The Minority Report

We don't agree on a lot of things, but here we have an accord. I think what you say here has the unmistakable ring of truth to it.

I don't think that the black community realizes it has always had massive political power in this country; it just hasn't had the will to exercise it. Given how close elections have been, the black community has had the power to swing the last three presidential elections, but seems captured by inertia. If only thirty percent of the black vote switched to Republican, the Democratic party would be toast.

While the black community doesn't seem to realize this, the Democrats certainly do. That's why they are so zealously courting the Latino vote. Once they have it, the ability of the black community to swing elections, and the power that inplies, will be gone.

To me that blacks were so strongly tied to the Dems. Blacks are more religious (with high levels of Southern Baptists and other fundamentalist religions) than most of the rest of the nation, so the gay rights, anti religious stances, abortion, stem cell, etc. positions must really clash with core beliefs. Yes, the Dems want to pay for the votes, but most people I know will not give up deeply held beliefs simply for cash.

I think it just has to be that the black population has belived the propaganda that Republicans are all white fat cat racists and felt they had no choice, regardless of what the Democraps pushed off on them. And I, for one, hope we can change that.

I agree with your assessment, and Jeff's and Scottie's too.

If the GOP had a lick of sense, instead of pandering for a future "vote" from illegals that will never materialize, they should be seizing this opportunity to recapture the vote of the Black community that is naturally more aligned with conservative principles to begin with.

The fact that the Dems have for decades had that lock was only due to a very successful snow job to begin with, as it's the GOP that fought slavery and enacted voting rights for Blacks. Kennedy and Johnson managed to sell some real snake-oil, unfortunately.

From your last sentance, Flag, it seems as if you took my advice and read that book "Bamboozled". Even if you didn't, I found your comments fascinating. I have been fascinated by this subject for years, especially when I worked with blacks in various jobs. Once I got to know a few well, I began to ask why 90% vote Democrat, when the Democrats have been historically AGAINST their rights, and AGAINST integration. The answer was ALWAYS that Republicans are racists, and Democrats look out for them. Only a MINOR look at the last 100 years shows that to be just WRONG. IT'S BEEN THE OTHER WAY AROUND, AND BLACKS JUST DON'T SEE IT. BOGGLES THE MIND.
BrianR is right.

honorable mention. And one question leads to another, perhaps several.

One thing that really jumped out at me was how you described the impact on job prospects:

'they are being priced out of certain jobs because they cannot compete using legal workers.'

'Because they have to pay their employees legally, and at wages above the minimum'

'too many Black youth are being shut out of entry level jobs and are not having the opportunity to develop job skills.'

It seems to me that blacks are also the ones most screwed by minimum wage increases, for reasons that are exactly the same as those above. Not only that, but as it becomes unfeasable to pay the new minimum wage (the value of the work to the employer is worth less than the pay) this only further encourages illegal employment and hence illegal immigration, magnifying the severity of its impact. I do believe that on these arguments I am in good company, specifically that of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

Yet I believe that when it comes to the minimum wage issue, despite the parallels on the impact to the black community, there is considerable black support for increases. I suppose that this demonstrates that the Dems still have some ability to sell snake oil.

Now if you could slip the minimum wage issue into your campus conversations about immigration and how they're related, and that could gain some traction, wouldn't that shake things up even more?

with respect to blacks being generally more religious and probably more traditional and morally conservative, yet signing on with the Dems. As I recall, prior to the 60s blacks were generally more likely to be Republicans than Democrats, and were not the massive bloc they are now. And of course we all know what happened in the 60s, one of which was the birth of LBJs entitlement programs.

As has been mentioned many times, here and elsewhere, the various entitlement programs have played havoc on the black community, and most particularly on the black family. The economic aspect has always been front and centre, the notion that the welfare cheque has replaced the need for women for dads for their kids or for men to take up their responsibility to be a dad.

It seems to me that these programs were the perfectly designed vehicles to destroy the black family which, thanks to its religious beliefs and more traditional moral views, was probably a primary if not the primary obstacle to getting the black vote for Dems.

Which leads me to the following question. Is it reasonable to consider that either at their inception or at some point along the way these programs were implemented or modified for the express purpose of damaging the black family for the sake of political gain, or is that tin-foil hat territory?

