CHRISTIAN MCCAFFREY: THE TRIUMPH OF GENES OVER STEREOTYPES

               Those who follow college or pro football know that a white running back is about as rare as a black swan.  Even though whites constitute about 77% of the total U.S. population, they constitute but a miniscule portion of running backs in both the major college ranks and the NFL. 

                While white running backs are extremely rare in the major college ranks, they are virtually non-existent in the NFL.  Indeed, there does not appear to be a single white starter at the running back position among the 32 teams in the NFL today.  Of the two white backs whose names might be recognized by NFL fans – Toby Gerhart of Jacksonville and Danny Woodhead of San Diego – Gerhart is not a starter, and Woodhead is more of a situational receiver rather than a regular running back. 

                The situation is not much different in the college ranks.  Virtually all running backs in the major conferences of NCAA football, as in the NFL, are blacks.  Over the past 30 years or so (until this year, of which more below), only two white running backs have been recognized as genuine All-Americans, the aforementioned Toby Gerhart of Stanford in 2009 and Luke Staley of Brigham Young back in 2001.  And neither of them established himself as a starting tailback in the NFL, although Gerhart has seen spot duty as a starter from time to time.

                Given the great desirability and prestige of this position at both the college and professional level, this near-total absence of whites seems quite remarkable.  In most desirable and lucrative fields of endeavor, the absence of members of a particular race is considered a matter of serious concern, or at least curiosity.  And given America's liberal-dominated political and cultural environment, such concern usually rises to the level of outrage, sensational publicity, and even government legal action if blacks are the excluded or absent category.  As but one example of many, the paucity of black head coaches in the NFL resulted in adoption of the so-called "Rooney Rule," whereby NFL teams are required to interview minority candidates whenever there is a coaching or other senior football operations vacancy.

                Yet the extreme paucity of whites among major college and NFL running backs (not to mention defensive cornerbacks, where whites are even rarer) – a paucity that has persisted for at least three decades – goes virtually unnoticed and unremarked.  It is as though sports journalists and commentators – not to mention fans -- have assimilated an unwritten rule that the subject is off-limits for discussion.

                                                                     

                          Christian McCaffrey:  Smashing records and stereotypes 

                In complete contrast, when there is the slightest hint of so-called "under-representation" of blacks in any area of the sports world, the liberal nerds who dominate sports journalism can be relied upon to throw hissy fits of indignation and to hurl feckless accusations of discrimination.  As but one example, when the percentage of blacks in major league baseball declined from a level well above the black share of the talent pool (which is an international pool, including Latin American and East Asian ballplayers) to a lower level more commensurate with that share, cries of wounded indignation and dismay reverberated through the sports media.  The fact that the reduction in the black percentage of MLB players was mainly a function of young black athletes' preference for football and basketball, as well as the expanding influx of Latino players (many of whom are themselves part black), was lost on the promoters of the entirely bogus black ballplayer shortage.  See SR's exposition of this canard, The Contrived Black Ballplayer Shortage (Apr. 17, 2013), at http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-contrived-black-ballplayer-shortage.html.

                Perhaps, however, the complete indifference to the absence of white running backs in football is simply based on widespread acceptance of the premise that white men are simply not fast enough to excel at this athletically demanding position. 

                At the highest levels of college football, and especially in the NFL, extreme speed is a mandatory qualification for the running back position.  In that regard, anyone familiar with the racial composition of the elite sprinting events at both the national and international level knows that blacks almost totally dominate these events.  Whether because of innate physiological differences, or some other inexplicable factor that is not readily apparent, neither whites nor any other racial or ethnic group seems to produce young men with the extreme running speed that is possessed by the black males who dominate speed-based athletic specialties.  As a result of this evident disparity, college and pro football coaches almost exclusively recruit blacks, and almost never recruit whites, for the running back position.

                                                                 

                                                                                    (Sports Illustrated, 1956) 

      McCaffrey's amazing grandfather, David Sime, with archrival Bobby Morrow                                           

                 Which brings us to Christian McCaffrey of Stanford University. 

                Almost out of nowhere, the sophomore McCaffrey emerged this year as one of the two or three top running backs in all college football.  He gained over 1,800 yards rushing, a total exceeded only by Derrick Henry of Alabama, who barely edged out McCaffrey for the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the outstanding player in college football.  But while Henry slightly surpassed McCaffrey as a runner from scrimmage, McCaffrey was in a class by himself as the top all-around back in college football.  He amassed an incredible 3,496 "all-purpose" yards, which include pass receiving and returning punts and kickoffs as well as total rushing yards.  This astonishing  total broke the all-time records previously held by the legendary Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State, considered by many as the greatest running back of all time.  Breaking Sanders' record was, needless to say, an enormous accomplishment.

                What separates McCaffrey from the very few distinguished white running backs of recent decades, like Gerhart and Luke Staley, is that they were primarily "power backs" with only modest speed, while McCaffrey is a genuine "speed-burner."  He has been laser-time at 4.50 sec. in the 40-yard dash, which would have placed him near the top end of the elite running backs who participated in the 2015 NFL Combine.  Yet McCaffrey is no light-weight.  He carries a solid, muscular 201 lbs. on his 6-foot even frame.  His great speed has not only enabled him to excel as a running back, but as a receiver, punt returner, and kick-off returner as well, all of which also demand great speed.

                Despite his current prominence, the young McCaffrey did not escape the prejudicial stereotypes that often attach to white athletes when they seek to qualify for positions assumed to be the exclusive preserve of black speedsters.  When he showed up for youth football camps or high school all-star combines, for example, observers would curtly dismiss his prospects as a running back, or assume he was a kicker or that he played some other position more "suitable" for white guys. 

                But fortunately, McCaffrey was recruited and coached by David Shaw, the present head football coach at Stanford, who was a teammate of Christian's father Ed as a Stanford undergraduate.  Shaw is black, and utterly lacking in the defensive assumptions about the limitations of white players that might affect a typically "by-the-book" and risk-averse white coach.  Not only did Coach Shaw quickly recognize Christian McCaffrey's superior ability as a running back, he has started him ahead of a collection of excellent black running backs – one of whom is actually Barry Sanders' son – on the basis of no-nonsense competition.  Shaw did not reach his current status as one of college football's best coaches by letting stereotypes of any kind get in the way of ruthless talent evaluation.

                The question naturally arises, then, what enabled McCaffrey to reach this elite level of speed that is seemingly so rare among white athletes.  The answer is:  the best gene combination imaginable, coupled with extensive training and focused ambition.

