Quote:
Originally Posted by whogo
When you look at the chart on your own link you see that crime continued rising until the early 90's, long after the height of the civil rights era.
I believe it was Patrick Henry who stated "Give me liberty or give me death." Is the new American slogan "Give me liberty as long no one ever gets harmed fighting for it" ?
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Look, I completely understand the concept of fighting for liberty. But you are equating the Civil Rights era with liberty. And moreover, you are pretending that liberty actually was the result of the Civil Rights movement.
Liberty is freedom. Freedom means, you are allowed to basically do whatever you want, as long as it does not take away the freedoms of others. The problem with that definition of liberty is that, it means different things to different people.
For instance, we have something called "freedom of association". Which means we only have to interact with people in which we choose to interact with. For instance, you don't have to let me into your home unless you choose to let me into your home. It doesn't even have to be a good reason. It could be because I'm from Oklahoma, or because you disagree with me politically, or because I'm white, or because I don't dress well, or it could really be for absolutely no reason at all. I don't have the right to be on your property, it is your property.
Now, lets pretend that you needed to hire an electrician to do some work on your house. This work would be taking place inside your house. So, you start taking bids, and you get to decide who will be doing the electrical in your house. Well, lets pretend I put a bid in, but you don't want me in your home for the above-mentioned reasons. Should you be free to "discriminate" against me just because of these reasons?
If you discriminate against me and don't hire me to do your electrical, even if I had the best bid, is that really taking away my liberty? If the government tells you you must hire me to do work in your house, since I had the best bid, is that taking away your liberty?
You have to understand it like this, "if you argue that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minorities are."
One of our fundamental rights in this country is freedom of speech, but is speech really 100% free? For instance, is a person free to lie about others? Well, in truth, you can lie all you want, but someone else can sue you if your lies caused them harm. How do we define harm anyway? Physical harm? Financial harm? Emotional harm? How do we really gauge emotional harm anyway?
It is not legal for me to put up a sign that is deemed "hateful", but how do we define what is hateful anyway? Lets take the confederate flag as an example. Is the confederate flag a symbol of hatred? To some it is, to other it represents history. So does someone have the "liberty" to place a confederate flag in their yard?
When we talk about the Civil Rights era and liberty, we have to realize that, most of the so-called freedoms that were supposed to be afforded to blacks, were actually taking away other peoples freedoms.
For instance, forced-busing was not a matter of liberty, affirmative-action was not about liberty, prohibiting private businesses from discriminating was not about liberty. All of these things were about social engineering. Period. And in the end, it was just the majority shoving their views down the throats of the minority by force.
I'm not a big fan of tyranny of the majority, and while I have great sympathies for the Civil Rights movement in principle. I still believe that in many ways it did more harm than good, because it caused severe division and hatred to abound in this country. And I believe, if it hadn't been for the existence of the Soviet Union(an outside threat), this country might have been torn apart.
Most of the so-called "liberties" fought for during the Civil Rights era, are really nothing but special-privileges to minorities, to give the appearance of equality.
As for the Civil Rights era. My argument is simply that, conditions for blacks were getting rapidly better over the decades long before the Civil Rights era. That the Civil Rights era was a movement that made blacks(and many other minorities) out to be victims, in which continues to this day. The division that came from the Civil Rights created quite an era of violence and discontent from all races, and continues to this day. And the only reason the Civil Rights acts even passed, was because they had majority support.
I mean, its hard to oppress the majority in a democracy. Sure, some areas of the country had laws that others didn't agree with. But lets think about it logically. Do you really believe that without the federal government stepping in, that Georgia would still have segregated bathrooms and water fountains? Get real man.
Sure it would have taken longer. The same argument could be said for slavery itself. Everyone will say that the Civil War was "fought to end slavery". And not only is that not true, but lets think, how many other countries had slavery? How many fought a war to end slavery? We are basically the only country in the world to have fought a war to end slavery. Do you think that is strange?
Now, how many states in this country had legal slavery in 1776? In 1789, eight of the thirteen colonies had slavery. By 1821, both New York and New Jersey had abolished slavery. Do you really think slavery would still exist without the Civil War?
The Civil War killed more than 600,000 Americans, it really laid the groundwork for the destruction of our Republic, into the vast federal empire. As well as created the KKK and other hate groups. As well as creating an ongoing resentment of northerners by southerners and their "the south will rise again", and "the war of northern aggression, and constant arguments over the confederate flag.
The Civil War was an utterly avoidable war. It was caused because people can't mind their own business, and just things run their course. When they see what they find to be an injustice, they wanted it gone immediately. And instead of educating people and setting a good example, they want to use the government to force others to do what they believe is right. Without really understanding why things are the way they are to begin with.
Most European countries were involved in some way with slavery at one point or another, and pretty much all countries in the Americas had slaves. Most countries had abolished slavery long before we abolished it, but a few countries had it after us. Brazil was the last major country to abolish slavery. And below is their decree for abolishing slavery.
Lei Áurea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And the reasoning was "Slavery was no longer profitable, as the wages of European immigrants, whose working conditions were poor, cost less than the upkeep of slaves."
Which is basically what was happening in this country. Where Irish immigrants in the 1850's were cheaper to employ than having to house, feed, cloth, and generally take care of slaves.
I think we just need to be careful when start trying to tell others what to do. When people feel that someone is trying to bully them, they tend to fight back with a vengeance. We don't seem to have learned that.
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