This video made the rounds today. Personally, I think it says everything in under 2 minutes. (Of course, I’ll have plenty to say, anyway.) Just watch it, if you have not seen it. It’s absolutely brilliant.
I know this was technically “edited.” That doesn’t change the fact that the very things President Obama is stating are the same things President Reagan stated. So, why are there all these claims that President Obama is a “radical socialist”? Or that he is trying to fulfill some “radical agenda”?
Well, let’s take a look at some of the Tea Party members and what they really have to say. (more…)
The President was elected by 537 votes in the deciding state for electoral votes and stopped the manual recount that was to decide if he actually did win the election. He was appointed to office by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. He actually received 543,895 votes less than his opponent.
The President and Congress passed a bill that opened up ability for government surveillance, restricted rules on opening bank accounts or transferring money, gave the government more access to private information. (Expanded government control over civil rights.)
The United States was attacked under the watch of this President.
This President ran on a platform of limited international involvement and less bi-partisanship. The same President went to war with a foreign nation on false pretenses. Congress was actually lied to before approving the war.
This President said “Bring It On” to people who were trying to kill American soldiers.
This President that claimed to be “bi-partisan” in his campaign made statements such as “you are with us, or against us.”
Enron.
This President gave large tax breaks to the wealthy, claiming it would help invigorate the economy.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the real GDP grew at an average annual rate of 2.5%. (Lower than had been in the past 50 years.) The DOW Jones Industrial Average dropped from 10,587 to 7,949. “Adjusted for inflation, median household income dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007, said Elizabeth Warren, professor at Harvard Law School, in written testimony before the Joint Economic Committee.“ (Resource) In the last year of his office, the U.S. entered the longest post-war recession since WWII, due to a housing market bubble, mortgage crisis, and high oil prices. (Reuters, Xinhua)
This President passed an educational bill known as the No Child Left Behind Act, which has so many criticisms, they cannot all fit in one passage, but included underfunding and increase in access for military recruitment, and most importantly, increased segregation in public schools.
It is quite often claimed that Black Americans or Chicano Americans are more prone to be criminals in the United States. Usually this claim is accompanied by statistics. I often wonder if people really just pick and choose statistics to support what they “want” to prove, or if they look at statistics and make a conclusion from gathering the evidence. I think we all know that the prior is much more common than the latter.
First, Let us look at the statistics.
From the US Census Bureau (2008):
The American population is 304,059,724.
257,116,111 people are not Hispanic or Latino.
199,491,458 people are White.
37,171,750 people are Black Americans/African Americans/Negro (was on the 2010 Census)
2,328,982 people are Native American
13,237,698 people are Asian
434,561 people are Hawaiian
4,451,662 people are “two or more races”
46,943,613 are Latino or Hispanic (and are broken up among various other races)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics: “In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.” and “In 1997, 9% of the black population in the U.S. was under some form of correctional supervision compared to 2% of the white population and over 1% of other races. “
What does this say? Well, it does say that Black Americans are disproportionally arrested in the United States. It doesn’t quite clearly say much else. You can infer that it means that Black people are criminals. You can also infer that it means a racist society will tend to prosecute those at the receiving end of the racism.
After a few hours of combing through statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, I remembered again why I hate numbers. They give me a headache. I can reprint a ton of information, but I really don’t want to. A bunch of it can be found here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1743
It basically says that Whites are more often the victims of crimes, overwhelmingly. What does that say? Well, for once, it says that crimes are reported by whites much more frequently than by anyone else. Does that mean they aren’t more often the victims of crimes? Not at all. Does it mean they are? Not at all. There are a lot of things you can infer from statistics, but it doesn’t always make them legitimate until you can correlate them and provide farther evidence.
So, yeah, I got really tired of those pages and pages of charts and numbers. Then I found the National Crime Victimization Survey that was started under President Nixon. “A key finding of the survey was the realization that many crimes were not reported to the police.”
The survey also found that ‘in the period 1992-2000, significantly less than half (43%) of all criminal acts reported through victimization surveys were also reported to police.‘ Hart & Rennison (2003:3)
So, when you look at the DOJ statistics, it states that 4,176,440 Whites were the victims of crimes in 2007 and 794,220 Blacks were the victims of crimes in the same year. With a “rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and over” of 20.5 for Whites and 26.1 for Blacks.
Again, what do we conclude by this? When 43% of crimes are not even reported, does this give an accurate picture? The Uniform Crime Report has numbers very similar to the National Crime Victimization Survey, but the UCR is only reported by police.