                McCaffrey's father is Ed McCaffrey, who was an extremely fast elite wide receiver at Stanford.  More impressively, he became a first-rank all-pro receiver in the NFL, where he also earned a remarkable three Super Bowl rings.  Ed's wife and Christian McCaffrey's mother is Lisa Sime, who was an outstanding soccer player at Stanford.  More importantly, Lisa is the daughter of the remarkable Dr. David Sime, who (as explained below) is probably the most critical genetic source of young McCaffrey's speed.  Lisa has jokingly remarked that she and Ed married "so we could breed fast white guys."  See http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/stanford-cardinal-christian-mccaffrey-rb-father-ed-david-shaw-mandel-101415.

                                                                   

                                                                                   (courtesy Lisa McCaffrey)

                       Ed and Lisa McCaffrey with their Stanford Superstar Son

                To round out this remarkable chain of athletic genetic connections, McCaffrey's uncle (Ed's brother) is Billy McCaffrey, who was the very excellent shooting guard on Duke's great 1991 NCAA basketball championship team headed by Christian Laettner. 

                It is small wonder, therefore, that Christian McCaffrey has turned out to be a remarkably successful athlete.  But his inheritance of the great speed that distinguishes him from other white running backs can be confidently ascribed to his maternal grandfather, the illustrious and highly interesting David Sime (pronounced "sim").

                Born in Paterson, NJ, Sime was first recruited by Duke University in 1954 as a star baseball player.  But Sime was equally outstanding in football, where he played split end, and was later drafted by the Detroit Lions (but he never pursued pro football).  But when casually timed for the 100-yard dash on an unfinished grass surface, Sime ran an astonishing  9.8 seconds.  The rest was track history.  He went on to set world records in the 100- and 220-yard sprints, as well as in the 220-yard low hurdles.  In total, he broke world track records seven times, and in the mid-1950's this red-headed flash was considered by many to be the fastest human in the world.

                Regrettably, a series of bad luck episodes prevented Sime from winning the Olympic gold medals that his enormous  abilities warranted.  In the build-up to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Sime engaged in a monumental rivalry with Bobby Morrow of Abilene Christian University for world and U.S. sprinting supremacy.  In one of their epic duels, Sime edged out Morrow with a 9.4 time (then 1/10 of a second off the world record) in the 100-yard dash at the 1956 Drake Relays.  But Sime missed out on the Olympics that year due to an untimely groin injury, while his rival Morrow went on to win three gold medals and to be named Sports Illusrated's Sportsman of the Year.

                But Sime continued his track career with an eye toward the 1960 Olympics in Rome.  He was the leading sprinter on the U.S. team, but again he faced a formidable rival – in this case, the super-starting West German, Armin Hary.  Sime and Hary finished in a virtual dead-heat in the 100-meter dash, but Hary was awarded first place in a controversial photo-finish decision.  Sime then rallied to salvage a first place for the U.S. with a come-from-behind anchor leg in the 400-meter relay – only to again suffer disappointment when the U.S. was disqualified for a technical baton-exchange violation. 

                Notwithstanding his Olympic disappointments, however, Sime's achievements established him as one of the great sprinters of his era.  In recognition of this, as well as his enormous athletic versatility, he was named Duke's Outstanding Athlete of the 20^th Century, beating out such Durham legends as Christian Laettner and Dick Groat. 

                Capping it all off, Sime showed that his values and priorities were of the same high quality as his athletic achievements.  He passed up opportunities in professional sports to earn a medical degree at Duke Medical School, and went on to a successful career as an ophthalmologist.  His admiring grandson Christian only half-jokingly calls him the real "most interesting man in the world" (it would take another essay to get into such fascinating  Simes episodes as his role assisting the CIA in attempting to secure the defection of a prominent  Russian Olympic long-jumper).

                                                            * * *

                Considering this distinguished athletic lineage, it is not so surprising after all that Christian McCaffrey has reached the highest levels of achievement as a swift running back -- notwithstanding the stereotypical assumptions about the speed limitations of white athletes.  McCaffrey's case strongly indicates that an athlete's individual genetic heredity, rather than the generalized traits or limitations of his or her race, can be more pertinent in determining the capacities and propensities that lead to elite athletic performance.  Unlike the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, therefore, the elite white running back and the white sprinter are not doomed to extinction after all – as long as the likes of Ed McCaffrey and Lisa Sime meet, get married, and get busy.

FURY, NOT FEAR: THE SIMPLE SANITY OF LIMITS ON MUSLIM IMMIGRATION

               SR has been silent for several months for a disturbing reason:  Each time he is ready to write on the most recent hideous outrage in our dismal era, an even more ghastly development occurs that supersedes the previous, and so on almost ad infinitum. 

                But the depths of ignorance, hypocrisy, and cowardice to which the media and political left have descended in their rabid response to Donald Trump's proposal for a temporary halt in Muslim immigration summons SR from the sidelines to join this critical debate.

                In response to overwhelming evidence that the proliferation of Sharia-compliant Muslim aliens presents an imminent threat to public safety, Trump proposes a temporary ban on Muslim immigration until the crisis can be thoroughly evaluated and understood.  Good.

                Unfettered Muslim infiltration of Europe has caused an epidemic of violence and barbarism, corrupted European civilization and culture, and exploited EU public services to the breaking point.   In the face of this disgusting catastrophe, basic considerations of self-preservation demand that America take necessary measures to avoid similar disaster.  Trump's proposal is a straightforward effort to do just that.  SR staunchly defends Trump's proposal, moreover, even though we recognize that Trump is not a genuine conservative and we do not presently support him for the GOP nomination.

                                                         

                               Where is Charles Martel when we need him?

                Given the subversive fallacy of the attacks on Mr. Trump's proposal, it is important to tabulate the most important points that refute the orgy of falsehood, fraud, and treachery that is spreading  through  the corrupt American media.  Let's call them the Seven Pillars of Opposition to Islamist Immigration.  Here they are. 

                1.  Limits on Immigration by Designated Groups is Normal American Practice and is expressly authorized by law.  The hysterical opponents of Trump's proposal declare that it is a blatant violation of American traditions, and an affront to "who we are as a nation."  This is utter nonsense.  Recent and past American history is rife with sweeping laws, orders, and Presidential actions not only limiting immigration by designated groups but even placing them in detention camps -- as the revered Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt did with the Japanese in World War II.  Iranians, Syrians, Chinese, Japanese, and many others have all been targeted by strict bars on their entry to the U.S.  That is the American tradition and the American way.  More recently, the ultra-liberal Jimmy Carter ordered the near total exclusion of immigration from Iran – and he was plainly targeting Iranian Shiite Muslims, not Christians – as a response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  As Carter stated in 1979: 

   

             "[T]he Secretary of Treasury and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly." 

