St. Louis riots and looting

[anthony]

Peter: I strongly agree that there is no matter which is too sensitive to be made personally conscious of, or discussed. 'Objectifying' something causes one to open up emotional undertones which are otherwise pernicious and irrational. The only "taboo" is to permit taboos, in effect. But I also think that IQ is not that important as applied to a whole sector of people. First, it leans to collectivism which ignores the individual exceptions, but too, (as I earlier said) it is not (so much) the level of intelligence, but what one does with it. I have too many examples of observations of various levels of IQ in people to have doubt on this.

As individualist it follows that I try to always treat people as individualist, too. What if individuals don't want to be seen as individualistic at all -in fact, resent your attempts, as I've also found- instead, clearly and vehemently identifying with a group or tribe or collective? You touch on this. I believe that if that's what they want and indicate, one should allow them their pleasure, and withdraw one's automatic esteem - and treat him or her collectively as part of a bunch. Careful consideration to avoid injustice is necessary, as it is not always clear. But avoiding one's self-sacrifice to such irrationality is above all.

[Peter]

Tony astutely wrote:

The only "taboo" is to permit taboos . . .

end quote

Well said. The word TABOO has interesting origins but the concept has always been around.

From The Encyclopedia Britannica:

taboo, also spelled tabu, Tongan tabu, Maori tapu, the prohibition of an action based on the belief that such behaviour is either too sacred and consecrated or too dangerous and accursed for ordinary individuals to undertake. The term taboo is of Polynesian origin and was first noted by Captain James Cook during his visit to Tonga in 1771; he introduced it into the English language, after which it achieved widespread currency. Although taboos are often associated with the Polynesian cultures of the South Pacific, they have proved to be present in virtually all societies past and present.

end quote

The very name of this thread, "St. Louis riots and looting" implies certain things as would "Johannesburg riots" or "Long Island Hampton riots." Everyone who is aware of the last location and demographics know the example is meant to be funny since The Hamptons are a ritzy, mostly white place to be. Of course I mean the houses are painted white. Everyone could simply imply the truth with a wink, a nod, and "you know what I mean" but there is inherent dishonesty in doing that.

Humans quite naturally "self segregate," as in a high school lunch room, any ball park, or neighborhood. It is a fact that cannot be ignored. Nerds stick together. The social elite do not mingle with the losers. Royals? Celebrities? Big Shots? . . Dont get me started on that. Blacks lunch with other Blacks (with exceptions.) The current trend is to say this behavior is socio-economic or cultural but there is more to it, even if certain groups inhabit certain rungs in society. Nature, nurture, prejudice, or thats just the way it is? Will it always be the same?

[anthony]

Humans quite naturally "self segregate," as in a high school lunch room, any ball park, or neighborhood. It is a fact that cannot be ignored. Nerds stick together. The social elite do not mingle with the losers. Royals? Celebrities? Big Shots? . . Dont get me started on that. Blacks lunch with other Blacks (with exceptions.) The current trend is to say this behavior is socio-economic or cultural but there is more to it, even if certain groups inhabit certain rungs in society. Nature, nurture, prejudice, or thats just the way it is? Will it always be the same?

Peter, yes. That is more to think about. It now occurs to me that I came over a little hard or too broad on "groups". I was (in part) recalling my extreme experiences with crowds rioting, in the early strike days in Durban, RSA. And it happens today, as aggressively and even more regularly than it did under apartheid. Go figure. The one-minded behavior with which a self-righteous mob acts is loathsome to see. But there are other groups, of other kinds, many of a benign or necessary nature. It is also a pleasure of mine, usually conversing alone with someone, to elicit and encourage his/her individualism - often unrealised in their scheme of things. I bet you've done and found similar.

You know that quote ? (Goethe, I think). "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being".

[Wolf DeVoon]

Wolf is right. My point is that discussions of reality should not be restricted

[Darrell Hougen]

Here is a nice article by Thomas Sowell on the topic of the shooting, the riots and the media.

[Peter]

Tony quoted:

Goethe, I think). "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being".

end quote

Well said again. Is it like downtown Baltimore walking along the streets in South Africa? Brrr.

