Kevin Williamson at NRO points out that the Baltimore riots are a direct result of the Democrat leadership of that city; a city with no Republicans in any positions of city Government, in the bluest state in the country. Baltimore is a one-party Democrat-run city, and the same can be said of Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, Atlanta and most other large cities that have not seen a Republican mayor since before the advent of color television. Williamson catalogs the failings of Democrat city governments, but he doesn’t really explain how dysfunction is rooted in the Democrat style of politics.
As I have often said, the Democrat Party has one value proposition: We’re going to take money away from people you don’t like and spend it on you. This model has been highly successful in large urban areas and in the last two presidential elections. It is a highly effective message for the greedy, entitled, low-information voters that make up the Democrat base. It is not, however, an effective strategy for actual governance. It is, in fact, the root of why Democrat governance is so dysfunctional.
In real life, how the Democrat value proposition plays out is, “We’re going to take money from people you don’t like, use it to create massive, bloated government bureaucracies where we can give our cronies do-nothing, no-show jobs and also divert a lot of that money to our business cronies who contributed to our campaigns, and whatever is left will trickle down to you in the form of lousy Government services [think inner city schools] and welfare payments that are just enough to keep you in poverty and demanding more.”
In the Democrat model, businesses that employ people and indeed people employed by the private sector are the enemy. The Democrat base is constantly told that businesses are greedy, and that they “owe” the community their “fair share.” And even when businesses try to do good for the community, they are attacked for not doing enough, or for doing it in the wrong way.
In this way, Democrats justify constant increases in taxes and regulations on businesses; and also make sure businesses contribute to the party in a kind of protection racket. However, it also drives businesses out of Democrat-run areas, or out of business entirely, creating unemployment. Democrats are by and large OK with this because welfare recipients are loyal voters; but a model in which ever fewer working people are supporting ever greater numbers of welfare recipients and government bureaucrats is unsustainable. Government, despite the “you didn’t build that” claims of Barack Obama and Liz Warren, creates nothing; it only takes. And it can only be sustained by economic growth in the private sector, which Democrat policies stifle.
Democrats also must villainize Republicans to make sure no alternative to their party exists. They tell blacks, “Republicans want to bring back slavery.” They tell gays, “Republicans want to outlaw sex and make it legal to kill you.” They tell single women, “Republicans will outlaw contraception.” They tell Hispanics, “Republicans want to secure the border and stop you from illegally taking American jobs.” None of these is true, but by demonizing Republicans, Democrats assure dysfunction by denying political alternatives, and by allowing their constituents to ignore the causes and effects of their own dysfunction. Contrary to Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and guilt-ridden white liberals, the dysfunction of the black community is not the fault of Caucasian Americans. But it is politically potent for Democrats to tell African-Americans that they are the victims of White America. As such, there is no incentive for the black community to introspectively examine black-on-black violence, broken and dysfunctional families, or their rotten (Democrat-run) education systems. Those who acknowledge the dysfunction are decried as racists.
Democrats win election by stoking resentments, scapegoating productive people for the failures of unproductive people, looting the public treasury, and making monsters out of their opponents. These policies win elections very effectively particularly where voters are uneducated and ill-informed (i.e. dependent on Democrat-run schools and Democrat-run media), but as a strategy of governance, they are inherently dysfunctional. The resentments become hatred and violence, the productive people abandon the dysfunction until the dysfunctional are a voting majority, the public treasury is robbed bare, and you end up with… Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, St. Louis, Providence, Bridgeport, Camden, and all the other one-party urban hellholes, basically.
Democrats think that the dysfunction can be papered over by spending more of other people’s money. But that only works while there is money to spend. The country is broke, which is why I think Baltimore is just the prelude of what’s to come.
Not only did the drug dealer that started the Baltimore chimp out have spine surgery the week before, & should have been on bedrest but he just converted a car accident payment into a lump sum. Non complient patient.http://thefourthestate.co/2015/04/breaking-freddy-gray-had-spine-surgery-just-one-week-before-arrest/
I called it as a prior injury from the start. Car accident, surgery, then ignoring doctors instructions. That’s similar to how drug resistant diseases come about.