Yes, we sometimes disagree, but we remain conservative allies...that's what counts! We can disagree on specific issues, but still be united in common cause; no Joe Lieberman treatment here.

As to your point, you may be right in a sense. I think that blacks have always realized that their votes were powerful; that's why the Southern Democrats did everything in their power to keep us from the voting booths for all those years. they saw how our votes swung elections to the GOP in the Reconstruction Era and during the early part of the 20th century; witness the fact that Teddy Roosevelt and the GOP courted Booker T. Washington to help get out the Black vote in their elections.

The real snow job was not run by Kennedy and Johnson as BrianR feels in getting Blacks voting for the Democrats; it has been in convincing us that our vote is only powerful if we vote in a bloc. By locking us into a bloc voting position, our power has benefited the Democrats, while simultaneously convincing us that we must vote as a bloc to have any voice in the political process.

The media has played a powerful part in painting the picture of the GOP that sticks in the minds of many Blacks. Notice that every GOP action is presented in the media as an attack on some class of victim, whether it be the homeless, gays, women, the poor, or Blacks. And look at the examples of the GOP that the media focuses on; they are going to find the most extreme right fanatics and treat that person as the representative of the GOP. Remember when David Duke joined the GOP, ran for office, and was forever linked with the Party? Blacks see that on the nightly news and is easy for them to believe that the GOP is filled with hateful, racist people with which they want to have nothing to do.

"Recapture" is the exact word for what the GOP needs to be doing with the Black vote; as I stated before, the Black vote was solidly Republican from the end of the Civil War until the coming of the Great Society.

But I think you give Kennedy and Johnson way too much credit for scooping up the Black vote. The credit really belongs to Martin Luther King Jr. on that score. I remember reading that there was some legislation that King wanted passed and he was looking for supporters; the GOP would not wholeheartedly support the legislation, the Democrats did and King made some statements about how the Democrats had been so supportive on the issue. Hearing that, the broader Black community took that as an endorsement of the Democratic Party by King, and that's what opened up the floodgates. And all the "free" money helped keep the votes flowing in. The thing about that is that King never meant to endorse one Party over the other!

Philos, well said. If someone was consciously trying to destroy the Black community and most especially the family unit, they couldn't possibly have come up with a better program than Johnson's Great Society initiative short of outright genocide.


Flag, There's merit in your point differing from mine, but I think it's actually the same point, with a tiny "chicken and egg" aspect to it.

IMO, it was Kennedy and Johnson who convinced Blacks that bloc-voting was the way to go, again using pandering techniques. I was amazed at the success, seeing as how Dems such as Wallace were making such asses of themselves at the time. But sometimes emotions run high, and overpower reason. Again, a lot of it had to do with the GOP being the Stupid Party, and not knowing how to handle public relations at all. The Dems, while trying to block equal rights, manage to paint themselves as being sensitive to minorities and the GOP as evil racists, and the GOP stands in the corner mute playing with themselves.

writing at the same time, apparently, and your post hit before mine, but it sounds like we're on the same page here.

You raise an excellent point about the minimum wage increases doing further harm to Black youth employment. I may have to take your advice and raise that in a conversation regarding the immigration situation. I have had stand alone conversations about this subject with some youngsters feeling that a raise is the right thing to do, and some realizing the broader economic impacts, especially on small business owners.

As for LBJ, I don't think he had in mind the destruction of the Black family structure with the coming of his Great Society. I think that LBJ, like FDR before him, did not anticipate that people would take a program meant for short term relief and turn it into a multi-generational lifestyle. I think he had the best of intentions in what he was trying to accomplish.

But you know what they say: The road to H*ll is paved with good intentions!

It doesn't matter what Johnson INTENDED, the only thing that matters is the RESULT.

I'm sure that not one of these clowns started out with the idea "what can we do to destroy the Blacks and turn them into Dem voters dependant on the dole?"

That's like Bush and the other GOP scamnesty apologists thinking that backing scamnesty was magically going to produce future GOP voters out of the population of illegals.

I mean, like, DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know, I have a sinking feeling that that is exaclty what some of them thought would happen, so you have a race to the bottom in pandering to the illegals. The thing is, most of the people sneaking over the border have no intention of becoming American citizens at all; they just want to get paid and send money home to their families back there. Intoducing this amnesty program is not going to make them suddenly clamor for citizenship; the Democrats and Republicans that are supporting this bill are vying for votes that will most likely never materialize anyway! They will have opened our borders and ignored the rule of law for nothing, and that's the sad part.