                Such alien exclusion orders are expressly authorized by federal law (11 U.S.C. 1182(f), which states:

                "Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

                Even the invertebrate Obama has ordered the exclusion of Syrians and Iranians who have committed "human rights abuses" no worse than the actions that all Muslims are obligated to take by the Koran.  When the Nation's security and welfare are threatened by identifiable foreign groups, our traditions and principles dictate that we exclude them, not welcome them.  That is exactly what Trump is proposing.

                2.  Trump's proposal is constitutional and lawful.  Having practiced constitutional law as Senior Counsel at the highest level of the Justice Department – the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) --  SR is well qualified to judge the constitutionality of Trump's exclusion proposal.  Various network legal buffoons – political hacks who would not survive the first round of interviews for a position at OLC -- smugly and instantly declared that the proposal was unconstitutional.  They are wrong.  As long as the exclusion measure includes the necessary exceptions that Trump has since clarified that he would adopt – such as an exception for existing Muslim-American citizens returning to the U.S. – it is clearly constitutional under the long-recognized "plenary principle" governing immigration by foreign persons.  Under that  standard, aliens seeking admission to the United States may be excluded for any reason, and they may not invoke the constitutional provisions (such as the equal protection clause or the First Amendment) that apply to U.S. citizens to support their efforts to gain entry.  Foreign persons simply have no constitutional right to enter the U.S., and the Constitution may not be invoked by them to force their way in.  Indeed, the above-quoted statute authorizes the President to order the exclusion of any alien categories whose entry would be inimical to U.S. interests.  That is exactly what Trump's proposal would do – exercising statutory authority given to the President by Congress to protect the nation from harmful immigration.

                3.  Muslim Immigration is not beneficial to the U.S.; it is demonstrably harmful.   Just as in the case of the illegal immigration invasion from Mexico, unhinged Democrats, "moderate" Republicans, and their media allies reflexively subordinate the interests of American citizens to the interests of undesirable and hostile foreign elements in connection with the Muslim immigration issue.  This is irrational and treacherous. The U.S. already has more Muslim immigrants than it needs, and some cities and towns (like Dearborn, Michigan) are so overrun by Muslims that their American character and cultures have been supplanted by an oppressive Islamic weltanschauung.  Indeed, in Hamtramck, Michigan, Muslims have seized a majority in the city council.  Sharia enclaves cannot be far behind (they have already been established in parts of Europe).  The U.S. simply does not need any more undereducated, non-English- speaking, combative Muslim refugees who are hostile to American culture and tradition, and who are largely incapable of supporting themselves and their families.  They place an oppressive burden on American citizens, with virtually no offsetting benefit.   And this entirely apart from the enormous risk of terrorist attacks and other violence posed by Muslim immigration.

                4.  Muslim Immigration is inherently low quality immigration.  Attempts to justify the entry of hordes of undesirables by highlighting the negligible percentage of Muslims aliens (e.g., physicians) who might bring a useful credential are fraudulent for the obvious reason that it is the net impact that matters.  The overwhelming majority of Muslim immigrants will cause a massive drain of U.S. resources – as Europe is now experiencing to its great cost -- with no countervailing benefit.  Hordes of Muslims have entered as self-selecting refugees, and Obama is poised to open the gates to legions more.  Others enter solely by virtue of their relationship to other Muslims who are already here.  Unlike traditional immigration based on preference qualifications, these refugees and dependents are not required to meet any standard for job skill and self-sufficiency as any sane immigration system would demand.  Moreover, the certainty that a significant number of Muslim immigrants will be Sharia-compliant fanatics who are prepared either to support, or actually commit, hostile actions against Americans overwhelmingly outweighs the pathetic attempts to justify Muslim immigration with maudlin and misleading pictures of hapless children and weeping widows.

                5.  Follow Japan, not Europe.  At least one other industrialized and highly civilized democracy virtually excludes all Muslims from its borders, let alone its accepted society.  An article in the Jewish Press blog, see http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-land-without-muslims/2013/05/19/, explains how Japan is able to avoid Islamic terrorism as a "land without muslims."  Mordechai Kedar, The Land Without Muslims, Jewish Press.com (May 19, 2013).  Although Japan does not expressly ban the immigration of Muslims, its laws, regulations, social norms, traditions, and national policies render it negligible as a practical matter.  Simply put, Muslims are not welcome in Japan.  With a total population of some 130 million people, Japan has only about 30,000 to 70,000 total Muslims at the upside; the actual number is probably much lower.   And when one of the rare Muslims in Japan commits a crime, the response is ruthless and unrestrained by political correctness:  "Police stationed agents at mosques, followed individuals to their homes, obtained their names and addresses from alien registration records, and compiled databases profiling hundreds of individuals,” according to an article in the Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus.  See also "Japan Close to Muslim Immigration," http://newsl.org/2015/06/japan-closed-to-muslim-immigration-shields-culture-from-islamic-influence/.

                In brief, Mr. Trump is proposing that the United States temporarily adopt a restrictive policy that has been successfully applied in practice by the super-civilized Japanese – a country from whom the U.S. could learn much indeed with respect to maintaining law-and-order and preventing terrorism.  Japan does not have recurrent terrorist attacks; Japanese sidewalks are not blighted by oppressed women in burqas that look like walking black tents; Japanese cities are not darkened and degraded by the shadow of looming mosques and minarets; and Japan will not subordinate the interests of its own citizens and its own culture to some perverse and twisted notion that a nation is obliged to welcome and subsidize whole classes of alien immigrants whose beliefs and practices are incompatible with those of the host country.

                6.  It's all about the Koran and Sharia.  The delusional Quislings who defend increased Islamic immigration by claiming that "the overwhelming majority of Muslims" are peace-loving, civic Americans perversely ignore the most unambiguous and readily available evidence on this question.  The plain text of the Koran and the unambiguously barbaric doctrines of Sharia are the core sources of doctrine for Muslims.  They advocate violence against non-Muslims; extreme and oppressive misogyny; unrelenting intolerance; and a system of "cruel and unusual punishments" that make our penal system look like the kind of discipline inflicted by Mary Poppins or Mr. Rogers.  The mandatory Muslim doctrines of the Koran and Sharia are simply incompatible with a civilized, constitutional, democratic republic.  Admitting additional hordes of persons who, by definition, adhere to those destructive doctrines is simply inimical to the interests of the United States and its people.

                7.  It's Fury, not Fear.  The most insulting and fraudulent  argument against restricting or barring Muslim immigration is the bogus canard that Americans "should not give in to fear."  The underlying implication of this canard is that opposition to unfettered immigration by hordes of undesirable Muslim aliens is driven by an irrational and un-American fear of terrorism and violence --which, of course, is not shared by those brave leftists and liberals who support open-ended immigration. 

