It takes a catastrophic hurricane and flood for the media to notice that we have a lot of poor people in this country, largely of black ethnicity.
Those aren’t the kind of people who hang out at the DC/NY cocktail parties that fuel the editorial directions of the press.
We know all about poverty, Oliver, just like we know all about race.
What you don’t know is that we know it.
Let’s hope the sleeping giant does not tire of it’s newly awakened social conscience.
No semanticleo, not this time.
The problem for the cons is that the majority of Americans are decent, moral people. They won’t soon forget what they’ve seen. The Republicans are struggling manfully now to pull the curtain back over this glimpse of reality, but people won’t forget.
I could point to a government site for any issue imaginable. Doesn’t mean anything is actually being done.
Let’s throw ANOTHER 10 trillion at the problem and end up with essentially the same poverty rate we had in 1965.
What poor American blacks need is REAL leadership. Not race pimps like Jackson and Sharpton who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.
We know all about poverty, Oliver, just like we know all about race.
What you don t know is that we know it.
What everybody in the world knows now is that you just don’t give a shit about poverty or race, just as long as your WalMart stock keeps pumping out dividends…
Actually Frank doesn’t believe there is such a thing as race. Or maybe he has changed his mind. You know how these conservatives are, they blow with the wind.
Sadie;
His keyboard is located under a bridge. Don’t feed his obsession.
One thing I’ve noticed about all the Katrina discussions is that they provide ample evidence for both the liberal and conservative worldviews.
If you are liberal and believe that people are basically good and will be good as long as they possess the right amount of wealth; if you believe that mankind’s ultimate success is independent of morality or a common sense of right and wrong; if you believe that mankind has been overtaken by a small group of men dedicated to greed and destruction, and that some of us, by virtue of race, are more easily made their prey; if you believe that only a another small group of men has achieved the correct intellectual and moral capacity to lead; and if you believe that these men with superior understanding must destroy the economic structures of the greedy and establish a benevolent governmental system to manage and redistribute our wealth so as to ensure that the rest of us are happy and treat each other nicely, then Katrina will provide a wealth of evidence to back up your worldview.
If you are consevative and believe that people are basically corrupt, and that we need laws and morality in order to train our young to be law abiding, productive citizens; if you believe that our morality comes from God, and that honoring the teachings of the Christian church is essential to establishing a benevolent society; if you believe that each individual has the power to achieve, and that achievement can either be promoted or destroyed by society at large, if you believe that the individual is far better off if he is self-sufficient instead of being constantly at the mercy of the state; if you believe that the purpose of charity is to lift someone from dispair, but is never to become a way of life (except for those with physical and mental limitations who cannot care for themselves), then Katrina will provide a wealth of evidence to backup your worldview as well.
The question is, which worldview is right? Which worldview has produced the most lasting, successful solutions to poverty?
Talk amongst yourselves…
I understand what you’re saying, semanticleo but dangit, it’s like picking a scab. You know there is nothing there you really want to know about, but it’s just so hard to resist ….
But if it’s bothering you, I will.
Oliver, there were over 500 hits — that’s a lot of something!
The only thing I see to talk about, Mike, is how idiotic your descriptions of liberal and con worldviews are. The only thing I agree with in both parts is the first sentence.
Loopy, Mike has summed up the two positions so well, it probably frightens you. You and your liberal “Oliver sycophants” are just as Mike described you.
Surely, if you disaagree, you can more accurately describe yourself.
Go ahead.
What everybody in the world knows now is that you just don t give a shit about poverty or race, just as long as your WalMart stock keeps pumping out dividends&
Well you got me. I made sure my contributions to those needing help because of Katrina said, “Make sure it doesn’t go to any niggers!!” Oh and I sold all my Walmart stock when I found out they were donating so much money. After all, some of it was going to coons and that couldn’t happen. And thanks to all the liberals who have donated close to $700 million thus far. After all, no conservatives would have sent money because it might have gone to some poor person or some spook.
Conservatives have been demonizing liberals for so long, and liberals have been moving to the center for so long, that it’s no suprise that conservatives’ view of liberals is as whacked as it is. Yeah, Mike, just because we want to address poverty instead of sweeping it under the rug, it must be because we want to detroy Christianity. Just nuts.