.

I think we have discovered over time that most of our disagreements center on how the issue is framed, and more importantly, what the media leaves out or twists to its own ends. I am your comrad in arms in the search for the truth and in debunking this whereever we may find it.

the libs do is a direct result of their inexaustable ability to ignore the question: "And then what will happen?"

Pick one:
Minimum wage
Affirmative action
Immigration
Great Society
Fairness Doctrine
Sanctuary Cities
Ad infinitum . Ad nauseum

The liberals have no real conception of what happens next on any issue; they focus on what gets them over at that moment...period. What hapens next is always someone else's problem to deal with, and can always be laid at the feet of the evil conservatives with the help of a complicit media.

I don't agree totally with that comment. It is not that they think what happens next is someone else's problem, it is just that they only can concieve of the endless now. And they use feelings to drive policy versus logic. With feelings, there is no future. For example, I feel sorry for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. We must do something, so I give her the short term solution of abortion. My feelings are satisfied and the logic that says I am reducing the value of life, hurting her physically and psychologically in the future, etc. does not come into play.

Point taken; I still think that libs see what happens next as someone else's problems. they kick the can down the road on every major issue and pass the buck onto someone else. Look at abortion for a prime example. While you are right that libs live in the endless now, they simply do not care what the long term ramifications are. The liberals wanted something done about abortion, but they knew that if they stepped in to legislate abortion that their constituents would rise up against them. So they decided to pass the buck to SCOTUS, whom they rightly figured would do the dirty work of legalizing abortion nationwide for them. They passed the buck to SCOTUS and have used them fr cover since the Roe decision and use that to ignore that there were long term societal ramificatons of their actions. the problem then becomes one that the court has to deal with, even though it was the perfidy of a liberal Congress that was the cause of the contriversy; that's what I mean when i say that liberals let any bad results from their actions become someone else's problem.

It feels good, so it must be right. If there's a backfire down the road, we can just throw more money at it and it will fix itself.

A very solipsistic, existential point of view.

Brian found a new word for narcissistic.
solipsistic - Good one bro, where did you dig that one up?

He probably writes with a dictionary close at hand...I know I do! Sometimes you have to use a certain word to express wxactly how you feel ;-)

Gimme a break!

I remember a few words from my philosophy 101 class back in college, around the time of the sinking of the Maine.

One of the great things about blogging is you get the occassionally throw in words you just NEVER get to use in normal conversation.

I'd also thought about throwing in "nihilistic", but then thought it might be overkill, so I'm saving that one for my next opp.

I saw something on TV that applied to this thread. On Jay Walking, they were asking about basic American history. You know, who was the command general of the army, who did we rebel against, who sewed the first flag, etc. They asked a middle aged black man and he did not have any idea. He called in his wife, and she did not know either. They then called in their son (15-16 age) and he had no clue. Finally, they brought in Grandpa. He was in his 60's and rattled off all of the answers correctly.

This is what our system of education and our programs to help the poor have brought us to. A man who suffered under descrimination and refusal to provide education is hugely more knowledgable than children who only have themselves to blame.

the Greatest Generation, the one who did all the fighting so that their children wouldn't have to.

Which poses a conundrum I have never been able to resolve. I have heard it expressed that the Greatest Generation (won WWII) was followed up by the worst generation (60's, hippies, Lord I loathe hippies). Now if the least were for the most part the children of the greatest, does that mean the greatest were great at everything except parenting? I mean everything that happened, the deterioration of the school system, expansive government, happened under the watch of the Greatest Generation.

Back to your example, where was grampa when his kid and grandkids weren't learning what he himself already knew? Was he asleep at the switch when the curriculum changed? Was he so uninvolved that when his son was found to be lacking the knowledge he possessed that he didn't provide it to him himself?

This has been something that's been bugging me for over a decade, due to a chance encounter. As a university student my passport was stolen, which occasioned my first ever encounter with an officer from the RCMP (a Mountie, you know, those guys who always get their man? Hey, I didn't ask, he didn't tell.).

He accepted my story pretty readily, and began to become quite chatty. He told me a few stories, things that you never heard about because they weren't politically correct, despite their prevalence. He then went on to discuss political correctness, gender and racial preference laws, and so on, and told me it would be up to my generation to get rid of all of that crap (again, this was over a dozen years ago, I'm so proud of the progess that's been made in that department, it brings a tear to my eyes, I tell you).

