O Tempora, O Mores! (February, 2001)

They Knew Not What They Did

Reginald and Jonathan Carr are two black brothers from Dodge City, Kansas. At about 11:00 p.m. on December 15, they broke into the East Wichita home of three white men who were with two white women, the fiancée of one and the girlfriend of another. The blacks ransacked the place, loading everything from appliances, bedclothes, and dishes into a vehicle owned by one of the three men. They then forced the whites at gun point to drive to several bank ATM machines and withdraw money. Afterwards they took the five whites to a soccer field where they stripped off the women’s clothes and raped them. They ordered the women to perform sex acts on each other and the men to do the same with the women. Afterwards, they made them all kneel on the ground and systematically shot them. [Hurst Laviana, Two Men Charged with Friday’s Quadruple Homicide, Eagle (Wichita), Dec. 18, 2000.]

The three men and one of the women died but one woman survived a bullet wound in the back. After the killers left, she got up, checked whether her companions were alive — one was her fiancé — and went for help. It was 2:30 in the morning on a freezing night. She tramped through the snow for nearly a mile — naked, barefoot and bleeding — across a construction site, around a pond, and through the brush to the first house she could find. She finally roused the sleeping couple inside, who wrapped her in blankets and called the police. She was able to identify the vehicle the Carr brothers had stolen and police picked them up within a day. [Hurst Laviana, Brutal Ordeal a Tale of Survivor’s Courage, Eagle, Dec. 20, 2000.]

The Wichita authorities have been at pains to downplay race. “This was a random act,” explains Nola Foulston of the district attorney’s office. “The fact that the defendants and victims happen to be of different races has no bearing,” she explains. “Let’s just look at the underlying crimes.” Captain Robert Lee of the Wichita police agrees, saying, “It’s too early to speculate on motive.” The Wichita Eagle, which couldn’t very well ignore the story, has scarcely mentioned the race of the killers, much less speculated about their motives.

On Dec. 21, 1,000 people attended the funeral mass for Jason Befort, fiancé of the woman who survived to walk barefoot through the snow. Rev. James Dieker told the congregation their attitudes towards the killers should be the same as that of Jesus on the cross who said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” At the funeral for Heather Muller — the woman whom the Carrs did manage to kill — Rev. Matthew McGinness struck the same note, saying “We must be like Christ, who forgave his enemies.” Even the woman’s mother, he said, felt this way, and he told his parishioners she had explained to him “Heather would want us to pray for her murderers, and Heather was probably praying for them at the moment of her death.” [Nicole Hughes, Ministers Grapple in Their Sermons With the Tragic Events of the Past Few Days, Eagle, Dec. 18, 2000.]

There is some reason to wonder if these rapes and murders really were “random,” as the DA insists. It appears that the Carr brothers had only just hit their stride with their Dec. 15 quadruple murder. On Dec. 7, they waylaid a 23-year-old white man at a Wichita convenience store and forced him at gunpoint to withdraw money from several ATMs. They pistol-whipped him for a while and then let him go.

On December 11, the Carrs then robbed Ann Walenta just outside her home. Police will not say whether she resisted arrest, but the brothers shot her repeatedly all the same. Mrs. Walenta, who played the cello for many years with the Wichita Symphony, was, of course, white. She lingered on, paralyzed from the waist down, until her death on January 2. [Hurst Laviana, Cellist Dies, Brothers Tied to Crime, Eagle Jan. 3, 2001.]

On January 4, 2001, now safely behind bars, the brothers appeared in court by two-way video, to hear some of the charges made against them. Relatives of the Carrs were in court and waved to them on the video screen. Reginald Carr smiled, waved, and said “I love you.” Someone in the courtroom answered “I love you, baby. Don’t worry about it.” [Tim Potter, Brothers Charged in Attacks on Seven, Eagle, Jan. 5, 2001.] Of course not. Who would worry about a bit of murder and a touch of rape? Certainly not the national media, which have found this record of mayhem entirely beneath their notice.

