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Saturday, February 21, 2015

Open Thread


So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

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A link to get this thread started...New woes for HealthCare.gov: Wrong tax info sent out [nearly 1 million affected].

47 comments:

  1. Yesterday at Western Hero in the midst a lengthy thread that seemed to be going nowhere in particular, FARMER JOHN (our longtime friend, FJ-Thersites & CO. ;-) asked THE most important question of at least the last decade -- possibly the last CENTURY:

    "If all current white people in America are responsible for the vestiges of Jim Crow, lynchings, and slavery, why aren't all Moslem's responsible for ISIS and their actions? What about "social justice"?

    I strongly urge every Conservative-Libertarian to ponder the significance of that question, carefully consider its implications, and then keep asking it OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again whenever a relevant subject comes up.

    FJ's brilliant, probing question is SO important I'm going to repeat it.


    "If all current white people in America are responsible for the vestiges of Jim Crow, lynchings, and slavery, why aren't all Moslem's responsible for ISIS and their actions? What about "social justice"?

    And repeat it again, because it could not be emphasized enough.

    "IF ALL CURRENT WHITE PEOPLE IN AMERICA ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VESTIGES OF JIM CROW LYNCHINGS AND SLAVERY, WHY AREN'T ALL MOSLEMS RESPONSIBLE FOR ISIS AND THEIR ACTIONS?

    WHAT ABOUT "SOCIAL JUSTICE?"


    Yes, what about Social Justice?

    Please don't imagine you'll get a sensible reply from any of the committed Marxicrats who love an adore anything deleterious to the best interests of the United States of America, of Christianity, and of Western Civilization in general.

    The truth is not in them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The premise fails so there's no point following your reach for victimhood any further.

      Delete
    2. What premise failed? That you haven't named it and/or demonstrated its' failure/fallacy mode speaks volumes.

      Delete
    3. For "if" there were economic and social conditions that arose that "created" the slavery and the KKK, then the KKK was merely a symptom of those conditions, they (Klansmen) were therefore "not responsible" for their EXTREME reaction. America (the "system') itself, would have to be to blame (as charged by Howard Zinn, et al).

      In other words the Left's current argument is that ISIS is not responsible for its' brutality AND Islam, the "system" under which it operates, is NOT responsible either. How can that be?

      Now we can all agree that the "capitalist system" lies "above" national interest, but ONLY in so far as "nations" choose to participate in it (as the recent "Soviet Union/USSR" experiment proved). So IF that is true, why isn't "Islam" to blame for ISIS? For they have defacto "accepted" the capitalist "system" as one "superior" to their own, else they would "exclude" it..

      Delete
    4. Did "Jihadi John" and the other "foreign fighter" members of ISIS learn their murderous ways in the West and then import them into the Middle East? If so, please explain "how" that happened.

      Delete
    5. Nobody believes all current white people in America are responsible for the vestiges of Jim Crow, lynchings, and slavery. No one.

      I'm glad to hear it. So you'll finally stop calling me a "racist" and pestering us for reparations and "social justice" for minorities?

      Why would they? How did "all Muslims" have anything to do with Isis? Most Muslims live nowhere near that region.

      Indeed. But where did Jihadi John come from? Why are most of ISIS members "foreign fighters" and not "Iraqi" like al Baghdadi (ISIS' leader translated "from Bagdad")?

      "What about "social justice"?"

      You are right, we don't care. We believe in justice for "the individual". YOU are the one who loves to apply (or NOT apply, in this "specific" case) pejorative labels to "groups".

      Delete
    6. Thersites, it will never do any of us a particle of good to try to "reason" with leftists, BECAUSE everyone of them -- whether he knows it, or chooses to acknowledge it, or not -- is an avid proponent of CRITICAL THEORY, which means he lives SOLELY to FIND FAULT with and REJECT anything and everything crossing his sites that is incongruent with the Marxist Narrative.

      Other terms we might to describe this obdurate, unyielding mentality might OPPOSITIONISM, REFUTATIONISM, DENIGRATIONISM, REJECTIONISM, PREVARICATIONISM, PERVERSITISM. ;-)

      You take it from there.

      When any idea fails to affirm and lend support to their tyrannical, faux-humanitarian objectives, they simply dismiss it, lampoon it, deride it, mentally thumb their nose at it, willfully mischaracterize it, and tell you what a fool you are for subscribing to it.

      ENDLESS INSOLENCE is their modus operandi.

      That in a nutshell is their SCHTICK.

      Nothing can be done about it. They'd rather DIE than admit to the faintest possibility they might be wrong.

      Delete
    7. Ducky ducks again.

      Ducky, old fellow, you are profoundly incorrect, and Jersey's clown show stupidity can't cover it.

      The Gold Standard of our time of reparations arguments is Tah Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations

      An excerpt:

      One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations.

