Race is not real, but racism is alive and well

From The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea by Robert Wald Sussman, from an long excerpt published in Newsweek:

For the past 500 years, people have been taught how to interpret and understand racism. We have been told that there are very specific things that relate to race, such as intelligence, sexual behavior, birth rates, infant care, work ethics and abilities, personal restraint, lifespan, law-abidingness, aggression, altruism, economic and business practices, family cohesion, and even brain size. We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even if you are not a racist, your life is affected by this ordered structure. We are born into a racist society. What many people do not realize is that this racial structure is not based on reality. Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race. There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human “racial” characteristics.

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Libertarianism as Not-Politics

David Masciotra of Alternet explains why Libertarianism is not actually a political movement, and why it is actually a "childish sham".

Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers, exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards of a selfish society: “I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because they’ve politicized the protest of children who scream through tears, “You’re not the boss of me.” The rejection of all rules and regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent. It is infantile naïveté. As much as libertarians boast of having a “political movement” gaining in popularity, “you’re not the boss of me” does not even rise to the most elementary level of politics. Aristotle translated “politics” into meaning “the things concerning the polis,” referring to the city, or in other words, the community. Confucius connected politics with ethics, and his ethics are attached to communal service with a moral system based on empathy. A political program, like that from the right, that eliminates empathy, and denies the collective, is anti-political.

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Why is the AR-15 the weapon of choice for those who want to kill many students?

Why is the AR-15 the weapon of choice for the deadliest murderers? USA Today has some answers:

“They’re accurate and they can basically shoot as quickly as you can pull the trigger,” according to a campaign statement. "Along those lines, they’re very customizable — most average people can figure out how to install accessories like forward trigger grips that let you hold the gun at waist height and spray bullets while stabilizing the gun, laser sights, and you can add high-capacity magazines.”
Image via GunsHolstersAndGear.com

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Gun regulations endorsed by the Founders

From a website called "The Conversation":

I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations.Consider these five categories of gun laws that the Founders endorsed.
#1: Registration (required) #2: Public carry (generally prohibited) #3: Stand-your-ground laws (not allowed unless retreat not possible) #4: Safe storage laws (sometimes required) #5: Loyalty oaths ("The right to bear arms was conditional on swearing a loyalty oath to the government. Individuals who refused to swear such an oath were disarmed.")

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Spanish Nun Questions Mary’s Virginity

What is the price one pays when one suggests that sex is a necessary precursor to having a baby? Death threats! What follows is apparently deserving of the death sentence, according to the NYPost:

“I think Mary was in love with Joseph and that they were a normal couple – and having sex is a normal thing,” Caram told the Chester in Love Show, according to the Guardian. “It’s hard to believe and hard to take in. We’ve ended up with the rules we’ve invented without getting to the true message.”
According to the article, these sort of free-thinking questions also require an apology or, at least, that is what Sister Caram felt compelled to do. The take-away: It is apparently the safer practice to proclaim that Mary got pregnant without having sex.

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