Why should white people be blamed for African American's collective social status?

The problem remains that fools like Obama, Holder, and Sharpton that has convinced blacks that they are "victim" have to blame someone else, in this case whites. But the facts dictate that the blame belongs on that trio.

 

You cant blame the government for the crazy cops shooting up the city, unless they fail to address that.

 

You do of course understand that by blaming the most prominent black people in this country for black people biatching you are not only making the situation worse....you are making their point for them?

 

Wrong!!! That trio IS the problem. They should be educating young blacks to stay in school, stay out of drugs, and stay out of gangs. BUT THEY ARE NOT!!! That is the prime reason they are to blame because of their lack of proper leadership, and promoting the ignorant idea that the black plight is the fact they are "victims".

 

I see...so you think the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and a useless preacher turned TV personality should stop doing their jobs in order to attempt the futile quest of educating black kids and taking over the parenting role of millions.

Sound realistic and rational to me...why didn't I think of that.

 

I hate to break it to you, but there are no serious policy sources that don't lean left. People who know a lot about policy and economics nearly always become liberal because the liberal position just makes more sense. Looking for a highly credible non-liberal think tank is kind of like looking for an accomplished physicist who doesn't believe that objects accelerate as they fall. There are a couple of conservative think tanks- Heritage and American Enterprise, but they aren't nearly in the same tier as the more serious think tanks like Brookings, EPI, CBPP, etc. AEI especially is basically just a lobbying organization at this point. Heritage is still fairly respectable, but not a heavyweight like the others. It's more like a collection of well-written op/ed columns than actual economics and research.

 

LOL, rather than look at the facts, you just make the wild claim that all accurate sources are of the "progressives". It must make your life very simple and easy to live in such a bubble. And I have to wonder, why are you here if all Truth is with the "progressives"?

And if the "progressives" are so wise, why are all their policies failing so dramatically?

And if the "progressives" are so brilliant, why do they resort to force to impose their will on everyone?

And if the "progressives" policies are so wonderful, then why was the most successful nation in history - the USA - founded by people who were unquestionably the opposite of "progressives"? Where is the equivalent success story from the "progressives"? Maybe that's China, Russia, Cuba? LOL

 

What are you talking about? Do you mean why do liberals believe we should have laws? Virtually everybody- conservative and liberal- thinks we should have laws. What the sides disagree about is what set of laws is optimal, not whether we should have them at all.

The founders were liberals, some even radical left wingers, for their day. Over time, we all always shift to the left on the social side of policy. As we figure out more and more things, we all always shift to the left towards more tolerance, more inclusiveness, more equality, a fairer distribution of political power, etc. One year, social liberals think women should be able to vote, but that schools should be segregated, and social conservatives also think schools should be segregated, but that women should not be allowed to vote. Then, women get the vote and a couple decades later, both liberals and conservatives think it is good that women can vote, but liberals figure out that schools shouldn't be segregated while conservatives still want them segregated. That just keeps going on and on with each generation getting more socially liberal than the last. So, when you look way back in history, everybody was socially conservative by modern standards, but that doesn't mean they were actually socially conservative for their time.

On the economic side, history doesn't consistently move either way. It seems to swing back and forth. The founders were very liberal in terms of economic regulation. For example, they only permitted corporations to exist at all if they could demonstrate directly to Congress that they would serve the public interest. Even then, they only gave them a license to operate for a few years- usually 1 to 5, very rarely 20. Each year that their license was in effect, they had to return to Congress and show evidence that the corporation had done more good for society than harm and if they could not, their license was revoked and they had to disband. The only sorts of corporations they allowed to exist at all were socially responsible businesses with a public interest objective, like building a bridge or a hospital or similar. Can you even imagine even the most liberal politicians today proposing something so left wing on economic policy?

Anyways, as to successful liberal countries- all of the successful countries are liberal. The most successful ones tend to be a bit to the left of the US, but in the big picture, the developed countries don't really differ all that much in terms of either social or economic policy, and they're all well to the left of the norm in the undeveloped countries. Developed countries always dominate the charts for social tolerance and always have far more robust systems of economic regulation.

