Fischkoepfin

. Where this bifurcated view leads to can be seen most vividly in the issue of the Japanese War shrine. Why would the Japanese Prime Minister have to refrain from visiting the shrine if their is no such thing as collective historical guilt. Why is white guilt bad but Japanese guilt good?

PM's visiting Japaneese war shrine was quite the opposite... Heh. Wow. Hahahahahahaha

Would you care to elaborate?

Isnt it true about Liberals and White Guilt... Yep You will deny your bigotry for the very reason you stated above.

what is white guilt? i'm white, I have never committed a crime. what exactly am I guilty of?

White Guilt

What the author of that particularly article fails to mention is that the charge of "white guilt" is usually coming from people of a certain political persuasion, namely those who also like to use terms like "reverse racism."

In a way, "white guilt" is the extension of "the white man's burden," a key phrase justifying colonization as a means of civilizing the world.

I know what it means. My point was that I had nothing to do with it. I do not accept responsibility for another person's or group of people's actions.

And my point was not to explain to you what it is but to bring to attention (via your rhetorical question) the way in which certain phrases are used to stigmatize those who do care about the past and are willing to take responsibility for it.

I find it quite interesting that people consider it perfectly reasonable to assume that it is ok if some groups in the world take responsibility for their past actions but others are somehow exempt. Where this bifurcated view leads to can be seen most vividly in the issue of the Japanese War shrine. Why would the Japanese Prime Minister have to refrain from visiting the shrine if their is no such thing as collective historical guilt. Why is white guilt bad but Japanese guilt good?

I do believe that past generations have to take responsibility for the actions of their forefathers because it creates an awareness for injustice and shows that late birth doesn't make you somehow innocent. Also, I believe that it helps prevent making the same stupid mistake again.

Ok, firstly, "shock and awe" did not cause anywhere CLOSE to the number of casualities the terrorists have caused. Secondly, your point of "how many did this before we were there?" is irrelevent.

Are you kidding yourself or what? The number of civilian casualties caused by the American invasion alone is around 30,000 people. And that does not take into account civilian casualties after 2003.

The terrorists in Iraq are causing currently more casualities, but they wouldn't cause any if it hadn't been for the invasion in the first place.

You see, as a military man I understand what type of war it is. It is the long, frustrating one that takes years because you do not know who the enemy is. If Iraq or Iran was in our shoes, they would take a page from the Waffen-SS and liquidate entire towns to solve the problem.

That assumes that the military offensive waged by the US uses somehow different methods then other militaries, which it might be, even though attacks like the one on Fallujah suggest that the difference is not as big as we would like it to be. Also, it evokes a tired and overworn comparison with the Nazis which is just an easy way to stigmatize the enemy (missing the true nature of the enemy) and to justify a war that is not just.

To me, it seems that the long-drawn out war against the unknown enemy has a precendent somewhere else, namely in Vietnam. Of course, acknowledging that Iraq is not a replay of the most glorious of all American wars (WW2) but of the biggest blunder in US-military history means coming to terms with a fact that it is a battle lost against an enemy that gains strength only because the war drags on.

I posted this on the other thread - thought it would be worth reposting here also:

German Weimar Constitution prior to 1933

The above constitution was effectively destroyed by two pieces of legislation that were apparently deemed to be in the "national need".

Reichstag Fire Decree

Enabling Act

That's right. The Weimar constitution was actually a very democratic and solid constitution as far as constitutions go. It's major problem was that it granted too much power to the president in terms of government formations, legislations, and the like.

The Reichstag Fire decree and the Enabling act exploited loopholes in the constitution which had been created a few years earlier when there was a general fear of extremists taking their fight into the streets.

I'm not a big fan of the Nazi-comparison because I think it oversimplifies what is really happening, but when it comes to the slow erosion of constitutions, the comparison is very valid because it shows that even the best constitution can be turned into meaningless blabbering when it comes into the wrong hands.

It all goes back to Straussian political philosophy - which seems to be a major influence in US politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

You're right about that.

Is it really self delusion? At the heart of all the rhetoric regarding the war in Iraq by the Bush Administration is the PNAC. They disguise opportunity with ideological terms...such as fighting against Islama-Fascism and yet their tract record as Rummy's does, shows they never let their ideology interfere with business as usual.

Among it's members besides Rummy...

Zalmay Khalilzad - who Bush named as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.

Khalilzad was an advisor for the Unocal Corporation. In the mid-1990s, while working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal for a proposed 1,400 km (890 mile), $2-billion, 622 m³/s (22,000 ft³/s) natural gas pipeline project which would have extended from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For this project, he met a delegation of Taliban in the United States. Between 1993 and 1999, Dr. Khalilzad was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for the RAND Corporation's Project Air Force.

