- The Southern Poverty Law Center may, at one time, have
been a force dedicated to preserving the American Values of freedom and
constitutional rights through American law, but they have strayed
far afield of their initially stated goals. Today they are wildly
flailing accusations at anyone who, in their estimation, is guilty of a
"hate" crime And as their brush continues to
broaden, they are busily applying sweeping strokes to the word "racism"
and hungrily scanning the landscape for anyone who dares to
oppose the actions of any non-white individual, group or nation.
Whether the non-white individual has committed an act of criminal conduct
appears to be irrelevant to the SPLC.
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- The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded by Julian
Bond and Morris Dees and is based in Montgomery Alabama. Since
1998, Bond has been chairman of the NAACP but remains active with the Center
and serves on its board of Directors. Bond states that America is
hopelessly racist. "Everywhere we see clear racial fault lines,
which divide American society as much now as at any time in our past, "
he said in 1999. Bond now holds 23 honorary degrees and is Distinguished
Professor at American University and professor of history at the University
of Virginia.
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- And what about Morris Dees, you ask? Perhaps
the question is best answered by Dees's former legal associate Millard
Farmer who describes the crusading lawyer as "the Jim and Tammy Faye
Bakker of the civil rights movement" (with apologies to Jim
and Tammy) "Former associates say that Dees is obsessed with
making money."
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- By nonprofit standards, the SPLC has an enormous
endowment fund of over $152 million, according to its 2005 annual report.
Although they bill themselves as a civil rights law firm, only a fraction
of their resources go to actual legal work. Most of the
money is devoted to "educating the general public, public officials,
teachers, students and law enforcement agencies and officers with respect
to issues of hate and intolerance and promoting tolerance of differences
throughout the schools."
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- In the year ending on October 31, 2005, the SPLC paid
Morris Dees $297,559 in salary and pension plan contributions. SPLC
President Richard Cohen took home $274,838, but the Center co-founder Joseph
Levin received only $171,904 for his efforts as general counsel.
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- The Southern Poverty Law Center has mastered the art
of inflaming racial passions and it has moved from the not so sublime to
the totally ridiculous.
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- For example, the latest, and, in my humble estimation,
laughable, claim has been that there is racism in The Lord of the Rings
and Harry Potter. What's next? Putting Little Jack Horner
in the corner seems to be a case for Child Protective Services and, of
course, there is something terribly unkosher about The Three Little
Pigs.
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- So what is the matter with The Lord Of The Rings: The
Return Of The King? In 2004, The Southern Poverty Law Center's
website Tolerance.org published an article titled "A Return of the
White Patriarchy" by Andrea Lewis. Ms. Lewis complained that
in The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King, which is based
on a novel by J.R.R. Tolkien :
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- "Almost all of the heroes of the series are manly
men who are whiter than white. They are frequently framed in halos
of blinding bright light and exude a heavenly aura of all that is Eurocentric
and good. Who but these courageous Anglo-Saxon souls can save Middle
Earth from the dark and evil forces of the world"?
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- As Matthew Vadum, Editor of Organization Trends, pointed
out "Who knew that the hobbits and elves in a movie that won 11 Academy
Awards in 2004 were in reality Little Hitlers in disguise?"
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- Going beyond the ridiculous, another insult to intelligence
appeared in the guise of a 2005 article by Colleen O'Brien.
She informed the mesmerized movie maven that Harry Potter was
basically "A Half-Blood Prince" Revealed. The mega-bestseller
by J.K. Rowling embraces a racist worldview, according to Ms. O'Brien:
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- "In J.K. Rowling's world, half-blood means 'half
magic' But the term-reflecting a dichotomy between magic/powerful
and mundane/helpless - implies a hierarchy. This 'magic' hierarchy
directly resembles racial hierarchies. Racially speaking, a 'half-blood'
could be a person with parents of differing races, such as one Asian parent
and one white parent; in this case, not being 'pure-blood' can diminish
certain rights and inclusion in the community. Even in the world
of magic, the term 'half-blood' implies that one half does not mingle with
the other. Half-bloods come from two different worlds and the idea
of these bifurcated worlds conjures images of racial segregation.
These inflections of the language of race still make me cringe. Why
does the magic metaphor emerge from a language of racial difference?
And what do millions of readers do with these metaphors? "
Matthew Vadum
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- Ms. O'Brien's article might make an amusing bit for The
Daily Show, but as a serious literary appraisal it is somewhere between
ludicrous and chilling.
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- A Tolerance.org "Hate In the News" bulletin
from a week before Halloween 2002 asked young readers to think carefully
about the political ramifications of trick-or-treat costumes. Two
partial excerpts follow:
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- WEARING A 'FUNNY' COSTUME?
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- Ask yourself if the humor is based on 'making fun'
of real people, real human traits or cultures?
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- WEARING A 'BEAUTIFUL' COSTUME?
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- Ask yourself if the costume is meant to be beautiful,
are these characteristics drawn from commercial references, such as movie
characters? Too often, "beautiful" at Halloween means white,
blonde, princess masks." Matthew Vadum
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- Even the deepest sleepiest of sheeple has got to wonder
what is motivating the SPLC and has it totally lost control.
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- The Southern Poverty Law Center has attacked a conservative
intellectual writer, Dinish D'Souza, who has made powerful statements
about the kind of racial alarmism that is the SPLC'S "bread
and butter."
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- D'Souza, a dark-skinned immigrant to the U.S. from India,
argued that the intolerant, politically correct culture of American universities
stifles free thought because it is obsessed with race, class and gender.
D'Souza also stated that "It is the civil rights industry which
now has a vested interest in the persistence of the ghetto ".
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- In addition, the SPLC has accused the American Military
of being racist.
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- Recently, the Center went after the Minutemen Project,
a group devoted to preventing illegal border crossings into the United
States from Mexico. The Center slapped the R word ("racist"
not "righteous") on the Project. It has been
a long time since I studied for my College Board exams, but perhaps I should
review my vocabulary. It may depend on what your definition
of "is" is, but I certainly do not see any confusion in the definition
of "illegal."
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- Even Ted Turner sees illegal immigration as a problem.
Will the SPLC tar and feather him too?
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- While some people are still following the politically
correct "yellow brick road" I prefer to follow the money trail.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, the Southern Poverty Law Center's activism
may be merely a profitable enterprise. Trafficking supposed racists
is a lucrative business indeed. And, if you cannot locate them.........
then, create them.
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- Copyright:2006
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- www.judyandreas.com
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- JUDE10901@AOL.COM
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