 

Just because the socialists call themselves "liberal" does not mean they are actually liberal.

The founders of the nation were classical liberals - Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy.

That's the opposite of todays Democrat party of "progressives" - the people who wage war on the 2nd Amendment, work to push religion into the closet, want top down control of everyones health care and retirement, want ever larger taxation, and use the government as tools to attack their political opponents.

If Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and Adams were alive today, would they join the "progressive" Democrat party, Republican party, or would they be with the Tea Party and libertarians? You know they would run to the Tea Party and immediately declare war on the "progressives".

The Tea Party and libertarians are the modern day classical liberals. The "left" is the tyrant.

 

You're sort of close to what I was explaining, but you're still missing it. The way history has moved has generally been that we split between liberal and conservative positions, eventually, everybody realizes the liberals had it right and we all move into what used to be the liberal part of the spectrum. Then we start calling the right half of that part of the spectrum "conservative" and the right part "liberal." We figure out the liberals got it right again, we all move to that part and redivide. It happens over and over. In those days, the liberal position was opposing monarchy. Conservatives supported the monarchy, liberals opposed it. That's where "right" and "left" come from- the people who supported the French monarchy sat on the right side of parliament and the people who opposed the monarchy sat on the left.

That always happens over and over on the social side. Hardly anybody alive today still supports the socially conservative positions of 200 years ago. Everybody's position today on social issues fall in the very most liberal end of the spectrum from 200 years ago. 200 years from now, people we perceive as being socially conservative will hold views that would make them radical leftists today.

Classical liberalism isn't the opposite of modern liberalism. Both modern conservatism and modern liberalism are part of classical liberalism.

I mean, if you just teleported anybody from hundreds of years ago to the present, they wouldn't fit in either party. They'd have to take a very long time to get to understand the present day circumstances and then figure out what policies they think make sense today before they could come to any kind of sensible position. They were liberal for their time socially and economically. Those same views would today be conservative socially and liberal socially, but there is no way to predict if they would stick with those positions given a totally different situation.

 

Holy cow, you need to spend some time in a political science class. And history.

Governments move from freedom to tyranny, nations start at different places on that spectrum but they almost never move towards freedom and when they do its almost always because the people revolt and force the change on the government. Governments accumulate more and more power and control, governments don't give up power. The founders wrote extensively on that problem.

And you are stuck on labels. The meaning of labels changes over time. Todays "conservatives" - the Tea Party - are not fighting to maintain the status quo, they are fighting to reduce the power of the government and increase the power of the individual. The other party used to call themselves "liberals" and now call themselves "progressives" but they are not focused on the individual but are greatly expanding the power of the government, they are trying to fundamentally transform the nation into a soft-dictatorship.

Its very simple to resolve. Between the Tea Party and the "progressives", which one wants bigger government which dictates to people, which wants want smaller government which is subservient to the people? Classical liberals - true liberals - want smaller government.

Not a chance in hell Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams would side with the "progressives". The founders would not think twice about rejecting the Democrat party, they would also reject the Republican party (which is just Democrat lite), and would run to the Tea Party and probably push them even farther away from the Republicans and Democrats.

Why? Because the founders had principle - they understood history and human nature and first formed their morals and principles on basic truths, and then created a nation which implemented those principles. They firmly believed the individual was quite capable of handling their own problems and the individual was best situated to deal with their problems - whatever those problems were. 18th century problem or 21st century, it does not matter. And the government is there only as an extension of the individuals action, not as babysitter.

You should read Frederic Bastiat, The Law. http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G004

 

I don't think solely white people or solely black people should be blamed. I think the human species should be blamed.

 

I mean, I get that conservatives like to talk like that is the difference between liberals and conservatives, but I can't really think of many issues where the conservatives actually favor the freedom of people. Conservatives generally want more government control and less freedom on the social side- marriage equality, abortion, school prayer, etc. On the economic side, conservatives consistently fight to submit the country to corporate rule. From where I'm sitting, that is the opposite of individual freedom. Best I can tell, conservatism is just the proposition that everybody should just give up trying to be free, submit to rule by the rich and the Christian right and quit trying to think for themselves. Conservatism strikes me as fundamentally subservience. It is about knowing your place, making the rich richer, living your personal life the way somebody else wants you to, working more for less, having less say over your life, etc. Weakness, obedience and fear.