Now, follow what happens when opportunity clashes with that ideology...

“The Prime Minister is a great Iraqi patriot, he's a friend of liberty, he's a strong partner for peace and freedom.

[…]

I appreciate Prime Minister Jaafari's brave leadership. Prime Minister Jaafari is a bold man. I've enjoyed my discussions with the Prime Minister. He is a frank, open fellow who is willing to tell me what's on his mind. And what is on his mind is peace and security for the people of Iraq, and what is on his mind is a democratic future that is hopeful.

I want to thank you for your courage. I want to thank you for your understanding about the nature of free societies. I want to thank you for helping Iraq become a beacon of freedom.”

-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, June 24, 2005

“Iraq's security minister, a Shi'ite political ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops on Monday of killing 37 unarmed people in an attack on a mosque complex a day earlier.”

-Reuters, March 27, 2006

"’The Alliance calls for a rapid restoration of (control of) security matters to the Iraqi government,’ Jawad al-Maliki, a senior spokesman of the Shi'ite Islamist Alliance and ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told a news conference.

The United States handed over formal sovereignty in 2004 but 133,000 troops in the country give it the main say in security.”

-Reuters, March 27, 2006

“The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a ‘personal message from President Bush’ on to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post for four more years, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of Parliament who was at the meeting.

Ambassador Khalilzad said that President Bush ‘doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept’ Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first ‘clear and direct message’ from the Americans on the issue of the candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said.”

-New York Times, March 28, 2006

“The Badr Organization, a political party that represents the paramilitary Badr Corps, the Shiite militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, demanded Monday that Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, be expelled from that country.”

-Juan Cole, March 29, 2006

“American and Iraqi troops mounted two raids in Baghdad yesterday arresting more than 40 interior ministry guards at a secret prison and killing around 20 gunmen in an assault on a mosque loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The sudden strikes seemed to put muscle behind a strong warning from the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Saturday that militias must be brought under control. They had become a bigger threat to Iraq than the insurgency, he said.”

-The Guardian, March 27, 2006

The PNAC is an interesting group, eh?

Yeah, PNAC is quite fascinating, but I do think that they have reached the point where self-delusion is the modus operandi. That of course does not mean that they don't continue to disguise opportunity with ideology, but they are getting more desperate every day, which manifests itself through more of the same tired comparisons.

Yet, as with most self-delusional minds, they will be the last to notice.

I posted this on the other thread - thought it would be worth reposting here also:

German Weimar Constitution prior to 1933

The above constitution was effectively destroyed by two pieces of legislation that were apparently deemed to be in the "national need".

Reichstag Fire Decree

Enabling Act

That's right. The Weimar constitution was actually a very democratic and solid constitution as far as constitutions go. It's major problem was that it granted too much power to the president in terms of government formations, legislations, and the like.

The Reichstag Fire decree and the Enabling act exploited loopholes in the constitution which had been created a few years earlier when there was a general fear of extremists taking their fight into the streets.

I'm not a big fan of the Nazi-comparison because I think it oversimplifies what is really happening, but when it comes to the slow erosion of constitutions, the comparison is very valid because it shows that even the best constitution can be turned into meaningless blabbering when it comes into the wrong hands.

Indeed - I find it questionable that Iraq is being framed as some sort of fight for "freedom and democracy" against terrorists who want to take it away, while the reality appears to be - if not a civil war, a chaotic free-for-all.

It shows how what we see from the distance depends on the language used to inform us about it. As long as we call the war a fight for freedom and democracy, that is frame it in the language of the war of Independence, we are more likely to support it then if we frame it as a civil war or simply another Vietnam.

Does anyone even listen to Mr. Donald 'Stuff Happens' Rumsfeld anymore?

He's so fcuking ignorant it's almost amusing. If it weren't for the thousands of soldiers that had to give their lives because of this utterly incompetent and arrogant idiot.

Sadly enough, there are still people who listen to Rumsfeld.

But I agree, he's getting to the point where he's almost funny. Maybe he should step down and try stand-up comedy.

How sweet... incanada has a new playmate...

Maybe it's her hubby.

Nah. Her hubby would at least know how to spell Canadian.

But he (or she) is certainly a new ally of the "insults-trump-arguments-any-time"-faction.

Isnt it true about Liberals and White Guilt... Yep You will deny your bigotry for the very reason you stated above.

what is white guilt? i'm white, I have never committed a crime. what exactly am I guilty of?

White Guilt

What the author of that particularly article fails to mention is that the charge of "white guilt" is usually coming from people of a certain political persuasion, namely those who also like to use terms like "reverse racism."