Meanwhile, in Shreveport, Louisiana, blacks committed a similar crime on Dec. 23. Derrick Bouya, 21, and Aaron Wilson, 17, staked out a parking lot looking for a carjacking victim and just happened to choose a white woman, 48-year-old Vickie McGraw. They took her and her 1996 Chevy Blazer on a ride to an ATM machine where they made her withdraw cash, and then raped her. Later they drove her out on a country road, made her get out of the car, and then shot her in the back of the head. Police had nothing to go on until transactions on Mrs. McGraw’s credit cards started coming in from department and jewelry stores. Immediately after the killing, the blacks had picked up several friends and gone shopping. In addition to the two killers, police have arrested four other blacks for unauthorized use of credit cards and failure to report a capital crime. [Larry Burton, Police Arrest 6 After Carjacking Slaying Saturday, Times (Shreveport), Dec. 29, 2000.]

Off Come the Gloves

A few writers in the blinkered media have begun to wake up to what is happening to them and their civilization. In his Dec. 5, 2000, column Paul Craig Roberts gets to the point with refreshing vigor:

If you are a white heterosexual able-bodied male (WHAM), you need to understand that affirmative action is not about leveling a playing field. It is about leveling you.

You need to comprehend, also, that you are already pretty much leveled. Even the most recent immigrant from the Third World arrives in the U.S. with more legal rights than you or your sons have. As a ‘person of color’ the immigrant is admitted to universities and job-training programs on the basis of lower standards than are applied to you. He has the right to be hired and promoted ahead of you despite lesser qualifications for the job. He can sue you for discrimination for a variety of reasons — for example, you don’t want to hire him, make him a bank loan, or rent him your house. But you cannot sue him for the same reasons. He can call you names, but you can’t call him names. His special legal status is growing as politicians pandering to him create new crimes that only he can suffer and only you can commit. His special rights are based on skin color. His official designation is ‘preferred minority.’ He is a member of a new aristocracy with status-based rights. He is learning to see his preferred legal position as a race-based entitlement.

You may say, ‘Baloney! We WHAMs outnumber the minorities. We have all the power, money and best jobs. These Third World types work in McDonalds and clean our homes while we pull in the big bucks.’ This is, for the most part, true. For now. But the fact remains that he has superior legal status to you. It is just a matter of time before he learns to use his superior legal standing to displace you . . .

Your persecution has already begun. And much worse is to come. You are demonized in the universities, just as Jews in Germany were demonized by intellectuals and professors for 60 years prior to Adolf Hitler. And you are demonized in the same vicious terms. You are part of the ‘hegemonic order.’ Your success and contributions are based on holding down others. The rule of law is your self-serving construction and nothing but a race and gender law designed to oppress blacks and women. You have done nothing but evil throughout history. The communists blamed the capitalists. Nazis blamed the Jews. Feminists and affirmative action blame you.

You have no leaders, no organization, and no spokesmen. Anyone who attempts to rouse you immediately becomes an outcast. They are slandered and called names. They lose their job and their voice. You have nowhere to go and no way of protecting yourself from the vicious propaganda that is targeted against you. You are too politically weak to cap the immigration that is making you into a minority in your homeland . . .

It is just a matter of time. [Paul Craig Roberts, What WHAMs Need to Know About Affirmative Action, Dec. 5, 2000.]

Not long after, the Greek columnist who writes for the British magazine Spectator under the name of Taki wrote an equally vigorous essay, from which we also provide generous excerpts:

If Tony Blair has anything to do with it, there won’t always be an England. The country is already fading, not from foreign conquest but from its own immigration policy. Demographic calculations have it that by the end of this new century the English people will be a minority in their homeland.

