fatsensei:
Great post!
It’s not just the wrong reaction that people like Sharpton and Jackson (both racists) had regarding Katrina. It’s a large portion of society that expects the government to give them a hand out.
I have no problem with the government helping out flood victims. My main problem is with the 20% or so of society that thinks the government is there to help them their entire lives.
Currently 1 out of every 5 families revieves some sort of government hand out. Where will it end?
Well, I can’t really add much to what orion and Professor X said, so I’ll just say:
The way the KKK apparently has dedicated several of its members to post on this forum, I definitely shall not be surprised if the next thread is entitled “Why we must restart the Black lynchings” (with the “Black” word being put in by the mods to replace the original which I cannot write either), followed by several posts agreeing with the point and praising that period of American history.
Anyway… Today I was doing the “President’s Memorials Tour” in DC and this hit me:
It’s amazing how America goes in cycles – the cycle starts with a great leader, who launches the USA into a great economic and moral revolution. It all goes well until people, that got comfortable, eventually forget what allowed the recovery, and start getting greedy and selfish. They want MORE. It then proceeds into decay into the Far Right. The cycle ends usually with an economic or political disaster and/or a great upheaval – and a great leader comes along again to save our collective asses again.
Here’s hoping for a great leader to materialize from the ether quickly… We need one pretty soon.
[quote]hspder wrote:
Well, I can’t really add much to what orion and Professor X said, so I’ll just say:
The way the KKK apparently has dedicated several of its members to post on this forum, I definitely shall not be surprised if the next thread is entitled “Why we must restart the Black lynchings” (with the “Black” word being put in by the mods to replace the original which I cannot write either), followed by several posts agreeing with the point and praising that period of American history.
Anyway… Today I was doing the “President’s Memorials Tour” in DC and this hit me:
It’s amazing how America goes in cycles – the cycle starts with a great leader, who launches the USA into a great economic and moral revolution. It all goes well until people, that got comfortable, eventually forget what allowed the recovery, and start getting greedy and selfish. They want MORE. It then proceeds into decay into the Far Right. The cycle ends usually with an economic or political disaster and/or a great upheaval – and a great leader comes along again to save our collective asses again.
Here’s hoping for a great leader to materialize from the ether quickly… We need one pretty soon.
[/quote]
LOL yes we need a “great leader” who will take more money from all of those evil rich people and dole it out to all of those deserving poor people. Ha ha please type more…
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
Great post. While some of it is somewhat irrelevant, it offers some great points. I particularly appreciate the “80 years ago, people understood
that the government was there to “protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Today, Americans expect the government to “provide life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That’s a major difference.”
This is a fundamental problem that is missed by the likes of too many liberals and Democrats. I grew up in poverty and an abusive family, but I climbed my way out as have many others. I grew up with people telling me that I’m worthless, but today I have a home, a great job, considered “upper class”, own my own business, a fat 401K, and a beautiful family of my own. I had my first business detailing cars at 12 years old (drove them without a license). The difference between me and SOME of the folks we may be discussing here, is that I had initiative and never expected that ANYONE would ever help me. Would I take a $2000 debit card from the government? Probably not, because I’d be out of there finding a way to get on with my life. I’d never look back. I’ve got enough Indian blood in me to receive government benefits, but I’ve never once put on any application that I was Indian. Give the handouts to the disabled and elderly, but if you’re capable to DO something, then you should do it. Don’t use up my tax dollars to enable you to continue the downward path you’re on. And, PLEASE spare me the race card. My Indian family was driven from their land, raped, murdered, enslaved, and forced to hide their identities if possible. I have never used my blood line as a crutch, and I expect others to behave the same.
Now, before someone tries to dissect my words and make more of them than is actually stated, I feel very strongly that there are tens of thousands of people in New Orleans that need our help right now. I feel that it is up to the human race to embrace and help each other. My statements are NOT blanket statements about all of New Orleans, but I’m sure that they apply to a fair amount of people.[/quote]
I’ll disect those words:
Great post and so true
hspder ~ proof that our education system wasn’t working
I’m not sure if I should FedEx you a tin foil hat or use the …
How you say? Toobsteak Boogie?
I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
hspder wrote:
Well, I can’t really add much to what orion and Professor X said, so I’ll just say:
The way the KKK apparently has dedicated several of its members to post on this forum, I definitely shall not be surprised if the next thread is entitled “Why we must restart the Black lynchings” (with the “Black” word being put in by the mods to replace the original which I cannot write either), followed by several posts agreeing with the point and praising that period of American history.