In a way, "white guilt" is the extension of "the white man's burden," a key phrase justifying colonization as a means of civilizing the world.

Funny, the sentence that preceded the one you bolded, "The only ones that escape the trap are those who have educated parents and instill into their sons and daughters the need to get a good education." supports my point, which is that families are stuck in cycles and we have to do something as a society to bring as many people into the "people with educated parents" category.

I don't know if we have to do anything, Alex. We just have to make sure the opportunities

are there for those who want them..... and if they don't, well, it's their loss.

Actually, there is one thing we could do. We could reform the school system to find a better

way to pay for our public schools. All public schools should get equal funding from the state,

rather than being funded through the archaic property tax which results in a very unequal

distribution of educational opportunity. Communities that have a lot of property wealth

clearly have more funding for their local schools than those that don't. This, in turn, drives up

the property values in the top-performing school districts even further meaning that only

affluent families can afford to live there.

September 3, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis

By FRANK RICH

PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

For further proof, read the address Mr. Rumsfeld gave to Pentagon workers on Sept. 10, 2001 — a policy manifesto he regarded as sufficiently important, James Bamford reminds us in his book “A Pretext to War,” that it was disseminated to the press. “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America” is how the defense secretary began. He then went on to explain that this adversary “crushes new ideas” with “brutal consistency” and “disrupts the defense of the United States.” It is a foe “more subtle and implacable” than the former Soviet Union, he continued, stronger and larger and “closer to home” than “the last decrepit dictators of the world.”

And who might this ominous enemy be? Of that, Mr. Rumsfeld was as certain as he would later be about troop strength in Iraq: “the Pentagon bureaucracy.” In love with the sound of his own voice, he blathered on for almost 4,000 words while Mohamed Atta and the 18 other hijackers fanned out to American airports.

Three months later, Mr. Rumsfeld would still be asleep at the switch, as his war command refused to heed the urgent request by American officers on the ground for the additional troops needed to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora. What would follow in Iraq was also more Chamberlain than Churchill. By failing to secure and rebuild the country after the invasion, he created a terrorist haven where none had been before.

That last story is seeping out in ever more incriminating detail, thanks to well-sourced chronicles like “Fiasco,” “Cobra II” and “Blood Money,” T. Christian Miller’s new account of the billions of dollars squandered and stolen in Iraq reconstruction. Still, Americans have notoriously short memories. The White House hopes that by Election Day it can induce amnesia about its failures in the Middle East as deftly as Mr. Rumsfeld (with an assist from John Mark Karr) helped upstage first-anniversary remembrances of Katrina.

One obstacle is that White House allies, not just Democrats, are sounding the alarm about Iraq. In recent weeks, prominent conservatives, some still war supporters and some not, have steadily broached the dread word Vietnam: Chuck Hagel, William F. Buckley Jr. and the columnists Rich Lowry and Max Boot. A George Will column critical of the war so rattled the White House that it had a flunky release a public 2,400-word response notable for its incoherence.

If even some conservatives are making accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, one way for the administration to drown them out is to step up false historical analogies of its own, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s. In the past the administration has been big on comparisons between Iraq and the American Revolution — the defense secretary once likened “the snows of Valley Forge” to “the sandstorms of central Iraq” — but lately the White House vogue has been for “Islamo-fascism,” which it sees as another rhetorical means to retrofit Iraq to the more salable template of World War II.

“Islamo-fascism” certainly sounds more impressive than such tired buzzwords as “Plan for Victory” or “Stay the Course.” And it serves as a handy substitute for “As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” That slogan had to be retired abruptly last month after The New York Times reported that violence in Baghdad has statistically increased rather than decreased as American troops handed over responsibilities to Iraqis. Yet the term “Islamo-fascists,” like the bygone “evildoers,” is less telling as a description of the enemy than as a window into the administration’s continued confusion about exactly who the enemy is. As the writer Katha Pollitt asks in The Nation, “Who are the ‘Islamo-fascists’ in Saudi Arabia — the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents?”

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists,” said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president’s speech. “It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis.” And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq — now more than 2,600 — is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Not taking responsibility for past injustice is practically the same as not taking responsibility for oneself. This is not about the blame-game but about understanding that community that have been oppressed for centuries can't uplift themselves in less than 50 years. Someone in the past screwed this up, and we'll have to do something to rectify this mistake.

And what, exactly, would that be? Nail-job, hair-do, and bing-bling rim stamps on top of the food stamp program? Do you know how mad it makes me when I see these $200.00 hair-do, $50.00 nail-job gals pay for their groceries with food stamps to then carry them to the vehicle with fcuking $5,000.00 set of wheels and $2,500.00 stereo? I'm sorry but there ain't a first fcuking thing any institution can do to bury that sick set of priorities.

