More Thoughts on Taekwon-do, RyuTe, Ed Parker, American Kenpo an' Stuff

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Beware: this post rambles. You have been warned.

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I suppose, for the sake of people not familiar with this blog--that would be the overwhelming majority of people in the world--people that are just "driving by," so to speak, maybe looking for information on American Kenpo, I ought to briefly recap my experience in martial arts, just so you'll have an idea of where I'm coming from.

I first started martial arts with a class at age of fourteen, something called "Polynesian-Chinese Karate." I knew nothing at the time, had absolutely no idea that this was an offspring of Hawaii's melting pot of martial arts (from what I understand, it's more or less a meld of kenpo and Hawaiian lua, if you wanted to know). It didn't matter that I knew nothing. I was only there for a couple of classes, and the only memory I have is of a sparring session, wherein the other kid complained to the instructor, "He hits hard!"

Then I wound up in a local taekwon-do school, I suppose you could say by default. You see, although Japanese Goju-Ryu was huge in Northeastern Oklahoma at the time, and by huge, I mean it had been pretty much the only game in town for quite a while--OK, you're wondering: Lou Angel brought it to town, having learned it under Peter Urban. Lou later traveled to Japan and studied directly under Gogen Yamaguchi, and was awarded higher dan ranks whilst he was there. Lou taught in Tulsa for quite a while, promoted a pretty fair number of black belts, a number of whom still teach--or their students teach--around the area today. Some of these guys were fairly well known back in the day, like Billy Briscoe, widely reputed as having "the fastest hands in the West."

Another guy that came up in Lou's organization was Gary Boyd, who was my teacher's first teacher. Gary was a special case. According to my teacher, he never tested for black belt. It seems that Gary's job afforded him the opportunity for considerable travel, and it was his custom to visit dojos wherever he went and ask to train. He collected kata, and he loved free-sparring (at which he must have been, given the stuff I've seen from my own teacher, darn near brilliant). At any rate, as a brown belt, he wound up in Gosei Yamaguchi's dojo--yes, Gogen Yamaguchi's son--and beat all the black belts present in free sparring, whereupon Yamaguchi Sensei handed him a black belt, saying, "Nobody beats my black belts but a black belt, so here--you're a black belt!"

Some story, eh? You would think it inevitable that a would-be karate student in Oklahoma would wind up in Goju-Ryu, but as it happens, shortly before I started training in martial arts, the Goju community in Northeast Oklahoma was absolutely rocked by a series of events that led to Lou Angel leaving the state, never, as far as I know, to return. I have heard the story and will not go into it. Others who know it better can tell it on their blogs if they feel so inclined.

I knew nothing of what was going on, but I did know, and so did my mom (she was a single parent at the time), that the hot place to go for karate training in Tulsa at the time was a school run by a Korean immigrant who later touted himself as one of the world's top taekwon-do "coaches"--and he did indeed coach at least one competitor who, if I recall correctly, medalled in the Olympics. He was also the first teacher of a man who later achieved world-wide fame in the kickboxing ring (I am not exaggerating--world-wide fame) and several other people who did quite well over about a four-state area in tournament fighting competitions.

Taekwon-do as it was taught then, and as taught by this man, was different from much of what I have seen from taekwon-do people over the last fifteen years or so. Most of what I have seen over the last fifteen years or so has been nothing but beat-crap-out-of-each-other-with-wildly-unrealistic-for-the-street-kicks stuff, so completely removed from its karate roots (Okay, I know some taekwon-do guy out there is climbing out of his skin at that comment, so let me digress: No, taekwon-do is not the modern-day version of a centuries-old Korean warrior art. It is the result of a fusion between Japanese karate and some indigenous Korean kicks. Live with it.) as to be completely unrecognizable. Taekwon-do back then was (and still is, in some organizations) very hard to distinguish from Shotokan karate. Even the forms--kata, hyung, poomse, whatever you want to call them--were just modifications of the Shotokan kata.

I got up to blue belt--the rank just below brown--with this man, and if nothing else, I learned how to hit pretty darn hard and improved my coordination, which, at the commencement of my training was absolute crap, quite a bit. Then, for reasons I just honestly don't recall in detail, I dropped out. I started and stopped a couple of times over the next few years, spending time with one of my first TKD teacher's students, then with the karate club at the university I was attending (where I made it to brown belt) and then with a gentleman from Korea who also ran a donut shop. I was working at Arby's at the time, and couldn't afford diddly, so I managed a special deal with this guy. When I wasn't working, during the daylight hours, I would just come and sit and answer the phone. In return--free lessons!