      I rarely agree with Coates' politics or opinions, but I respect him as a thinker and writer and I learn from him. In this famous article he marshals facts and arguments going back to our nation's founding.

      A common thread running through such arguments can be expressed by the stupid, guilty while college kid demanding we white guys "Check our privilege."

      Coates is too intelligent to stoop to such leftwing slogans, but the basic argument is that it's not just slaveowners, but all of white America benefited from slavery, Jim Crow and black second class citizenry. It's the system, and for that reason, everyone who benefited from the system must pay.

      So, Ducky, the premise is not flawed. It has been posited by those arguing for reparations.

      Delete
    8. Thank you, sf.

      And in the case of ISIS vs the KKK, the Left discovers "individuals responsible" who pervert the group-think. Social Justice, their cause celebre, is revealed "a sham."

      Delete
    9. Thersites,
      The Left is always saying that the South owned slavery. I've heard that over and over again -- and I'm sure that you have too.

      So....Islam owns ISIS the way that the South owned slavery.

      Delete
    10. ...but I would add that the "South" that owned slavery no longer exists. The Islam that owns ISIS, on the other hand...

      Delete
    11. Thersites and AOW,

      It's fundamental Aristotlean logic, but the progressive hive is immune to it, reflexively reacting to ideological pheromones. The beauty of doxies dogmas is they do your thinking for you.

      Delete
    12. It's the equivalent of believing that a "jobs program" for white southerners should have been America's "solution" for the KKK.

      Delete
    13. Thersites,
      It's the equivalent of believing that a "jobs program" for white southerners should have been America's "solution" for the KKK.

      Indeed!

      Delete
    14. SF: WHITE PRIVILEGE is fast becoming on college curriculums...well said. That's a perfect example of the undeniable.

      "I rarely agree with Coates' politics or opinions, but I respect him as a thinker and writer and I learn from him" Perhaps if people on both sides of the aisle would allow other opinions to filter through their indoctrination, we'd all do better. The country certainly might. I never hear anything like this from the left on the blogs. Ever.
      I applaud you for that....it's SO important we all hear both sides and learn.

      Delete
    15. SF: WHITE PRIVILEGE is fast becoming on college curriculums...well said. That's a perfect example of the undeniable.

      "I rarely agree with Coates' politics or opinions, but I respect him as a thinker and writer and I learn from him" Perhaps if people on both sides of the aisle would allow other opinions to filter through their indoctrination, we'd all do better. The country certainly might. I never hear anything like this from the left on the blogs. Ever.
      I applaud you for that....it's SO important we all hear both sides and learn.

      Delete
    16. Z: Black people have legitimate grievances because of our history, no doubt, and much of their plight can be chalked up to the past as well.

      But the left drives it off the rails by demonizing us as the 'other,' and preaching a dismal determinism to people mired in poverty. Too many people in this nation believe their futures are determined by the past, and it just ain't so, even though because of history and systematic impediments, many must swim upstream.

      Delete
    17. AOW: And yet, there is a grain of truth there. History shows that tribes focus on 'the other' much more during times of scarcity. Where there is a bounty easily shared by all, different tribes (nations, families, people) tend to get along better.

      But, par usual, the left takes a seed of truth and grows it into a gnarled tree of hatred, controversy and choking brambles.

      Delete
    18. White supremacist sympathies?

      Didn't you start off this thread with a claim as to what he was attempting to wrap himself in victimhood?

      "... no point following your reach for victimhood any further."

      You can't argue the point both ways AND be credible.

      Delete
    19. FT's motivations aren't racial. His motivation is to exhort others to virtue. That you don't see that because your definitions of virtue and vice are different, doesn't surprise me.

      Delete
    20. FT, wouldn't recognize virtue if it cut off his unit with a power tool.

      He simply laments his victimization through the loss of white supremacy.
      He's a brother to the neoconfederates who have spring up.

      Delete
    21. WHITE PRIVILEGE is another Leftist mischaracterization of a non-problem. Minorities in this country are freer, wealthier, and generally happier than their counterparts in most of their countries of origin.

      It's not "white" privilege. It's the "privilege" that results from embracing and pursuing the capitalist economic system. Those who "fail" to embrace it, end up as both social outcasts and dependent upon redistribution of its' innate 'surplus'.

      Delete
    22. Look at China. Is their recent success "Yellow privilege"?

      Delete
    23. Social Justice isn't bending over backward for every failed individual who doesn't support the "system." THAT is "charity". Social justice lies in reaping the rewards that come from SUPPORTING any given social system, be it American, European, Chinese OR Islamic. So get with the PROGRAM, Lefties!

      Delete
    24. ...as for FT's "racial superiority", ducky. F*CK your "free pass" on racism. Either we're ALL free, or NONE of us are. That you will continue to label us as such, is YOUR ideological "blind spot", not mine.

      Delete
    25. We don't "insist" that 50% of the population be veiled and lounge around in harems all day.

