South Carolina Church Shooting

[Selene]

I am soooo glad I grew up in NY City and farmland in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

It was a perfect balance.

A...

[Peter]

I wrote, "The full story should be shown by those dash and body cams."

The full story, Adam, should be in every police story on the news. I think the news stories, whether in Florida, Ferguson, South Carolina, Staten Island, or Baltimore, through selection and editing, portray a bias and an agenda. It is sort of like the 2 percent of the total rioters, the white radicals who show up to throw their rock and damage someone's property - or to kill a cop. Likewise, the mostly white progressive press shows up to do as much damage as possible. Not to help any particular minority, or to right a wrong. No, they want to destabilize society and cause a revolution.

I am impressed with the South Carolinians who have responded in a lawful fashion.

[Derek McGowan]

That is all you have to say about different cultures, Derek?

No, in fact good and bad have nothing to do with culture. The good and bad transcends cultures.

PREDICTIVELY, the perpetrators are Arabic or black. Why is it predictable? Because of past experiences not just in the news but statistically.

Its predictable for you because that is how you choose to see it. I could post this

Events:

32 killed - April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. A gunman, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho, goes on a shooting spree killing 32 people in two locations and wounds an undetermined number of others on campus. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho then commits suicide.

27 killed - December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook Elementary School - Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, 20, guns down 20 children, ages six and seven, and six adults, school staff and faculty, before turning the gun on himself. Investigating police later find Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, dead from a gunshot wound. The final count is 28 dead, including the shooter.

23 killed - October 16, 1991 - In Killeen, Texas, 35-year-old George Hennard crashes his pickup truck through the wall of a Lubys Cafeteria. After exiting the truck, Hennard shoots and kills 23 people. He then commits suicide.

21 killed - July 18, 1984 - In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Huberty, armed with a long-barreled Uzi, a pump-action shotgun and a handgun shoots and kills 21 adults and children at a local McDonalds. A police sharpshooter kills Huberty one hour after the rampage begins.

18 killed - August 1, 1966 - In Austin, Texas, Charles Joseph Whitman, a former U.S. Marine, kills 16 and wounds at least 30 while shooting from a University of Texas tower. Police officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy shoot and kill Whitman in the tower. Whitman had also killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.

14 killed - August 20, 1986 - Edmond, Oklahoma, part-time mail carrier, Patrick Henry Sherrill, armed with three handguns kills 14 postal workers in 10 minutes and then takes his own life with a bullet to the head.

13 killed - November 5, 2009 - Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 people and injures 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, during a shooting rampage. He is convicted and sentenced to death.

13 killed - April 3, 2009 - In Binghamton, New York, Jiverly Wong kills 13 people and injures four during a shooting at an immigrant community center. He then kills himself.

13 killed - April 20, 1999 - Columbine High School - Littleton, Colorado. 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold kill 12 fellow students and one teacher before committing suicide in the school library.

13 killed - September 25, 1982 - In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 40-year-old George Banks, a prison guard, kills 13 people including five of his own children. In September 2011, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns his death sentence stating that Banks is mentally incompetent.

13 killed - September 5, 1949 - In Camden, New Jersey, 28-year-old Howard Unruh, a veteran of World War II, shoots and kills 13 people as he walks down Camden's 32nd Street. His weapon of choice is a German-crafted Luger pistol. He is found insane and is committed to a state mental institution. He dies at the age of 88.

12 killed - September 16, 2013 - Shots are fired inside the Washington Navy Yard killing 12. The shooter, identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, is also killed.

12 killed - July 20, 2012 - Twelve people are killed and 58 are wounded in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater screening of the new Batman film. James E. Holmes, 24, is taken into custody outside of the movie theater. The gunman, dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear, set off two devices of some kind before spraying the theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns police recovered at the scene.

12 killed - July 29, 1999 - In Atlanta, 44-year-old Mark Barton kills his wife and two children at his home. He then opens fire in two different brokerage houses killing nine people and wounding 12. He later kills himself.

10 killed - March 10, 2009 - In Alabama, Michael McLendon of Kinston, kills 10 and himself. The dead include his mother, grandparents, aunt and uncle.

9 killed - March 21, 2005 - Red Lake High School, Red Lake, Minnesota. 16-year-old Jeff Weise kills his grandfather and another adult, five students, a teacher and a security officer. He then kills himself.

9 killed - June 18, 1990 - In Jacksonville, Florida, 42-year-old James Pough, angry about his car being repossessed, opens fire at a General Motors Acceptance Corp. office, killing nine people. Pough takes his own life.