I remember distinctly thinking (not saying, mind you), that here you are, a federal officer in your mid to late 30's, under whose watch all of the crap you're referring to happened, dumping it all on me, a 22 year old grad student. Much like the tab for your cushy federal pension you can collect starting at 50, you SOB.

It's a bloody good thing for the previous generation that I'm not exactly representative of mine, cause if I were they'd be getting the finger and more.

...let me try:

The Greatest Generation came to be because they had to. They had an overwhelming incentive to do so: communism and fascism. It sparked their ingenuity and their innate kick-a$$ gene.

Their kick-a$$ gene put the enemy at bay and their ingenuity created a world of luxury history had never known. With absolutely no threats (commies, fascists, and indigence) came a generation history had never known: Baby Boomers.

and I realize that part of it is that the boomers could be babes in the woods instead of growing up because their parents had killed off the wolves, so to speak. But that didn't relieve the greatest of their parental responsibility to teach their kids about wolves and how to deal with them.

And so what I have a hard time understanding is what happened to the kick-a$$ gene when it came to raising their kids and domestic policy? If the boomer kids of the Greatest Generation were the inmates who took over the asylum, if you will, the Greatest Generation were the ones running the asylum at the time. Why, after fighting the socialists in Germany (the Nazis were the national socialist party, after all), commies in Korea, and while fighting the commies in Vietnam, was communism allowed to be not so subtly introduced in the US under their watch in the form of LBJ's Great Society projects?

Perhaps after physically fighting the commies and fascists they had run out of gas? I'm not being facetious with that last comment, could be a valid reason, I'm just speculating.

I don't think that it was so much bad parenting, as much as the parents wanting their children to have it better than they did. I consider myself an excellent parent, but I still struggle with really being able to pass some lessons that I learned along to my kids because things are so different now than when I grew up. I, like my parents before me, want so much more for my kids than I had that it gets to be a struggle not to overindulge them, because there is just so much for them right now.

Also, I think that many in the greatest generation were raised by parents that believed in setting the example and having the children follow it, that it never occurred to them that they would have to TELL their kids how to live, instead of just modeling it. I am only 35, but my mother and grandfather never spent a lot of time telling me what was right and wrong, but showing me. Likewise, they never spent a lot of time telling me that I had to work hard to be successful because they were too busy showing me what hard work was. They believed in the old axiom "I can show you better than I can tell you", and that may be why they seemed to be so lax in their parenting skills.

..and I've thought about as well.

I think most parents naturally want to give their kids everything that themselves never had. Well, they gave their kids freedom from want and freedom from outside threats.

Remember, the Greatest Generation grew up killing for every meal, plowing the fields, milking the cows. They grew up before puberty.

Now, when raising their Own children they developed inventions for these chores. Their kids were now expected to go to school and go for a much longer time, therefore keeping them kids for a much longer time. Growing up started after puberty and in the lap of luxory.

Maybe throw in there,"I'm not going to do what my Dad to me..." and you have a little less disciple.

but I will.

I think the 19th Amendment was the beginning of the end of the culture of the kick-a$$ gene.

The politicians had to begin to pander for the women's vote. How does one do that? Tell them what you will give them, whereas men, once upon a time, had pride of individuality. A man and woman married for good back then, but once the government began to give women and children services with the absence of Fathers there became less need for Fathers to be around. This bred promiscuity which bred no fault divorce which bred abortion.

Now, Fathers can't discipline their children without Mother walking out and taking the kids.

You're right, it's not pc to say someting like that. I understand the point you're trying to make, but I can't say I agree with the premise. The 19th Amendment was totally necessary at the time because women were being denied their right to vote, while being subject to all the taxes, laws, and statutes that everyone else was. They were being denied the full benefits of citizenship, while being forced to bear the same costs as everyone else.

You are right that politicians began to pander for the fmale vote after a time, but that is no different from the usual in politics. Heck, back in the day the Populists demonized big business and pandered to get the farm vote and it almost worked; pandering is something that, unfortunately, is not new in our system.

I think that the Great Society programs were devastating to all families, with the Black family taking more of the brunt; but all the free money and services that the government handed (and hands) out did make the traditional male role in the family seem obsolete, but the father still remains an integral part of any successful family unit.