To me, modern liberalism is the opposite- standing up for yourself, pushing back against those who want to push you around, fighting for the little guy, trying to make the world a better place, doing what is right instead of just doing what the guy with the biggest stick says to do, etc. And that's really what liberalism has always meant. That exactly what the founders were doing- standing up to the powerful. Putting people ahead of kings and corporations, fighting for what is right even if change is scary, etc. Conservatives never wanted to revolt against the King of England. They never would have stood up to the mega powerful corporations of the day. They did then exactly what they do today- snivel and cower before the powerful. That's what conservatism is to me.

 

Hmm. I actually agree with this. Although I find liberals to be almost the same, just pertaining to different matters, like our 2nd amendment right, among others. I hate both parties, TBH.

 

The problem with the labels "conservative" and "liberal" is they are used to reflect the right-left linear political spectrum. A linear spectrum is inaccurate, a 2 dimensional model such as the Nolan chart is much better.



"progressives" are statists, so is the Republican establishment. The Founders tend towards the Libertarian/Right border (in this the "Right" means capitalism). The Tea Party tends to the top/right but not as far as the founders.

The Republican Party is split between the Republican establishment and the Tea Party/Libertarian faction. This split started during Bush's second term, got rolling when Bush implemented TARP, and took off during obama's first year.

The Republican establishment is what you describe, they are for big business, porous borders, strong law enforcement, strong military, foreign intervention. They claim to want small government because its popular but they support things like top down education (Common Core), top down health care (they think obamacare can be fixed), they like federal control of finance (they think Dodd-Frank just needs some tweaking).

The Tea Party/Libertarian faction often is described as "conservative" not because they are status quo, but because of habit - they are on the "right" which to the naïve equates to "conservative". The Tea Party faction wants a much smaller federal government along the lines of the government the founders envisioned. Ideally, they would abolish the Dept. of Education, Commerce, HHS, Energy; the tax code would be replaced with something very simple; the TSA and NSA would be rolled way back and the 4th Amendment protections against search and seizure (and surveillance) would be reinstalled.

Compare that to the "progressives" running the Democrat party. The "progressives" obviously like big government, they like Common Core, obamacare, open borders, Dodd-Frank. They like big government so much they want an all powerfull executive, a semi-dictator or monarch. And don't think for one second that the "progressives" don't place big business and the ultra-rich above the masses - its gone so far last year Princeton declared the US was an oligarchy.

 

Agreed. I actually post that same chart all the time, except the normal one where the left is labelled "liberal" instead of "socialist."

Progressives range between centrist and left. Republicans range between centrist and right. On the global scale, they're both centrist. The tea party believes in low personal freedom (e.g., they're anti-immigration, pro-life, favor blurring the line between church and state, etc.) and high economic freedom, so they're right. Libertarians are in the libertarian box. No significant political group in the US is statist.

The idea that the founders wanted a really small federal government is somewhat of a modern misconception. For starters, do you know how the founders became the founders? They were a committee of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation that was formed to figure out ways to make the federal government bigger and more powerful because it was failing for lack of funding and authority. They quickly concluded that they couldn't possibly make it big enough or powerful enough to survive under the framework of the Articles, so they broke away from the Congress and started drafting the outline of a much bigger and more powerful federal government. No doubt, they federal government they pictured is much smaller and weaker than what we have today, but for their time, they were way out on the pro-big-government end of the spectrum. Remember, back in those days, people thought of states like they were separate countries. The typical American saw the federal government more like Europeans see the EU today- as a relatively loose international alliance between independent countries. The founders' vision for a unified country under a single, powerful, federal government was seen as radical at the time. To some extent, it is hard to distinguish between what the founders really thought was ideal and what they thought they could get.