8 killed - October 12, 2011 - Eight people are killed during a shooting at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, California. The suspect, Scott Evans Dekraai, 41, of Huntington Beach, is arrested without incident as he is trying to leave the scene. The eight dead include Dekraai's ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, 48. He was armed with three guns -- a 9 mm Springfield, a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, and a Heckler & Koch .45 -- and was wearing body armor during the shooting rampage.

8 killed - August 3, 2010 - Manchester, Connecticut - Omar Thornton kills eight co-workers at Hartford Distributors before turning the gun on himself. Thornton had been asked to resign for stealing and selling alcoholic beverages.

8 killed - January 19, 2010 - Christopher Speight, 39, kills eight people at a house in Appomattox, Virginia. He surrenders to police at the scene the next morning. February 2013, he is sentenced to five life terms plus 18 years.

8 killed - March 29, 2009 - In Carthage, North Carolina, 45-year-old Robert Stewart kills a nurse and seven elderly patients at a nursing home. In May, the Moore County district attorney announces she will seek the death penalty. On September 3, 2011, a jury finds Stewart guilty of second-degree murder. Stewart is sentenced to 141 to 179 years in prison.

8 killed - December 5, 2007 - In Omaha, Nebraska, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins goes to an area mall and kills eight shoppers before killing himself.

8 killed - July 1, 1993 - In San Francisco, 55-year-old Gian Luigi Ferri kills eight people in a law office and then kills himself.

8 killed - September 14, 1989 - In Louisville, Kentucky, 47-year-old Joseph Wesbecker armed with a AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle, two MAC-11 semiautomatic pistols, a .38 caliber handgun, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and a bayonet kills eight co-workers at Standard Gravure Corporation and then kills himself. He had been placed on disability leave from his job due to mental problems.

8 killed - August 20, 1982 - In Miami, 51-year-old history teacher Carl Robert Brown, angry about a repair bill and armed with a shotgun, kills eight people at a machine shop. He flees by bicycle, but is shot in the back by a witness who pursued him. He was on leave from school for psychological treatment.

From CNN, and say hmmm out of 25, only 3 of these mass murderers were black and the vast majority is white. I could also look at the statistics that show serial killers are mostly white, and maybe I should be scared of violence breaking out everytime I go out to a public place.

I could perhaps go tunnel vision (such as your self) and follow the teachings of the Nation of Islam which call your race "white devils" because they (historically true) perpetrated systematic violence against blacks and other races for hundreds of years.

or I could watch a video like this

and then fear a white crowd at every sports event I go to. Or maybe after I read something like this

https://storify.com/betakateenin/white-people-riots

Or what about the fact that so many large scale wars are started by white people?

Would I be justified in your opinion to feel that way? If you were in a culture that was enslved by another for 300 years, would you be justified in assuming that the entire white race is violent and oppressive?

I had no clue that Bang Bang Bang had anything to do with some song and if you continue to use it as your tag there will be an unacceptable number of misunderstandings.

You might be right, but then you may also have only had the misunderstanding because you can clearly see that I am black. Would you have saw the irony of the tag line if I was white?

[Derek McGowan]

Is it safe to walk the streets?

This shows the level of thinking that you are applying to this subject. Of course its safe. I do not have bars on my windows and everyday I leave the car running with the keys in it while I go into banks (not to rob the !) and stores. In your mind, do you imagine mad max style gangs roving the streets raping and killing with abandon? Behind every establishment is a alleyway where, if you choose to travel, you might just lose a limb, or a spouse, or your parents (ala Batman)?

Allow me to enlighten you. The vast majority of murders in the city are of those who are in the game. Random people are not a significant part of our murder rate.

At the same time, should I ask (as a black man)if its safe for me to walk in a lily white neighborhood during every year up until the 70s? Or maybe I should ask if it is safe to be a black person in dispute with a cop today. Seems that I would be more prone to random violence then you would if you walk through my neighborhood now. In fact there are white people that live in my neighborhood and I live no more than a mile from where the Baltimore Riots kicked off.

Now does that make me a racist or a good cop?

Based on your previous statements and mentality, I'd probably go with a racist. Anytime you want to pick and choose whatever stories to fit your own narrative and then focus that narrative around a certain race, then yeah...