                Like so many mantras of the left and their media mouthpieces, this is the absolute opposite of the truth. 

               SR can personally attest that the opposition to expansive Muslim immigration he shares with many millions of Americans is based on fury, not fear.  We are furious that hordes of aliens hostile to our constitution, our civilization, and our way of life are not only being welcomed into our country, but subsidized, indulged, and accommodated as though they were deserving patriots rather than parasitic intruders.  And we are paying for it!

               On the other hand, the angry citizens of the right are the least fearful element of the population, precisely because they are well-armed, know how to use their firearms, and united by a firm resistance to any threat to the safety and security of their families.

                In fact, it is the advocates of appeasement and accommodation of the Muslim invasion who are dominated by fear and cowardice.  They are so afraid of offending or angering the Islamic movement and its transnational supporters that they abandon their most fundamental principles – like equal rights for women and homosexuals – to embrace and defend a religion that is unambiguously hostile to those principles.  Just as the poltroons of the left are afraid even to acknowledge the existence of widespread anti-white criminal violence by rampant black felons, let alone to expose and resist it, they perversely ignore Islam's hostility to the principles they purport to cherish so they will not have to muster the courage to engage it.

                                                                                                * * * *

                As these Seven Pillars demonstrate, the debate over limiting Muslim immigration to the United States should not be confused by whether one supports the candidacy of Donald Trump -- although he deserves much credit for his courage in forcefully placing the issue front and center.  Rather, straightforward considerations of national, cultural, societal, and moral self-interest demonstrate the simple sanity of halting this injurious invasion until a suitably restrictive standard can be identified and enacted.

               

PAIRED FIGURE SKATING, HYDROGEN ATOMS, AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

     The beautiful sport of figure skating is mainly known for its solo or individual competition, especially the breathtaking athletic artistry of such celebrated heroines as Korea's Yuna Kim, America's Peggy Fleming, and Japan's Mao Asada.  But real connoisseurs of the sport understand that the pairs figure skating competition is not only equally spectacular and athletic, but includes an element of serious physical risk that requires a remarkable degree of raw courage -- especially for the female partner.  Indeed, one of the standard elements in elite pairs competition is ominously known as the "death spiral."

     The death spirals, as well as many of the soaring lifts and gasp-inducing throws, place the female partner within a hair's breath of high-speed ice crashes that can result in concussions, broken bones, or worse.  The lithe, bantam-weight female skaters are inescapably dependent upon the strength, focus, and stability of their male partners in executing these harrowing maneuvers.

    At the highest level of the sport, it is the unique, complementary interplay between the muscular male lifter and the lissome female floater that gives paired figure skating its peculiar appeal and compelling aesthetic.

                                                

The chemistry of Tai and Randy would not be the same if it were Randy and Roger                                                              [Tony Duffy/Getty Images]

    As one might expect, International Skating Union (ISU) regulations specify that pair teams must consist of "one lady and one man" (does this sound vaguely familiar?).  The sport places special emphasis on the harmonious and unified movement of the mandatory male and female partners. "Two skating as one" is the hallmark of the greatest ice skating pairs.

    In many ways, the best paired figure skating bears a striking similarity to a good marriage.  It demands cooperation, harmony, and the subordination of selfish impulses.  Unsurprisingly, some of the most illustrious pair teams have been married couples, including the incomparable Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, who twice won Olympic gold medals and are regarded by many as the greatest skating pair ever.  

     Splashing Rocks would normally be reluctant to drag something so exquisitely beautiful as paired figure skating into a discussion of something that is as awkward and ungainly (especially in its putative "consummation") as the oxymoronic concept of same-sex marriage (SSM). But the collective mentality in today's America has increasingly come to accept the notion that a "marriage" between two males or two females is not only possible, and not only acceptable, but even somehow desirable from a social standpoint. 

      Because SR stands firmly among those who staunchly reject this ill-conceived tendency, we recognize the importance of demonstrating, and not merely declaring, the fundamentally unnatural character of SSM.   In that regard, the essential nature and qualities of paired figure skating offer a compelling analogy to the reasons why the notion of same-sex marriage -- however many politicians, judges, and utterly confused people succumb to a contrary canard -- is a logical impossibility.

      The arguments that have succeeded in imposing SSM upon American society generally focus upon the contrived misnomer of "marriage equality."  The essential point behind this glib slogan is that it is somehow discriminatory, and a form of "unequal" treatment, to limit the institution of marriage to unions between a man and a woman.  

     Indeed, during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the disastrous SSM case of  Obergefell v. Hodges, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that the case could possibly be disposed of as a simple matter of sex discrimination.  As Roberts stated during the oral argument: “I mean, if Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”

       In the very same vein, then, one might then ask:  If a skilled male skater named Johnny wanted to compete in the Olympic paired figure skating event with a male partner (say, Alexander), but the ISU refused the request based on the male/female requirement, why isn't that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?  If a lass named Irina is eligible to skate as a pair with this same Alexander, why can't Johnny?  They are both talented skaters; the only difference is their sex.
                                               
       The answer of course is the same that logically applies in the case of limiting marriage to a male and a female, and for the same reasons.  The very essence of both marriage and paired figure skating inheres in the complementary relationship and interplay between "one lady and one man."  If all-male and all-female pairs began participating, pairs figure skating would simply no longer be the same sport.  It would be something fundamentally different.

                                              

   The interplay between Gordeeva and Grinkov would not work with two males

      Excluding same-sex couples from both of these institutions is simply necessary to maintain their essential integrity.  It is no more "discriminatory" than the unwavering requirement of atomic physics that a hydrogen atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus.  In marriage, paired figure skating, and the physics of hydrogen atoms, or even car batteries, complementary polarity is the essence of the thing.  Remove it, and the thing no longer works.

        The ISU regulations tersely but firmly define pairs skating as the complementary interplay between "one lady and one man." Allowing two males to compete as a pair would alter the very nature and essence of the competition.  The yin-yang aesthetic of the event would be obliterated. 

     It is unclear what the interplay between two males skating as a pair would be, but one thing is certain:  it would be jarringly different from the graceful interaction between Gordeeva and Grinkov or between Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner.  It is painfully awkward to contemplate two male skaters engaging in some of the more intimate cradling and embraces, not to mention the ballet-like lifts, that are commonplace with male-female pairs. It is not difficult to predict the appalled and uncomfortable reaction that this "new look" would induce in most skating spectators.