Who's prejudiced in America? Eric Holder, Barrack and Michelle Obama, their pastors like Jeremiah Wright, and their cohorts Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson. The mainstream media pretrial of the Ferguson affair. The free presses ignoring black on black crime. The covers of Time, and other magazines of black people holding their hands over their heads. The punching game.

And of course whites and Asians but that's the only news there is to the liberal media.

[Peter]

Darrell linked Thomas Sowell's article who wrote:

Race is the wild card in all this. The idea that you can tell who is innocent and who is guilty by the color of their skin is a notion that was tried out for generations, back in the days of the Jim Crow South. I thought we had finally rejected that kind of legalized lynch law. But apparently it has only been put under new management.

end quote

It is time for reasonable people to protest this racist insanity. To counter racists like Eric Holder head of the US DOJ, the chief investigator or the family of the policemen should show pictures of his busted eye socket just to keep the peace.

[Peter]

Thanks again for the link Darrell. I thought black American, Thomas Sowell's review of "The Bell Curve" was fine but now, someone Offline has pointed out to me that my statistics may be a bit old fashion.

From a review of "Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective," by Rushton . . . uses the terms Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid to describe these groups broadly conceived, but these terms have since been replaced in the scientific literaturethe MeSH terminology as of 2004 is Asian Continental Ancestry Group, African Continental Ancestry Group and European Continental Ancestry Group.

end quote

And I found this from another site about non white and Asian IQ:

Caribbean Blacks 72

African Blacks 71

Papuans 64

Aborigines (pure-blood) 62

Bushmen 50?

Pygmies 50?

African Americans (85-87?)

and British Blacks (86)

World average 89

Amerindians 87

Polynesians 87

Micronesians 87

Melanesians 86

Modern Aborigines (White-Aborigine mix) 85

Arabs 83?

South Asians 81?

end quote

I am not sure of why the question marks are there unless it is scientifically inconclusive or there is too little data available. The truth is out there.

. . . . The effects of this mindset are examined in the documentary "Dark Girls," produced by actor/director Bill Duke and directed by Chan Berry.

The documentary "Dark Girls" explores the pain that is associated with having dark skin, even re-creating the white doll-black doll studies made famous by Dr. Kenneth Clark, which played a crucial role in the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

Facilitator: Show me the smart child.

(A Black child's hand points to the fairest-skinned depiction among a spectrum of drawings of a little girl, identical, save for the skin color).

Facilitator: And why is she the smart child?

Child: 'Cause she is white.

Facilitator: OK. Show me the dumb child.

(The little girl, who is brown-skinned, points to the drawing of the child with the darkest skin).

Facilitator: And why is she the dumb child?

Child: Because she black.

end quote

Ouch, that is painful to hear. I think I saw that on 60 Minutes though the linked dialogue is from The Net. Are blacks prejudiced or are they observant? They call each other the N word. Blacks have their own TV channel BET, their own magazines like Jet and Ebony, their own sitcoms, they support blacks over other races in many business ways. Blacks attack whites for the smallest perceived slight. Whites are forbidden to have such behavior.

[Selene]

Sowell is smart, precise, terse and correct.

But politics is undermining law.

By what principle should someone decide how many shots should be fired? The bullet counters seldom, if ever, ask that question, much less try to answer it.

You can be killed by a wounded man.

Do those critics know that you are just as dead when you are killed with a knife as you are when you are killed by a gun?

A...

[Peter]

Adam wrote:

Sowell is smart, precise, terse and correct.

end quote

Everyone watching Ferguson may be interested in the following letter.

Peter

From: "Greg Johnson"

To: "Atlantis"

Subject: ATL: Re: On Talents

Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 22:53:29 -0400

Dave Rasmussen wrote:

Objectivism has as one of its core principles the egalitarian ~belief~ that talents are distributed equally between all persons at birth, and any differences that exist at adulthood are merely the result of that person refusing to make the volitional choice to develop their talents.

Mike Hardy responds:

Huh?? *WHERE* did you get that?? I am quite familiar with the objectivist literature, including the NBI basic course, the articles in The Objectivist and the Ayn Rand Letter, etc. I've never seen anything like that.