“The structured settlement from Allstate and Gray’s attempt to convert it into one lump sum payment has been confirmed by Howard County Circuit Court Records”
Full video: Nik Wallenda walks on Orlando Eye
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/04/full-video-nik-wallenda-walks-on.html
I disagree with Kevin Williamson. The Democrats that run these hellholes didn’t appoint themselves to office – the people that live there elected them.
If all it took was Democrat-run gubmint to run down a locale, Vermont should resemble Somalia. Marin County should be another Haiti.
Politicians of both parties would rather slide down a razor blade than to point out the cultural (and racial) issues. Since these topics are taboo, we cannot have any rational discussion.
V the K:
Notice that most of these cities are majority or near majority black. Hellholes follow the dark skinned people like coyotes follow deer.
The democrats run everything because they have convinced he low information voters that vote for them that the reason their failed programs are still failing is because the mean republicans won’t let them.
But if the low info voter thought just a little more they would realize that the mean republicans have no power in their city and in the case of several cities their counties or states.
“If you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police.”
“Where are the institutions that will teach the next generation of Americans that they, too, need to voluntarily obey the laws?”
This 90 second video poses a profound question.
Progressives and social Darwinists seek to destroy religion. They have to make laws the work of men, not of God. God is supreme and unalterable by the pleadings on man. The state as the superior machine needs no God and, in fact, can not co-exist with a higher order than the enlightened, rational mind of man. God granted us free will; the state exists to control it according to its own dictates.
Hitler understood religion very well. So, he created the Reichskirche and made all churches subservient to it. Marx, Mao and Castro just outlawed religion.
The ethical and moral beliefs of a nation must come from some authority. If the authority is God, right and wrong are not negotiable: free will is expected to be self-monitoring. If the authority is the emperor or the state, obeying the law is subject to the likelihood of being caught and the punishment delivered for breaking the law; free will is strictly controlled.
Strict authoritarian states scare the people into obeying the law. They usually form a special police who act as monitors and “teach” obedience to the state by employing harsh consequences for coming under their watchful eye.
We are a long way from the prototypical authoritarian state. But the more we turn to the courts to decide policy and the further the Department of Justice moves in the direction of “social justice” based on the whims of the elite, the closer we come to losing our Constitutional liberties.
Amen, KCRob.
“Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, Atlanta and most other large cities that have not seen a Republican mayor since before the advent of color television”—let’s not forget a really classic case….
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tragic-City-Birmingham-1963-2013/dp/1481045954
The story of Birmingham, Alabama, the tumultuous year of 1963, and the battle for civil rights helped convince a nation – an entire civilization – to throw open the doors to the halls of freedom and welcome everyone in. Bull Connor, Jim Crow, water hoses and fierce German Shepherds were the perfect villains, with black people – merely marching and fighting for equality before the law – cast as the perfect heroes. Images broadcast to the entire nation from Birmingham, and the promotion of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” helped convince legislators in Congress to pass Civil Rights Legislation in 1964. As one lawmaker said as they signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, “But for Birmingham, we wouldn’t be here.”
But in most narratives about “The Magic City,” history stops in 1963. Nothing post-1963 out of Birmingham is discussed in polite-society. Until now. Paul Kersey, the author of “Escape from Detroit” and “Black Mecca Down” now brings to you the definitive account of life in Birmingham, Alabama after the cameras left in 1963. A now 74 percent black city, with a city government completely dominated by black public employees and a shrinking tax base incapable of providing revenue to maintain the city, Birmingham is a city in financial and moral ruin. Crime rates consistently place Birmingham in “Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities in America” lists, with A&E’s real-life detective show ‘The First 48’ finding fertile grounds for filming in the former Magic City. No longer the “Magic City,” Birmingham post-1963 is the “Tragic City.”
Over on another thread, we have this:
Gays should be particularly sensitive to the dishonesty and damage done by stereotyping and painting with a broad brush.
Let’s talk turkey. The Ferguson riots have put spotlight on marginally competent people who are paid too by welfare programs to consider taking entry level jobs. They may be marginally competent, but they are not full-blown stupid.
When a group fails as completely as black males have failed, we are left with a seething underclass that will grasp at any straw in point the finger of guilt away from within. Black males disproportionately run afoul of the law. They disproportionately drop out of school. They disproportionately father children out of wedlock. They disproportionately fill up prison cells.
So, it is natural to ask the question: “Why?”