      Whatever paired figure skating with two male partners might hypothetically entail, it would be fundamentally and glaringly different from the graceful, complementary aesthetics of the male/female pairs event that its fans know and love.  And a moment's honest reflection on these considerations leads to the inescapable conclusion that, whatever a SSM might be called by society, it is simply not the same thing as the male-female pairings that constitute genuine marriage.



       

AMERICAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION II -- WHERE IS THE WHITE ANGER?

                It has come to this.

                A white Democrat presidential candidate, the former Governor of Maryland, decides that he must apologize for expressing the self-evident truth that "white lives matter." 

                The groveling Quisling in question is Martin O'Malley, and he was actually booed off the stage by afro-racist democrats after he dared insinuate that the lives of whites, Hispanics, and Asians might be just as important as the lives of blacks.  Specifically, after O’Malley said, “Every life matters. And that is why this issue is so important.  Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter,” the angry rabble booed and shouted at him.

                Rather than standing up to this howling mob, O'Malley quickly capitulated to them in an act of shameful racial treachery.  He even went so far as to expressly recant, cravenly conceding that his indisputable statement – i.e., that "white lives matter" – was a "mistake."

                Think for a moment about the incredible level of abject cowardice and self-hatred to which such a man has descended.  In order to appease the demands of a malicious crowd of race-baiting radicals, this sorry excuse for an American is willing to recant his statement that "white lives" and "all lives" matter -- therefore implying that they do not matter, and that only black lives matter.

                Someone should remind this deranged poltroon that his wife and daughters (if he has any) are living "white lives," and that his cowardly kowtow to the frenzied mobs of the so-called Netroots Nation demonstrates his willingness to subordinate the members of his own family to the assertions of black primacy that the shameless Democratic Party has elevated to the status of ideological dogma.

                One's first impulse is to exclaim, "That's insane."  But the sad reality is that O'Malley, and millions of flustered whites like him, are not really insane.  It is rather that their values, morals, and notions of personal and familial self-worth have been twisted into a grotesque parody of the unwarranted white guilt harbored by liberals, democrats, and even many republicans far beyond its proper expiration date.

                As outlined in SR's last post, the ultra-radicalism of today's leftist Democratic hordes has taken on the character of the crazed Red Guards in China's disastrous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).  Even more disturbingly, millions of craven Americans are succumbing passively to this radical onslaught, just as the Chinese nation, to its enormous cost, allowed itself to be coerced and intimidated by mobs of radical youths who could have been quickly subdued by even a modicum of determined and organized resistance.

                In the face of the racial radicals' subversive exploitation of the slogan that "black lives matter," coupled with its obnoxious and hateful corollary that it is heresy to insist that white lives matter just as much, one is forced to ask:  Where is the White Anger?  When will a majority of white Americans come to grips with the fact, long recognized by SR and other truth-telling outlets, that the anti-white and anti-law enforcement animus of the racial radicals and their Democratic and liberal allies presents a serious threat that must be acknowledged, resisted, and overcome?

                Perhaps the tipping point will be reached when the radical racialists push their current campaign to denigrate the leading white icons of American history to a level of lunacy that even the most passive and feckless of white Americans will find intolerable.

                                                                     

       If the racial radicals come for Stonewall, it could be an ugly Third Manassas

                            

                This anti-historical madness came to a head following the murder of a group of innocent black church-goers by a deranged white madman in South Carolina.  The proper reaction to this appalling tragedy would have been sincere mourning for the victims, strong support and sympathy for their surviving families, and an uncompromising criminal prosecution of the evil perpetrator to assure his prompt execution.

                Instead, both black and white racial agitators exploited the event to instigate a fanatical, rabid assault on the white race, white southern heritage, the Confederacy, and the many worthy heroes of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

                First, the Governor of South Carolina succumbed to pressure from racial agitators and their Democrat and media allies and spinelessly signed sacrificial legislation to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.  That flag had flown there harmlessly for decades with no discernible adverse effect on blacks or whites.  Its removal was nothing more than a deliberate insult and repudiation to southern heritage and traditions.  It was done to appease and ingratiate racial agitators and their supporters, to the deliberate detriment of southern white traditionalists who honor and respect the Confederate flag for reasons of culture and heritage rather than racial animus.

                But the removal of that flag was only the beginning of an expanding racial assault on all the memorials, statues, and other relics that commemorate the brave men who served honorably on the Confederate side in the Civil War. This was and is a deliberate and direct attack on the heritage and ancestry of millions of decent American southerners.

                In the benighted city of Memphis, the vindictive City Council voted unanimously to exhume the body of Confederate General Nathan Bedford, as well as that of his wife, and move it to another location.  When the city did not move quickly enough to execute this act of wretched barbarism due to legal barriers, a lawless horde from something laughably called the Commission on Religion and Racism grabbed shovels and dug up a patch of ground near the General's grave. 

                In Atlanta, meanwhile, the racialist radicals are contemplating an even more audacious assault on southern heritage and sensibilities, not to mention basic American history.  There, the spiteful extremists of the NAACP are demanding that the gigantic historical monument to the three most revered leaders of the Confederacy – Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis – be sandblasted into oblivion from the Rushmore-like memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia. 

                With this outrageous demand, the Atlanta NAACP places itself in the company of such fellow barbarians as Afghanistan's notorious Taliban, who earned international condemnation and contempt when they blasted the revered mountain-side sculptures of the Buddhas of Bamiyan from the cliffs on which they had been sculpted.  Fortunately, the organization responsible for the Stone Mountain Memorial is private and self-supporting, so these racist Philistenes will not be able to achieve their boorish objective by simply intimidating spineless governors or legislators.

                Still, the crude logic of the afro-racist attack on all things commemorating the Confederacy may lead to some testy confrontations that these agitators may yet come to regret.  Already, in Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, staunch supporters of Southern heritage have rallied in aggressive support of the Confederate flag in demonstrations, motorcades, truck convoys, and biker rallies.  

                If the anti-Confederate marauders try to take on, for example, the revered statue of Stonewall Jackson that proudly holds center-stage at the First Manassas Battlefield in Virginia, they might find themselves facing a phalanx of furious physical opposition that would make them wish they were back in the state legislature, facing only gutless and submissive politicians.  

                                                                        

        Deranged Democrats want to disassociate themselves from the great Thomas Jefferson

                But it is the gutless and submissive politicians of the Democratic Party that have allowed the race-based assault against the icons of American history to be extended beyond the relatively "soft targets" of the Confederacy.  Now the left's Racial Red Guards have turned their crazed eyes to the Nation's most revered Patriots and Founding Fathers.