I understand why Mike is incredulous, but I think that Dave is on to something. He is not referring, however, to an articulated principle, but to an unarticulated assumption of many Objectivists, Ayn Rand perhaps included. Consider Rand's affirmation of "volition" and her assertion that "man is a being of self-made soul." Then consider her essay "Racism," where Rand claims that racists ascribe moral, social and political significance to genes, and she is against this.

The central assumption of such racists is that human potentialities are largely genetic. Call this the principle of heredity.

But Rand never actually attacks the heredity principle. Instead, she attacks other points that are not necessarily related to it. She attacks people who treat others as members of groups rather than as individuals. She attacks people who think that not only that people's abilities determined by genetics, but what they do with those abilities, "that man's convictions, values, and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control." She attacks racists for having pseudo-self-esteem.

And she leaves many readers with the impression that she has overturned the heredity principle too. Perhaps she herself believed this. Hence the tendency of Objectivists I know to dismiss the heredity principle with slogans about volition and the self-made soul, as if all human traits are malleable by the will, rather than some of them fixed by nature.

But if each human being enters the world radically malleable by the will, then that means that they are essentially without fixed properties that differentiate them. And that means that they are essentially the same! This is the crypto-egalitarianism that Dave was talking about. Objectivism affirms a moral elitism--people differentiate themselves by their will and are therefore entirely responsible for their excellent or bad spiritual traits--but assumes a metaphysical egalitarianism as the starting point.

If Objectivists were more objective, they would to have to admit the principle of heredity. They would also have to recognize that human excellences are not distributed equally or merely randomly among the races.

This means that even in a perfectly free and rational society, where each and every person treated each and every other person as an individual, a society where everybody is treated justly according to his or her abilities, trading value for value, you would find the different racial groups will naturally gravitate toward different styles of life and different levels of wealth, education, and cultural accomplishment.

One can grant the principle of heredity and the innate differences among races and still treat people as individuals, not as members of groups. There is a limit to this, however. After all, there are billions of people on this planet, and life is too short to deal with each one as an individual. It would, however, be altruistic to ignore group differences and group behavior patterns, since these have high predictive power, even though treating people as members of groups may be unjust to individuals in a given group--unjust to OTHERS, but eminently rational for ONESELF given the limits of time and knowledge.

A young woman is walking down a lonely street at midnight. Ahead she sees a black man. On the other side of the street is an oriental man. Does she cross the street? I would say: Yes, cross the street, and don't give it a second thought. The odds are with her. A college basketball recruiter can visit one high school in Dotville. Does he go to the predominantly black high school or the predominantly Mexican one?

In a world of limited time and information, to increase the likelihood of positive social interactions, one has to look at the differences among groups of people. One has to determine which groups are more likely to contain worthwhile individuals and which are less likely. One then should steer toward some groups and away from others. One should treat people as individuals where one has the greatest chance of actually finding superior individuals. This strategy seems eminently rational and pro-life, given the limitations imposed upon us by the real world.

Furthermore, there is good evidence not only that one's potentialities are largely genetic, but that one's ability to exercise the potentialities is to some extent genetic as well. There is ample evidence that certain character types have a genetic basis, and that some of these genetic factors are race specific; therefore, one will find certain character types with greater frequency in certain racial groups. (Michael Levin's WHY RACE MATTERS contains a treasure trove of information on this topic.)

Such a view does not require that one abandon the idea of volition altogether. A deeper problem with Rand's view, though, is that she fails to ask the question: What is the biological basis of volition? She fails to consider the possibility that the ability to exercise rational control over one's actions may itself be based on genetic factors, and that some of these factors may be race specific. If, for instance, volition is the ability to act rationally, one's volitional powers will vary with one's rational powers. If this is true, then it is not the case that racists deny volition altogether, but instead recognize that OUR ABILITY TO DETERMINE OUR ACTIONS BY NON-GENETIC FACTORS ITSELF MAY BE DETERMINED BY GENETIC FACTORS.