As for how big they wanted government to be, it kind of depends on how you mean it. Some of the founders wanted the federal government to have fairly limited powers. Jefferson, for example, was at that end of the spectrum. Others wanted the federal government to have powers that were very broad even by modern standards, such as Hamilton. Even Jefferson, though, was in favor of the federal government having a lot more power than it did under the Articles and he spent a lot of time convincing people to support a powerful federal government. Again, though, they all felt that corporations should be much more aggressively regulated than much anybody today thinks they should be.

The perception that the founders were all generally in agreement with one another is a misconception. They were actually bitterly divided and had starkly different views in many areas. But, if you just mean the number of employees or the budget, they didn't take a stance on that. Within the bounds of whatever powers the government was given, they all thought it should be up to the voters.

 

Republicans and progressives are centrist? First I've heard of that. I don't agree with that at all.

I also believe you are wrong about the founders. They wanted to avoid a monarchy at all costs, that is the reason why they wanted a small central government with very limited powers.

 

By global standards they are. For example, consider how much more conservative, say, the government of Saudi Arabia is than Republicans in the US or how much more liberal the governments of Scandinavian countries or Venezuela. And even those countries are moderate by historical standards.

That is kind of the result of the flattening effect of the lens of history. The Constitution was written 11 years after the Declaration of Independence. A lot happened in those intervening years. Right after we declared independence, we enacted the Articles of Confederation, which set up its own federal government. It was exactly what you describe- an ultra limited federal government that was so limited because people were reacting to the monarchy. The problem is, it failed completely. Its powers were too limited. It was unable to secure sufficient tax revenues, it had no real legal authority, trade wars broke out between the states, it was unable to field an army sufficient to defend the country, so we had a hodge podge of uncoordinated state militias that were sort of squabbling among each other. It wasn't even possible to send mail from one state to another because the clashing state governments mucked it all up.

Then all the stuff I said above happened- the Congress under the Articles formed a committee to figure out how to strengthen the federal government, the members of that committee are who we call the founders today. They decided they couldn't strengthen it sufficiently under the Articles, so they went rogue and wrote the Constitution with the intention of making a dramatically stronger federal government. Lots of the things in the Constitution that seem kind of out of place trace directly to the years under the Articles- for example, we have a whole clause about creating a national post office, which seems like a trivial thing to spell out in a Constitution, but it was because state-run separate postal services were a disaster and everybody was really keen to make sure that was handled by the federal government.

Anyways, the Constitution was not just a reaction to monarchy, although it certainly was that, but also a reaction to the failed Articles of the Confederation. They had a government with unlimited powers under monarchy and that sucked. Then they had a government with almost no powers under the Articles, and that sucked too. So, they tried to strike a balance in the middle- a government with limited powers, but enough powers to accomplish the things Americans want it to accomplish.

 

Well, in the constitution, the federal government powers are also very limited. And let's not fool ourselves . . . our government has used lawyers to find loopholes to take on other responsibilities which the founders never really intended for them to have.

Congress's legislative powers are enumerated in Section Eight:
The Congress shall have power
To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence[note 1] and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

 

Do you have an example of something Congress does that doesn't fall in one of those enumerated powers?

Note though that those aren't a list of responsibilities, they're a list of powers. How Congress decides to employ those powers is up to it, and in turn, the people. For example, it says the government can spend on the general welfare, but doesn't specify what sorts of projects it can spend on, just that they be ones that aim to advance the general welfare or common defense. So, the people through their representatives may decide to do that one way one year and another way a different year. That clause doesn't list off the specific things the government can do, it draws lines around the types of things the government can do.

 

Yes, they categorize things as "taxes" which are not actually really taxes and other such things. The government is sneaky and not to be trusted. Do you trust politicians? Because that is what the government is made up of . . . politicians. That is just ONE reason why all of our rights have to be protected. Don't think for a moment that you can "trust" the government or that they are your "friend" or have your best interest at heart. That may have been the case at one time, a long, long time ago, but not anymore. They are OWNED by lobbyists and others who are super rich.

