Posted on 07/18/2008 7:18:21 AM PDT by PurpleMountains
Like most white, middle-class Americans, I was astounded, shocked and disgusted by the comments and beliefs of Reverend Wright, and, given the applause and cheers, he mirrored the beliefs of most in his congregation. I thought, well, maybe the people in this church hate America this much, but this has to be a tiny sample of what black people think. Then, for weeks afterward, I watched black talking head after black talking head appear on various cable news channels some disagreeing with the Obamas and Wright, but many agreeing with them that America is a terrible country, for blacks at least.
(Excerpt) Read more at forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com ...
Not as bad as The Great Society, granted, but still terrible.
That was a good line.
“I was astounded, shocked and disgusted by the comments and beliefs of Reverend Wright, and, given the applause and cheers, he mirrored the beliefs of most in his congregation.”
Reverend Wright’s congregants do not live in Section 8 housing. From what I have read, the church’s congregation is heavy in urban professionals. Perhaps the congregants are trying to prove they are “black”.
Why do we have to go to the movies to see the Joker, when we’ve got Wright and Pfleger?
If people want their check, they'll have to move to the designated location.
Jobless, indolent people will move if it means free checks. That will still solve absolutely nothing.
The writer’s epiphany is nice and all that (which is personal to him and anybody who happens to have seen the same light); but I’ve got a couple of other biggies that I find serendipidous about Baraq’s candidacy. 1) Who else could have unhorsed the hildebeeste? Absolutely NO ONE. For that, I thank him. 2) Who else could have put the marxist strand of the black poverty-pimping industry under the scrutiny it is getting? Not another soul.
And now, he is about to get slamdunked, despite all indicators being against Republicans, despite having a fawning media, and despite having plenty of money. And nobody is going to be able to understand how it happened. Simple. You can have all the anti-American feelings you want, and express them — you just can’t do that and expect to be president.
I wrote that sentiment once on here and someone replied: “Oh yeah? What about Carter?”
Well, Carter never acted like anything but a gentle, humble, Sunday school-teaching, nuclear submarine-running southerner UNTIL he began trying to give away the Panama Canal. It was only AFTER he left office that he showed his true America-hating colors.
Baraq shows them every time he makes a speech: “This is a great country, BUT...;” “I believe in capitalism, BUT...” “America USED to be admired in the world, BUT...”
All you’ve got to do is line up a litany of soundbites of him and Michelle dissing this country, and he will lose, big.
I’ve bet $1000 on it at +180 (i.e., WHEN McCain wins, I’ll be paid my $1000 back, plus $1800 more).
I really hope you are right. Obama has everything going for him right now except for the perception among those paying attention that he is an America-hater. The problem may be that too few have been paying attention.
“Perhaps the congregants are trying to prove they are black.”
I think you are right there but I would add to it the general liberal tendency to accept any philosophy that allows them to enjoy the fruits of their own getting. Upwardly-mobile blacks don’t want to be held responsible to drag their fellow blacks along with them. They want to be told they should continue to get more money and more power in order to use that money and power to get the “real villain” (i.e., the government) to take care of the other blacks. They want to have a green light to be as selfish as possible so long as they advocate government action to take care of their lessers.
You miss the point. The problem is a collective one. When they are dispersed, local communities and schools will provide an example as well as an incentive to become more productive.
Pipe dream.
In 1920, Detroit was a city of almost one million people, almost entirely white ones.
Over the course of the 1920s, a few thousand African-Americans from the South moved to Detroit, in search of jobs. Presumably the local white population's communities and schools provided an example and an incentive.
By 1960 African-Americans were a third of the population.
By 1970 the white inhabitants were fleeing in droves, largely due to the pathological behaviors of the African-Americans who had been dispersed into their community starting in the 1920s.
Today Detroit has four-fifths the population it had 90 years ago. It's a hollowed-out shell and arguably the worst inner-city disaster in America.