But it's all good though. The great news is that people that hold your mentality will all soon be dead (of natural causes hopefully) and the human race can move on.

p.s. I made that above statement as one of fact and not as a for of malice. History shows that as the old guard dies off, whether it is in science or culture, their old fashioned ideas are cast aside

[Derek McGowan]

I had no clue that Bang Bang Bang had anything to do with some song and if you continue to use it as your tag there will be an unacceptable number of misunderstandings.

"Misunderstanding" is an understatement. I took Derek's sig line at face value as being a black value by which he lived because he deemed it to be important enough to include it in every post he writes.

If I had a sig line, it should be:

"All I want to do is work work work

to earn your money."

Greg

I cant tell if you are being sarcastic or not especially since you and I had a multi day discussion over my monetary views in my book thread, where I stated firmly that I'm for the dissolution of money all together. I would love to see it vanish so I doubt that I would be the one wanting to stick someone up over the desire of it.

p.s. Why would I love to see it vanish? Refresh your memory here

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13854

[moralist]

I cant tell if you are being sarcastic or not especially since you and I had a multi day discussion over my monetary views in my book thread, where I stated firmly that I'm for the dissolution of money all together. I would love to see it vanish so I doubt that I would be the one wanting to stick someone up over the desire of it.

There's almost always some fooling around in whatever I write, Derek.

What you're saying only makes your sig even more misleading when it doesn't match up to your values.

I use money to keep score... as a means of measuring the goodwill of the people I serve. I know I'm doing what's right when they're genuinely happy to give me money, because they feel what they get is worth what they pay for. There is something so sweet and personally satisfying about honest ethical win/win financial transactions.

Greg

[Peter]

Greg wrote: I use money to keep score... as a means of measuring the goodwill of the people I serve. I know I'm doing what's right when they're genuinely happy to give me money, because they feel what they get is worth what they pay for. There is something so sweet and personally satisfying about honest ethical win/win financial transactions. end quote

Exactly right, Greg. A *trader* is an honorable profession. It's a handshake, where your word is your bond. Truth. Justice. Honor. That is what Objectivism is about.

Derek wrote: You might be right, but then you may also have only had the misunderstanding because you can clearly see that I am black. Would you have saw the irony of the tag line if I was white? end quote

I dont see where the concept of *irony* comes into the picture Derek. You could be an Eskimo and I would still read your tag line as saying, "I will screw you and/or screw you out of your money." I saw it as a deliberate method of absolving yourself of guilt by implying that, "I am a scamp, and since you now know that, dont blame me after you fall for my ruse." And oh, yeah. "I have great sexual prowess. Im a baaaad man," as Cassius Clay said. Now that is ironic, since he said that before bad meant good.

And as far as I know his newly minted name is Mulholland Ollie. Yeah, thats it. Ollie with his special gifts of verbal jabs and furious fists but with a 78 IQ coined the phrase, "bad" which really meant, "good." I will stop with the truth filled slap stick, since you are answering my questions. And you definitely deserve an answer. Its good to have you corresponding on OL. And I am glad you are not trying to scam anyone, if that is the case.

[Brant Gaede]

I cant tell if you are being sarcastic or not especially since you and I had a multi day discussion over my monetary views in my book thread, where I stated firmly that I'm for the dissolution of money all together. I would love to see it vanish so I doubt that I would be the one wanting to stick someone up over the desire of it.

There's almost always some fooling around in whatever I write, Derek.

What you're saying only makes your sig even more misleading when it doesn't match up to your values.

I use money to keep score... as a means of measuring the goodwill of the people I serve. I know I'm doing what's right when they're genuinely happy to give me money, because they feel what they get is worth what they pay for. There is something so sweet and personally satisfying about honest ethical win/win financial transactions.

Greg

Gee, when I pulled off my last bank job they didn't look happy, but I was.

--Willie Sutton

[Peter]

I wrote, "Now does that make me a racist or a good cop?"

And Derek responded: Based on your previous statements and mentality, I'd probably go with a racist. Anytime you want to pick and choose whatever stories to fit your own narrative and then focus that narrative around a certain race, then yeah... end quote

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

Why bring up race when describing a black neighborhood? Isnt it alwaaays a case of police brutality against a minority? No. It is a 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, white coke dealers were less often caught. That's not fair right? But what if some people are less intelligent and reckless, are perhaps controlled by gangs and / or 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 like California? Because their IQ's are low, not high. Noticeably low. And we must not speak that truth. And there are other racial groups who score lower on the IQ spectrum. Political Correctness deliberately hides the truth. And that truth is that IQ is amazingly predictive of future circumstances.

