smiled, “Gentlemen, behold the enemy.” For him and many Americans, the movie’s cloying, cowardly first class passengers represent that capitalistic ethic.”

Were the elites of the Titanic different from the elites today? It's a question Fareed Zakaria tackled in his book “The Future of Freedom – Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad.” In 1912, he contends, elites were more likely to exercise power with responsibility.

The Titanic's crew, to be sure, also were well-trained and thus facilitated the ship's evacuation as best they could. In contrast, there's the alleged misconduct of the captain and some crew members aboard Italian cruise ship Concordia, a name synonymous with cowardice and incompetence. But was that ship's entire evacuation a disgrace? There's another side to the Concordia story: Hundreds of passengers, for instance, are shown in photos waiting in an orderly manner in the ship's corridors; and there were reports the ship's staff and passengers rising to the occasion to help with the evacuation.

Consider as well the conduct of passengers aboard the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight, the US Airways jet that ditched in New York's Hudson River. Even as water flooded into the jet, the jet's evacuation was orderly -- a fact that played a significant role in all passengers and crew members surviving. Many of the jet's passengers were upper-middle-class business travelers. In a sense, it was a triumph of a well-trained crew and the shared middle-class values of the jet's passengers.

It took the Titanic two and one-half hours to sink. Order prevailed in contrast to what happened abroad the Lusitania during the 20 minutes it took to sink after being torpedoed.

"If you've got an event that lasts two-and-a half hours, social order will take over and everybody will behave in a social manner. If you're going down in under 17 minutes, basically it's instinctual," says David Savage, an economist and Queensland University in Australia, who has studied witness testimony from the Titanic.

And what about those lifeboats? In James Cameron's film, the ship was not fitted with an adequate number of lifeboats due to a concern for aesthetics: it was thought the deck would look cluttered with too many lifeboats.

In fact, the Titanic complied with existing maritime rules. And as a recent Op-Ed article by Chris Berg in the Wall Street Journal observed: It was thought at the time that lifeboats, rather than accommodating every passenger abroad the ship, would instead by used to transport passengers to ships coming to the rescue. "Had Titanic sunk more slowly, it would have been surrounded by the Frankfurt, the Mount Temple, the Birma, the Virginian, the Olympic, the Baltic and the first on the scene, the Carpathia," according to Berg's article "The Real Reason for the Tragedy of the Titanic." "The North Atlantic was a busy stretch of sea. Or, had the Californian (within visual range of the unfolding tragedy) responded to distress calls, the lifeboats would have been adequate for the purpose they were intended—to ferry passengers to safety."

Hollywood and leftist ideologues make lousy historians. Their retelling of the Titanic disaster offers abundant proof of that – and in a way their tall tales are part of the poisonous effect of leftist ideology in the postmodern world.

Dems to Apple: Hire the 'economically disadvantaged'


By David Paulin

Apple Inc. is getting a lesson in liberal social engineering in Austin, Texas. The hi-tech giant is considering a new facility there, but haggling over various tax breaks has taken a strange turn. Some Democratic officials are demanding that Apple -- in exchange for millions of dollars in tax breaks from Travis County -- hire residents who are "economically disadvantaged."

Austin is a liberal mecca and a high-tech one. But it's not the only place Apple might go. It's also debating whether to locate its new facility in Phoenix.

Officials in Texas have been working hard to woo Apple, with the state-run Texas Enterprise Fund reportedly proposing a $21 million incentive package. Travis County, for its part, "is considering giving Apple an 80 percent rebate on its tax bill for 10 years -- up to $7.4 million with a potential five-year extension -- if the company locates a facility here that could create up to 3,600 jobs," reports the Austin American-Statesman.

As for the city of Austin: it has pledged $8.6 million in breaks in property taxes, report local media outlets.

Getting Apple to Austin, however, could hinge on the demand from some Travis County Democrats that Apple's tax breaks be contingent on it hiring a certain percentage of economically disadvantaged residents. Local TV station YNN explained that Apple would have to "give preference to qualified applicants who are at or below the poverty line rather than those who may come across as the most attractive job candidates."

Democrat Sarah Eckhardt, a Travis County commissioner, complained to YNN that Apple will thus have to change its hiring practices. "They will-hire the low-hanging fruit, and the low-hanging fruit in our community don't need the hiring preference."

Austin has much to lose if Apple decides not to allow Democratic officials to dictate whom it must hire. As the Statesman reports: "Apple's project would be built in two phases in Northwest Austin, near its current customer support center, first with a $56.5 million, 200,000-square-foot office, then a $226 million office up to 800,000 square feet. The 3,600 jobs are expected to be filled over the course of 10 years, with county officials saying the average salary for those jobs would range from $54,000 to $73,500."