We clearly recognize a difference in volition between animals and men, and that these differences are based on their different genes. But there are genetic differences between different kinds of men too. My cat is not a moral agent, because she cannot act rationally at all. To the extent that the rational faculties of human beings approach those of my cat, they lack moral agency and are less and less morally responsible for their actions. It is no coincidence that that vast majority of violent criminals have low IQs.

Genes, IQ, racial differences, etc. all add up to the elephant in the corner of Ayn Rand's living room. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

Greg

[Peter]

"Truth may be stretched but cannot be broken. It always gets above falsehood as oil does above water." Miguel de Cervantes.

Why bring up IQ? Isnt this a case of police brutality against a minority? No. It is case about blatant racial politics to coerce a continuing loan payout that lasts a lifetime, from everyone who is not black.

I remember the debate over why so many minority crack cocaine dealers were caught but suburban sniffy coke dealers were never caught. Thats not fair right? Why is IQ relevant in this case? After all, volitional control over our actions is possible. But what if some people are less intelligent, are perhaps controlled by gangs and lack the brains to not join a gang, and have a problem with crossing the line when it comes to the law, anyway? They lack the brains to commit their crimes in a manner with a lesser chance of being caught. It demonstrates the stupidity of dealers who sell where they can be seen. Its that simple. And a police presence must be seen as a deterrent to these simpler minds. Yep. Im talking about a custodial presence throughout their short, brutish lives. Why is IQ in minority children not tested in some areas? Because their IQs are low not high, and noticeably low. Political Correctness deliberately hides the truth. IQ is amazingly predictive of future circumstances.

Will blacks become smarter if their standard of living is increased in Africa? Quite possibly if their food supply is affordable even for the poorest people and if their kids get a decent education and ideology for living on earth. I have donated money to The Plumpy Nut Project which gets light industry and nutrition to young African children. But how much will that help?

Consider America which has one of the largest black populations in one of the richest nations on earth. Everything should be rosy but it is not. Blacks are poorer, less educated, cant speak English in a correct manner and seem to be proud of it. Their crime rate is the highest of any group in America. They have children out of wedlock, there is no father in many black homes. They are on welfare one generation after the other, and the stay at home moms do nothing to statistically raise the IQs or chances of their children.

I am not a Eugenicist, race baiter, or a Nazi. I am someone who recognizes a collectivist scam to enslave some Americans to do the bidding of less fortunate Americans.

Notes from Wikipedia:

According to the BJS non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009, with whites 34.2%, and Hispanics 20.6%. The incarceration rate of black males was over 6 times higher than that of white males, with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents . . . .

According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and Native Americans and Asians 2.2%. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most murders were intraracial, with 84% of white homicide victims murdered by whites, and 93% of black victims murdered by blacks . . . .

The "National Youth Gang Survey Analysis" (2011) state that of gang members, 46% are Hispanic/Latino, 35% are African-American/black, 11.5% are white, and 7% are other race/ethnicity . . . .

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report database, in 2010 58% of hate crime offenders were Latino or white, 18% of offenders were black, 8.9% were of individuals of multiple races and 1% of offenders were Native Americans . . . .

disproportionality.

As noted above, scholars acknowledge that some racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, are disproportionately represented in the arrest and victimization reports which are used to compile crime rate statistics in the United States. The data from 2008 reveals that Black Americans are over-represented in terms of arrests made in virtually all types of crime, with the exceptions of "Driving under the influence" and "Liquor laws". Overall, Black Americans are arrested at 2.6 times the per-capita rate of all other Americans, and this ratio is even higher for murder (6.3 times) and robbery (8.1 times).[

As a theory of criminal behavior, subculture of violence theory claims that certain groups or subcultures exist in society in which violence is viewed as an appropriate response to what, in the context of that subculture, are perceived as threatening situations. Building upon the work of cultural anthropologist Walter B. Millers focal concerns theory, which focused on the social mechanisms behind delinquency in adolescents, sociologists Marvin E. Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti proposed that the disproportionally high rate of crime among African Americans could be explained by their possessing a unique racial subculture in which violence is experienced and perceived in a manner different from that commonly observed in mainstream American culture.

end quote

[anthony]

Fascinating and important. Peter, you bring more to the table, some of which I've wrestled with too. I have also roughly recognised a kind of "egalitarianism" to Rand's philosophy, rooted in 'tabula rasa' and continuing into metaphysics and beyond.