The school wasn't very old. I soon made it to first gup (ikkyu in Japanese) and I was the senior student. And it was just about that time that I really began to understand that something wasn't quite right with taekwon-do.

There I was, within spitting distance of getting my black belt, and one day, when my instructor and I were alone, I was sparring with him, and I suddenly realized that I was manhandling him--that he might outpoint me, but if I really chose to press it, it would have been him getting hurt, not me. Now, it is true that I was no midget (about five-ten and about 180 pounds at the time) and he was a little Korean guy, but he was a sixth-degree black belt and I couldn't help but think that if, not even being a black belt, I could "handle" a sixth-degree black belt, then maybe taekwon-do was never going to be, for me, the ferocious fighting art that I had always heard that karate was. You see, I had had my suspicions for a long time. I had read Richard Kim's book, Funakoshi's autobiography, and several other books, and I knew that karate was supposed to be bad, that genuine experts were supposed to be able to achieve remarkable effects, but the reality is that I had never seen any such things and had been training and waiting a long time so as to reach a skill level where karate's "badness," if you will, would show up.

It's not that I believed taekwon-do was useless, mind you. I had used it--simple reverse punches to the solar plexus--several times to put a stop to attempted bullying in high school. I was quite capable of manhandling the other students in my instructor's school. And I had this abiding conviction that there was something there, for I found it impossible to believe that people would preserve kata for so very long if there was nothing to them. I had heard the instructions about "chambers" and "blocks," and, knowing no better, accepted them, but with a grain of salt.

I mean, some of that stuff was just impossible to believe. You're going to "chamber" for a block on the right side of your body by first withdrawing both hands to the left side? Seriously? But I didn't believe the old masters were stupid, either.

I knew there had to be more.

Well, eventually, I quit Arby's and joined the Marine Corps Reserve. During our last week in boot camp, we were allowed to visit the PX, and on the cover of BLACK BELT magazine, which I bought, was a man named Seiyu Oyata. The article was about the hidden meanings of kata, and you can imagine that I was interested. At last, here was someone saying that my suspicions were right--the kata motions weren't useless, but they weren't what I had been taught, either.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got back home and, through sheer dumb luck, found that someone was actually teaching Taika Oyata's system (known then as "Ryukyu Kempo," now as "RyuTe") in my city. This was amazing. I joined the class and was there regularly for some few months, happy as a clam.

Then I got married, and, as those of you who are married know, things get complicated. I dropped out of the class and didn't return for a long time. So long, in fact, that I had an almost-grown son. Life had grown somewhat more manageable, and he had an interest, and at first I thought, "Well, we'll take a look at the Shotokan class at First Baptist, it's probably the best we can do, we'll order some of Taika Oyata's tapes and see if we can't apply some of what we see to what we do in Shotokan." But then I thought, "Well, who knows? Maybe my old teacher is still teaching."

At first I couldn't find him. He certainly wasn't teaching publicly. I finally found a stray blogospheric reference to him, and then--duh!--decided to look him up in the phone book. He had since become a very sick man, but he remembered me, and after talking with me and my son, agreed to take us on as private students in his home. We have been with him now for some little time, and it has been amazing. He's about to turn 63, and is an oxygen patient, not very big, not strong at all, and he can make the techniques work on me and my son. He is living proof that real Okinawan karate works, that it's skill and knowledge that rule, not size and strength. He validates everything he says by his ability to make the techniques work on healthier, younger, larger, stronger people.

So, there I am. Not as "brief" as I initially intended it to be, but I warned you that the post rambled!

Now, about American Kenpo. Obviously I do not practice the system and am never likely to, but it has intrigued me for a while, as have other "American" martial arts, like Danzan-Ryu jujutsu, Budoshin jujutsu, Small-Circle jujutsu, Vee-jitsu, Kombido, Kajukenbo, and so forth. I mean, I can see how these things arise...

...pardon me while I digress for a moment. I have to tell a story about a local kenpo teacher, one I heard from my own teacher.