                The Democratic Party of Connecticut has taken the lead in this lunacy.  The Democratic State Central Committee – which not only sounds like something straight out of Maoist China, but acts accordingly – recently voted unanimously to expunge the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from the language it had long used to commemorate the party's heritage in describing the party's annual dinner.  Unsurprisingly, they acted in abject submission to the urgings of the racially relentless NAACP.  The accompanying resolution passed by these brain-addled poltroons stated:  "As members of the Democratic Party, we are proud of our history as the party of inclusion.  Democrats have led the way on civil rights, LGBT equality and equal rights for women. … It is only fitting that the name of the party's most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.''  So much for the two presidents who have long stood at the top of the traditional Democratic Party's roster of heroes.

                Apart from the blatant falsehoods in the Party's statement – Republicans, not Democrats, led the way in voting for the Civil Right Act of 1964, for example – it is revealing that these pettifogging Democrats are so committed to obliterating commemoration of the great Thomas Jefferson while embracing the canard of so-called "LGBT equality." 

                Jefferson was not only one of the foremost giants among the Founding Fathers, and not only the author of the Declaration of Independence, but one of the most forceful advocates of the very democratic principles that the so-called Democratic Party purports to embrace.  A genuine Renaissance Man and diversified inventor, he mastered disciplines ranging from politics to philosophy to architecture to agronomy. On top of all that, he authored the historic Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom (the precursor of the First Amendment's religion clauses) and was the Father of the University of Virginia, one of America's earliest and greatest universities.  

               So extensive were Jefferson's accomplishments that President Jack Kennedy once quipped, when honoring a group of Nobel Prize winners gathered at the White House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."  It is indeed depressing to note how far the Democratic Party has descended from the days when the likes of Jack Kennedy had a keen appreciation for the true greats of American history, unfiltered by the twisted resentments of party constituencies.

                In short, Thomas Jefferson puts to abject shame the mental and moral midgets who seek to denigrate his legacy. Although he did own large numbers of slaves -- an institution embedded in the southern plantation system which men like Jefferson inherited, rather than supported – he supported the gradual emancipation of  the slaves as early as 1779.  He supported a gradualist approach rather than immediate and unconditional emancipation because he believed, with good reason, that releasing unprepared slaves with no place to go and no practical means to support themselves would bring misfortune rather than good fortune.  

               But in the tiny, race-obsessed minds of today's Democrats and radical afro-racists, Jefferson's inherited status as a slave-owner supersedes all his historical achievements, including those which helped provide these ingrates the very freedoms they exercise in seeking to defame one of the genuine giants of American History.

                Ravenous with the media-fueled successes of their attacks on the white icons of the Civil War, and now even the Revolutionary War, America's race-obsessed latter-day Red Guards might next turn their twisted rage against the greatest icon of all, George Washington himself.  Should this vengeful movement descend to such shameful and lunatic depths, it may at last foment the dormant anger of not only heretofore docile white patriots, but outraged patriots of all races.

THE OMINOUS AMERICAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION

            As a somewhat close student of Chinese history, I had always thought that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) of 1966-74, initiated by Mao Zedong, was the most extreme example of an entire nation undergoing a form of mass insanity, or mass mind alteration, in modern times.  But what remains of the erstwhile United States is presently experiencing a collective surrender of reason that in many respects is even more radical and insidious. 

             The Cultural Revolution, after all, only worsened a nation and political culture that was already immersed in extreme communist totalitarianism and mass conformity.  In contrast, the currently deranged United States remained at least a modestly reasonable democratic republic, with considerable remaining strongholds of liberty and individualism, as recently as 2008. 

                But now those strongholds and remnants of liberty and decency are rapidly disappearing, as American continues its depressing descent into a destructive and nasty cultural revolution of its own.

                                                                   

             China's Red Guards:  Forerunners of Mass Madness in Obama's America

                During the GPCR, China was essentially taken over by hordes of radical Maoist youth, known as Red Guards.  They roamed the country at will, imposing their most extreme notions of Maoist political correctness upon a cowed and craven citizenry.  With almost no tradition of individualism or civil liberties, there was no one to resist or confront the mindless political lunacy that swept across China.

                A striking hallmark of the GPCR was its utter contempt for Chinese cultural or historical traditions – even recent ones.  Not even the most revered colleagues of Mao, who had been with him through the Long March to the triumphant takeover of Beijing in 1949, were immune from the ravenous attacks of the Red Guards.  Men who had been revolutionary icons were pilloried, humiliated, and driven to "re-education camps" when the Red Guard mobs attacked them as "capitalist roaders" or "bourgeoisie reactionaries." 

                The GPCR and the Red Guards then set out to destroy what they referred to as "The Four Olds" – old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.  Mao specifically charged his cadres to attack and destroy "traditional values," with no distinction between good ones (like respect for education) and bad ones (like subordination of women).  Any resistance to this monolithic political and cultural upheaval was ruthlessly suppressed.  Almost overnight, the ideas, standards, and beliefs that had been embraced and accepted by virtually the entire Chinese nation were deemed anathema, and anyone who clung to them – or even failed to condemn them with sufficient conviction – was subjected to public humiliation, political show trials, or banishment to the Chinese equivalents of the Gulag in Xinjiang or other grim hinterlands.

                Which brings us to America in 2015:  the era of the lawless Obama presidency, the oligarchical tyranny of a corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, a supine and spineless Congress, and a cowed conformist populace that is only too glad to surrender the liberties and values bequeathed to them by their generational betters.

                All these circumstance have combined to subject the United States to a dark and degenerate cultural revolution of its own, completely upending the traditions, standards, and moral principles bequeathed to us by the giants and geniuses of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and other pillars of our history.

                Just as Mao and his allies unleashed cadres of rabid Red Guards to impose monolithic Mao Thought upon the Chinese people, Obama, the Supreme Court "Gang of Five," and their media minions have unleashed a political and cultural tyranny that is making mincemeat of constitutional government, individual liberties, and the longstanding moral and cultural traditions of the United States.

                Examples of America's overnight descent into a perverse cultural and political degeneracy abound.  Both high and low, prominent and nameless, legions of lost Americans have suddenly turned their backs on values, beliefs, standards, and traditions that, only yesterday, they firmly embraced.

                What was immoral and evil for nearly all of human history, has suddenly, and inexplicably, become admirable and good.  Conversely, beliefs and standards that were honored and accepted by virtually all Americans and other civilized humans for millennia, and as recently as two decades ago, are now condemned and reviled as not only wrong and mean-spirited, but deserving of societal condemnation and persecution.  The society's most basic moral beliefs and principles have been turned utterly upside down in less than two decades, and in the case of millions of Americans, in a matter of several years.