("Man's life as the standard of value...is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man").

But the idea should be viewed with limitation, I think. As I see it, in Objectivism it is not the *measure* of the faculty of reason, but the *activation* of whatever measure one has. i.e. staying true to reality, and so, the never-ending commitment to rationality.

The faculty that is "egalitarian" in all men is that of a volitional consciousness, I have no doubt.

Notwithstanding intelligence, or the varying cultural and genetic influences one possesses, every day each of us opens his eyes, each has the choice to identify and to assess his-her environment afresh - and act accordingly to this reality and to principle. Or merely, to skip it. Does one have the will to switch on his engine, direct it accurately and run it to its maximum? or, putter along on only a few cylinders out of his alloted four, six or eight - lazily or evasively allowing others to choose one's course?

High intelligence alone lacks context. I know of persons whose high IQ has (I speculate) enabled them to evade and distort the truth to fit their own preference. History is full of such, some greatly immoral. In other instances I've seen a lesser intelligence apply itself more rigorously, morally and truthfully.

More that absorbs me is that high intelligence seems to sometimes be non-or anti-conceptualist.

In this case, a lower-intelligent, but conceptual thinker will have the advantage of exponentially-increasing knowledge.

(Perhaps along with raw intelligence, it is this, Rand's "anti-conceptual mentality", that is worth pursuing further).

[Selene]

A young woman is walking down a lonely street at midnight. Ahead she sees a black man. On the other side of the street is an oriental man. Does she cross the street? I would say: Yes, cross the street, and don't give it a second thought. The odds are with her. A college basketball recruiter can visit one high school in Dotville. Does he go to the predominantly black high school or the predominantly Mexican one?

Peter:

Rhetorically, this quote is exceptional in that it uses logic and emotion very well. Depending on who your audience is, you will have positive ethos.

Even civil rights leaders profile. “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson said several years ago, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—and then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson now says his quotation was “taken out of context.” The context, he said, is that violence is the inevitable byproduct of poor education and health care.* But no amount of “context” matters when you fear that you are about to be mugged.

As a human, I am constantly amused by the Rev..."Keep hope alive!"

Huckster, charlatan who at a real level sold his people into socialized slavery.

A...

* I wonder if anyone told the Rev. about Leopold and Lobe Loeb? Or, wealthy crime families that are also a rainbow coalition.

[Peter]

Adam wrote about Jesse Jackson:

As a human, I am constantly amused by the Rev..."Keep hope alive!" Huckster, charlatan who at a real level sold his people into socialized slavery.

end quote

And hes not the only one.

Notes

From Wikipedia:

Black liberation theology is a theological perspective found in some Christian churches in the United States which contextualizes Christianity as an attempt to help African-Americans overcome oppression. Black liberation theology seeks to liberate people of color from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and views Christian theology as a theology of liberation"a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes James Hal Cone, one of the original advocates of the perspective . . . . Anthony Bradley of the Christian Post interprets that the language of "economic parity" and references to "mal-distribution" as nothing more than channeling the views of Karl Marx. He believes James Cone and Cornel West have worked to incorporate Marxist thought into the black church, forming an ethical framework predicated on a system of oppressor class versus a victim much like Marxism.

end quote

From Wikipedia:

Black Power was a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies aimed at achieving self-determination for people of African/Black descent. It is used by African Americans in the United States. The movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values.

"Black Power" expresses a range of political goals, from defense against racial oppression, to the establishment of social institutions and a self-sufficient economy. The earliest known usage of the term is found in a 1954 book by Richard Wright entitled Black Power. Although he did not "coin" the phrase, New York politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. used the term on May 29, 1966 during a baccalaureate address at Howard University: "To demand these God-given rights is to seek black power."

Communicative competence and IQ.