Anyway… Today I was doing the “President’s Memorials Tour” in DC and this hit me:
It’s amazing how America goes in cycles – the cycle starts with a great leader, who launches the USA into a great economic and moral revolution. It all goes well until people, that got comfortable, eventually forget what allowed the recovery, and start getting greedy and selfish. They want MORE. It then proceeds into decay into the Far Right. The cycle ends usually with an economic or political disaster and/or a great upheaval – and a great leader comes along again to save our collective asses again.
Here’s hoping for a great leader to materialize from the ether quickly… We need one pretty soon.
LOL yes we need a “great leader” who will take more money from all of those evil rich people and dole it out to all of those deserving poor people. Ha ha please type more…[/quote]
Yes those rich people who criminally exploit the poor by employing them…the shame of it all.
[quote]hspder wrote:
Well, I can’t really add much to what orion and Professor X said, so I’ll just say:
The way the KKK apparently has dedicated several of its members to post on this forum, I definitely shall not be surprised if the next thread is entitled “Why we must restart the Black lynchings” (with the “Black” word being put in by the mods to replace the original which I cannot write either), followed by several posts agreeing with the point and praising that period of American history.
[/quote]
It’s this type of strawman response that really burns me up.
HSPDR, actually, the rest of your post might have gotten a little creedence had you not included this paragraph. Unfortunately, all your post will be seen as is a strawman arguement. Nothing prior to this even REMOTELY brought up the race issue, unless by saying poor and un-educated YOU define as a race classification. Seeing as I know just as many poor an uneducated people in just about ANY race, I guess I’m just not racist enough to classify “poor an uneducated” to mean “black and should be lynched”. It’s a shame to see that you are.
The fact is that to a certain degree BOTH sides of this ORIGINAL arguement are right. YES- we (citizens AND govt) SHOULD do all that we can to help. These people are going through a living hell right now and it’s our humanitarian duty to lend any assistance possible and neccessary to aid in the recovery of the Gulf coast.
YES- there are way too many people that think that this recovery is completely owed to them and they don’t need to sinch up their bootstraps and work for it. Notice that I didn’t say ALL people. Notice that I didn’t say BLACK people, WHITE people, GREEN, PURPLE,BLUE, or CHARTRUSE people. There are people of EVERY background trying to take advantage of this disaster for their own personal gain. There are also people of every background bustin’ their ass every day trying to do their part.
NOT every societal issue is a racial one.
I think this discussion is a very intriguing one. I would like to see it continued on both sides without any strawman mudslinging.
Excellent post, and I agree with you 100 percent. Its somethin Mr x just doesn’t, and won’t ever, get.
This was written by a man that I usually think is full of s#it. There are some valid points in here that echo some of the sentiment that I think fatsensei was trying to relay. It’s just food for thought.
"In his 1935 State of the Union Address, FDR spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated in conservative values:
“[C]ontinued dependence” upon welfare, said FDR, “induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
Behind FDR’s statement was the conviction that, while the government must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food, clothing and shelter for their families.
And we did, until the war pulled us out of the Depression and a postwar boom made us, in John K. Galbraith’s phrase, “The Affluent Society.” By the 1960s, America, the richest country on earth, was growing ever more prosperous. But with the 1964 landslide of LBJ, liberalism triumphed and began its great experiment.
Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America’s poor out of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs. By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free medical care, government will end poverty in America.
At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to stay alive and protect people.
It was the character and conduct of its people that makes the New Orleans disaster unique. After a hurricane, people’s needs are simple: food, water, shelter, medical attention. But they can be hard to meet. People buried in rubble or hiding in attics of flooded homes are tough to get to. But, even with the incompetence of the mayor and governor, and the torpor of federal officials, this was possible.
Coast Guard helicopters were operating Tuesday. There were roads open into the city for SUVs, buses and trucks. While New Orleans was flooded, the water was stagnant. People walked through to the convention center and Superdome. The flimsiest boat could navigate.
Even if government dithered for days ? what else is new ? this does not explain the failure of the people themselves.
Between 1865 and 1940, the South ? having lost a fourth of its best and bravest in battle, devastated by war, mired in poverty ? was famous for the hardy self-reliance of her people, black and white.
In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue 300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain to the world that a tenth that number of Americans could not be reached in four days from across a stagnant pond?
The real disaster of Katrina was that society broke down. An entire community could not cope. Liberalism, the idea that good intentions and government programs can build a Great Society, was exposed as fraud. After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965, poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and the weak.
Stranded for days in a pool of fetid water, almost everyone waited for the government to come save them. They screamed into the cameras for help, and the reporters screamed into the cameras for help, and the “civil rights leaders” screamed into the cameras that Bush was responsible and Bush was a racist.