Money alone is not going to solve the problem, you are right about that. And I totally understand your anger, but then you don't know how they paid for their hair-dos or their car stereo or why they are receiving food stamps. And this is not an exclusively black issue either. White people on social security or food stamps exhibit similarly contradictory patterns.

And, if you read my earlier post, I believe that the only way to address the issue of internalized prejudice is to start taking it seriously. One way to do that is to start thinking about poor blacks as remarkably similar to poor whites. Also, the impetus to help poor blacks overcome their defiance to education has to come outside the middle-class black community, from those who made it and not from someone outside who is not trusted.

As a society, however, we need to be more patient and to give people a chance. Trying to invest more heavily in impoverished schools could actually accomplish something because good teachers make better students.

Cian,

Every poor person who does not help themselves is more money out of your pocket to pay for their expenses. More crime on the streets because of poverty. More children without health insurance.

Without worrying about whose responsibility it TECHNICALLY is to take care of the problem of poverty, black or otherwise, you can still see how, in terms of even money, it is not beneficial for our society to have a lot of poor people in it.

I think we should try to find solutions to the poverty problem for ALL of our sakes, without pointing fingers.

Good point.

Yes, it is a good point. It's just that more free rides ain't the answer. Promoting personal responsibility is.

Right on!

Cian,

Every poor person who does not help themselves is more money out of your pocket to pay for their expenses. More crime on the streets because of poverty. More children without health insurance.

Without worrying about whose responsibility it TECHNICALLY is to take care of the problem of poverty, black or otherwise, you can still see how, in terms of even money, it is not beneficial for our society to have a lot of poor people in it.

I think we should try to find solutions to the poverty problem for ALL of our sakes, without pointing fingers.

Good point.

So if poor, black people do not value education and do not run out and get an advanced degree on their own, should we just shrug and say "oh well"?

This does not seem like a very productive solution to me.

Why not? Isn't that what we do with poor white people, too? Why should poor blacks get more breaks/benefits/compassion than poor white people? Because 150 years ago their cousin's uncle's wife's brother's ex-girlfriend came from a family that owned slaves? You can only use the "oh woe! poor downtrodden race of people!" thing so long. I seem to remember the Irish being thought of as nothing but trash when they first immigrated here. Why don't I see them moaning and complaining these days about how oppressed they are?

At some point in their history, EVERY race/nation was a victim of slavery. Did they all become a bunch of whiny freeloaders because of past injustices, or did they get off their a$$es and do something about it?

[Edit]

I really should clarify, because I kinda sound like a racist there. I am only referring to blacks who CHOOSE to be victims and do nothing to improve their lives. I feel the same way about ALL people who play the "victim card" and accept no personal responsibility for their own circumstances.

Poor blacks should not get any more breaks than poor white people do; it is actually the other way around if you compare the number of blacks and whites who live on social security, food stamps, and the like. It is just that we like to pretend that poor blacks are cut a lot of slack because we don't compare them to poor whites very often but to middle-class blacks.

As to your point about the Irish immigrants, you are somewhat right, but forget that in a segregated society (and by this I mean not just the South), someone who looks white still has an advantage. The other advantage Irish immigrants had is that after them came more immigrants who conformed even less to the Anglo-American way of life, and it was them who took the lowest rank of white society from the Irish.

Education, cultivating desire for education, and facilitating opportunities for education are key.

The door's wide open. Need a wheelchair to make it through to the other side? I have to push it, too?

Apparently so, yes. The mean, mean white man has damaged the morale of the black man so badly, that he can't do anything for himself.

Whatever.

I know black people who have made something of themselves, and black people who are happy to be "ganstas" for the rest of their lives. They're all black, they all grew up poor, and they all had the same #$%ing opportunities to finish high school and go to college. Some chose to do so and are doing well, some chose to be worthless gangsta trash and blame it all on "the man". Imagine that.....Americans without a sense of personal responsibility.....

Not taking responsibility for past injustice is practically the same as not taking responsibility for oneself. This is not about the blame-game but about understanding that community that have been oppressed for centuries can't uplift themselves in less than 50 years. Someone in the past screwed this up, and we'll have to do something to rectify this mistake.

There are always people who make it for themselves regardless of the circumstances they grow up in. Yet, the majority of people never get there be it because they don't have the strength or be it because they don't care. That's how humans are. But there's no reason why we shouldn't care about this and try to help in any way we can.

On the other hand, assuming that this attitude is exclusively coming from parents and peer pressure overlooks that it is in effect an internalization of societies' views of black men (and to a certain degree women) that stems back from centuries of prejudice.

According to a lot of VJers, this never happened.