From PBS:

. . . . Ebonics, the term was formally defined in 1975 when Williams published an edited volume, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks. In it, he classified Ebonics as the, . . . linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin. (Williams, 1975)

end quote

Sup? - How are you? Dope/Dizzle good Off da hook/hizzle/hizza - very good Whack/Whizzle bad Da Kronik - good weed Peeps people Ni/Nizzle/Nizza - Man/friend Dawg/Dizzle/Dizza - Man/friend Beeatsh - Woman/female friend

Ho/Hizzle/Hizza - Woman/female friend Pimp'd up/out- well dressed Ride/Rizzle/Rizza Car 5-0 Police Crib/Krib - house

Bu - darling/girlfriend 9'z - a gun 6-Flow Car Crackaz / Crizzles / Crizzaz Caucasian Grillz teeth d-lo - keeping yourself unnoticed pen prison gank'd - to be mugged/robbed reprezentin' - to represent yourself or your group

and one of the good guys~ Ebonics In The Classroom: Bad Idea Posted on May 28, 2002 by D.C. Thornton:

When I went to school as a kid in the ghetto (yes, the ghetto), I was taught how to communicate in standard English. I had no problem grasping standard English. My black liberal teachers were quick to correct me if spoke in vernacular in the classroom, and my classmates and I knew that the once recess was over, the vernacular stopped and the standard English began. At home, standard English was used by both of my working-class parents. Some kids who refused to apply themselves academically took pleasure in teasing me and others for actin white or talkin proper, but I didnt care. It was the way I communicated, and it worked for me, my siblings, and those I grew up with. Communicating solely in black English everyday is a choice, and not a cultural trait. Those who choose not to communicate in standard English are doomed to self-defeat and have only themselves to blame for their failure to succeed.

[Peter]

Tony wrote:

I have also roughly recognized a kind of "egalitarianism" to Rand's philosophy, rooted in 'tabula rasa' and continuing into metaphysics and beyond . . . . In this case, a lower-intelligent, but conceptual thinker will have the advantage of exponentially-increasing knowledge.

end quote

I think your summation is insightful.

I also agree about a general issue, though not specifically about race, brought up by Wolf and Francisco. We are being systematically denied our rights as Americans, as you may be in South Africa. Let your voice be heard, loud and clear. Do not allow your oppressors to label your demand for civil rights as white backlash or racism.

I think the police should behave in a professional manner. There is no argument there. No one, like Rodney King in Los Angeles, should be beaten but even then I do not think drug addled Rodney had submitted to arrest because he was still cursing, moving, and trying to get up. That linked Chris Rock video dramatizing stupid behavior while being approached by the police is a good lesson for us all.

Trayvon Martin. Ferguson, Missouri. My fellow Americans, you DO know that there is another case and another one waiting to occur? And if the case is within media memory, say in less than a year, we could have some real insurrection. There was a political machine in place to exploit any citizens or policemans justifiable use of retaliatory force against African American criminals. This political machine has been honed by Americas equivalent of the Soviet Union's Pravda and now by the links between President Obama and his Justice Department with those espousing the Black Power Movement like Al Sharpton and Black Liberation Theology from the likes of Obama's cohort and pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Peter

[Wolf DeVoon]

.

[moralist]

A mental handicap need not refer to intelligence. It can be a strong emotional attachment to something that one knows and believes in that doesn't happen to be true. I'm guessing this is close to Wolf's meaning.

Adding to the conjecture, I agree; both with Mike's appraisal and the feasibility of it being Wolf's meaning. Outside of physical conditions, there exists a major, prevailing "mental handicap": an unwillingness -not an inability- to apprehend what's real and to think for oneself.

Greg, you are right. Not intelligence, not race, but (moral) values.

That is especially well put. "an unwillingness -not an inability-" because that acknowledges the reality of moral choice, whereas intelligence or the lack of it does not.

Greg

[Jules Troy]

Rotfl @ Wolf's on strike sign!

[Wolf DeVoon]

Rotfl @ Wolf's on strike sign!

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you..."

[Jules Troy]

I don't ignore you Wolf, I have come to enjoy your style of penmanship. I thought the sign was awesome!