You'll recall that I said Japanese Goju-Ryu was once the game in town around here, only to lose first place to taekwon-do. However, there was a kenpo school here for a while, a franchised one, and the teacher was a man of considerable ability who remains quite well known around these parts, although, as far as I know, his teaching is limited to a handful of students in the Tahlequah area.

My teacher told me that this man once attended the local state fair and got drunk whilst he was there. The local sheriff's department was providing security and made their intentions to take him in known, and he said fine; he wasn't going to resist, he would go with them, but not to touch him--he couldn't stand to be touched. Now, I know that makes no sense at all, but you have to bear in mind that the man was drunk. Well, the deputies had already put out a call for backup, for the man was known to them, and as deputy number four arrived on the scene, overhearing the conversation, it climaxed with deputies one, two, and three trying to take the kenpo teacher down from behind in order to cuff him. In a trice, the kenpo teacher had downed all three deputies and turned to the fourth one, who, not being a fool, announced that he wouldn't touch the kenpo teacher, just, please, sir, would you take these and cuff yourself?

In court, the first three deputies naturally wanted the kenpo teacher to serve time for resisting arrest, battery, and so forth, but when deputy number four took the stand, he confirmed everything the kenpo teacher had said and the judge tossed those charges, apparently on the grounds that deputies one, two, and three were idiots! The kenpo teacher was found guilty of being drunk and disorderly and that, apparently, was it.

My teacher had a job in city government at the time and deputy number four, in addition to his duties as a deputy, was one of my teacher's employees, and that is how he heard the story. Hope you enjoyed it.

As I was saying, I can see how these things arise, especially given my experience with taekwon-do. I mean, you get some training in something, you can tell something's there, but you can also tell you haven't quite got the whole picture. So you start seeking out knowledge from other sources, hoping to fill in the gaps in your "picture." How many people have you known who have achieved black belts in karate, and then judo, and then aikido? A lot of people are satisfied to leave it right there, apparently content with the idea that karate really is mostly block-punch-kick and you have to get grappling from elsewhere. Some of the arts I mentioned above really don't amount to much more than collections of techniques drawn from karate and judo and, maybe, arnis. I don't blame the founders of those arts. What would you do if you came home from military service with a black belt in Shotokan and your neighbor came home with a black belt in judo, and you went to the same church? Or something like that?

But American Kenpo seems different to me, and I think it is different principally because of Ed Parker.

Now, there is more than one theory of how American Kenpo came to be. It may very well be that some people came here to read this post just to see what this no-name blogger had to say about its history. I am not going to get into an argument about American Kenpo's history with anyone, so if you disagree with me, that is fine, you are not the first and you will not be the last. I may well be wrong and if I am, I will still go home and sleep well.

Having said that, for those of you who haven't heard it, the story in many kenpo circles is that James Mitose was born in Hawaii and was then sent back as a lad to Japan for training in his ancestral religion and martial art, that art being a variety of kenpo. He then came back to Hawaii and taught a number of students.

Mitose eventually left Hawaii. My understanding is that he was eventually arrested on the mainland, charged with being an accomplice to murder, and died in prison. That much seems to be fairly certain. However, I don't believe that story about James Mitose bringing an ancestral Japanese martial art to Hawaii at all. You can poke about the web for people making arguments for it and arguments against it, and in my opinion, those making arguments against it have much the better of the argument.

What I think happened is this: Mitose picked up a smattering of martial arts from only-God-knows where and combined it with what he had seen of Okinawan karate. If memory serves, both Choki Motobu and Chojun Miyagi made visits to Hawaii within Mitose's lifetime. I think (though I cannot prove) that Mitose took what he had learned and turned it into a temporary means of making a living. You may wonder how he was able to do this, probably not being what we think of as a genuine karate master, and all I can tell you is that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! Back when I was in taekwon-do and defending myself with a simple reverse punch, the people on the receiving end of that punch, simple as it was, certainly thought that I knew what I was talking about.

I don't think Mitose had to be a real "master" for people to be impressed with him.

One of Mitose's students was William K.S. Chow, who had apparently learned some kung fu--what kind? Heck if I know--from his father. "Thunderbolt" Chow took what he had learned from Mitose and blended it with his father's kung fu and passed the result on to, among others, Ed Parker. If nothing else, it was rough stuff and the people behind it had a vital--vital--interest in being able to stay alive on the street.

