Me vs. We

[harkin]

Lourey shows how trapped he is in New Society gobbledeegook when he states that the only way to improve schools is to address how they are 'financed'.

Schools in Utah run achievement rings around schools in Wash DC which spend three times the amount per student (even adjusted for cost-of-living/region) because home life is stable, drug/alcohol use much lower and the environment is learning-friendly, study habits not only nurtured but enforced.

Without a cultural belief in education, strong parenting and personal responsibility, pouring dollars into these schools (and communities) is a futile gesture.

I am still grappling with the fact that someone as obviously intelligent as Mr Lourey has no faith in the black community's ability to help itself. You have to wonder if people like this, respected I'm sure throughout much of their community, are aware they are poisoning an already-tainted well.

[harkin]

I was working on a project recently in my hometown of Los Angeles.

One Saturday, I was working in the city of Monterey Park, an immigrant Chinese community. Since that day was the occasion of the Kentucky Derby, I scheduled my work that day to make time in the mid-afternoon to catch the race.

The only problem was come post time I could not locate a bar in the entire city. There were restaurants galore and small schools for english and trade-specific needs, but not a bar or tavern anywhere...........

Just the month before I had been working near Crenshaw and I had my choice of bars on every corner.

IMO this is a perfect illustration of the differences in a community's mindset.

[piscivorous]

I think that hits the nail on the head!

[garbagecowboy]

Again, you're caricaturing my position. Of course I don't think this.

I think the dumb shouldn't have a vote.

Oh, well, that's very egalitarian.

IQ tests for everyone!

And do you think that perhaps being poor correlates highly with being dumb? So, in practice you'd be banning lots of poor people from having any impact on public policy.

I think you're doing a good enough job caricaturing your own position, I don't need to help it along.

[piscivorous]

I know but I couldn't resist as I've seen him use it so "cleverly" so often.

[bjkeefe]

Well said, Uncle Eb.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by piscivorous

You profess prescribe to the general philosophy that it is not the fault of the downtrodden that the are poor it is the fault of society except for the Its because they are dumb.

Sorry, Pisc. I just don't understand what you're trying to say here.

[garbagecowboy]

The worst thing about all this is, that as McWhorter said, that anyone who says these kinds of things is (if black) is "pushing the envelope or punitive and preachy." I'd also add that if you mention these things as a white person you're at best butting in where your advice isn't wanted and possibly a racist, fascist, bigot. You're blaming the victim.

I really don't understand how Loury can admit that agency matters but still have his main policy thrust be that we need to throw money at the problem. He doesn't seem to remember how badly awry the last attempt to use money to fulfill "our mutual obligations" to poor black people went, or for some reason thinks that the programs this time will not just be bigger or better, but of a completely different nature. It is inarguable that the Great Society programs failed to help black people reach anywhere near a similar standard of living or other measures of human capital relative to white Americans. I would contend, further, that the programs actually harmed the people they intended to help instead of just not helping as intended.

Giving the poor money seems to be something that lefty wonk types thought would be a positive good and would certainly do no harm. It turns out that giving free money to people who are not highly self-motivated saints (e.g. virtually every single human being alive) tends to be a strong disincentive to work, education, and and, frankly, taking personal responsibility. It seems to me that given how many fewer people are on welfare sine welfare reform that a large fraction of the people who were on the dole could have actually gone out and made a living, had they chosen to. Housing people who could not afford to live in a city otherwise was an idea that the lefty wonk types thought would be a positive good and certainly wouldn't hurt anybody. That movement certainly had plenty of very very smart intellectuals behind it. As others have noted, the plan was good, but it didn't work out according to plan. They've torn down a lot of the projects and yet cities don't see a spike in homelessness when they did that. A lot of them ended up being nearly empty or severely depopulated eventually. It all points to the fact that lots of the people who moved into the projects in the 60's and 70's probably would have gotten housing somehow and not simply been on the street without their government handout.

So where was the problem? Maybe this time we just need to get smarter intellectuals to fix the problem for black people? Given how the indicators of human capital, the strength of the family, etc. have trended since the great society and with a great waning of institutional and personal racism, I think we should spare all people, black and white, from the Great Society 2.0.

[Wonderment]

(As if I ever would have been able to get accepted at Brown!)

Brown's loss, Brendan.