 

Trust has nothing to do with it. The Constitution isn't about trusting politicians, it is a structure that is designed to make it so that we have control over the politicians so we don't need to trust them. What the politicians do is always just a reflection of what we instruct them to do. When they heed the will of the super rich it is because the super rich control US and we control the politicians. They know that if they alienate the super rich, the super rich will spend their money convincing us to vote against the politicians who alienated them and we will fall for it. So, they don't dare alienate the super rich. They favor the interests of corporations over the interests of humans because we let ourselves become convinced by the corporations. Politicians don't actually care about money directly so much as they care about votes. The reason they care about money is because it gets them votes. As long as we let money buy votes, that will keep happening.

The problem is us more than them. We're not doing a great job of our fundamental duty to vote well. We generally don't bother looking up which policies have worked out well and which have not before we vote. We generally just don't pay enough attention to really vote in an informed way. We let negative ads sway us. We continue to watch news outlets even after they are caught lying to us over and over and over. The problem isn't with what powers the federal government has or with the character of the politicians, the problem is that we're being lazy voters.

For example, take trickle down policy. 35 years ago, a sizable minority of economists actually thought it might work. But, it plainly didn't work. None of the predictions came true. Economic growth slowed down, inequality exploded out of control, our competitiveness slacked off, poverty increased, etc. By say 15 years ago, virtually no economist still bought into trickle down. Now, even Republicans will say that they don't support trickle down policy any more. But, a huge swath of voters support "rewarding job creators." That line polls very well and Republicans work it into just about every speech they give. The thing is, that's just a new name for the same trickle down policies that everybody knows are a disaster. They're voting for a policy they know is bad because they never bothered to think through what the new catch-phrase for it actually means.

 

What a bunch of bull. Lol! They don't do what we instruct them to do. They do whatever they want and move boundaries to do so. They most certainly DO care about money. Don't be silly. They take bribes and all kinds of things.

No, the problem is not "us." The problem is the government has become a monster. The politicians lie and they cheat.

 

I'm not really clear how you think that would work. What would happen if we elected a good politician? They would immediately become corrupt upon taking office? No matter who we picked? So basically you're saying there isn't a single good person out there we could vote for? That doesn't strike me as remotely plausible that there isn't a single decent person in a nation of 313 million people.

Politicians care about votes more than anything else by far. It is not actually true that many politicians take bribes. Very few do and it is always a big scandal, but 99% of them have never had any kind of wiff of anything like that going on. But, even a corrupt politician who takes bribes would care more about votes than the individual bribes because if they get voted out, the bribes would stop. We hold the ultimate power over the politicians. The problem is, we've ceded most of that power to the rich and corporations by allowing them to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections and by being lazy about voting. So, politicians are constantly faced with these situations where they actually get move votes by favoring the rich and corporations over the regular people. Rich people and corporations have a dominant influence on elections, so the politicians who are in office are the ones who cater to the rich and corporations. If they stop doing it, they lose their next election and they get replaced by somebody who will cater. There are certain exceptions that have big enough names that have been around long enough that even the rich and corporations can't dislodge them, but they're few and far between these days.

Look, for example, at the extent to which the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and a few dozen other huge megadonors are driving the Republican primary. That isn't because those candidates are competing for bribes, it is because those megadonors have the resources to determine who wins the primary. If they spend $300 million on Walker and $50 million on Bush, that's it, Walker wins the primary, and vice versa if they give Bush the $300m and Walker the $50m. No matter whether a politician is a good person or a bad person, that's the reality they face.

If we want to fix democracy, we won't accomplish it by just complaining about the politicians. We can only fix it by getting money out of politics both by fixing the campaign finance laws and by voting smarter.

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/sep/25/how-corrupt-are-our-politics/

Sorry, but politicians are generally corrupt. The longer they stay in office, the more likely they are to become corrupted. We need better and strict term limits. Bribes are just ONE example of corruption in our government.

We do not hold "ultimate power" anymore. That may have been how it once was, but not anymore. I don't know about you, but I haven't "ceded" anything. How can you blame the people? Politicians lie to the people and cheat.

Now, you say rich people and corporations have a dominant influence on elections? That is because politicians are corrupt and want personal gain, as well as political gain.

It certainly isn't only the republican party. It is BOTH major parties which have held a monopoly on our government for . . . decades and decades.

Obviously, you are blinded by ideology to only bring up the republican party and conveniently leave out the democrats, who are just as corrupt.