The liberal/Progressive answer is that white oppression created a tangle of pathologies which have left a “cultural residue” that has become a roadblock to success.
Well, what were the structural conditions of white supremacy the liberal cites? Slavery, a ban on black literacy, Jim Crow segregation and denial.
From Uncle Tom’s Cabin the abolitionists were informed that institution of slavery had made the slaves wasteful, shiftless, lazy, thieves, liars and degraded. Really? That was the prescription for having a successful plantation? But it was what the liberals needed to hear in order to cry their tears of outrage.
When slavery ended there was a vast movement among the freed people to find and reunite their families. There was also a general thirst for learning to read and write. In fact, freed slave built the first public schools in many parts of the south. Sears, Roebuck even packaged prefab schools and student desks that were shipped by rail and erected by parents who collected the money among themselves to buy the buildings.
The point is, liberty gave many freed slaves a chance to be self-reliant, responsible and to have a positive future. They were really not much different from the cash strapped whites. The “long depression” beginning in 1873 saw nominal wages drop by 25% and the total collapse of the Freedman’s Savings Bank. Unemployment rose sharply, banks collapsed, manufacturing and durable goods plummeted. Blacks and whites alike had to survive by sheer wit. Is it any wonder that the KKK arose to sate the hostility that poor whites felt toward former slaves who were making progress in their new-found freedom. Ghetto riots are always the same.
I have many dealings with black men and women and I do not find them less moral, less responsible, less worthy in our dealings than white Americans of Mexican Americans or gays.
Our welfare system has created a Ferguson type of pissed-off malcontents who lack the initiative and skills to bust free from the welfare plantation.
William Hogarth made an etching in 1751 of Gin Lane. These were white people of London, England. In that year, records show that 9,000 children died of alcohol poisoning. Eleven million gallons of gin were consumed in a city with less than one million people. In the Gin Lane etching, Hogarth includes a drunken woman sprawling on the steps while her child falls into a cellar, another feeds gin to her baby, a man fights with a dog for its bone, another hangs himself in a garret. In the background a house collapses, while the only buildings that are in good repair are the pawnbroker’s, the undertaker’s and the distillery.
Our underclass uses dope to instill indolence and make the section 8, food stamp days pass by. Trayvon and “Watermelon Lean” and the Gentle Giant with his Swisher Sweets or Eric Garner and his “looses.” These are the habits of people who have become like the description of slaves laid down in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And, in large part, the liberals created them.
Mayor Thomas D’Alessandro was Nancy Pelosi’s father. She’s a branch from the family tree, having been educated on her father’s knee. After him, came a string of liberal Democrats who have made Baltimore into the city it is today. The current mayor gave a stand down order to the police. What will they do if insurance companies refuse to pay claims on burnt out buildings?
Helio – your point is well taken. Mark Steyn has observed that the British welfare state has created a white equivalent of America’s black underclass. Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom is a real eye-opener.
The fact remains, though, that we have a race problem for which, in the modern climate, is intractable. When you see what happens in, say, New Orleans and what happens in Japan or San Francisco after a major earthquake, you’re looking at different civilizations. There were protests this week in Ferguson where, wait for it, black folks shot at other black folks. There’s something deeply wrong here (even more so since we’re used to this).
I don’t know what other white folks think but I am sick and tired of the race thing. I blame blacks but I also blame the people they hold up as leaders and the mainline culture that pretends that there’s not a problem.
There are too damn many people who benefit from the ongoing dysfunction, squalor, and chaos. Without the race problem, would anyone with a functioning brain cell give a fart what Al Sharpton thought about anything?
Some years back, Claire McCaskill was running for (and won) a senate seat from Missouri. While campaigning, she told a black audience in a STL church that Bush hindered the disaster response after Katrina because he wanted black people to die on the rooftops. I wrote her off as a human being at that instance.
There’s no way McCaskill is so breathtakingly stupid that she believes that’s true so that leaves only evil; wickedness. She believed her audience was dumb enough to believe her lie and, sadly, many do.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2006/09/blogger-attacked-for-airing-mccaskills-racistcrazy-bush-rant/
You’re just trying to excuse them, Helio. Doesn’t work. The KKK was founded to protect whites in a postwar south where black supremacy was forced on them and individual blacks were getting away with murder in their accustomed fashion.