      Delete
    26. Thersites:

      Exceedingly well-argued. You had the Beantown Quacker on the ropes and punch drunk in the first round.

      His comment about FT's "racial superiority" was especially egregious, and I'm glad you unleashed on him.

      Ducky's comment did give us a frightening peek into the dungeon of the leftwing mind. FreeThinke taught minorities in the inner city of New York, what did the Leftwing Duck ever do for anybody?

      but none of us should be surprised. We bring facts and logic, lefties bring bile, invective and insult. They will become increasingly unhinged and crabby as their hopium-blue world continues to crumble around them, and their scolding and putting everyone on notice no longer works. Insult to injury... We on the right are using their own tactics against them, and it enrages them, but they are so blinded by ideology they don't realize they are facing their own tactics.

      I wish we could attract some fresh blood from the left who knows how to debate an issue on its merits. Jersey and Ducky's schtick is stale. Even Jersey's verbal seltzer down his pants doesn't do it for me anymore.

      Delete
    27. Glad that you enjoyed the argument. Thanks for all your exhortations to virtue. I doubt that the duck, et al, would have "engaged" at all without them. :)

      Delete
    28. Speaking of virtue, it's interesting how exercised leftist get when you raise the issue.

      I guess they don't understand that we bring it up not because we are 'there,' but because it is a goal we attain to.

      Scratch a leftwinger and there's a lot of scary stuff underneath, most of it driven by a nagging conscience, I bet.

      Delete
    29. ______ TO SUM IT UP______

      A disparaging view un-American
      Gives joy to the chronic contrarian.
      If it’s hostile and dark,
      His heart sings like a lark,
      But condemns when it touts what is Aryan.


      ~ FreeThinke

      Delete
    30. On a related note, the blogger Freedom Now has an exceedingly well argued and related post at his blog. I hope that a number of you will take the time to visit and read it.

      Delete
    31. FJ,
      That is indeed an excellent commentary over at FN's site. Glad that you recommended that others at this thread read what he wrote.

      Delete
  2. Chocolate. I am thinking about chocolate. I made a French silk pie last night.

    I think I will have it for breakfast.

    Tammy

    ReplyDelete
  3. The US must be the only country where a lack of native violence against minorities drives the need to invent it.

    This reminds me. I think it was Dennis Prager who observed that if the criminal who murdered those Muslims over a parking space was religiously-motivated, those deaths will be the first anti-Muslim 'hate crime' murders since 9/11.

    I may have heard it wrong, but for all the yapping we hear from the SPLC and Huff and Puff Po about anti-muslim hatred, we thankfully see little of it here in the US.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds mentally ill like the homeless man who torched the mosque in Houston

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks a lot, Kid, I'm never going to get that IQ point back, ya know...

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete
  6. Have you heard about Obama's Secret Plan?

    He wants to have the central architectural feature of the Capitol Building taken down and replaced with a gilded ONION DOME.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ____ GETTING TO KNOW YOU ____

    __________ UPDATED ___________

    It's a very ancient saying

    But a true and honest thought

    That when you become a blogster

    By your colleagues you'll be taught.



    As a blogster I've been learning;

    Please forgive me if I boast,

    But I've now become an expert

    On the subject I like most:



    Getting to know you

    Getting to now all about you

    Hoping to like you

    Knowing that most won't like me



    Getting to know you

    Putting it my way but nicely

    Few are precisely 

    What they should be.



    Getting to know you

    Getting to feel free and easy

    When I am with you

    Setting my traps in your way



    Haven't you noticed

    Nothing at all makes me queasy,

    Because of all the ways 

    That each one of you

    Bares his soul for review

    Every day.


    ~ "Francis Terwilliger" - with deepest apologies to Oscar Hammerstein

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very clever, FT. I get it. Just wanted you to know that at least one person appreciates your wit and ingenuity.

      Leslie Anne Charpentier

      Delete
    2. Leslie,
      Oh, I appreciate FT's wit! However, the past few days here in this household have been devoted to housecleaning, snow shoveling, and, yesterday, repairing the kitchen ceiling.

      Back to the work grind today -- the teaching work grind, that is.

      Delete
  9. From your point of view, Canardo, life, itself, is a mental illness, and the world nothing but one big madhouse.

    ReplyDelete
  10. SF,
    for all the yapping we hear from the SPLC and Huff and Puff Po about anti-muslim hatred, we thankfully see little of it here in the US

    Yes, that is true.

    And how do those few incidents of anti-Muslim violence compare with incidents of anti-infidel violence on the part of Muslims right here in the United States? At the Boston Marathon jihad, there were 3 people killed and some 264 others injured, some of the latter grievously injured; at the jihad attack on Fort Hood, there were 13 people killed and at least 30 more injured. And, of course, there was the beheading of Colleen Hufford in Oklahoma last September.

    ReplyDelete
  11. and poor old Jersey Girl ain't got that many IQ points to lose

    ReplyDelete

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