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, can't 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 a larger proportion of black homes. They are on welfare, one generation after the other, and the stay at home mom's do nothing to statistically raise the IQ's or chances of their children. THEY WILL NOT EVEN READ TO THEIR KIDS. 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. Of course races are made up of individuals. I am not a racist who denies that, Derek.

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 . . . .

(WHAT a huge disproportionality, says I.)

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).

(From me. And it is horribly ironic Derek, that Caucasians seem to predominate in America's and the world's crimes of mass murder. But the percent of whites who commit mass murder is miniscule ,which is probably not an appropriate thing to say on this thread, because it sounds cruel and heartless. Once again, I am terribly sorry for the victims and their families in South Carolina.)

From Wikipedia again:

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

Why, Derek, is it that the movie, "Barbershop" was hailed by black people, as SO TRUE TO LIFE. In that movie, everyone threatens violence, commits violence, or has violence committed against them. I candidly spoke to a person of the black ethnic persuasion and they thought nothing of the constant unremitting, violence. When I pressed them about it, they thought that it did COMICALLY reflect their life, but that they never thought of it as SO violent before. It was just their life.

Of course, around here, people steal chain saws and lawn tractors. There are crimes of violence committed by whites especially in Ocean City, Maryland. But the crimes in Delmarva from black neighborhoods in Salisbury, Dover, Pocomoke, and Snow Hill are astronomical in comparison.

Have a good night everyone. it is nearly 11:30pm.

Notes:

From, "The Missing Link," by Ayn Rand

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between men and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon - a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing link" between man and animals. Perhaps that missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality.

end quote

[Selene]

Really Peter?

I remember the debate over why so many minority crack cocaine dealers were caught but suburban, white coke dealers were less often caught. That's not fair right? POST 134 SUPRA

What years were those debates in?

Or do you mean the debate about the disparities in sentencing between predominantly white powder coke dealers and black crack cocaine dealers.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 implemented the initial disparity, reflecting Congress's view that crack cocaine was a more dangerous and harmful drug than powder cocaine. In the decades since, extensive research by the United States Sentencing Commission and other experts has suggested that the differences between the effects of the two drugs are exaggerated and that the sentencing disparity is unwarranted. Further controversy surrounding the 100:1 ratio was a result of its description by some as being racially biased and contributing to a disproportionate number of African Americans being sentenced for crack cocaine offenses.[2] Legislation to reduce the disparity has been introduced since the mid-1990s, culminating in the signing of the Fair Sentencing Act.

Don't snort the yellow snow...

[Peter]

Adam wrote: Or do you mean the debate about the disparities in sentencing between predominantly white powder coke dealers and black crack cocaine dealers. end quote

What is a kiss ass to do? Let's fudge the data. Progressive Sociologist Wesley Mouch, one of the chief proponents of past "adjustments," points out that to make the disparity disappear, they didn't just increase arrest rates since 1985. Their data also adjusted downward the sentences received for crimes immediately before that. Starting from a lower base of incarceration makes the "adjusted" increase look even bigger. That's a pattern that invariably shows up in all these adjustments: the past is always adjusted downward to make it more in line with the big fabrication. So, the present is pushed upward to make it more startling and this is an amazing coincidence that guarantees a preferred outcome. The ends justifies the means, Silly.

All of this fits into a wider pattern: the enlightened liberal elite has been less than satisfactory at making predictions about the data ahead of time. But it has been great at going backward, retroactively reinterpreting the data and retrofitting the theory to mesh with it. Sheesh. What a maroon!

It isn't a question of which method of processing a drug is worse for the person taking it. It's about why some criminals are arrested more frequently. And if they are arrested more frequently then they receive longer sentences as repeat offenders.

[Derek McGowan]

Peter,

I'm going to need you to answer my questions like I answered yours.

Continously spouting out the same ideas over and over is not a debate

[Peter]

What questions, Senor? These?

Derek asked: Or what about the fact that so many large scale wars are started by white people? Would I be justified in your opinion to feel that way? If you were in a culture that was enslaved by another for 300 years, would you be justified in assuming that the entire white race is violent and oppressive? end quote

Started by whites? There is near constant attempted genocide going on in Black Africa using machetes and imported fire arms. But white and Asian cultures have had gunpowder and advanced technology for hundreds of years. The weapon's technology, political philosophy, and the ability to mobilize a nation is the reason whites have started, fought and ended so many BIG WARS.