Despite all that slavery stuff that happened over 150 years ago with plenty of help from New England slavers like Aaron Lopez, whites have given blacks the only shot at civilization they’ve ever had, and they’ve always reverted to the jungle when given what they yell for most—total control over their own turf.
Except when under tight control by whites, their behavior’s the same in Baltimore as in Burkina Faso. (I’m all but quoting Albert Schweitzer.) You are dramatically more likely to be robbed, maimed or killed by a black than a white as a matter of statistics. It’s too late to discuss why except in the one thing that’s been ruthlessly excluded from the “conversation”: innate racial differences and the perils of denial.
I find it impossible to believe that anyone could believe that:
It is impossible to define a person racially by biologically. The American Antropological Association statement on “race” notes that “there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them.” If further states: “Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.”
The sweeping generality about “whites” civilizing “blacks” is supremacist talk and it belongs in the skin-head, Nazi, Phelps league of non-thinkers.
By “them” I assume you mean the blacks. Sort of like “those people.”
The world is full of human “trash” that comes in all colors, traits and beliefs. Eventually, we have to confront them when they run amok and out of control.
It is too simple and simplistic to believe that if it is black, it is rotten. That is real KKK and Third Reich supremacist stuff.
I have no way of knowing if the commenter @ #12 is part of the LGBT group, but such bigotry is ironic if he is.
All these Democrat atrocities, reminds me of an old song by Mudhoney, “Flat Out F***ed!”
That’s nutty, Helio (#13). You’re the one that wrung your hands for 17 paragraphs about what whites have done to blacks and how it’s all really whites’ fault after all.
Generalities are exactly how life works and you use them freely. No more sophistry please. Your attempts to join gay rights and black power at the hip are ridiculous. Blacks aren’t too happy about it, don’t know if you’re aware of that.
Want to call names, do you? I’m calling you a bleeding-heart liberal, on this one at least.
Helio – permit me to direct your attention here:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
There are cognitive differences between races. Does that mean that all black people are dumb? No. Does that mean all whites are smart. No. Does that mean that black people are to be denied the rights we all have as human beings? Again, no.
What that suggests to me is that public policy needs to be design to close the gap (e.g. perhaps meaningful education reforms) so that those who are willing can succeed. Those who succeed will have kids more likely to succeed. What we do now does nothing but make liberal whites feel good about themselves. Nothing more. If anyone can explain to me how college classes on white privilege helps black people, I’m all ears.
Whatever we’ve been doing since the 60s is a tragic failure. Thomas Sowell has noted the increase in misery since gov’t moved to create and sustain dependence.
eremon,
You have somehow been unable to comprehend what I wrote @ #9. Perhaps you can get someone to explain it to you.
I don’t think there’s a consistent view point in #9, Helio, but your true colors come gushing out in #16, and they are PC to the hilt.
#9: “Our welfare system has created a Ferguson type of pissed-off malcontents who lack the initiative and skills to bust free from the welfare plantation.” No, the welfare state has deliberately bred a bestial, irredeemable, criminal, mostly black underclass seething with hatred against other races, notably whites, and contemptuous of the idea of working, learning or getting off the welfare tit. This they call “acting white” and punish those who attempt it.
This is a drastic situation. Plain English is urgently called for. Politicians have built the welfare state, Hollywood fills each new generation of welfare brats’ heads full of virulently anti-white “hood” BS to the point that there’s no dividing line between gangsta rap and gangs. The life of every one of us is in danger as the beasts escape their imaginary cages snarling for our blood. The dollar’s down for the count, the EBT cards could go dead at any moment.
Never caught doing anything monoracially, the never-changing political establishment is working the same magic with other races through immigration. Crips, meet MS-13. Now you boys play nicely. Hey, put away those knives!
KCRob,
My effort @ #12 was to explain that the once dominant concept of Mongoloid, Caucasian and Negroid as the “three races” is null and void since DNA and the human genome study came to the fore. “Race” is now a corrupt construct used very loosely as a designation without a definition.
Affirmative Action is a violation of the 14th Amendment, pure and simple. But its worst problem is that there is no scientific way for determining who is not “black enough” to qualify for the program.
I am very familiar with The Bell Curve and Charles Murray makes a very strong case for dealing with the shallow end of the gene pool. Appalachian “whites” in West Virginia got themselves so fouled up with the shallow end of the gene pool that they managed to have an overwhelming incidence of Lesch–Nyhan syndrome characterized by cognitive impairment and self-mutilation.