Americans were once famous for taking the initiative, for having young leaders rise up to take command in a crisis. See any of that at the Superdome? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we, did not behave like this in a tsunami that took 400 times as many lives as Katrina has thus far.
We are the descendants of men and women who braved the North Atlantic in wooden boats to build a country in a strange land. Our ancestors traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons, fighting off Indians far braver than those cowards preying on New Orleans’ poor.
Watching that performance in the Crescent City, it seems clear: We are not the people our parents were. And what are all our Lords Temporal now howling for? Though government failed at every level, they want more government.
FDR was right. A “spiritual disintegration” has overtaken us. Government-as-first provider, the big idea of the Great Society, has proven to be “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
Either we get off this narcotic, or it kills us. "
This was Patrick Buchanan’s take on the situation.
[quote]Velvet Revolver wrote:
Excellent post, and I agree with you 100 percent. Its somethin Mr x just doesn’t, and won’t ever, get.
[/quote]
What is it that I don’t get? Please tell me. I asked for where the commentary was on the many who have been looking for jobs and found them in new cities after the evacuation. You seem to be one of those who wants to ignore the many who do work hard and try yet still find themselves “poor” by labeling them all as lazy bastards who are just sitting on their asses in shelters right now. One thing you won’t ever seem to get, is how to actually make a valid argument.
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany. [/quote]
YOU ARE EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU!
[quote]ZEB wrote:
jackzepplin wrote:
I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
YOU ARE EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU![/quote]
You are a smelly pirate hooker!
[quote]mica617 wrote:
"In his 1935 State of the Union Address, FDR spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated in conservative values:
“[C]ontinued dependence” upon welfare, said FDR, “induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
[/quote]
This is good!!! I think I’m going to have to have this printed on a magnetic sign and drive around town with this on my vehicle.
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
ZEB wrote:
jackzepplin wrote:
I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
YOU ARE EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU!
You are a smelly pirate hooker! [/quote]
Worse yet I’m a republican who owns a business! YIKES (people are now screaming running from the room).
[quote]Tank53 wrote:
Keep asking that question. Do you really believe people deep down inside are great wonderful people? I think if you could flash up a mental picture of the thoughts any person has ever had in the last week, they’d have to move out of town.
Total side track I know. But it always gets under my skin when people talk about how wonderful everyone is, and when something like this happens and people dont understand why people start shooting planes, robbing stores, etc. [/quote]
Wow, you have a pretty morbid view of people in general. I’d be extremely depressed if I thought like you. Believe it or not, I think the opposite of your post. I think people are generally good. Every one has weaknesses but I don’t think they’re generally bad at their core.
How can you not lose faith in people? Just take a look out the window. Turn on the tv. Go to google news. Hell, just go to any source of information. It’s terribly sad the way the world is.
How can you not feel guilty, knowing that you had it so good from the start, when there’s billions that are worse off than you? How can you not feel guilty knowing that it was nothing but chance that gave you such a life, while giving some poor bastard in somalia a rape victim mother with AIDs, a dead guerilla father, 9 starved siblings, 7 of which are dead, and a life expectancy that can be measured in days? How can you not feel bad about the way the dice rolled? How can you live with yourself, knowing that you don’t give a damn?
[quote]hspder wrote:
It’s amazing how America goes in cycles – the cycle starts with a great leader, who launches the USA into a great economic and moral revolution. It all goes well until people, that got comfortable, eventually forget what allowed the recovery, and start getting greedy and selfish. They want MORE. It then proceeds into decay into the Far Right. The cycle ends usually with an economic or political disaster and/or a great upheaval – and a great leader comes along again to save our collective asses again.
Here’s hoping for a great leader to materialize from the ether quickly… We need one pretty soon.[/quote]
I am curious for an accounting for these various cycles - what is you list?
And as for your historical trends, I think you may be on to something, but you have your end results mixed up. Rather than devolving into the ‘Far Right’, affluent societies all too often lapse into an Age of Entitlement.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
One thing you won’t ever seem to get, is how to actually make a valid argument.[/quote]
Given Pro X’s track record, anyone else here think this statement is hi-larious?
BigFlame,The conservatives that live in my area,are not rugged indiviualists,they have to stick together to venture out of the safety of their little areas where they live.And if ever a real rugged individualist comes around and speaks there mind about something these people are afraid of them and dont want the rugged individualist type around ,because they feel threatened.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
jackzepplin wrote:
ZEB wrote:
jackzepplin wrote:
I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
YOU ARE EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU!
You are a smelly pirate hooker!
Worse yet I’m a republican who owns a business! YIKES (people are now screaming running from the room).[/quote]
I’ll be damned! ME TOO!!