Just think about it. Fifty years ago, there were only a few tens of thousands of non-whites in all of Great Britain, but in the next one hundred years, the whites will probably be a minority. And it’s very easy to explain. The English are not having enough children, whereas non-whites have a high fertility rate. As the Observer said, ‘This is the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease.’

Mind you, the English may be finished as a people, but at least they have twice as long to go than American whites do. By 2050 the whites will be a minority of the US population, as they already are in California. What amazes me is that two of the most powerful countries of the 19th and 20th centuries have legislated their way to their own extinction. Talk about the suicide of the West. In my own country, Greece, the birth rate is decreasing at an alarming rate. In Italy, a once upon a time fecund Catholic population has now such a low birth rate its population is declining. In fact, European birth rates are below replacement rates, which means we are faced with the extinction of the white race sooner rather than later. In the meantime, European governments are busy opening borders to Third World immigration . . .

I am Greek with some German blood and wish my children to live in a European culture. The culture that gave us Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Why is it racist to want to keep England for the English or Greece for the Greeks? Why do we have to listen to race hustlers like Jesse Jackson — or the Blair gang — endlessly prattle on about diversity? As far as I’m concerned, there are far more black and brown countries than white ones, so diversity needs to be reversed, not encouraged. Most scientific and technological discoveries were invented by whites, yet our leaders, eager to please politically correct intellectuals, are doing their utmost to destroy our European past . . .

Once upon a time, nationalism was a virtue. One remembered the past with pride, and those who didn’t were like drunks who had blackouts. Now the past is a no-no. The endless agitprop about racism, sexism and other alleged evils of our forebears are the key weapons in destroying the past . . . [Taki, Gloom and Doom, Spectator, Dec. 16, 2000.]

Keep Hope Alive?

In 1994, when South African whites voted to turn their country over to black rule, there were many Afrikaners who recognized the folly of this decision. Many left South Africa, but many more stayed, determined to make a home as best they could amidst the wreckage. One group decided on the Northern Cape Province town of Orania as a place they could keep white and where they could preserve their language and culture. Orania had been abandoned by its former inhabitants and was a ghost town, but hardy Afrikaners brought it back from the dead. They set up a private corporation to run it, with the power to grant residency only to certain approved Afrikaners. Unlike everywhere else in South Africa, where blacks do the menial work, in Orania whites sweep the streets, wait tables, and change the sheets at the town guest house. The 600 residents dream of their town becoming the nucleus of an Afrikaner volkstaat that might some day be fully independent.

Orania has hit a snag. In a recent reorganization of South Africa’s municipalities, Orania was slated for a merger with the neighboring towns of Stryndenburg and Hopetown, both overwhelmingly black and colored. Under the new arrangement whites would be outnumbered ten to one, and Orania would be absorbed into the surrounding crime and chaos. The Afrikaners are furious and plan to mount a legal challenge, but prospects for a white enclave, much less a volkstaat, now seem exceedingly dim. [John Murray, An Afrikaner Eden Under Threat, Baltimore Sun, Dec. 5, 2000.]

Preferences For Ever!

It used to be that racial preferences in college admissions were thought necessary to make up for all the “racism” non-whites suffered from kindergarten through high school. The theory was that they were every bit as smart and hard-working as whites but had been held back by “institutional racism,” and other such bogeys. Just let them into college and they would do just as well as whites. Needless to say, they haven’t. At the same time, with non-white, city schools often getting more money per student than schools in the suburbs, it has become harder to claim blacks and Hispanics have had to claw their way through a miasma of bigotry to get to college.