According to a lot of people in the U.S., it doesn't exist and never happened because most people see racism as merely institutional. But that would be mean that getting rid of Jim Crow laws and integrating schools and the like would have done the trick which it didn't, in the same way as simply abolishing slavery did not change the way blacks were looked at (actually, it made things worse).

You can attempt to end discrimination, especially on an institutional basis, but you can't that easily reverse prejudice. Of course, you might say that there are enough black people who are successful and all that, but if you talk to them about poor black people they will offer similar insights as white people on blacks in general, which shows that the prejudice is to a certain degree class-based.

Bolded part especially. A cultural change in the black community is necessary, but that's not going to happen until they are proportionately as educated as white America.

Education, cultivating desire for education, and facilitating opportunities for education are key.

edit: double post

Yes, I agree; education is the key, and as I mentioned before the impetus for this will have to come first of all from the black community. Beginning to recognize that all this is also a class issue would be a good way for non-blacks to approach the issue, however. A person's race is just one aspect of their identity. So maybe it is about time to start comparing poor blacks not to affluent blacks or even worse educated white people but to white people living in trailers who also could care less about education and who come to school with similar attitudes.

And this leads back to my point on wide-spread prejudice: why do people complain about blacks refusing to play with the system but at the same time they take the poor white person who displays a similarly defiant attitude for granted?

Is it the black community's problem, the individuals' problem, or society as a whole's problem?

It's everybody's problem. Ultimately, though, the solution will have to be found and implemented in the black community. I just don't like having the finger pointed at me or "the institutions" when the fist step ought to be a close look in the mirror. As long as there's denial, nothing will get better.

One of my best friends, who happens to be black, is also a PhD in education and the Superitendent of a schol system. He tells me stories of some of his black students that really makes me wonder at times. These kids are cultural trained not to suceed. If a black student gets good grades, he is then taunted by his fellow black students of just trying to act white. Any young black kid wil tell you that he doesnt need an education because he is convinced that he is going to be drafted by the L.A. Lakers when he gets out of high school.

The only ones that escape the trap are those who have educated parents and instill into their sons and daughters the need to get a good education. Its strictly a matter of bad parenting and peer pressure.

Also have a lady friend who is a court reporter. At times she is assigned to the Juvenile Court for kids that commit some kind of crime or steal a car. She has told me many times of the kids that show up in court with the parents wearing gang clothing. The judge takes one look, continues the case for 24 hours, and tells the kid and the parents, "how dare you show up in my court dressed looking like that". I want you back here tomorrow at the same time, properly attired and groomed, and if not, I will hold you all in contempt and you will not be leaving here.

I've actually heard the same thing about black children and education recently. There is, particularly for black male children, a perception that kids who try to succeed in school are losers. That of course is a problem. On the other hand, assuming that this attitude is exclusively coming from parents and peer pressure overlooks that it is in effect an internalization of societies' views of black men (and to a certain degree women) that stems back from centuries of prejudice. Historically, black men were viewed as lazy, stupid, and driven exclusively by their sex drive. Since the civil war, black men have additionally been accused of being unable to maintain a family and serve as the head of a household; as studies of the impact of slavery have shown, however, the issue is not that black men are somehow deficient, but that kinship traditions were disrupted by slavery which disregarded the existence of families. Because of this messed-up situtation, in black culture, men have been struggling to conform to mainstream society and head their own households, but once a tradition has been disrupted, it is almost impossible to reinstitute, especially not within a few generations.

You can attempt to end discrimination, especially on an institutional basis, but you can't that easily reverse prejudice. Of course, you might say that there are enough black people who are successful and all that, but if you talk to them about poor black people they will offer similar insights as white people on blacks in general, which shows that the prejudice is to a certain degree class-based. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that in order to change the situation of poor blacks in this country, it is necessary to overcome the legacies of internalized prejudice. And that is an undertaking which is primarily up to the black community, but which nevertheless needs the support of everyone because the prejudices still exist.

I'm still trying to figure out the point of this thread.

Vacuous lip-flappery

Unlike all the other threads about politics.

No, this one is even more pointless because someone who, judging by his avatar, endorses racist practices is calling for a day during which he cannot spurt out hate. Seems schizo to me.

Or maybe the idea is to put history behind us and engage in group hug because the categories of the past supposedly don't apply anymore which can only come from someone who is not and most likely has never been the subject of discrimination.

Wow. So it is not about an idea, it is about person who suggested. Wow. You need a shepherd, my little sheep.

Never been Discriminated. Heh... Wow, You seem to know everything about me... Heh.... And Who is judgemental racist after all???.. Since your name sounds German.. Can I Call goddamn NAZI???... Well your name sounds german. Do you still torture Jews??? Why??? STOP!!!