One only need to look at the disproportionate number of “blacks” in special ed programs to understand that something has screwed them up. The old “nature vs. nurture” fiasco of 40+ years ago assumed that Head Start, money and special strokes would clear things up. Things, in fact, have gotten worse.
The cultural collapse in urban black communities is a national tragedy. The recent news featured a black mother who saw her kid in the Baltimore riots and went after him with a vengeance and slapped him around. Great. That is a bit of good news. However, that mother has six kids and no man in the house. How, pray tell, did she get six kids and who supports them? I think both of us know the answer. We also know that for every one of her, there are quite a few single moms who don’t grab their kids out of the riot zone and set them straight.
We desperately need to be allowed to be honest about this problem which is costing us all a huge amount of time, wasted money and aggravation.
I have no reason to feel defensive about race or to make excuses based on race. In every corner of the world, you can find people who have managed to be grouped together as some sort of societal “bottom feeders.” If there has been a generalized success in pulling these people up and turning them into productive people, we would all like to hear about it.
From my perspective, much of what ails these people who are a drag on society stems in large part from an internalized cultural rot.
Your language is quite colorful, but if you understand what I wrote you should be able to see that we are largely in agreement.
However, your tacit inference of welfare being a conspiracy is a bit too much for me to swallow. There are many fine and deserving people who have used welfare as a safety net and moved on to productive lives.
I don’t know the ratios between blacks and whites in the welfare systems or the ratio between “bestial, irredeemable, criminal” blacks in the welfare system and blacks in the welfare system who are not “bestial, irredeemable, criminal, contemptuous of the idea of working or getting off the welfare tit.” I doubt you have any clue to the actual numbers, either.
You certainly show a propensity and a knack for damning a whole “race” for the actions of some in the race.
You are showing every sign that you are bigoted and unwilling to pry your narrow views open to a little more reasoned thinking.
I have done nothing like condemn a whole race and you know it, Helio. How old are you? You lacking the very basic principles of reasoning when you try to equate a general pattern with its exceptions or write off the pattern as nonexistent or irrelevant.
“It is impossible to define a person racially by biologically”—GIVE ME A BREAK! Tell Al Sharpton or the Congressional Black Caucus there’s no black race. Or the NAACP—hey, they’re “colored”! See, that’s just a last-ditch attempt to fend off reality.
I demonstrated the reality of conspiracy on the ISIS Stones Gay Couple to Death page which you also tried to becloud. (“Doxological rules?”)
eremon,
I am 73 and a long time academic in the field of ethics. Unfortunately, I am not as careful with proof reading on these small print pages as I should be and I let a fair number of errors fly, such as omitting words or letting the cursed “spell” devise choose something I did not mean.
I do not believe, however, that my skills in rhetoric and logic have declined to the point you assert.
I do not assert my race as part of any argument.
You asserted: whites have given blacks the only shot at civilization they’ve ever had. That is a statement of racial supremacy.
My reference to the DNA and human genome project is to point out a very curious problem: there is no biological basis for dividing the human species by race. Blacks are not a separate species with given characteristics. The pigmentation charts for human skin colors will turn up a whole lot of “blacks” from around the world who differ greatly in bone structure, hair characteristics, etc.
You have branded blacks thusly: “ The Negroes will have to accept the consequences of their actions, but that is difficult for people that have been treated as children by the federal govt.
Here is my beef with you: You have made sweeping statements about “blacks” and “Negros” that imply a racially based incapacity to be civilized and responsible.
What is the next logical step to that assumption? Round them up and concentrate them in reservations? So, how will you decide who should go to the reservation and who should be left free to be civilized?
You and I likely differ very little on how the welfare system has corrupted far too many of the blacks who have lived for generations on the public dole. The fact is, in the 1960’s we tore down largely black communities in the name of urban renewal and we gave them largely black high rise concentration buildings and welfare in exchange. Cabrini-Green in Chicago was infamous. In clearing up urban blight, the bureaucracy had the chance to take the people penned up in public housing in hand and “civilize” them according to the very best white supremacist thinking. Head Start, proper nutrition, job training, cultural activities and the likes. It not only largely failed, the target group degenerated. This was due in no small part to the federal rules which effectively forced the man out of the house.
