And the mail comes in:

Great and Mighty, etc., Dreadful, etc., цѣсарь,

Your humble Burgher of Bong sends greetings from the land of Badgers and Beer-makers and Meat-Packers. Also the land of pointless recall elections, expensive ‘bring out your dead’ voter mobilization efforts, and a state Supreme Court that puts extreme unction into dysfunctional.

This Burgher considers himself (falsely, no doubt) a tolerant chap. He figures that most racists can’t really help feeling that way, and that the typical anti-Catholic bigot doesn’t really hate Catholics, merely everything they claim the Catholic Church stands for. But he draws the line when and where these intersect.

Drudge linked to one version of this story, here’s another from the local newspaper:

Short version: Gov. Walker is scheduled to read Dr. Seuss to some little kids. The night before, vandals glue the locks on the school doors, then during the day scores of ‘protesters’ show up (as scheduled) to yell at the children and their parents and everyone else about how fondly they recall our governor’s name.

Here’s the rub: Bishop Messmer is one of the Catholic schools in Milwaukee that survives in large part because of Wisconsin’s (very limited) school voucher program. Its student body is almost entirely African-American, a fact well-known to the SEIU and WEAC folks who were behind this protest. So let’s call a spade a spade.

If you commit crimes and/or create a public disturbance to keep African-American kids from going to the school they want to go to, you are a racist. This isn’t about protesting the governor, it’s about taking from disadvantaged families the dignity of being able to send their children to school of their choice in peace.

To put this another way, the protestors aren’t just cravenly trying to hang on to whatever portion of the public trough they think they are entitled to; they are expressing fear of a system that might actually lift people out of poverty, a system that is based on the personhood of each individual rather than regarding the poor as a ‘class’ to be mollified. The former, of course, is the foundation of genuine Catholic social teaching. School choice is but one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a start.

Good hunting,

– Bongburgher

Thanks for the ultra-correct spelling on our name, up there! And thanks for the thoughtful reply. The Czar has no intention of quibbling.

But, if you commit crimes and/or create a public disturbance to keep kids from going to school, you are a criminal. Being a racist is not a crime of law so much as it is a crime of intellect. The Czar, who heard this story, should hope that the MPD is seriously investigating this. Bongburgher likely agrees.

However, whether the motivation was racism is curious. If anything, the motivation was to terrorize Governor Walker; that the school was almost exclusively African-American probably mattered little to them, so much as it was an opportunity to commit a vulgar attempt at stifling free speech.

You may disagree; the Czar, however, thinks that if the motivation was racism, the deed would have been done without Governor Walker needing to be there.

On this we can agree: this a clear-cut case of liberal fascism. They do not care for Governor Walker, so they punish a group of innocent students who had nothing to do with their flavor of politics.

But it is the Tea Party who are racist terrorists, right?

Oh Wise and Cuddly Czar,

I’d like to thank you for your mercy in waiting until after I moved from CT to FL to send the hurricane up there. I assume you did it to blot the denizens of the show Jersey Shore off the map? In any event, I appreciate it, and the Myrmidon training continues as usual.

XOXO,

D.T.

Great news about the Myrmidons, and may we state excellent work this past week on the earthquake cleanup! Very few residents of Washington, DC, had any indication that they were being invaded by ninja zombies. Your Myrmidons did a flawless job in wiping them out, cleaning up the mess, and keeping the streets safe. Very few citizens were eaten.

That said, though, you will want to talk to the Mandarin about the hurricane. The Czar won’t go near that damned weather machine. He learned his lesson.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.