Mike’s understanding of the typical liberal world view seems to have come from…um, I don’t know where it comes from. I call myself liberal, but what Mike describes has little to do with me. It sounds more like a Heritage Foundation/Robert Bork fantasy liberal, complete with horns and a pointy tail.
OK, I’ll cop to that. Look around at the outporing of support for the people displaced by the storm. Look at the millions of dollars donated, the acts of heroism in the evacuation, and the sacrifice of those who came to the rescue. People are basically good.
Wait, are you suggesting that I think poor people can’t be good? Some of the best people are poor. Some of the worst people are rich. If I’m not mistaken, youi’re going to accuse me of that in the lines that follow.
Who on earth thinks that? A shared sense of right and wrong is critical to “mankind’s ultimate success.” However, it’s possible to believe that conservative Christians don’t hold a monopoly on deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. A muslim, a buddhist, a hindu, or an athiest can be as moral as a Christian.
Mankind has been overtaken? No. The United States government? Definitely. American media? Clearly. American society? I wouldn’t say “overtaken,” but the levers of influence have fallen into fewer hands. Earlier, weren’t you just saying that liberals believe wealth makes you good? Now you’re saying I believe wealth makes you bad. Which is it?
Not sure what you mean by this. If you’re saying that the impact of economic inequality falls disproportionately on African-Americans and Hispanics, the evidence is irrefutable. If you’re implying that liberals believe that members of certain races are intellectually or morally ill-equipped to resist the will of the elite, that’s tin-foil hat territory.
Uh, no, I don’t. First off, I like some women in leadership positions. Second, I don’t trust a small group of anybody.
Red-baiting is so 1959.
You mean taxes? Governments collect taxes. Government has a legitimate place in the affairs of a nation. Deal with it, you anarchist, you.
Because government has been so successful at this in the past? No, government that divides the “moral” against a perceived other, government that reserves for itself the authority to rule the affairs of other nations, government that imposes a narrow view of morality on its citizens will not ensure that anyone is happy and will incite people to conflict.
Would someone please come sweep up all this straw? Oh, wait. I guess I expect the government to do it for me, don’t I?
A handful of Republicans vote against a whopper of a giveaway that is going to prove to be a tarbaby for corruption. Crooks and scoundrels will gravitate to this money like white on rice.
How many poor people of many (of any race) will be helped? I imagine the dollars per capita will be minimal compared to that whole package.
As I said before, they should air drop bundles of $20 dollar bills all over he stricken area, until it equals $1 billion.
How about if everybody in the hurricane files a “zero” tax return for 2005?. And credits on each tax return in the future equal to ther documented losses until they are all claimed?
Now that would help.
But considering that our tax hungry government now collects taxes from people who now live below its own declared poverty level, don’t expect that to happen.
Jay, it s impossible take your claims of being concerned about poverty when you support politicians who ignore or dismiss the issue.
And you don’t? Or are you under the delusion that all Democrats care about poverty?
It says something about you as a person, if you judge others based upon who they vote for. IE, voting for John Kerry does not make somebody truly concerned about poverty than somebody who voted for GWB.
I know there’s a whole host of Kerry voters who held back sending any money for Katrina victims because a bunch of “welfare recipients” should “get jobs.”
Jay, it’s impossible take your claims of being concerned about poverty when you support politicians who ignore or dismiss the issue. And watch the republican response on katrina if you’re legitmitately concerned about race bigotry in this country. Subtle appeals to southern whites’ fear of black mobs is looking like the last card in the conservative deck.
Uh-oh, Frank. You’re off the reservation there. Remember the GOP gospel: poor people don’t pay taxes! The entire system of taxation in this country is designed to redistribute wealth to those who don’t deserve it!
“Mike s understanding of the typical liberal world view seems to have come from& um, I don t know where it comes from”
Once again, Quaker, you are too polite. I think we all know exactly where his understanding of the typical liberal world view comes from, it’s his tuckus!
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You have no idea how I feel about poverty or race, and you think you can make a statement like that? Why, because I’m a political conservative? I might be poor and black, for all you know, idjit. What a stupidly stereotypical and biased remark.