Enslaved for 300 years? Why? If someone enslaved me I would escape. I would fight back just like prisoners of war did in WWII, and like those two convicted murderers on the run did (minus one, as of 11:34 on a Saturday.) How in the world can an entire race ALLOW themselves to be enslaved by other blacks and Arabs, and then be shipped to other countries, for 300 years? Seriously Derek. Just what type or group of people CAN BE enslaved for 300 years . . . by others? Of course we have Big Brother(fiction) and Totalitarian States, but those don't last for 300 years. Certainly, as we saw in the 19th Century and today with Boca Haram (???) Africans have always enslaved Africans. Whites have had Charles Dickens-onian poor houses, indentured servants, and petty thieves in a type of slavery or they were exiled to Australia.

Look up some threads on OL about IQ and race. Read some anthropological and sociological science. I am not trying to hurt the feelings of anyone or to classify an individual as necessarily the norm in a larger, logical grouping. You may conclude Whites are enslavers and ignore the bigger history but just like you I can think, hell, thats not me.

Some other questions from Derek: At the same time, should I ask (as a black man) if its safe for me to walk in a lily white neighborhood during every year up until the 70s? Or maybe I should ask if it is safe to be a black person in dispute with a cop today.

A stranger in a different neighborhood? A resident, cop, or security person would think, even today, "He is part of a collectivized group with a historically high (60 percent) incarceration rate. What is he doing here? He may be a thief." Is that thinking irrational? I dont think so.

Why is the black person in a dispute with a cop? I dont dispute with cops. I put my hands on the wheel where Smokey can see them. I answer politely. Watch that Chris Rock video on You Tube about being stupid.

[Derek McGowan]

I don't think you have been picking up on what I have been putting down.

You have made the accusation that several depictions of violence among blacks represents the entire race. My remarks are not to show that whites are violent but to show that they have the same record of violence.

My previous post was, there is good and bad in each of us.

For you to make reference to the troubles of the last two generations of blacks and rap music without acknowledging the many generations of white violence shows your level of tunnel vision.

How do you reconcile your view of white supremacy (from standpoint of violence) with the witch trials? The inquisition? The third riech and concentration camps? The treatment, death marches and such, of native Americans? The beating of Rodney king? Jim crow laws? Apartheid? The forcing open of Japan? The conquest of Texas? The treatment of aborigines? The hunted extinction of multiple species such as the dodo bird? The assassination of several presidents? The dropping of nuclear weapons on civilian populations? The expansion of the British empire into India? The expansion of the Roman empire?

[Derek McGowan]

Why the focus on rap music? Why is there no place for blacks and black culture part in jazz? In rock and roll? R and B? Blues? Reggae?

Is it because those music forms don't fit your version of black culture?

[william.scherk]

Peter Taylor sez: "Enslaved for 300 years? Why? If someone enslaved me I would escape." Thus reducing the history of slavery to a matter of personal strength and will.

One could laugh. Or one could put Peter on the ignore list.

[Derek McGowan]

I also find it highly suspect that you keep mentioning rates of incarceration when it's been an open fact for years now that blacks are profiled by the police and then face a much higher possibility of getting jail time when faced with a judge.

Selene, just put up a post that said that there was a 100 to 1 ratio of blacks getting convicted of basically the same crime. I wrote a thread on my getting profiled by the police and I've never done anything.

How can you continue to use such numbers?

Finally your ridiculous post on the movie barbershop and your associates that say it mirrors life. I could easily point to the movie Selma and ask my 97 year old grandmother if it accurately depicted white behavior in the south and she would say yes. So what?

[Derek McGowan]

Peter Taylor sez: "Enslaved for 300 years? Why? If someone enslaved me I would escape." Thus reducing the history of slavery to a matter of personal strength and will.

One could laugh. Or one could put Peter on the ignore list.

True William. Because from his position it's easy to leave and entire continent when someone has put you in bondage and you don't like it.

But the problem I take is that he seems to justify the actions of the slavers by saying that if the slaves didn't like it they would have left. Meaning that if they put up with it then there is nothing wrong with it.

People are justification machines but Peter is in overdrive!

[Jules Troy]

For the record Jimi Hendrix was awesome!

[Brant Gaede]

Derek: "The conquest of Texas"? Could you briefly elaborate even though it's a dogleg here?

--Brant

[Derek McGowan]

Brant, I am on my phone right now (at art studio- no computers allowed!) So I can't post the link, but look up Texas revolution on Wikipedia.

Basically American colonists flooded that part of Mexico. They then took issue with the Mexican government. Instead of leaving and heading back to us territory, they decided to just break the land off from Mexico and become a separate entity. Again, the Mexicans didn't do this but colonists.