[TwinSwords]

Originally Posted by uncle ebeneezer

The biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals acknowledge the fact that various elements of society DO play a role in why some kid ends up as a gangsta. And more importantly, they believe that the government (as imperfect as it may be) has the potential to tweak various elements of society to try to minimize these occurences in the future.

I agree completely. Furthermore, conservatives also believe both of these things, but towards different aims — usually as they advocate repressive and theocratic state policies designed to constrain choice and limit the range of human freedom.

— "various elements of society DO play a role" in shaping children

The conservative war on free speech and commerce where it concerns music, art, video games, movies, books (fiction and non-fiction), etc., is entirely based on a belief that various elements of society shape children. At the extreme end, they don't even want their children going out trick or treating because the Halloween rituals are demonic. The conservatives are at war with science and education because these dangerous elements of society undermine their religious teachings. You can't let your kid go to government schools, not at least without a lot of counter-programming, because he will be indoctrinated into the secular religions of "Darwinianism" and "the church of global warming," to say nothing of sex ed, access to birth control, and rational thought in general.

At the most moderate end of the spectrum, this results in conservatives who want to undermine or replace "government schools" with private (ideally religious) education. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, it results in conservatives who home school their children for fear that any exposure to life outside the cult will poison their children's minds.

— "they believe that the government ... has the potential to tweak various elements of society"

In the same vein, conservatives believe government plays a role in shaping elements of society. See, e.g.:

George F. Will, "Statecraft is Soulcraft."
Bush's Office of Faith Based Initiatives
Bush père's Thousand Points of Light

This is affirmative action to advance a moral agenda and "tweak" society for the better.

On the other side of the coin, conservatives believe government tweaks society in negative ways: the aforementioned hazards of public school, or their resentment of welfare programs because they deny churches access they might otherwise have to desperate souls in search of food or shelter. The churches liked it better when the poor went to them for charity. This gave them the opportunity to proselytize and set conditions: "We'll give you food, but you must attend church services on Sunday, and volunteer your services to our mission."

This just scratches the surface.

{QUOTE=uncle ebeneezer;69353}
By the way, I found your "meeting" line funny. Too true. I have sat through countless "business meetings" in the corporate world that totally demolished the notion that somehow free-market/capitalism breeds higher efficiency.{/QUOTE}

Precisely correct. What a lot of right wing blowhards don't get is that corporations are bureaucracies and exhibit many of the same inefficiencies as any public sector.

At the Fortune 50 company where I work (total workforce > 50,000), we are constantly being moved from office to office, building to building. It's a constant bureaucratic churn, and a hell of a waste of money. My team and I have moved no fewer than twice a year for over a decade. The last time we moved was September, 2007. Our next move is scheduled for February, 2008. Wherever we go next, we won't be there long.

The best example was the day I watched a guy with an office near mine spend the morning packing up his office and loading his belongings into a cart. When he was all finished, he went to lunch. After lunch, he pushed his cart 3 feet and unloaded everything into the adjacent office -- directly next door to the one he spent the morning vacating.

This is the kind of centralized planning that makes sense to a bureaucrat looking at a spreadsheet, but no one else. And as you said, corporate America loves its meetings.

[TwinSwords]

Originally Posted by Wonderment

Brown's loss, Brendan.

Seconded...

[bjkeefe]

Thanks, y'all.

[TwinSwords]

Originally Posted by mvantony

But we ought not ignore that Hezbollah fired 4000 Katyusha rockets into civilian areas in Israel (with no pretense of aiming at military targets), many laced with ball bearings that could kill people up to 600 meters away. And Israel was absolutely powerless to do anything about it.

In a sense; they were unable to find and destroy the rocker launchers. But I don't think it's true they were "absolutely powerless" to stop the war. It did end, after all, and didn't inflicting massive damage to Lebanon's infrastructure, while killing so many civilians, have something to do with it? Isn't Nasrallah politically constrained from doing anything that would cause further Israeli devastation of Lebanon for fear of another round of Israeli attacks?

Originally Posted by mvantony

(Katyushas, by the way, are hardly “slingshots.” True, they’re not very accurate. But that’s part of the terror

If I had to choose between terror and death, I'd take terror. And my understanding is that Israel suffered about 44 dead civilians, while Lebanon suffered around 850. Israel may be "absolutely powerless" to do anything except inflict 20 times as many casualties and obliterate a lot of Lebanese infrastructure.