Quaker: I’m not on a reservation. I know the tax rates in this country, and people with who live beneath the poverty level. People that the government valls poor shoouldn’t be taxed. People shouldn’t be taxed on unemployment, but in some situations they are. That’s plain stupid.
That has nothing with your made up GOP gospel. You bet someone’s last nickel our IRC is designed to skim the wealth of the upper middle class. It’ s the Congress’ leislative practices that redistribute wealth.
And while you and your lefty “Oliver’s Army” never deviate from the Party, don’t dare tell me you think I’m “off the reservation.”
I’m not a Republican, and haven’t been one since about 1970.
How far should a team player stretch their principles and regurgitate the talking points of their leadership before they break from the pack?
Ask Oliver.
Frank;
Impressive.
You should let go more often. We might get a better idea of what ideas inhabit you world if you talk a little instead of just taking cheap shots.
Let me ask you a question, or maybe two.
How far should a team player stretch their principles and regurgitate the talking points of their leadership before they break from the pack?
Mike;
A thoughtful series of questions that merit some serious responses. I do not wish to take up space addressing all of the issues, so let me take just one.
I do not know which of these worldviews you hold dear, but doubt very much that anyone here ( in fact most people) would embrace an either/or position, but rather a blend of same. That is to say; the world is neither black nor white.
Although this life would be far simpler to deal with if it was either/or, it is a complex place for the very reason that it is not.
Our political world is very much a reflection of our spiritual world and you conclude your comments:
“Which worldview has produced the most lasting, successful solutions to poverty?”
My answer would be; the worldview that errs on the side of generosity, versus self-interest.
The worldview which encourages debate because it is not afraid of the truth.
The worldview that gives respect to all living things regardless of species.
The worldview which treats earths resources as irreplaceable.
Somebody’s a crankypants today!
For those of you on the political and ideological left who are confused about the origins and evidence for your worldview …
The cornerstone of modern liberalism is post-modernist moral relativism; that is, the belief that there is no true right and wrong, or to put it another way, anything that benefits a person today and doesn’t “hurt” anyone else is okay. Corollary to this is a belief in cultural relativism; that is, the notion that one culture (or nation) has absolutely no right to criticize or evaluate the culture of its neighbors. For example. we in America have no right to criticize the nation of Swaziland, whose king holds an annual sex pageant for the purpose of chosing a continual succession of teenage wives, and whose mystics teach that having sex with a virgin girl will cure a man with AIDS, because we ourselves are less than perfect.
The ideological Left has been waging an open war against Christianity here in the US for the past forty years. Their goal is to embarass and denegrate Christianity and specifically to exorcise every bit of Christian moral teaching on sexuality from modern American culture.
The other defining factor of the ideological Left is its continuing obsession with Marxism. Marx believed that the root cause for human suffering was inequal distribution of wealth. Ever since the New Deal, leftist politicians have proposed an almost endless list of government programs and monetary supplements for the poor, based on the idea that the poor suffered because big business did not pay them enough in wages, and therefore it was the the government’s obligation to supplement their income to the point where they would be satisfied and happy. It was then assumed that the impoverished would put this extra income to wise use, work their way up to higher-paying jobs, and leave poverty behind. If you don’t believe me, read what RFK and others argued during the 1960’s. Other Democrats, such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, didn’t buy into it.
During the last 40 years, we have spent over $5 trillion on entitlement and supplemental income programs for our nation’s poor. Yet we have more people living in poverty today than we did in the 1960’s. For me to explain why I think this is so would involve writing a short book. I’ll just say that what we have done so far with massive wealth redistribution and entitlement programs hasn’t worked. Perhaps we should try reaching people on a personal, moral and spiritual level?
With regard to race – at the turn of the century, there were two intellectual leaders who argued opposing viewpoints as to how to best help blacks get back on their feet. Booker T. Washington argued that the black man had no need for compensation. He the brains and the work ethic to make of himself anything he desired; he simply needed to have roadblocks taken out of his way. W. E. B. DuBois argued that the black man needed to be compensated for the decades of misery spent under the slave owners boot and then the decades under Jim Crow law in the south. Needless to say, DuBois’ line of reasoning prevailed.