                This complete and sudden reversal – not merely change, but utter reversal – of accepted standards and norms has been most emphatic in the area of sexual morality and the institution of marriage.  This is probably the most radical and fundamental change brought about by the American Cultural Revolution (ACR) – especially if one reviews where we recently were, and where we now are, over a very short span of historical time.

                Americans of all stripes generally agree on describing the men and women who combined to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II as the Greatest Generation.  And there can be no doubt that the revered members of the Greatest Generation almost uniformly considered homosexual activity disgusting, harmful, and fundamentally immoral.  Further, the warped concept of so-called same-sex marriage would have been so utterly bizarre to the men and women of the 1940's (and the 50's, 60's, and 70's, for that matter) that their only response to a question of whether they approved of it would have been:  "Are you out of your mind?  What lunatic came up with that sick idea?"  

               There is no exaggeration in these statements of simple historical truth.  That is "the way we were," plain and simple.

                American society's overwhelming disapproval of homosexual sex – let alone the biological oxymoron of two men "marrying" one another – generally held firm for the remainder of the twentieth century.  As recently as 1987 – when the Bangles and Bon Jovi were topping the pop charts – 75% of Americans expressed their firm conviction that homosexual relations were always wrong.  And in 1988, only 11% of Americans expressed approval of same-sex marriage (SSM).

                Fast forward to the disjointed and dismal year of 2015.  In the space of an historical micro-second, millions of Americans abruptly abandoned and repudiated the standards of sexual morality and family structure they had held from childhood.  Just as occurred in Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a relentless, monolithic movement orchestrated by government, a left-wing political party, and a subordinate media imposed its will upon a cowed and compliant populace -- a nation of conformist sheep.

                Homosexual activities that had been illegal, immoral, and almost universally deplored only years before were suddenly not only legal and beyond reproach, but admirable and even celebrated.  Major American cities were suddenly teeming with pro-homosexual parades and festivals, with officials and politicians of all stripes falling over themselves to outdo each other in endorsing and embracing the sodomite lifestyle.

                

                This radical inversion of cultural and moral standards was consummated with the U.S. Supreme Court's preposterous holding that the U.S. Constitution somehow mandates the states' validation and blessing of "marriages" between two men or two women.  The politically and ideologically corrupt majority of five justices – America's own "Gang of Five" – perversely held that the liberties guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment somehow included the "right" of two men to demand that the state authenticate their unnatural homosexual union as a valid marriage -- of equal standing with the natural marriage of one man and one woman. 

                But when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted back in 1868, homosexual sodomy was universally condemned and criminalized by all the states.  Marriage was universally limited to heterosexual unions, and the suggestion that two men could "marry" – let alone that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed their right to do so – would have been met with appalled and outraged derision by every single state legislator who participated in its adoption.  In short, the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision ascribes to the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment an intent that is conclusively contradicted by the indisputably demonstrated beliefs and understandings of those men.

                A more distorted, illogical, and fraudulent assault on rational constitutional analysis would be difficult to concoct.  The corrupt Justice Anthony Kennedy's "opinion" for the court was nothing more than a free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness expression of his own maudlin and prurient philosophical preferences, bearing no discernible relationship to the text and history of the Constitution.  In short, Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges has more in common with James Joyce's Ulysses than it does with the jurisprudence of Marbury v. Madison.

                Yet Kennedy and the rest of the Court's Gang of Five could feel confident and comfortable that their deranged and lawless ruling would be embraced and welcomed by predominant portions of the media, the political culture, academia, and a compliant general populace.  The Orwellian atmosphere of cowed and mindless conformity  imposed by the American Cultural Revolution assured no less. 

                One thing is certain about the mass conversion of Americans from their long-held understandings about the morality of homosexual practices and the historical institution of marriage between man and woman as ordained by nature itself:  It did not result from any thoughtful and deliberate reconsideration or analysis of those understandings.

                There is not the slightest evidence that millions of ill-educated Americans suddenly discovered the egregious historical mistake of limiting marriage to male-and-female from a studious examination of the literature, data, and studies on these issues.  After all, it never occurred to the great inquiring minds of history, from Confucius to Ptolemy to Newton to Einstein, that human civilization had fundamentally erred in its universal limitation of the core institution of marriage to man-and-woman.  It is hardly credible that the untutored masses of the superficial civilization of the present age would somehow discover an egregious civilization mistake that had somehow escaped the detection of history's intellectual giants.

                Rather, it is evident from both the suddenness and superficiality of this mass conversion that it reflects nothing more than feckless capitulation to the prevailing mores and convictions of the leftist-dominated political and media culture.   Just as the Chinese people cowered and capitulated before the onslaught of Mao's rabid Red Guards, much of the American population have abjectly abandoned their standards of sexual morality and social sanity rather than resist the relentless, Orwellian onslaught of the American Cultural Revolution orchestrated by the Obamist totalitarians and their media minions.

                So complete and craven is the popular submission to this cultural and moral madness that congressional Democrats can call for the actual eradication of the terms "husband" and "wife" from the federal statute books without eliciting more than a murmur of resistance.

                But the deranged subversion of civilizational standards of sexual morality and family structure is but one manifestation – albeit a glaring one – of the dystopian cultural revolution that has descended on America.  Splashing Rocks will next examine the ACR's accelerating onslaught against the values, culture, traditions and, indeed, the basic rights of White Americans – and the obvious question of, where is the White Anger?

CUOMO IS MORALLY COMPLICIT IN NEW YORK PRISON ESCAPE

       For some two weeks now, two dangerous convicted murderers have roamed at large in upstate New York or parts beyond.  Richard Matt and David Sweat managed a brilliantly planned and executed escape from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility that has utterly confounded state authorities.

     At this writing, the legions of police and investigators employed on the case -- estimated to be at least 800 personnel -- remain clueless as to even the general location and route of the escaped duo.  The cost of this massive recapture operation is undoubtedly enormous, but New York authorities are understandably unenthusiastic about revealing the multi-millions involved.  At the federal level, the U.S. Marshals Service has added the duo to the list of America's Most Wanted.

       New York's liberal Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, has taken a highly visible and active role in the state's response, although he possesses no apparent qualifications or experience that would make any genuine contribution to the locate-and-retrieval operation.  The fugitive-hunting skills of a liberal New York lawyer-politician are not to be confused with those of Dog the Bounty Hunter, or Lieutenant Girard in pursuit of Dr. Richard Kimble.  Cuomo would have done better to stay at his desk in Albany and leave the recapture operation to the cops and marshals, as those officers would undoubtedly confirm under grant of immunity.