So, we are left with the conundrum how to deal with unskilled labor in an economy where welfare payments are equal to being paid close to $30 an hour in the world of paying taxes and bills out of your own pocket.
As you travel the world, you will find groups of people who simply live lives that are the antithesis of our concept of “civilization.” They are not limited to being “black.”
This President and his Department of Justice have focused on their brand of “social justice.” They have decided to attack the “obstacles” they assume which stand in the way of “blacks” progressing to some imagined form of “equality” or parity with ….. I guess …. the whites. It is a form of affirmative action which assumes that the white devil made the poor black miscreant commit the “boo-boo.” They are racists for taking this stance.
Now we have the fires resulting from racial rabble-rousing. Al Sharpton and the Congressional Black Caucus and a boatload of “aggrieved’ black academics and news people are busy playing to the community they are organizing.
So, eremon, the time has come either modify your language and stop painting with such a broad brush, or to lay out your plan on how to gain the authority and permission to do with these “blacks” as you would deem necessary.
GayPatriot has been mostly free of bigots and bigotry. I called you out for your sweeping, bigoted remarks. Either tighten up your rhetoric or go full full skin-head. But don’t let occasional readers here think that this site takes no notices of commenters who claim whites have given blacks the only shot at civilization they’ve ever had.
eremon,
My apologies for attributing a statement made by davinci on another thread to you. That was sloppy on my part and unfair to you.
Heliotrope
“there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them.”
Just because Asians & whites have a wide bell curve of IQ doesn’t mean that the difference between the averages doesn’t matter. Asians with an avg IQ of 106 fill the top NYC public schools even more than whites with an avg of 100. De Blasé wanted to kick out poor Asians so US blacks avg 85IQ & Hispanics Avg 90 could enter.
Only 1 out of 6 US blacks have an IQ of 100 or higher.
Anyone who doubts the significance of mean IQ disparities among different races has only to observe how effectively the Democratic Party has convinced a supermajority of blacks to give them unwavering political support in return for living on a political, cultural, and physical plantation and and subsisting on a few comparatively meager handouts.
Steve,
China admits to a population of 1.2 billion, but suspects the population might be as high as 1.8 billion. That means that 600 million people may or may not exist in China. That is almost twice the population of the US. If the top 10% of those ghost people with the highest IQ were to turn up, it would be 60 million bright guys.
China is full of not too bright people and they have been shunted aside to fish, plow with water buffalo plant and harvest rice and pick dry corn from the cob. It is a society that does not set out to “waste” people, but neither does it try very hard to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
We sometimes get caught up in dealing with huge numbers while forgetting to associate them with ratios and proportion.
One thought to keep in mind. The Asians largely deal with logograms which are pictures that can change meaning with the addition or subtraction of small strokes. These logograms become words, but they do not have any phonetic attachment. Therefore, the Asian learns thousands of logograms and then a set of words that say the picture. When writing, the Asian hears the word and then immediately creates a rather complicated logogram on the paper. It they have a propensity for math, I suspect that they have to use the part of the brain the that manipulates complex symbols just to read and write. I also suspect that weaker minds among Asians don’t pick up reading and writing very easily.
Just a rumination.
The attorney for Freddy Gray’s family is conducting a press conference. He claims all they want is justice for Freddy, and he thanks demonstrators in other cities for their support and need to work for justice in their cities. He said that Freddy’s death is one too many. I’m getting sick and tired of blacks feeling sorry for themselves. Why is it when a black youth dies at the hand of a white person, be it the police or a private citizen, it is one too many? When are they going to address the problem and the need for justice for the hundreds of black youths in the ghettos who have died at the hands of another black? I wonder how the black youths feel about how the black leadership considers them throwaways?
Heliotrope, whenever I see one of your comments, I read it thoroughly, always admire your depth of thought, and wish this site had a way to up-vote a comment. But I have to disagree with one of your assertions: I was not offended by the comment that “whites have given blacks the only shot at civilization they’ve ever had.”
I’m referring to blacks brought from Africa and sold as slaves in America, and their descendants. I would never suggest that their lives in America were better than were their lives in Africa, but I do suggest that what has happened in most African countries where blacks are in charge is worse and less civilized than what has happened in the ensuing years in America.