Well, if you were truly opposed to racism and bigotry, you would not fly a flag that suggests racism and bigotry. Pointing out the contradictory nature between your avatar and your post is not racist because I did not make gross generalization about your race nor did I suggest that members of your race are inferior.

As to the second part of your retort, you can call me a goddamn Nazi if you feel like it, but it willl be somewhat less convincing since I don't sport a swastika or the imperial war flag. Nor would I display any of these symbols because they are contradictory to my personal convictions or my actions. But thanks for bringing it up anyway because it illustrates my point quite well.

I'm still trying to figure out the point of this thread.

Vacuous lip-flappery

Unlike all the other threads about politics.

No, this one is even more pointless because someone who, judging by his avatar, endorses racist practices is calling for a day during which he cannot spurt out hate. Seems schizo to me.

Or maybe the idea is to put history behind us and engage in group hug because the categories of the past supposedly don't apply anymore which can only come from someone who is not and most likely has never been the subject of discrimination.

the bill excluded extending the child tax credit to 4 million low income families who do not qualify. Middle class earners will receive an average cut of $162 in 2005.

Did I miss something? My husband and I are low income, with a child, and we certainly qualify for this child tax credit. Who are the ones that do not qualify....or did I misunderstand that statement entirely (which is possible for me, since I am working my a$$ off these days and I'm very tired).

The child tax credit only affects families who earn enough to claim it. Meaning, those families who don't benefit from it are those who are either truly low-income or make more than $200,000.

Here's a report dealing with the problems of the child-tax credit for low-income families.

Also, an editorial on falling wages and salaries which points out that many poor people live on less than half of poverty-line incomes.

Lie: “We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket.”

Fact: While Bush is cutting taxes for the rich he also is raising fees for government services ($5.9 billion in FYE 2004 alone) and states have been forced to do increase taxes and fees as a the impact of the tax cuts, cuts in aid to states and new unfunded mandates have added a $39 – 98 billion burden to the states. For example:

(1) Since Bush took office states have raised taxes $20.2 billion annually (after 7 consecutive years of tax cuts)

(2) Tuition at state colleges and universities have increased 35% since 2001 while the administration is cutting education aid.

(3) Property tax collections rose more than 10% last year alone to pay for under-funded schools and services.

(4) Increased fees for a variety of programs from small business loans to national parks. Under Bush, veterans’ co-payments for prescription drugs are to rise from $2 in 2002 to $15 in 2005.

Thanks for bringing this up. The decrease in federal taxes of course forced the states to get their money from somewhere else. I wonder how this effected those states who constantly rely on funds from DC, like the plain states and the southern states, which, contrary to popular belief,, are the main beneficiaries of federal tax dollars.

Don't cloud the issue....the statements were made. As I said, facts don't change. Now while you're certainly free to selectively ignore them, that doesn't change the point that they were made. And there's also plenty of written, verifiable facts....such as some Democrat Congressmen (including Kerry) who sent a letter demanding that Clinton invade Iraq because they were a threat to the US. And how the foreign policy (under Clinton) towards Iraq changed to 'regime change'. Yet nothing was ever done.

You can't say this is GWB's war and then say it was planned by the GOP since 1997, all the while ignoring the facts that many a democrat supported an Iraq invasion long before Deubya was Prez....Way to straddle that fence Look at the whole pic, not what is popular opinion. REsearch for yourself. REsearch how many prominant Democrats commended Dubya in writing for the war on Iraq like a year after we invaded them. Look at other world leader's statements in the years before Bush. Look at how most people say Bush is a gormless idiot...yet capable of 'convincing the world of a lie' lol...one which would include him mastering time travel.

Then and only then can you be a truly independant thinker instead of regurgitating half truths all the while looking like a sheep who's bought into the Liberal Lie Machine....There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see

I think you're right in so far that like 9/11 the Iraq war cannot be pinned to either party exclusively. Both parties are to blame, and to disband either side from responsibility is like blaming the democrats for everything that is wrong with this country.

That said, historically the party in power has had to live with the fact that their failures as well as their successes are attributed to them rather than circumstance or bipartisan actions. Since the Iraq war happened under Bush's watch (fact: Clinton did not invade Iraq) and, more importantly, the government, through Cheney's and Rumsfeld's separate attempts to tweak intelligence reports to their goals, furthered the push to go to war, Bush will inevitably be remembered as being responsible for the mess Iraq has turned into. And rightly so.

Further, Stephen_and_Jinky, stop posting that "torture" bullcrap. Just because our troops did not let some guys sleep at night, let some dogs bark at them, stacked them in a naked pyramid, and pretended to drown them, does not constitute torture.