Importing a thousand Detroiters into a rural community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan will not result in a thousand new upstanding citizens - it will result in the importation of pathologies from Detroit.
Moving to another town does not immediately bestow upon a child a responsible, hardworking father who is there for them. Moving to another town does not make a woman magically unwilling to open her legs for any man who agrees to take her out. Moving to another town does not miraculously make a young punk decide to stop committing crimes and taking drugs.
Wherever African-Americans choose to live, the unaddressed internal problems of their community follow them.
Acting white is the greatest sin whether you live in Des Moines or Philly.
I have lived through two perfect examples of this idea and have this to report:
Back in the late 1960's I worked for a Milwaukee based manufacturing company (Rex Chainbelt). It came to light that nearly all of our skilled tradesmen were roughly the same age and would all retire in mass in a year or two! We were having a terrible time finding new applicants for an apprenticeship program, the local trade schools were not supplying any with the needed skills (welding, foundry worker, general machining, &c.) with most of their programs being things like dental assistant, beauticians, and such.
The Industrial Relations department came up with the idea of turning an unused warehouse building and some older but still serviceable machine tools into an on site training center. We got dispensation from the Machinist Union to skirt rather close to the edge on their apprenticeship rules. We set the operation up and staffed it with foremen volunteers who would put a portion of each day in as shop instructors. The various engineering departments were asked to supply instructors for basic shop math, blueprint reading, and related subjects.
We started out with a class of about thirty inner city youth. Did I mention that Chainbelt is located right on a major city bus route? By the second week, we had people calling the homes of these kids to ask if we could expect them to show up for school. Did I mention that our students were being paid as machine shop apprentices just to show up for class?
By the end of the first month of the program, we had a full time employee with a company car driving around the neighborhoods and knocking on doors, trying to round up our wayward students. The program did not make it through the second month!
My second experience was some years later at a Racine based manufacturer of hydraulic components. While not nearly as ambitious as the Rex plan, we attempted to provide a basic grounding in shop math, blueprint reading, measurement tools and techniques for some of our younger employees. We found it necessary to include some "grocery store arithmetic" like adding and subtracting fractions and reading a ruler, and other topics that were neglected by our public school system. They went to class for two hours a day, three days a week. The first hour was "on the clock" and they were paid to attend at their base pay rate. The second hour was on their own time. The instructors were all volunteer staff people from the engineering and quality assurance departments.
At the end of the program (six weeks) every last one of our students wanted to know how much of a raise they would receive because of their "new skills" (which barely brought them up to what you would expect from a good high school graduate!). When they were told that they would continue at their base pay until they could move into an apprenticeship program, every single one quit and went across the street and got employment at J.I. Case because they now knew how to read blueprints. Sad but true, and Case didn't even thank us for our efforts.
Regards,
GtG
PS The really scary part of all this is that we're several generations deeper into the pit with the current generation of dead-end kids who are convinced that carrying guns and selling drugs is the only to live.
I would point out that a relative of mine is a liberal arts instructor at a trade high school which provides an excellent and free curriculum in basic engineering and hands-on machinist training in a state of the art facility funded by the city.
The population of the school is approximately 85% Hispanic and African-American.
Out of 800 kids, maybe 50 bother to do the full four years of the program - and of those 50 about 30-35 are white and 10-15 are Hispanic.
One of the retired engineers who is a full-time instructor there told this relative of mine that when he tries to get the African-American teens in the school who show an aptitude for the work to pursue it for a full four years, he gets a response of disdain for the physical labor involved in the program. To quote one kid he was trying to encourage: "What am I? A motherf****** slave, now? Nah."
Any job other than NBA player, actor, record producer or unlicensed pharmaceutical distributor is now "slave labor."
But apparently if these kids are moved from Brooklyn to a rural community like Cooperstown they will wake up the next morning and apply for a job working on a dairy farm and then show up every morning at 4 am like clockwork.
What kind of country will our children live in if we just keep doing what we have been doing?
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