Originally Posted by mvantony

In any future war with missiles fired into Israel from various sources, or where missiles with greater range are used, leaving will likely be out of the question.

Right. Honestly, I don't know how Israel is going to survive the next fifty years unless they work very hard at coming to some kind of accomodation with their neighbors. While I am firmly on Israel's side of this conflict, the apartheid state and refusal to accommodate the Palestinians will, I fear, doom the nation to eventual obliteration.

If Nat Turner had a nuke or WMD, he would have probably killed a lot more than 57 white men, women, and children. Systems of oppression that have worked for thousands or years may not survive in an age of cheap and readily available weapons of mass destruction — though it looks like Israel intends to test the propostion. The threat of mutually assured destruction may protect them, but I doubt it.

Originally Posted by mvantony

Israel’s advanced weaponry is obviously useful for carrying out pinpoint operations

But Israel's weapons are also useful as instruments of blunt force designed to inflict massive, indiscriminate destruction, which is what they did in the war of 2006. And ultimately, wasn't that blunt force what ended the war?

I thought Glenn's Paean to Israeli Exceptionalism was moving and precisely correct. But at some point, you have to take your boot off the back of the neck of your neighbors. White South Africa was terrified of "mob rule" (democracy), too. White Americans in the South were afraid of freedom for blacks. But at the end of the day, the brutal systems of apartheid enforced through violence simply had to end. Israel must end the police state and the slaughter if only to save its own soul.

[dudeman]

There wouldn't be any conflict between Israelis & Arabs if the Arabs had not been stupid enough to reject Israel's creation. Ever seen just how small Israel would be if the Arabs hadn't stupidly rejected Israel? It's miniscule, and it was still too big for the Arabs. Well, where did their rejection of Israel get them? Israel is now the most powerful state in the region, and it's going nowhere.

Now after many lost wars, the Arabs make fools of themselves by demanding the losing side get all its land back and the right to live in the winner's country. These demands are insane. Did we offer the Germans all their land back and the right to live in the US, UK & USSR after WWII?

The conflict has one source: Arab rejectionism of Israel's existence. Once they accept it, the conflict ends.

[Trevor]

Well the circumstances by which those groups came to America were markedly different, to put it mildly.

[uncle ebeneezer]

Thank you Trevor, for bringing that up. I meant to mention that.

In an effort to rty to explain why certain phenomena seem to exist in one ethnic group (Blacks) rather than others (Asian, Irish, Jew etc.) it would be foolish not to consider the experience that a group has endured specifically that may be a factor. The "well the Irish/Korean/Polish (whatever) managed to not have these problems so what's the matter with the Blacks?" argument, seems very short-sighted to me. For as much prejudice as any of those groups undoubtedly faced, none of them were specifically the targets of terrorism (lynchings), cultural segregation, and legislative discrimination on the level that blacks were. America put a whole lot of effort for years into treating Blacks as "different" than everybody else. Water fountains, lunch counters, back of the bus, voting rights etc., to say nothing of the fact that they were once "property" and viewed as animals. Is it really any wonder that some of the ramifications of this story may still manifest in negative ways within the black culture? Ask a jew about the Holocaust and whether that still affects them today. Ask an Irish person about the bloddy conflicts from their past. Look at the Middle East for crying out loud. "Get over it" may be excellent advice, but Blacks are hardly the only ethnicity who are having a tough time putting it into practice.

Koreans, Chinese, Polish etc. all came to this country specifically because they had the desire to achieve. So it makes sense that a bunch of achievers would foster a culture that places high emphasis on such a virtue. Blacks were dragged here on slave ships and have been shunned by America far more often than they have been embraced. Given that history (and the generations of poverty), I don't find many of their cultural problems all that surprising. The question is how we can try to fix them. I don't think "be better" is the solution. And I don't think it's a matter of genetic differences that can't be overcome by the right combination of policy, family, personal responsibility. I don't think that slavery or anything else from the past is an excuse, but it is certainly in part, an explanation and should be considered as we try to formulate a solution. I think a solution is out there. We may not reach a perfect one, but we can at least try to make baby steps in the right direction. I have hope that this is something government can do (or at least assist in.) I'm not ready to write off 13% of our population as a lost cause. I think we can fix things but the answer won't be simple or obvious. I think we just need to keep trying.