Torture is drilling holes in a person. Torture is attaching electrodes to testicles and nipples. Torture is executing someone's family in front of them in order to get information. Torture, is mutilating someone's body so badly that it has to be identified through DNA testing.

The funny part is, either Saddam or the terrorist scum over there did or currenty practice these methods with stunning regularity.

To add the cherry to this little pie, captured terrorists in Iraq are NOT subject to Geneva convention protections because THEY ARE NOT IN UNIFORM, AND THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAWS OF WAR. I say, juice them for information, and if they did something: firing squad.

These guys are NOT going to tell you anything unless you make them a little uncomfortable.

And SO WHAT if a few Japenese guys were executed for supposidly dunking some heads? I would like to see a reliable source on that one, and even if it did happen, it was an anamoly and not the norm.

I find it really laughable that so many people on here speak so loudly about the military and what they do and don't do well, and the only thing you know is what you see on CNN. Go talk to a Marine or a Soldier and ask him how it really is.

Excuse me while I go vomit.

Your definition of torture is sick, to say the least. By your standards only a few POW's were tortured in North Vietnam, if any.

Torture, by contemporary standards, refers primarily to the psychological damage inflicted on the tortured rather than to physical consequences. The goal of torture is not to hurt someone's body but to get to their psyche, either to extract information or for intimidation purposes. Link

I read the following editorial this morning and thought this could be of interest to some of you. And as a disclaimer, this is not bashing the GOP or the president but rather wondering how to deal with internal rifts.

September 2, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Can This Party Be Saved?

By JOHN TIERNEY

Republicans in Washington did not abandon their principles lightly. When they embraced “compassionate conservatism,” when they started spending like Democrats, most of them didn’t claim to suddenly love big government.

No, they were just being practical. The party’s strategists explained that the small-government mantra didn’t cut it with voters anymore. Forget eliminating the Department of Education — double its budget and expand its power. Stop complaining about middle-class entitlements — create a new one for prescription drugs. Instead of obsessing about government waste, bring home the bacon.

But as long as we’re being practical, what do Republicans have to show for their largess? Passing the drug benefit and the No Child Left Behind Act gave them a slight boost in the polls on those issues, but not for long. When voters this year were asked in a New York Times/CBS News Poll which party they trusted to handle education and prescription drugs, the Republicans scored even worse than they did before those bills had been passed.

Meanwhile, they’ve developed a new problem: holding the party together. As Ryan Sager argues in his new book, “The Elephant in the Room,” the G.O.P. is sacrificing its future by breaking up the coalition that brought it to power.

A half-century ago, during the Republicans’ days in the wilderness, a National Review columnist named Frank Meyer championed a strategy that came to be known as fusionism. He appealed to traditionalist conservatives to work with libertarians. It wasn’t an easy sell. The traditionalists wanted to rescue America from decadence, while the libertarians just wanted be left alone to pursue their own happiness — which often sounded to the traditionalists like decadence.

Meyer acknowledged the fears that libertarianism could lead to “anarchy and nihilism,” but he also saw the dangers of traditionalists’ schemes for moral regeneration.

“If the state is endowed with the power to enforce virtue,” he wrote, “the men who hold that power will enforce their own concepts as virtuous.” The path to both freedom and virtue was the fusionist compromise: smaller government.

The coalition started with Barry Goldwater but persevered to elect Ronald Reagan and take over Congress. But then Republicans’ faith in small government waned, partly because they discovered the perks of incumbency, and partly because they were outmaneuvered by Bill Clinton, who took their ideas (welfare reform, a balanced budget) and embarrassed them during the government shutdown of 1995.

The shutdown didn’t permanently traumatize the public. In poll after poll since then, respondents have preferred smaller government and fewer services. But the experience scared Republicans so much that they became big-government conservatives.

Soccer moms were promised social programs; the religious right got moral rhetoric and cash for faith-based initiatives. Meyer’s warnings about enforcing virtue were forgotten, along with the traditional Republican preference for states’ rights. It became a federal responsibility to preach sexual abstinence to teenagers and stop states from legalizing euthanasia, medical marijuana and, worst of all, gay marriage.

Big-government conservatism has helped bring some votes to the G.O.P., particularly in the South. But as Sager writes: “It’s not as if the Republican Party could do much better in the South at this point; it’s not really the ideal region to which to pander.”

The practical panderer should look West — not to the Coast, which is reliably blue, but to the purple states in the interior. Sager notes that a swing of just 70,000 votes in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico would have cost Bush the last election, and that he lost ground in the Southwest between 2000 and 2004.