Parker took the art to the mainland and, as far as I can tell, kept "cooking" it. You can see a real progression in Parker's kenpo from his first books to his last. Although I am convinced that he added to what he learned from Chow (I have read at least one source that strongly suggested he spent some time training in Hung Gar kung fu), it does not appear to me that he just added techniques willy-nilly to his system. It appears to me that he really attempted to understand what was going on anatomically and in terms of kinesiology, and he made a serious effort to systematize what he had learned and come up with. Parker, as far as I can tell, accepted and absorbed what he had an opportunity to learn, but he didn't blindly accept it. He kept asking himself, "Why does it work? Can it be improved? Can I prove that it works in real life? Is it the best way to do it?" His life vis-a-vis martial arts appears to have been a continual process of absorbing, refining, and improving whatever he could find, from whatever sources were willing to part with it. It intrigues me because it seems a peculiarly American approach to martial arts, and because it seems to me that it is the same approach that the Okinawan masters of karate took . If Ed Parker's American Kenpo isn't the equal of classical Okinawan karate (specifically RyuTe), it's not his fault. The Okinawan masters carried out their research over the course of centuries, and through Taika Seiyu Oyata, it is still going on. Ed Parker had only his own lifetime and during it, he created an art that while, again, not the equal of classical Okinawan karate, is sure as **** better than most of the "karoddy" (to borrow a term from Openhand) that you find around this country today.

At least when it's taught well. That is an issue. Not every kenpo instructor out there is a good one.

Oh, well. Just some meandering thoughts from a middle-aged man without any particular claim to expertise. Hope I didn't bore you too much.

Why You'll Never Impress Me with Stories of Conservative Racism

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I use the term "libtard" a number of times in this post. If you are one of my liberal friends, rest assured that you are not a libtard. There is a difference between a liberal and a libtard. I have liberal friends; I have yet to acquire any libtard friends. My liberal friends, this post is not about you.

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I got to thinking about this subject this afternoon, and unfortunately wound up with too many good ideas (and titles! I will be writing another post, to be titled, "Curse of the Libtard" shortly) to work into one post, especially one (hopefully) short enough to be suited to the short attention spans of the few liberals that might read it.

I'll try to be brief:

1) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because there are too many conservatives. That is, there are millions of people who claim to be conservative in this country alone, and you don't have to have more than two brain cells to rub together (Unless you're a libtard. You might need a few more, yours being of low quality.) to figure out that in any group of that size, of course there are going to be some who hold opinions that are, shall we say, less than optimal. Just because, in a nation that probably has a minimum of thirty or forty million self-identified conservatives, you can find a few--or thirty, or forty, or even thousands, that have used the word "nigger," it doesn't logically follow that conservatives are racists.

Again, slowly, for the drive-by libtard reader: you may prove that there are racist conservatives, but that does not prove that conservatives are racists, just as you may prove that there are brown dogs, but that does not prove that dogs are brown.

2) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because, dear libtard reader, you've too often proven to me that you do not actually know what racism is. You continually confuse racism with a host of other things, in such a way that it ultimately becomes clear that to a libtard, "racist" essentially equates to "not liberal." Honestly: I have seen libtards refer to opposition to social programs as "racist," for no better reason than that the beneficiaries of some of those programs are disproportionately black.

Why should I be impressed with your stories of conservative racism when you've spent so much time showing me that you have, at best, a tenuous grasp of what racism is?

3) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because, dear libtard reader, you've too often proven to me that you don't actually have a clue what conservatism is. Time and again, I have watched you confuse the politics of various statist regimes with conservative thinking, completely oblivious to the glaring contradictions between the two.

Libtards almost never have any clue what the intellectual heritage of conservatism is. Talk to them of Russell Kirk, and they will look at you as though you've a horn growing out of your forehead. And you might as well mention the satellites of Jupiter as bring up Edmund Burke. They have no idea, as a rule, who he was or what he said.

Why should I be impressed with your stories of conservative racism when you've spent so much time showing me that you have, at best, a murky grasp of what conservatism is?

4) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because racism is no part of conservative thinking. There are, to be sure, streams within conservatism, just as there are streams within liberalism (I would never confuse my liberal friends with libtards. God forbid!). I have written on this before; you can search the blog if you're interested. There are "mainstream" conservatives; Paleocons; Crunchy Cons; Neocons; "Social" (primarily Christian) conservatives, and so forth. Not one of these groups will tell you that some races are, by nature, inferior to certain other races (that is the definition of racism, if you were wondering). To be sure, you may find a few (darn few, in my experience) individuals within these groups that have racist ideas, but...see point one.

5) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because you've too often proven that you're completely blind to the racism, bigotry, and hatred within your own libtard ranks (not to mention the other "isms" present there). I saw and heard the way you talked about, and drew cartoons about, Condi Rice. I've read what libtards have to say about Michelle Malkin. I remember the libtard that said she hoped Clarence Thomas died, like so many black men, of heart disease. It is despicable. But you libtards turn a blind eye to it because, in the end, to you, the charge of "racism" is just a tool with which you can assault your political enemies, not something over which you have genuine concern.

Yes, I just called you libtards "hypocrites." Congratulations on figuring that one out.

6) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because I just know too many conservatives. I referred to this in my last post. Look, libtards and libtardettes, most of the people I know reasonably well are conservatives of one stripe or another. Some are more conservative, some are less, some are conservative on this issue but not on that issue, but I'm really not going too far in saying that most of the people I know reasonably well are conservatives.

I don't know any of them that are racists. Seriously. To tar any of them as "racist," you have to torture the definition of racism (see point 2).

How on earth do you think you're going to persuade me that conservatives are racist when none of the conservatives I know are racists?

7) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because there are too many black (and brown) conservatives. Sadly, it is when you libtards write about them that your own bigotry and vitriol most often boils over. Words fail me when thinking of the venom that's been heaped on Clarence Thomas, on Michelle Malkin, on Condi Rice.

Libtards' thinking just can't quite grasp the significance of people like Clarence Thomas, Michelle Malkin, Condi Rice, Star Parker, La Shawn Barber (whom I follow on Twitter, and who has graciously responded to some of my tweets), Lloyd Marcus, Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain (currently near the top in Republican polling--kind of weird for an allegedly racist party, wouldn't you think?), and...Mike.

"Mike?" you ask? I don't know his last name, but Mike is a black gent, a driver for Triple A, whom I met a couple of years ago. You see, I drive this ratty old Bronco II, which I dearly love and hope to restore someday, and there for a while, a couple of years ago, I was having pretty regular trouble with it. One of the few benefits of my job is that I get Triple A coverage, and the first time I met Mike was when I had to have Triple A come out and pick me up on a back road. While Mike was lowering the platform on his truck, he was playing his radio at full volume because he didn't want to miss a word of what Michael Savage had to say. I guess people had commented on his taste in talk radio before, because he felt obliged to turn to me at one point and tell me, "Not all of us voted for Obama!"

Mike picked up me and my Bronco II a couple of other times over the next several months. He's consistent. He's not fooling. He's a conservative.

Mike and people like him fry libtard minds. The fact that there are black conservatives puts libtards in the position of having either to admit that conservatism doesn't equal being against black people, or of having to accuse people like Mike of being stupid or sellouts. With almost clockwork regularity, libtards choose the second option, apparently clueless as to how bigoted accusing a black man of being a sellout or a fool for disagreeing with them makes them look.

8) You'll never impress me with stories of conservative racism because--and this will no doubt come as a shock to your poor little libtard soul--I actually know, and have known, a lot of black people. Brown people, too.

I swear, libtards often write and speak as though conservatives have never actually met a person of color, like they don't know what they're like. It's amazing. You really seem to think you can say almost any stupid thing about black people and conservatives and since, in your libtard minds, no conservatives actually know black people, we'll never be able to call you on it!

I wrote about some of the black people I've known in this post, which I also linked in my last post, but I know perfectly well you libtards didn't read it.

Libtards and libtardettes, in my life, I have been in the Marine Corps Reserve, worked in the restaurant business for fourteen years, worked in call centers, and, for most of the last eight years, worked in a field that gives me direct and almost-daily contact with heavy consumers of social services. I know, and have known, lots and lots of blacks and hispanics. And having known so many, let me assure you, dear libtard reader, I have a much better idea how they behave and what they say than you might think!

It is almost comical to watch or read libtards act as though certain words were proof-positive of racism. Almost comical, that is, to anyone who actually knows a lot of black people.