I do not attribute our superior country (yes, politically incorrect as it is, I do believe America is #1) to white supremacy but rather to the incredible system of government set up by the Founding Fathers; it’s entirely possible that if the same system of government had somehow been created in any other country, we’d have some competition. No other country has it (and we’re working on losing it).
Black immigrants who come here voluntarily do very well. Some descendants of black slaves have done and are doing very well. But the race hustlers and, well, The Great Society have created a class of blacks in which too many cannot honestly be called “civilized.” And too many are enabling the uncivilized among them, so that their behavior becomes less and less civilized. But the point is that if any could succeed, then any could have succeeded.
If you can point to any country in Africa where freedom reigns under a black government and where most of the citizens live prosperous lives (at least as prosperous as America’s “poor” live), then I will be educated and I will apologize. I admit, I have never been to Africa.
“I am 73 and a long time academic in the field of ethics”—I think we’ve found the source of your problem, Helio. You’re a career egghead and that is clearly why your mind is a fog of smog on the life and death ethical matters at hand.
You’re an academic. You’ve spent your career in the miniature North Koreas called colleges and universities, or similar. You’ve had endless cheers from your fellow LIBERALS for your brainwashing of decades of youth. That surely sounds like what’s going on here.
“I do not believe, however, that my skills in rhetoric and logic have declined to the point you assert”—you simply don’t have any. Your mind is bent to the left and it’s never coming back. Mostly nobody’s agreeing with you here, showing you’re a fish out of water in this whole site, if not some kind of change agent. Two or three people are now going to reassure you of your supposed merits and shield you against “MEAN-SPIRITED” Eremon, but facts are facts are facts.
“You asserted: whites have given blacks the only shot at civilization they’ve ever had. That is a statement of racial supremacy”. At this point you’re just lying. You liberals are used to repeating a crazy, nutty thing till conservatives give in and agree with you, then dutifully pass it into law—but it ain’t me babe.
Racial supremacy is one race dominating another. That’s not the same a stating an obvious if liberally-unpopular fact. People like you need to learn you’re not going to smear people like me that easily and stuff us into pigeonholes straight out of the SPLC playbook anymore. Repeat this “supremacist” thing 15 more times and it won’t be one bit truer or fairer. Hey, liberals are the ones who always want to do away with LABELS, remember? Well, when it suits them.
Tribal Africa is not civilization. Not all blacks drink the equality kool-aid. Here’s another reference for you to ignore since that’s your bent: Richburg’s book Out of America, A Black Man Confronts Africa.
People like you just mess up beautiful sites. Comment threads are two or three times as long as they have to be. Owners probably have to pay more for each month’s storage.
Polly,
I would not disagree that blacks who came here in chains were given a full chance at a higher level of civilization than had they remained in Africa.
African tribes of blacks captured and sold their captives to the slave traders. It is natural to think that one group was somehow “smarter” than the other group.
It is also true that no black nation arose from within the African continent to rival the accomplishment of the Greeks, Romans or Chinese. In fact, there are no black African timeless monuments to rival the works of the Maya, Inca or Aztecs.
The Islamic Caliphate centered in Istanbul imported black slaves in greater number than were shipped to the western hemisphere. But only a scant population of blacks exists today in the Islamic territories of the old caliphate. But in the US and Caribbean and South America we have an incredible number of blacks who can trace their roots to the slave trade. That is not to say that it justifies the slave trade, but it is to point out that once freed, the blacks did not head back to Africa in any great numbers, nor were they killed off.
Certainly, our “civilization” rubbed off on the blacks and they became better for it, in my opinion. But we westerners have a different view of civilization than do the tribal peoples of the Amazon, Africa, Australia, southern Asia or Mongolia. I wince at the notion that every Hottentot and Eskimo is lacking in some way in civilization.
I find it exceedingly narrow-minded to believe that those who live and have lived successfully in third world conditions are somehow less human than we highly “civilized” monkeys who pay big money to listen to some Hollywood airhead spout off about global warming.
I don’t think we have different views at all. I take exception to the false pride inherent in the statement that the blacks of jungle Africa got a leg up by association with white people just because they were among whites. That is a very heavy dose of schadenfreude for me. Imagine someone looking into the eyes of a tribal black African from the deep jungle and saying to him: “Black man, this is your lucky day. A white guy has found your unlucky ass.”