Those sounds like pretty nice hi-tech jobs -- not what you'd expect somebody at or below the poverty line to jump right into. Some Apple executives must be thinking about now that some of Austin's Democrats are a little over the top -- clueless about how a business operates. It would be no surprise to learn that Apple is taking a closer look at Phoenix.

Originally published at The American Thinker

Uproar over student newspaper's politically incorrect Trayvon Martin cartoon

By David Paulin

Tensions are simmering between liberal and conservative students at the University of Texas in Austin. At issue: A politically incorrect editorial cartoon in the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, lampooning the media's coverage of the Trayvon Martin case.

Student Stephanie Eisner, a sophomore, used to be a cartoonist at the newspaper, but she was fired for having drawn the cartoon. Her ouster followed protests from outraged liberal students, many of them blacks and Hispanics, who accused editorial board members of being racists for having allowed the cartoon. The Daily Texan subsequently pulled the cartoon, titled "The Media," from its website and it apologized profusely for publishing it.

Now, Eisner and conservative students are fighting back by circulating a petition: It demands that Eisner get her job back.

Her cartoon depicts a woman reading a children's book to a shocked little girl. The book's title: "Trevyon Martin and The Case of Yellow Journalism."

In a corner of the cartoon is an excerpt from the book: "AND THEN the BIG BAD WHITE man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent COLORED BOY." Big arrows point to the words "white" and "colored," which also are boldly underlined -- reflecting the media's breathless bad white/good black storyline.

Eisner, a scholarship student who grew up near Houston, explained: "I feel the news should be unbiased. And in the retelling of this particular event, I felt that that was not the case. My story compared this situation to yellow journalism in the past, where aspects of news stories were blown out of proportion with the intention of selling papers and enticing emotions."

In its apology, on the other hand, The Daily Texan noted that Eisner had been fired, and it explained that "the decision to run the cartoon showed a failure in judgment on the part of the editorial board. We have engaged in meaningful dialogue with many people who shared their concerns and outrage with us."

Thomas Lifson adds:

Yesterday, in The Story Unravels: New Questions about Trayvon Martin's Final Hour, Jeff Lipkes used the same fairy tale metaphor to describe the media's spinning of a narrative congenial to their political goal of racial grievance.

Originally published at The American Thinker

Obama's Ship of Fools at U.S. Embassy in Jamaica

The U.S. Embassy in Jamaica has honored a Stalin propagandist. Is it part of Obama's "reset" in America's foreign policy?


By David Paulin

In a ceremony befitting President Obama’s vision of a repentant postmodern America, a section of the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica has been named after a propagandist for Stalinist Russia and darling of the international left – the controversial African-American stage actor and social activist Paul Robeson.

The Embassy’s Information Resource Center which boasts housing the definitive collection of Americana in Jamaica is now named the “Paul Robeson Information Resource Center.” During the renaming ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica Pamela E. Bridgewater called Robeson a patriotic American.

Her remarks surely pleased Jamaica’s left-leaning government and its many anti-American elites. They regard Robeson as a kindred spirit — a famous ideologue of the old left who blazed a trail for them: stalwart members of today’s postmodern left. In recent years, they have pushed for slave reparations from Britain, promoted a chummy relationship with Cuba, and proven problematic partners in the war on Islamic-inspired terrorism.

Ultimately, the renaming appears to be part of President Obama’s reset of America’s foreign policy – and how a postmodern America ought to interact with the world and be perceived by it.

It’s not that Robeson’s resume lacks some stellar achievements, a fact that Bridgewater – an African-American whose father was a jazz trumpeter – surely had in mind. A famous stage actor and singer in the 1920s and 30s, Robeson was an all-American athlete and class valedictorian at Rutgers University. He subsequently earned a law degree from Columbia University, and though he briefly practiced law it’s said he ended his legal career because of limited opportunities for black lawyers, and an alleged incident in which a white legal secretary refused to take dictation from him.

Many regard Robeson as a 20th Century Renaissance man. Yet like many among the morally confused left during the 1940s and 50s, Robeson embraced communism. And while most black Americans stood by their country, Robeson stood against it by serving as a high-profile propagandist for Stalinist Russia — a dangerous existential enemy of America and the West. He was controversial and polarizing. In 1949, when Robeson declared that African-Americans should refuse to take up arms against Stalinist Russia, American boxer Sugar Ray Robinson was quoted as saying that although he’d never met Robeson, he would “punch him in the mouth” if they ever met.