One time, I brought a short stick with which I happened to be working to our summer training in the Mojave Desert. My A-gunner--assistant gunner--saw it, asked what it was, and upon being told that it was a martial arts weapon, said, "It sure looks like a nigger-knocker to me." He was, of course, a "dark green" Marine, that is to say, for those of you who haven't been in the Corps, he was black.

How seriously do you expect me to take your charges of racism when Lilly, one of the Wal-Mart employees I have gotten to know a bit over my years of shopping there, was obviously upset with someone on the phone, and, when asked what she was upset about, replied, in frustration and almost at the top of her lungs, "BLACK PEOPLE!!"? Racism? I have no doubt that if she was white, you libtards would charge her with it. But Lilly is black.

One of my best friends in this world is a 74-year-old black lady named Rose. When she tells me how she cautioned a grand-daughter to take her car to a real mechanic, not to get it "nigger-rigged," when she tells me how she told an errant male relative to "get his black *** over here," just how seriously do you expect me to take you when you tell stories about how some conservative or other used the word "nigger," and how that proves that conservatives are racists?

Haven't you libtards ever been around a group of black folks and heard one say to another, "Nigga, please"?

I'm not saying that it's a good idea to use the word "nigger," but honestly, has it never occurred to you libtards that if black people routinely use the word, saying "nigger" doesn't automatically mean you're against all black people? Are you really that stupid?

As I wrote in this post, I've had black folks tell me--quietly, as though they were afraid someone might overhear--that the behavior of some black folks made them ashamed to be black, or that they didn't like black people. Do you seriously expect me to consider the possibility that those black people thought that black people are, by nature, inferior? If not, why on earth would you expect me to believe that conservatives who say that black culture is deteriorating are racists?

Libtards, I know you'll never quit accusing conservatives and Republicans of institutional racism. If you admit that conservative opposition to your ideas has little to do with race and much to do with the feckless and often murderous record of your ideas, you are, conversationally and publicly speaking, cooked. Accusing conservatives of racism is just one of the ways you have of diverting attention from your failed ideology, so you won't ever give it up.

But I, and others like me, won't ever fall for it.

The Mark of the Idiot

Been a while since I've posted. Been busy, still am, so I'll keep this short and sweet:

You know, don't you, that I identify myself as a Tea Partier? Well, if you didn't, you know now.

Probably most of the people I know would describe themselves as Tea Partiers, or at least not unfriendly to the Tea Party. It's probably fair to say that most of the people I know would describe themselves as conservative, even the few that don't identify themselves as Tea Partiers.

I do know some liberals, and some of them I like and get on quite well with. Those are not the people I'm writing about today.

The people I'm writing about today are the fatuous twits who simply cannot see a Tea Partier--or a conservative, for that matter--without seeing a racist.

Friends, I know not one--not ONE--Tea Partier who could fairly be described as a racist. I do know Tea Partiers who oppose racial set-asides, who oppose welfare programs that mostly benefit minorities, who think that Black American culture is suffering badly, and so forth, but it requires an extraordinary degree of ignorance or stupidity to describe those as racist positions. Even to suggest that any one of them is racist shows blissful ignorance of the definition of the word.

It floors me that a political movement that currently seems to be enamored of, for crying out loud, Herman Cain, an obviously black man, can be tarred as "racist," but I have seen the attempt made. It floors me that a political movement that practically worships Col. Allen West, another obviously black man, can be tarred as "racist," but I have seen it done. It floors me that a political movement that has, for one of its most lively writers, Lloyd Marcus, another obviously black man, can be tarred as "racist," but I have seen it done, even by people who know that the Tea Party has blacks and other minorities in it. They do it, basically, by asserting that our minority members candidates aren't real minorities, or are sellouts, or stupid.

Mighty **** broad-minded of you, pally...

The situation has gotten so bad that I cannot look at someone calling Tea Partiers "racist" and fail to think of him as a complete idiot. Calling Tea Partiers "racist" has become a badge, a mark--the Mark of the Idiot.

For more of my thoughts on racism, go here.

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And, of course, they're still at it, trying to tar the whole barrel with a few bad apples, in spite of headlines like this one. As God is my witness, one of the things I'm hoping for most is the sight of libtards trying to tell me that their opposition to Herman Cain's presidential policies isn't racist but that my opposition to Barack Obama's was racist.

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