When Mexico stepped in like "hold on now, this is our land" the US was like "uh uh, they are with me" thus ensues the Mexican American war.

A bit like the Russian Ukraine thing but with more guns and death

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, I am on my phone right now (at art studio- no computers allowed!) So I can't post the link, but look up Texas revolution on Wikipedia.

Basically American colonists flooded that part of Mexico. They then took issue with the Mexican government. Instead of leaving and heading back to us territory, they decided to just break the land off from Mexico and become a separate entity. Again, the Mexicans didn't do this but colonists.

When Mexico stepped in like "hold on now, this is our land" the US was like "uh uh, they are with me" thus ensues the Mexican American war.

A bit like the Russian Ukraine thing but with more guns and death

I shed no tears for Mexico respecting Texas for westward expansion by the US was a geo-political inevitability and was essentially the US following its citizens. The British tried to stop this before the American Revolution to protect their Indian allies who had fought for them in the 1760s against the French. It just became another bone of contention and stopped nothing.

The real conquest of Texas was the subjugation of the Comanches. First by influenza then by force. Read Empire of the Summer Moon. The Comanches were the previous conquerors. The Mexicans were an inferior presence in Texas to them. In New Mexico the Mexicans--actually the Spanish it was that long ago--hit them with a successful military campaign (late 18th C.) then they all made a deal in that they would not fight, but trade in NM through the Comancheros. This secured the Rio Grande Valley up from Mexico to Santa Fe. The Comanches were so fierce the Apaches even turned to the Spanish for protection while being displaced to southern NM and Arizona.

--Brant

[Selene]

Let's see, I am a black slave who was conquered in a raid by other blacks in an area of Africa.

I am then tied up and transported to the East coast of Africa, to a port and taken, still restrained and watched, below deck where I am chained by ankles and wrists to a wooden open box stacked on top of other black folks and transported to an Island fortress in the Caribbean, where still restrained, weakened by fever and barely kept alive with the gruel that I am given once a day, I am sold to another white man and loaded back into a different ship below deck and a different open box.

My open box is my bathroom, dining room and bedroom.

Suddenly, white men come charging down the ladders and drag us chained to the deck and begin throwing us overboard to drown.

Clearly, this shows my weakness because I did not escape.

Wait, Peter, I somehow am able to get my hands around the white man's neck who is trying to throw me into the Atlantic and I choke him to death with his own chains.

Somehow we take the ship and drift aimlessly until...

So, Peter, is this fiction?

No, it is part of American history.

The Amistad went to our Supreme Court.

The story of the Amistad began in January 1839 when hundreds of native Africans were captured from Mendeland near Sierra Leone, and sold into the Spanish slave trade. The captives endured brutality, sickness, or death during a horrific journey to the Spanish colony at Havana, Cuba, on the notorious Portuguese slave ship Tecora. Upon arrival in Cuba, the Africans were fraudulently classified as native Cuban-born slaves and sold at auction to Don Jose Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, who planned to transport them to their plantations on another part of the island aboard the cargo schooner La Amistad which, ironically, means “friendship” in Spanish. Desperate, the Africans staged a revolt three days into the journey and seized control of the vessel, killing the captain and the cook; two other members of the crew dove into the sea. The Africans were led by Sengbe Pieh, a 25-year-old Mendi known to the Spanish as Cinque, who managed to unshackle himself and his companions.

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amistad/amistadstory.htm

The saddest part about how you "argue" is that you are exceptionally intelligent and, at the same time, a "rational" bigot.

You do no honor to Ayn with that position.

I hope that you can see how you appear and I hope that you can change.

[Derek McGowan]

I agree with Stefan's assessment

[Derek McGowan]

that you are exceptionally intelligent .....

I guess I have a different definition for intelligence. To me it is based on one's proficiency with two abilities-

1st. Creativity- the ability to physically solve problems in order to create things but also to imagine new things and situations, abstract or practical, and at the same time observe the implications that such imagined concepts would create.

2nd. The ability to hold multiple ideas in one's head at the same time, cross reference and reconcile opposing views, rooting out hypocrisy/contradictions and to maintain as close to a fact based scientific integrity as one's knowledge can take them.

A connected 3rd would be the extent of one's memory and strength of recall.

Peter's ability to offer justifications and statistics (which haven't been checked for context or against other known facts) isn't a stand-in for intelligence

BUT

As Greg pointed out recently, one's intelligence has very little to do with what kind of person one turn's out to be. A genius serial rapist who never gets caught has brought nothing to human existence.