Overt racism is anything but subtle. But ascribing benefits for association with a given race is not all that subtle within the bounds of racism.
There is an academic interest involved in exploring differences and trying to pin down causation for the differences. I have no objection whatsoever to research that is honestly proffered and carried out. Let the chips fall where they may.
Charles Murray and The Bell Curve popped the lid off political correctness and he was shut down and excoriated post haste. That is exemplary of the state of madness our “civilization” is able to accept.
There is little more I can say. We must practice precision in our condemnation or else be prepared to be shouted down as lunatics, heretics and bigots.
•You’re a career egghead and that is clearly why your mind is a fog of smog on the life and death ethical matters at hand.
•You’ve spent your career in the miniature North Koreas called colleges and universities, or similar.
•You’ve had endless cheers from your fellow LIBERALS for your brainwashing of decades of youth.
•Your mind is bent to the left and it’s never coming back.
•Mostly nobody’s agreeing with you here, showing you’re a fish out of water in this whole site.
•Tribal Africa is not civilization.
•People like you just mess up beautiful sites. Comment threads are two or three times as long as they have to be.
What can I say? I have been tried, found guilty and hung out to dry.
So much for honest dialog with those whose minds are made up.
Apparently @ #12 above, eremon DID NOT WRITE
Insanity is the only way to explain this.
This liberal ideology has spred everywhere. My husband called an ad to have some sticks picked up before mowing becaue he can’t do it because he’s a retired cop because of three ruptured discs from on duty injury and was told sure, $100. Btw he was answering a 911 call for help and now he can barely walk.
$100 using our lawn tractor and cart, for maybe a half an hour of work. I’d like to make that too. He’s not a teacher so doesn’t receive their pay or retirement.
Heliotrope,
I’ve heard from many different sources that blacks (or back then, Negroes) were making great strides toward success in the ’50s, with strong families being the norm. That began to unravel with LBJ’s Great Society–and they never knew what hit them.
More blacks have said it than whites; are they traitors to their race? I don’t think so. They seem a little disappointed and maybe just a little angry, albeit quietly.
The slaves were angry when their families were torn apart, as their owners sold them off. Today’s blacks do it voluntarily. I think that’s not progress.
A few minutes ago I sat down to watch my recorded WSJ Editorial Report. It had been preempted for a Victory Rally in Baltimore. Yep, it appears if you throw enough missiles and burn enough businesses, “justice” will be done. It the 6 jailed cops deserve it, well, good. If they’re innocent, just sacrifices to appease the mob, not so very good for law and order in the United States, and not good at all for blacks, even if it makes them feel good for now.
Al Sharpton has called for all local law enforcement to be taken over by the federal government. After seeing the good work of the IRS, sounds like a plan, as they say. And certainly sounds like what Barack Obama and his Department of “Justice” have been working to effect.
In my opinion, the government has done great damage to the black family.
If you interact with many government institutions, you will find too many bureaucrats who are essentially retired behind their desks and pulling down a paycheck with the least amount of service and production they can get by with. Many “affirmative action” people were hired in the great quota round-ups and we all know them when we run into them.
Merit-based employment is pretty much the norm in small business, unless the owner is a jerk and hires his jerk cousins and is the only game in town.
But many people who get into the government bureaucracy can’t be gotten rid of and they just sit and compost.
Cutting the government bureaucracy of its dead wood would cause a great deal of racial blood letting, because Affirmative Action and government bureaucracy are like a tick and warm human crevice.
Many, many blacks who have learned the ropes of merit advancement in the technical government bureaucracy have escaped into the middle class and become successful, productive citizens. I don’t wish to paint with too broad a brush. But high unemployment among a statistical group almost invariably leads to facts of people being essentially unemployable for substantial reasons. Not is no secret. But saying anything about it is an invitation for have the race card thrown and a chant among Progressives for more Affirmative Action, government programs, “education” and money, money, money.
The Governor of MD came out and said “200 businesses were lost in one night, tha majority of them were minority owned and not insured. So yeah, take that, Whitey! And when the citizens of that area are left without jobs or goods and services, Whitey will be feeling the pain again… I for one, cannot understand what possesses people to burn down their own neighborhoods. I really don’t get it.