[Peter]

Zzzz. I have commented so much I am even putting myself to sleep. I may back off this subject . . . in a minute.

William Sherk wrote:

That said, If you are angling for a long disquisition on the handicaps or inferiorities of The Blacks, I don't think anyone is prepared to utter strong straightforward comments here.

end quote

I will. Retardation is nothing to applaud. I am tired of glorifying the stupid. Unusually poor English should be viewed as stupidity, or simply as ineptness. But, not with blacks. Yea. Das rite. But Ebonics is not ignorance. It is a willful act of racism. Ignoring its racist reason for being is in itself racism.

Constantly needed custodial care is not to be seen as just the way it is or as reparations. Life-long welfare is enslavement of one race or group to another. It is not being color blind. A few commentators have mentioned how a disproportionate number of blacks, around 50 percent or more, are in American commercials or on the TV show The Family Feud hosted by a black man. That is racism. Black movies are blatantly racist. This is not a fad to be minimized. It is racism and stock yard collectivism.

The Ferguson story coming out of the media should be:

A tall, 300 pound, muscular, thuggish, recent criminal gang member, assaulted a cop but did the policeman overreact? Probably not, so let's wait for all the facts to be in.

That is not happening. Instead the left wing press, in their whiskey barrel of a universe, is fermenting an insurrection. The news from Ferguson is about race. Every instance of a non white person doing harm to a black person will be publicized by the main stream media. Every such act, without the facts being known, will be condemned as racist which is a form of RACISM. It is race glorification. This will cause more crimes to be committed by racist blacks in some sort of retaliation. Of course, this is not to mean our protectors, the police, should behave in an unprofessional manner. If you want to be a good Objectivist or simply a good person that is fine but to call racism non conceptual thinking is not. It is tip toeing around the truth and editorializing your agenda.

The press's racist coverage and propaganda will cause every cop and first responder, no matter their race. to be very vigilant and even more edgy around black criminals or suspected black criminals or black witnesses, or even a black person or a crowd of black people in the background. Ask yourself why a group of blacks, AS ALWAYS, and for good reasons, will be perceived as a potential riot a fist in the face a rock to the head a bullet in the back. If the progressive press continues with this pogrom it will lead to rioting and violence, and the use of retaliatory force against black people. Remember the 70's? I would like to forget them.

[Selene]

Constantly needed custodial care is not to be seen as just the way it is or as reparations. Life-long welfare is enslavement of one race or group to another. It is not being color blind.

I will tell you what amuses me about what you are saying because it is the precise message that attracted me to Malcom X in Harlam in the '60s.

The Black Muslims dressed properly, spoke properly and showed self discipline.

To hear, from a street corner, a radical black fellow American speak about black capitalism was completely refreshing.

God - family - community was his message.

I am sure that you and I would America.

A...

[Peter]

When I cut and paste I am losing commas. I enable HTML, paste, then click out of HTML> and I lose commas and other punctuation. Anyone know how to stop that from happening?

Adam wrote about Malcolm X:

God - family - community was his message.

end quote

Oddly enough as I have mentioned before, the teenage me thought Malcolm X was a refreshing voice in the arena of ideas at least at first. Then either he or someone else in the black power movement

began making stuff up about evolution and how white people descended from the trees only recently. Science and rationality were foreign to them. Someone may have already referenced this next piece. DSouza, as you may know from his picture, is black. (joke)

Conservative firebrand compares Ferguson protesters to ISIS

08/23/14 04:17 PMUpdated 08/23/14 05:16 PM By Joy Y. Wang

Conservative provocateur Dinesh DSouza is sounding off again. This time its to draw a parallel between Islamic terrorists who have beheaded innocent civilians and looters in Ferguson, Missouri.

There is a common thread between ISIS and whats going in Ferguson, DSouza said Thursday on The Steve Malzberg Show, a Newsmax talk show. You have these people who basically believe that to correct a perceived injustice, its perfectly OK to inflict all kinds of new injustices.