The interior West is growing quickly, thanks to refugees from California seeking affordable housing. These Westerners have been voting Republican in presidential elections, but have also gone for Democratic governors. They tend to be economic conservatives and cultural liberals. They’ve legalized medical marijuana in Nevada, Colorado and Montana. They’re more tolerant of homosexuality than Southerners are, and less likely to be religious.

They’re suspicious of moralists and of any command from Washington, whether it’s a gun-control law or an educational mandate. In Colorado and Utah, they’ve exempted themselves from No Child Left Behind.

They’re small-government conservatives who would have felt at home in the old fusionist G.O.P. But now they’re up for grabs, just like the party’s principles.

As the article points out, Cheney already is the secret president, so there's no reason to speculate on his chances in 2008 by which time he will be ancient and without any chance to recover in the polls. And yeah, the editorial is right on; Cheney has much more power than most people are aware of. He has tried to be in the shadows since 9/11 if not earlier, citing national security reasons for his generally stealthy demeanor. He only pops up when necessary, but always has his hands in everything. And since the press is unsuspecting and courting the interests of those who prefer to think of the government as some sacred entity - not to be touched by criticism - he will not suffer the same fate as previous vice presidents who were either censored or impeached due to their anti-democratic behavior.

About Hillary: The Democratic party has tried to court centrist voters for the last 30 years, and look how many presidents they sent into the White House since then. During the same time span, the Republicans have moved from a centrist to an increasingly right-wing position, and they have won election after election. That indicates that courting some imaginary center is not the way to win, and that the Democrats need to remember their more liberal leanings (note: left-wing politics have never been really forged by the Democratic party; the New Deal was a kind of appeasement for the increasingly radicalized population in the Depression years). So, Hillary, as a centrist, will have a difficult time in the next election, but that is not bad because other centrists (like Gore or Dean or Lamont, all of whom are not very radical or left-wing even by American standards) will take over and continue the tradition of courting to the center.

[A] national health program could reap tens of billions of dollars in administrative savings in the initial years, enough to fund generous increases in health care service not only for the uninsured, but for the underinsured as well ....

How?

By cutting much of the red-tape and bureaucratic waste and overhead that the private health care system has produced. Seriously, I've never seen so much bureaucracy around clinics and hospitals as I have here in the US.

Replacing private overhead with government overhead will create less bureaucratic waste? Why am I so skeptical?

I don't know why you would be. Look at the numbers. No public health care system (not even those in the US - Medicare/Medicaid) have as much of an overhead and bureaucratic waste as the private system currently not funtioning here. Nowhere near as much, not even in the same ballpark. I think the private overhead in the US health care system is somewhere in the 30% range. It's low to mid single digits for the public programs here in the US and elsewhere.

I take 4% - 5% overhead as opposed to 30% any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Also, the higher the number of insurance companies, the higher the overhead since every company replicates the bureaucracy already existing in another company.

Lastly, private coompanies, despite popular myths, are usually less efficient that the government because there is less public oversight. You can see that at work in any place where the government has hired contractors to provide services formerly provided by the government.

Its infinitely tedious whenever you criticise the current administration, that rather than address the substance of the criticism someone prefers instead to turn around and makes the apparent assumption that you must therefore support the other side - as though any issue can only be understood by first filtering it through two apparently divergent political parties. Though I hasten to add I don't think the Reps and Dems are really all that different at the end of the day.

People have to learn to give the president a break instead of using him as a scapegoat for all their problems. He could cure cancer and certain people would still focus on the war..

Coming from Australia, the US is a fantastic country with some extraordinary people but I tell you what, it has a lot of faults… The thing is these are not 'end-of-the-world' faults but faults in attitudes, laws, responsibility and concepts. These are areas that politicians here need to get their act together to keep up with the rest of the world. These are the areas which groups like the ACLU, KKK, NAACP need to dramatically develop in.. The country needs a nationwide session with dr phil to teach everybody to stop whining and complaining about everything. Its almost as if the country is in a bad marriage..

When I listen to people who oppose Bush rant and rave on about this and that I think, what do you guys want.. Hey, I want a utopian world were everyone can do what they want and live happily and not have to worry in a world but the reality is this can never be the case.. So while people here ###### and whine, countries like Iran are clearly gearing up for a major battle..

I want republicans to lose. It will be interesting to see what the other side of the fence will do if the US has another terrorist attack or N.Korea, Iran and Venezuela decide to go for it..

why the US, with it's large population can't make sure everyone can go to the Dr. and not have to pay. I told him I did not know. He said it seemed wrong that all that money was going to the war

Totally agree.. Are Americans ready to pay an extra 2.5% tax to cover this? I'm all for it..

Health insurance for only 2.5% higher taxes? Sure, I pay a lot more than that out of my income right now.