                                                                 

                                                                 (hawaiimagazine.co)                    
                       Cuomo should leave fugitive-hunting to The Hunters

       Media pundits have debated whether Governor Cuomo has helped or hurt himself politically by assuming such a high-profile role in the escape crisis.  Some say it has provided a useful distraction from the more pedestrian and banal political bickering with the state legislature, making the governor appear (however falsely) preoccupied with more pressing matters of public safety.  Others note, in contrast, that the governor may appear out of his element in purporting to spearhead an operation that is best left in the hands of law enforcement and investigative operatives -- especially if the search drags on in futility or, even worse, the escapees commit further murders or crimes of violence.

       But Cuomo may have a more profound and personal motivation for his obviously intense and anxious involvement in the matter.  He may reluctantly recognize that the serious civic danger and disruption posed by the escape, and any deaths, injuries, or other harms that may yet result from it, may be attributable to the legal and policy predilections so zealously espoused by himself and his liberal cohorts.  Even if Cuomo does not come to that recognition -- and being a doctrinaire liberal, such a recognition is most unlikely -- Splashing Rocks will do it for him.

       One of Cuomo's responses to the crisis was to order an investigation by the state inspector general into "all factors" that were involved in the escape.  As Cuomo explained, "It is critically important to examine the circumstances that enabled these inmates to escape in the first place."

       But Cuomo could save himself and the state much unnecessary investigative cost and effort by acknowledging one decisive "factor" that indisputably allowed these murderers to escape and endanger the citizens of upstate New York and beyond.

       If Cuomo and his liberal ilk had not so effectively destroyed the state's ability to impose the death penalty, the two escapees would have been far too dead to escape from prison or anywhere else.

       Both Matt and Sweat were imprisoned for murders that would have been eligible for the death penalty under the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause. Richard Matt cruelly tortured his victim in an automobile trunk before murdering him and dismembering his body. David Sweat murdered a law enforcement officer in cold blood.

       Both of these murders thus included "aggravating circumstances" that would have subjected these men to capital punishment in a state that permits it.  But New York does not allow capital punishment -- thanks in large part to leftist officials, legislators, and lawyers like Andrew Cuomo.  If New York did authorize and enforce the death penalty, Matt and Sweat would have never had the opportunity to escape from prison, endanger the safety and security of thousands of people, force the costly deployment and diversion of at least 800 police officers, and possibly commit additional murders or other violent felonies while at large.

       Andrew Cuomo has long been adamantly opposed to the death penalty and has made it a major policy point in his political career.  For example, he wrote a NY Times op-ed piece in 2004 urging the New York legislature to reject efforts to enact an enforceable death penalty (the N.Y. death penalty statute that technically lingered on the books had been declared unconstitutional and unenforceable).  Among other canards and distortions in his article, Cuomo stated that "there remains no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime."  Cuomo's statement is simply false, and the escape of the Dannemora murderers aptly demonstrates why.

       Cuomo either ignores, or doesn't understand, that there are two kinds of deterrence, specific and general.  Specific deterrence simply means that an executed person is absolutely and specifically "deterred" from committing any more murders or other crimes.  This is not some jesuitical or theoretical point, but an entirely valid and practical justification for capital punishment in itself.

       Nor, as emphatically proven by the Dannemora breakout and others preceding it, is life imprisonment an effective alternative in that respect.  Both Matt and Sweatt are free to commit murder or other crimes because their life imprisonment, even in a maximum security facility, was inadequate to prevent their determined escape.  And their case is hardly unique.  The escape of the notorious Mecklenburg Six death row inmates from a maximum security Virginia prison in 1984 is another prime example that capital punishment provides the only certain form of specific deterrence.

       When a state surrenders the option of executing the likes of, say, Hannibal Lecter, it requires some poor prison personnel to guard, feed, and provide medical care to such a menacing and dangerous monster.  And it runs the risk that such a monster may escape and resume his murderous career.

       Cuomo's arrogant dismissal of the death penalty's deterrent effect is especially and demonstrably fallacious in the case of escaped inmates who are serving life sentences without possibility of parole. Because Cuomo and his liberal cohorts have succeeded in completely excluding resort to the death penalty in New York, there is little, if any, reason for escapees like Matt and Sweat to fear meaningful additional punishment should they commit additional murders or other serious crimes while at large.  They could sneer at their captors, "What are you gonna do, send me to life imprisonment at Dannemora?  LOL, suckers!"

       That is the consequence of New York's abandonment of the "general deterrence" provided by the death penalty, wholly apart from its abandonment of capital punishment's utility as a specific and foolproof deterrent as to murderers who are actually executed.  Not all potential murderers are deterred by the prospect of being executed by the state -- fanatics and lunatics, for example -- but most are.  It is simple, inescapable logic that the more severe a penalty, the greater its deterrent effect; our whole system of escalating punishments calibrated to the severity of the crime is based upon this logic.  And execution is the ultimate penalty.  If murderers did not fear execution more than life imprisonment, they would not desperately pursue every possible legal avenue to avoid execution in favor of life imprisonment.    

       So when death penalty abolitionists like Cuomo argue that there is "no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent," they are perpetrating a massive fraud.  They are glibly and dishonestly equating the valid point that the death penalty is an imperfect deterrent with the fraudulent myth that it has no deterrent effect at all.   And the danger, expense, and disruption occasioned by the Great Escape from Dannemora is but one example of the cost to society occasioned by the "success" of Cuomo and his fellow liberals in depriving New York of any resort to the death penalty -- even when it would be demonstrably just and efficacious.

          That the New York escapees were serving mere terms of imprisonment -- with the now indisputable potential for escape and further crime -- rather than rendered conclusively harmless and "deterred" following a capital sentence and execution is both morally and legally outrageous.  Mr. Matt was not only a recidivist murderer -- one in the U.S. and one in Mexico -- but the murder for which he was serving time in New York was an especially heinous torture-murder that cried out for capital retribution. As New York prosecutor Joseph Mordino (a veteran of over 200 murder cases) told a Niagara County judge:  "Of all the cases I've tried this would top my list for the death penalty."  David Sweat was guilty of the first degree murder of a law enforcement officer in the course of committing another felony, which would have resulted in certain capital punishment in a saner state, like, say, Texas.

       So Governor Cuomo should spare us his hand-wringing concern regarding what went wrong to allow the escape of the Dannemora Duo and the resultant danger, disruption, and enormous expenditure of public funds and law enforcement resources.  What went wrong was New York's ill-considered, illogical, and emotional abandonment of the death penalty, due in large part to the fanatical advocacy of Governor Cuomo and his ilk.  Had New York retained and enforced even a narrowly circumscribed death penalty, Messrs. Matt and Sweat would be dead and buried, rather than roaming the country at large and posing a threat to public safety wherever they arrive.