DSouza . . . was presumably connecting the beheading of journalist James Foley by militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the violence that occurred during demonstrations against the police shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson. He said that to behead guys who have nothing to do with it, go and loot shops from business owners who are not part of the original problem whatsoever were similar actions because they caused harm to people not involved . . . . Now, historically, blacks have faced this problem and it looks like what were seeing is a kind of complete flip, so that were going from one set of injustices to another, he said.

[Peter]

While he may have only been holding up his hands and sassing, soon after that Michael Brown was like a charging rhinoceros.

Fort Apache, Missouri

Ferguson Is the Next Chapter in 20th Century Lite

by Robert Tracinski

Like most people who are getting into their 40s, I suffer occasional bouts of nostalgia. But lately, in a cruel irony, the world only seems interested in re-enacting the parts of my youth that I'd rather not relive. A Russian dictatorship that invades its neighbors. A stagnant economy with rising food and gas prices. A giant new welfare boondoggle. An overmatched president who seems too small for his office.

And now race riots.

The whole feel of it is captured by David "Iowahawk" Burge, who jokes about a man who wakes up from a coma after 45 years and asks the doctor about the latest news. The doctor replies: "Nixon is talking about the race riots." The patient asks if he can be put back into the coma. That about sums it up . . . .

I don't think anyone can really understand the events in Ferguson without understanding this 20th Century Lite phenomenon, because the whole thing re-enacts in exact parallels all of the major elements of the mid-to-late-20th-century crime wave. It's Fort Apache, The Bronx all over again.

That 1981 film, which has since lapsed into a probably deserved obscurity, captured the overall sense of how things had been going on the domestic front in the late 1970s, with the police hunkered down in their precincts struggling vainly to establish law and order among a hostile population.

Looking at the past weeks' upheaval in Ferguson, Missouri, I see six parallels to the bad old days of my youth. . . .

The siege mentality of the police. In the face of rising crime, and with a lack of connection to the people they're policing, the cops see themselves as the "thin blue line" separating decent people from anarchy . . . .

That's what explains the riots in Ferguson. You don't keep rioting because you want justice, certainly not when you've already brought the case to everyone's attention and gained the nation's sympathy. No, you riot because you feel that all authority has been knocked down, that the whole system is rotten and that there is nothing to stop you from smashing everything and taking whatever you want. Notice the way in which the rioters have threatened reporters, who are, after all, attempting to document them in the process of committing serious crimes. Only a kind of comprehensive delegitimizing of the system can produce this result.

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I hope you will subscribe to Robert to read this insightful analysis.

[Selene]

And now Ferguson...

The old media just love creating huge racist hoaxes -- which has done so much to improve the lives of ordinary black people!

Luckily for America, especially African-Americans, the advent of alternative media has reduced the Non-Fox Media's ability to stir up urban riots. Today, it's possible to get information that never would have seen the light of day in the 1980s.

In less than two weeks, the original version of the racist police execution of Michael Brown -- or "Big Mike" -- has already undergone major revisions. We were told:

-- Big Mike was the sweetest kid, he'd never hurt a flea.

Then we got the store surveillance video of him robbing a liquor store and manhandling the clerk. Perhaps Big Mike committed his first-ever crime 11 minutes before his encounter with Officer Darren Wilson, but it doesn't look good.

-- He was shot in the back.

At least two autopsies now establish Big Mike was not shot in the back.

-- He didn't touch the police officer.

This week, we saw the X-ray of Officer Wilson's fractured eye socket.

-- He was holding his arms up surrendering when Officer Wilson shot him.

That's at least in doubt now that a video of a Big Mike supporter has emerged, capturing the private conversation of an eyewitness confirming the officer's claim that Big Mike was running at him.

On the tape, one black man tells another:

"Him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran -- the police got out and ran after him ... Then the next thing I know he comes back toward the truck 'cause -- the police had his gun drawn already on him. The police kept dumping on him, and I'm thinking that the police missing ... but he kept coming toward him."

Some would say a private conversation, unintentionally recorded immediately after an event, is more credible than alleged eyewitness accounts by people who know they're talking to the press.

But if MSNBC can spend six months on a bridge closure in Fort Lee, New Jersey, they can probably do at least a year on a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

Interesting, don't you think?

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-08-20.html#read_more