Like Hollywood’s outspoken leftist celebrities, Robeson traveled the world to promote his odious political views. This included high-profile trips behind the Iron Curtain, to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, to demonstrate solidarity with Joseph Stalin and the communist cause. He spoke and sang at large rallies and gatherings – high-visibility events generating newspaper headlines and featured on Pathe’s newsreels.

Robeson fashioned himself as a man of the people. Yet when Hungarians revolted against their Soviet masters, he likened them to fascists. Referring to politically-motivated killings in Stalinist Russia, he observed: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”

When Stalin died in 1953, Robeson – winner of the Stalin Peace Prize a year earlier – praised him in a glowing eulogy as a great man. “One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin – the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future,” he wrote.

Many of Robeson’s fellow leftists were horrified at Stalin’s crimes in Russia and aggression abroad. They publicly condemned what was happening — even to the point of renouncing communism. But not Robeson. Appearing in 1956 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he refused to condemn Russia’s labor camps where millions perished – yet in the same breath he bitterly condemned his own country’s legacy of slavery. Robeson’s outrage was selective. He was enraged by every lynching that ever occurred in the Jim Crow South – yet he never raised his voice against millions of state-sponsored lynchings in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe. He regarded them as color-blind societies where social justice and egalitarianism prevailed.

Rewriting History

Robeson’s outspoken political views were repugnant, a fact even acknowledged today by some leftists. “Yes, Paul Robeson Was an Unrepentant Stalinist,” declared a Robeson-bashing article in the left-wing Daily Kos. Yet U.S. Ambassador Bridgewater nevertheless praised Robeson as a great American during the embassy’s renaming ceremony that coincided with the 36th anniversary of his death on January 23, 1976, at age 77. “Paul Robeson faced many challenges throughout his life, but he remained a sterling and shining example of patriotism, pride, elegance and humility,” said Bridgewater, 64, a 32-year veteran of the foreign service.

The renaming generated much positive publicity in Jamaica, a country with a love-hate relationship with the United States. Robeson’s granddaughter Susan Robeson, a filmmaker and activist, was among more than 150 visitors on hand, including a number of students. One newspaper headline declared: “Robeson’s Shining Example Lights Up U.S. Embassy.” Now, many young Jamaicans are learning for the first time about Robeson; and no doubt they’re learning a narrative that’s popular among Jamaica’s influential leftist political class: Paul Robeson was a black man who sought social justice for America’s oppressed blacks, and as a result he was blacklisted and persecuted by America’s racist and reactionary government. A former British colony, the island of 2.7 million is overwhelmingly of African descent.

The story behind the Robeson renaming is purely Obamaesque, and is perhaps an indication of what’s been quietly happening at U.S. Embassies around the globe. Early last year, in observance of Black History Month, the U.S. Embassy in Kingston launched an essay contest for high school students, asking them to propose a historical figure after which the the Embassy’s popular Information Resource Center should be named.

The winning essay by Kathy Smith, “The Soul of a Continent,” put forth Paul Robeson with whom Smith identified, in part, out of a sense of racial solidarity. “Robeson sung songs of equality and anti-hate, as if spurred by the soul of a continent,” Smith wrote – with her reference to “continent” being a reference to Africa. “His baritone voice told the truths of a man desperate to retain his thought-soul, his identity and African spirit.”

Smith, now a law student at the University of West Indies in Jamaica, is correct about one thing: Robeson’s rich baritone voice is indeed associated with a number of memorable American songs including “Old Man River,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “Let My People Go.” Yet Robeson also is famous for singing an English-language version of the Soviet National Anthem – a powerful and heartfelt rendition that may be heard on the YouTube clip reproduced here.

The U.S. Embassy in Jamaica failed to respond to an e-mail query regarding the renaming — and who approved it. But Ambassador Bridgewater certainly had a major role in it. So did whoever in the State Department gave her a green-light – an approval no doubt reflecting President Obama’s reset of U.S. foreign policy. In this reset, America no longer defines who it is to the world. That would be arrogant. Instead, the world is allowed to decide who America’s heroes ought to be.

How times change. During the Bush years – when I was a journalist based in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, the U.S. Embassy sought to counter the island’s anti-Americanism, which went into a chest-thumping rage over Bush’s post-9/11 war on terrorism and invasion of Iraq. Those efforts were described in an article of mine for theWashington Times, “Answering Anti-Americanism.” Now, Ambassador Bridgewater and her State Department facilitators appear to be throwing a bone to Jamaica’s left-leaning People’s National Party and its anti-American cheerleaders: people, to be sure, who don’t represent the views of most ordinary Jamaicans.