Boosters of racial preferences now have a different angle on justifying discriminating against whites: diversity is wonderful. So decreed U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan in a Dec. 12 finding that University of Michigan’s most recent “affirmative action” admissions policies are constitutional. The university grades applicants on a 150-point scale, and they get 20 points right off the bat if they are black, Hispanic, or American Indian. Being Asian is no help, since Asians are not “underrepresented.” Judge Duggan concedes that “if race were not taken into account, the probability of acceptance would be cut dramatically,” but discrimination is necessary because a “racially and ethnically diverse student body gives rise to educational benefits for both minority and non-minority students.” How does he know that? The university conducted a study that says so and he swallowed it without a gurgle. He did conclude, though, that the discriminatory admissions programs back in 1995-1998 were illegal quotas. The university was blithely and knowingly breaking “civil rights” laws — which forbid quotas — and it took a Freedom of Information investigation to root out just what it was doing. It hastily converted to the point system so as to better defend itself after it was sued.

The case was brought by the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights (CIR), which successfully demolished racial preferences at the University of Texas Law School in 1996. The Texas ruling, which struck down any consideration of race in admissions, was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and is now prevailing law in that district. CIR will undoubtedly appeal the Michigan ruling, and if it is upheld in that district there will be two starkly contradictory rulings in two parts of the country — a situation tailor-made for Supreme Court attention.

Meanwhile, the University of Texas Law School has petitioned its appeals court to review the decision. It argues that racial preferences are needed to promote diversity, but it is also making the old argument that they undo the “vestiges” of discrimination. The yahoos never rest. [Jim Suhr, Judge Affirms Affirmative Action in Michigan Admissions Policy, AP, Dec. 13, 2000. Thomas Bray, Soft Bigotry Wins Two in Court, OpinionJournal.com, Dec. 19, 2000.]

Guard That Tree

It is a Vatican tradition to accept a Christmas tree as a gift from some Catholic land and set it up formally in St. Peter’s Square. Last year the tree came from the Czech Republic but this year an 80-foot high monster came from the Austrian province of Carinthia. Carinthia, unfortunately, is governed by Jörg Haider of the Austrian Freedom Party, whom all civilized Europeans love to hate. A high official from the place that donated the tree traditionally comes to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope at the time the tree is officially lit, and the announcement that Mr. Haider was to play that role met with ferocious bellowing. The Pope explained the tree deal had been worked out in 1997, before Mr. Haider became governor, and that the visit was “pastoral” rather than “political,” but the lefties were not appeased. The tree, installed but unlit, was assigned a round-the-clock police guard for fear someone might do it mischief.

The Papal audience was scheduled for Dec. 16, but protests began earlier. On Dec. 13 more than 3,000 people, including 50 Italian politicians, tramped the streets of Rome, protesting the arrival of the horrible Mr. Haider. If it were up to the Italian authorities, he would not have been let in, but they have an agreement with the Vatican to give passage to anyone the Pope agrees to receive.

On the day Mr. Haider and 250 fellow Carinthians actually met the Pope, 3,000 Romans again took to the streets. Several hundred of the hard core, wearing crash helmets or with their faces wrapped in scarves, tried to force their way down the Via della Conciliazione and get to St. Peter’s Square and head off Mr. Haider before he could attend the tree-lighting. They were throwing cobblestones, bottles, and smoke bombs but were met by 200 heavily-armed riot police who responded with teargas. The police beat some of the rioters to the ground, and there were blood and injuries on both sides, in the worst violence anyone can remember in connection with a visit to the Pope. Afterwards, one end of the ironically-named Via della Conciliazione was covered with rubble: overturned barricades, public toilets, trash cans, broken glass, rubble and (of all things) shoes. Clouds of teargas lingered over the square as the rioters retreated to a sullen standoff. In a mark of their own distaste at Haider’s visit, Jewish shopkeepers switched off lights in their shops. “Jewish shopkeepers can do what they want,” said Mr. Haider, “if they want to save electricity, they can do that too.” [Luke Baker, Italy-Austria Row Looms as Pope Prepares for Haider, Reuters, Dec. 15, 2000. Philip Pullella and Luke Baker, Violence Erupts as Haider Visits Vatican, Reuters, Dec. 16, 2000.]

This is the first time we can remember a Christmas tree getting a night-and-day police guard.