In his 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King wrote:
“No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries& Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of a the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.”
I don’t know how many people (certainly not myself) believe that race somehow makes some people less able to achieve than others, but there is no denying a strong belief among the American Left that blacks in this country can’t be successful without things being tilted disproportionately in their favor.
I’m sorry if these things offend the readers of this site, but they are as I see them. If the Left in this country believes in other courses of action besides throwing of money at problems, I have yet to see it. I kind of like Frank_D’s suggestion of dumping $1 billion in $20 bills out of an airplane over the City of New Orleans. Those who need it most would get it directly, and it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than yet another government entitlement program.
Sez you and Robert Bork. The cornerstone of my liberalism dates back 350 years to the thinking of George Fox and his co-religionists.
Absurd. Liberals criticize and evaluate cultures as readily as anyone else. That doesn’t mean we think we should blast them to bits to demonstrate our cultural “superiority.”
Then how do you explain the existence of so many Christian liberals?
Ah, there it is. Promiscuity. Homosexuality. So that’s what you’re driving at. No, liberals don’t want to exorcise (a telling word choice) Christian moral teaching from American society. We want to remove it from government. Sex is not the government’s job.
Where do you get this stuff? Marxism?
Which programs are those? Maybe I could sign up.
No denying? Watch me: I deny it. One needn’t look far to find African-Americans who have succeeded without the benefits of affirmative action. However, pretending that all Americans enjoy the benefits of a “level playing field” is ridiculous. There are some areas of life where equal opportunity must take into account a difference in circumstances.
Mike, do us all a favor. Don’t pretend to tell us what we believe. If you want to make a case for your own point of view, do it. But don’t try to set up your phony “modern liberal” as your opponent.
Quaker,
I wish we could meet some time over a cup of coffee and talk.
Unfortunately, online forums are too impersonal and take up too much time to ever accomplish anything worthwhile. Right now, I’m ready to get three little rugrats ready for bed, and then it’s off to work on next month’s family budget and then spend some time on the present I’m making for my son’s 3rd birthday, which is in 2 weeks…
Mike
I never gave you a direct answer to your question:
How far should a team player stretch their principles and regurgitate the talking points of their leadership before they break from the pack?,/i>
1) Never strecth your principles
2) Never regurgitate talking points, unless you are in full agreement with them, and they are saying it better than you can. I catch a lot of hell around here for doing that, but that’s the way I roll.
3) I don’t have to break from the pack — I’m not in one!
Semanticleo: I will answer your question in the only way I know how, and without cheap shots.
I grew up in a wage -earning low income family, Democratic and Catholic.
When Kennedy ran for President, I was only a 13 year old Catholic high school freshman, but we all acted like Kennedy was “Jesus come to earth.”
Jackie K was, improbably, the Virgin Mary.
Then he was assasinated by a leftist, a pro – Cuba communist.
Jackie O’s lament: How could he have been shot by one of us?
Did she really say that? I believed that she did.
Where I went to school, we had literally a population of 90 – 95% liberals and further left students. In a mock election between Johnson and Goldwater, Johnson got more than 3000 votes, Goldwater got 29 (!)
One of those votes was mine…
You know why
Because another conservative asked me to read three books:
1. A Choice not an Echo
http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/89/
2. None Dare Call it Treason
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/526
3. Conscience of a Conservative
http://www.politixgroup.com/br8.htm
From there it was the usual route
Ayn Rand (too brutal)
William F Buckley (too intellectual)
Russell Kirk (too “old school”)
Finally (about 1971 – 1972), I started seriously reading. I never looked back. I’ve been a conservative ever since, now a registered Right – to – Lifer.
I’m a liberal who became one because of two principal influences: family and church. Mind blowing, isn’t it?
Wow Mike that’s quite a capacious umm, place that you get your ideas from. And it certainly is full of …… ideas.
And Mike. And every other conservative who thinks Jesus’s message is somehow compatible with fucking over the meek every chance they get.
Only to you, TomY, only to you.
Hear hear