Anti-Americanism

Words and deeds matter. By honoring Paul Robeson, the U.S Embassy may be giving a boost to anti-Americanism and in turn Jamaica’s potential for Islamic-inspired terrorism by young men attracted to jihad’s anti-Western message. It’s a strange fact: Jamaica has only a tiny Muslim population; yet it has links to a unusually large number of Islamic-inspired terror outrages and plots. These include the London subway bombings; Washington’s beltway sniper shootings; and “shoe bomber” Richard Reed’s aborted attempt to blow up an American Airlines jet.

Could the anti-Western worldview propagated by Jamaica’s leftist elites be serving as an incubator for Islamic-inspired terrorism? That possibility was discussed in my personal blog in 2007 and, low and behold, the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica on February 25, 2010 issued a secret diplomatic cable: “Jamaica: Fertile Soil for Terrorism?” that was released by anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks.

Written by Deputy Chief of Mission Isiah Parnell, the cable attributed Jamaica’s potential for Islamic-inspired terrorism to the island’s large number of disaffected youths and unstable families with absent fathers. There was no mention of my main points; that Jamaica’s grievance-mongering elites may be providing a worldview from which Islamic-inspired terrorists could emerge in an overwhelming Christian culture. The cable was sent to the CIA, FBI, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security among others. Why it was classified as “secret” is perplexing. Perhaps it was to avoid embarrassing Jamaica’s government.

In 1950, the State Department declined to renew Robeson’s passport unless he signed an affidavit stating that he wasn’t a Communist Party member and was loyal citizen. Robeson refused. Rightly or wrongly, the State Department’s actions reflected the realities of the era – a dangerous cold war pitting Stalinist Russia against America and the West; a conflict in which Robeson sided with the enemy with considerable gusto. U.S. authorities decided they’d had enough of Robeson’s antics on the international stage during a perilous period of nuclear brinkmanship between America and the U.S.S.R..

Robeson sued to regain his passport and in 1956, in connection with that lawsuit, he appeared before the by-partisan House Committee of Un-American Activities. The confrontation featured some memorable exchanges between Robeson and committee members, including Robeson’s incredible assertion that the Soviet Union was a color-blind society (which was undoubtedly the case for high-profile useful idiots visiting there). Here are some excerpts from the hearing:

Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today.

Rep. GORDON H. SCHERER : Why do you not stay in Russia?

Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.

Rep. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.

Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here.

. . . .

Rep. FRANCIS E. WALTER: Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh.

Mr. ROBESON: We beat Lehigh.

Rep. WALTER: And we had a lot of trouble with you.

Mr. ROBESON: That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team.

Rep. WALTER: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?

Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up — and here is a study from Columbia University — for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in.

STAFF DIRECTOR RICHARD ARENS: While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin?

Mr. ROBESON: I do not know.

Mr. ARENS: Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow?

Mr. ROBESON: I cannot remember.

Mr. ARENS: Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin?

Mr. ROBESON: I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth.

Mr. ARENS: Did you praise Stalin?

Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember.

Mr. ARENS: Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?

Mr. ROBESON: Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.

Mr. ARENS: I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?

Rep. WALTER: You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that.

Mr. ROBESON: The slaves I see are still in a kind of semi-serfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that.

Mr. ARENS: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.

Mr. ROBESON: I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you.

Mr. ARENS: You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia.

Mr. ROBESON: I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem.

At one point, Robeson attacked the patriotism of the committee members, saying that “you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Nearly 20 years later, James Baldwin, the great African-American novelist and essayist, criticized Robeson’s moral blindness in a widely-cited essay, writing: “It is personally painful to me to realize that so gifted a man as Robeson should have been tricked by his own bitterness and by a total inability to understand the nature of political power in general, or Communist aims in particular, into missing the point of his own critique, which is worth a great deal of thought: that there are a great many ways of being un-American, some of them nearly as old as the country itself…”

This isn’t the first time Robeson’s fans succeeded in their efforts to rehabilitate him. Eight years ago, the United States Postal Service issued a Paul Robeson commemorative postage stamp that was part of its Black Heritage Series of stamps. Interestingly, Robeson was first honored with a postage stamp issued in 1982 by the German Democratic Republic (i.e. communist East Germany).

Undeniably, Robeson was a remarkable talent and intellect – yet he was ultimately a tragic figure because of the political views he chose to promote. In the end, his achievements must then be considered against the morally flawed universe that he inhabited.

Robeson’s name obviously has no place on the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica, a place that is supposed to represent America’s values and interests. Ambassador Bridgewater and whoever in Washington gave her a green-light ought to be ashamed of themselves. But don’t count on President Obama or Hillary Clinton ordering any inquiries into this matter. Undoubtedly, they can be included among the ship of fools at the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica and at embassies around the world that are putting forth an Obamaesque view of America’s place in the world.

Originally published at The American Thinker and FrontPage Magazine.