...Flagwaver, I think the 19th led to the birth of the Great Society.

Let me throw this in the hopper:

After WWII, there were a lot less men. In Nature's Infinite Wisdom to replenish the population, this led to much more females born in the Baby Boomer generation. With a significant number of more females than males came more competition from the females for the males.

Which led to the females exhibiting more of their skills: more provacative clothing, getting "further along" during dating, leading to the loosening of morals. Leading to justifying their actions, culminating into the "sexual revolution."

Maybe you're right on that score. I had never thought about the population demographics after WWII, but what you posit sounds reasonable; if there is a shortage of eligible men, it does stand to reason that some old standards would be "eased up" a bit to account for that state of affairs.

I just don't see the sexual revolution leading into the Great Society programs; cold you leave me a post explaining it...or am I seeing something that you didn't mean?

the notion of setting the example and expecting it to be followed does strike me as a plausible factor, for the following reason.

Let's take the Greatest Generation. I think that they probably learned that way, because they likely had to, there wasn't much choice and the options were starker and more immediate. When the Greatest Generation was growing up, they had to actually grow up and follow their parents' example out of necessity. They would have had chores to do that resulted in food being on the table or not, for example. They would have been growing up in the 10's and 20's, and while progress was going on, they probably would have grown up in an environment largely similar to that of their parents, and a much greater percentage of them in an agrarian environment.

Take their kids, born in the late 40's and 50's, and they grew up in an environment that was likely very different from that of their parents, and one that continued to rapidly evolve. A lot of urbanization happened during that time, the development of the suburb as well. Their chores would have been more like ours, taking out the trash, a lot less immediate and important than their parents, the consequences of failure to perform much less, and therefore a much reduced emphasis on needing to follow the example set by the parents.

This to me is something that the Greatest Generation would not have taken into account, would have been very difficult to in fact, the fact that the way they learned and therefore taught was no longer as effective as they might have thought.

I agree with you and Jimmy that the 19th led in large part to the Great Society, although I would say that most of that is due to the pandering of male politicians.

With respect to the sexual revolution leading to the Great Society, here's my stab at it. I think part of it stems from what Jimmy describes, the women who, thanks to their part in the war effort, got to do things they weren't otherwise doing (i.e. working in various professions they hadn't before), and liking it and the financial independence they got from these jobs.

This, in itself, is hardly nefarious. But then you get the radical feminism of the 60's, which not only demands that all sisters join the male world of work and business but demeans those who'd rather raise their children themselves. And of course the whole attitude that women don't need men at all, and shouldn't want them. To put it as simply as I can, men have throughout human history had essentially the role of provider. With a certain amount of women not wanting men in the picture so much, it probably isn't a big step or hard sell to have the government take on that role. And the cherry on top I suppose, from a feminist perspective, is that since the government's principle revenues in terms of income tax comes mostly from men, they paid for it.

..Here:

I think the Great Society created the conditions for the "sexual revolution."

Example: Our maximum speed limit on the interstate was once 55mph. Generally, most people followed the law, but of course you still had those very few who did not (like most laws). Then along came mandatory seatbelt laws. After this had taken hold in Our culture they found more people than ever were speeding. Why? Those people who did not break the maximum speeding law before now felt safer in their cars while wearing that seatbelt. This led to increasing the maximum speed instead of repealing the seatbelt law.

The Great Society began to take the place of the Father in Our Families, namely money. Couple this with women's competition for men and you create an atmosphere for paid promiscuity among women. The fear of having children without a home with which to house them or food with which to feed them is eradicated. Next, add the human nature touch of justifying one's actions: what was once called a bad "w" word, they then called "liberation."

I gotcha now! It just seemed that you were saying earlier that the sexual revolution led to Great Society programs...just a slight misunderstanding.

I think that both kind of fed off the other, since they were happening at roughly the same time. I think the increased sexual liberation of women was enhanced by the introduction of GrSoc programs that made it much easier for women to raise children wothout a nuclear family structure. The way they intersected, it almost becomes a "chicken/egg" type argument; the Great Society and the sexual revolution/women's lib movement are almost in a symbiotic relationship.

I concur.

Thanks for the thought provoking convo fellas!

That's what we're here for! And thank you for your comments, they kept the conversation flowing!