Sorry, Obama's speech style is begining to rub off on me. Cheers! --UE

[Wonderment]

Now after many lost wars, the Arabs make fools of themselves by demanding the losing side get all its land back and the right to live in the winner's country. These demands are insane.

Why is it insane to demand that your stolen property be returned to you? What do you think you'd do if a foreign army invaded your town, kicked you out and sent you to live in a refugee camp on the other side of the Mexican border?

The refugee issue is about people who were dispossessed and expelled from their country, or who fled under terroristic threat and other forms of duress.

[piscivorous]

I suppose those memories of hangings and such were handed down genetically. They would have to be for the vast majority of those living today know of these events through reading about them in text books, old newspaper clippings and specials on the TV not through any direct exposure or even indirectly through stories told to them my their grand parents. I guess that one could be traumatized by reading old issues of Time Magazine and Newsweek but I don't find it very likely.

[David_PA]

Originally Posted by bjkeefe

basman:

That pretty well sums up the difference between conservatives and liberals, I'd say. I feel collective responsibility (as well as personal responsibility) and I definitely think intellectuals (on average) make better decisions.

Chiming in a little late ...

Academics and intellectuals make excellent analysts and they can be very good developers of policy. But, I wouldn't, in general, rate intellectuals as having excellent decision making skills or say that they see clearly directions in which we 'should head'. Rather, intellectuals are trained to see clearly all, or almost all, the directions in which we 'could' head.

Good decisions are borne out of knowing all of the possible ways to head, and as much as possible about the consequences of each possibility. So, intellectuals can play a crucial role in good decision-making, because thoroughly researching before making certain critical decisions is essential to making good ones.

The right often positions itself as the anti-intellectual or anti-academia party. At it's worst, that translates into the non-thinking party. Though, to be more fair, neither the left nor the right has lately brought forward front-line leaders who make good decisions. However, I think the left is the more thoughtful party and that the country would be more sound if either of their top leaders-in-the-making get elected as president.

[uncle ebeneezer]

Pisc, these memories are handed down CULTURALLY. Genes have nothing to do with it. Nor does reading about it in Time magazine. Example: Great great grandfather was slave. Great grandfather was freed but denied the right to vote had limited property ownership rights etc.. Grandfather wasn't allowed into certain schools, had to drink from separate water fountain, Father faced discrimination in college, business world etc., Son lives in ghetto is routinely harrassed by police receives harsher sentence than white friend. etc. The details of the story change from one generation to the next but the overall theme which is reinforced via personal experience as well as annecdotal family history, remains the same. Conclusion: person from one culture (in this case black) has entirely different outlook and experience than someone else (white). I'm sure your relatives have told you stories that directly relate to your culture. And if you told me them I'm certain that some of it would be as alien to me as another culture is to you (unless you happen to share my ethnic combination.) These are the things that define our cultures. These are also the things that make it so hard to understand other cultures.

[piscivorous]

I don't have a problem with this but to continue to use this these third and fourth hand "experience" as an excuse or reason for the continued under-performance of many blacks seems to me; to paraphrase one of my favorite Senators, "... require the willing suspension of disbelief."

[Dee Sharp]

Originally Posted by garbagecowboy

...given how many fewer people are on welfare sine welfare reform...

A nice post, but sine means without, not after.

Sorry, that can't be right. I live in a trailer park. Since the mean intelligence of trailer dwellers is so low that most shouldn't vote, the chance that even one knows a smattering of Latin is too small to consider.

Suppose that some dwellings increase the intelligence of their occupants. That would explain the Flynn Effect: as the housing stock improves, intelligence follows. After research identifies the smartest housing, our Great Housing programs will achieve what the Great Society attempted, but failed to accomplish.

[Dee Sharp]

Originally Posted by Wonderment

Why is it insane to demand that your stolen property be returned to you? What do you think you'd do if a foreign army invaded your town, kicked you out and sent you to live in a refugee camp on the other side of the Mexican border?

It would depend on the circumstances. If the invading army was part of the Islamic or Spanish conquests, I'd accept their claims to the land. I'd consider any later conquest to be illegitimate.