I’m getting tired, so I’m just going to rip this line from Wikipedia, but it is a summary of the FBI Expanded Homicide Data – Crime in the United States 2008. Link here.
African Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36% of all arrests. African Americans, constituting approximately 12% of the general population, were significantly overrepresented in the total arrests made. African Americans were also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47% of all murder victims. White Americans and individuals of Other race were significantly underrepresented in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide in 2008. Murder in White American and African American populations were overwhelmingly intraracial, with 83% of all White victims and 90% of all Black victims having been murdered by individuals of the same race. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, for individuals of Other race, with 52% having been murdered by individuals also of Other race.
So, what did we learn? So far we learned that our prisons are filling up with Blacks more than Whites, that half of all crimes go unreported, and that most people are murdered by people with the same skin color as themselves.
Finally, I want to turn to a non-government source of information. If you have never heard of the Innocence Project, it is a nobleorganization that does wonderful things. Anyone who talks bad about them is an asshole. And this is why: 254 EXONERATED
Here is information from the Innocence Project:
Seventeen people had been sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence and led to their release.
The average sentence served by DNA exonerees has been 13 years.
About 70 percent of those exonerated by DNA testing are members of minority groups.
In almost 40 percent of the cases profiled here, the actual perpetrator has been identified by DNA testing.
Exonerations have been won in 34 states and Washington, D.C.
70 PERCENT OF THOSE EXONERATED BY DNA TESTING ARE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS!
Surprise!
Anyway. This could really go on for quite a while. There are so many moderating and intervening variables that need to be examined. Even IF there was concrete evidence that Black Americans were 90 times more likely to commit a violent crime, you need to isolate that to provide proof that it is due to them being Black Americans and not the social environment, class situation, environment, nutrition, prenatal care, neonatal care, et cetera. (There is a lot of evidence that people from low-income communities were more prone to violence in the past due to children ingesting large amounts of lead paint. We DO know that lead causes violent behavior.) I still see no evidence at all that links skin color to violence or criminal behavior. These tendencies have not been proven to be clustered, or linked, to skin color in any way.
Oh, nevermind. There are several books written about it. Like America behind bars: trends in imprisonment, 1950 to 2000 by Rick Ruddell. (You can look it up on Google Books for free, or you can come back when I update this page and click on the link to buy it from Amazon and give me a percentage of the sale.)
I really don’t like maths.
And I really get tired of using statistics to prove a point in such detail.
I guess we could all just go to Lawrence Auster’s website and read the selected incidents and news articles that he has cherry picked to prove his point and avoid doing ANY actual research. Hell, if Sarah Palin’s research involves having someone else write her biography and give a speech about the notes on her hand, and make $12 million a year, who needs to actually look up statistical data and analyze studies? Compiling data? Isn’t that for the Elite? “We don’t need no book learnin’ and ‘rithmatic!”
Especially when 99% of all statistics are wrong.
“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson
There are a lot of terms flying around today, especially in the political sphere. They include, but are not limited to: Socialist, Communist, Racist, Nazi, Fascist, Lib, Liberal, Teabagger, and Thug. These terms are seemingly used by any, and everyone, with reckless abandon. The problem is, that when you actually have a reason to use one of these terms, it gets dismissed. I have noticed a lot of attention on Goodwin’s Law. The concept that, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.“ This is quite humorous. At the same time, this does not mean the comparisons are not valid. I find a strong correlation between Fascism and the New Right. (The Conservatives of today, be they Tea Party, Tories, or National Front.)
Sometimes the Left does propose Socialist ideals, or at least borderline socialist ideals. “Universal healthcare” could be considered more Socialist than Capitalist. There is no secret that I think they should stop pretending. I personally think they should say, “We aren’t concerned with who developed this idea. We are concerned with something that works. This isn’t a new concept, and the countries that use it are doing quite well with it.” Farther, they should point out, “As Americans, we should be trying to do it better than other nations, not avoiding it.” On the same hand, while I am not a big fan of Fascism, I do not contend to use “Fascist” in this entry as an epithet. The New Right has Fascist ideology and Fascist goals. Fascism is also not democratic. So, in some way, I am claiming the New Right are anti-democratic.
I want to reiterate, that I am not claiming the New Right are Fascist to drive a farther wedge. The goal here is to really examine what is going on.
There are a few things that strike me as odd with the rise of the New Right in the past year or so. When Barack Obama was elected President, a new wave of protest swept through the nation. There are tangible threads that weave through this new tapestry that seriously concern me. Especially as the numbers are growing. Just last night, the Tories in England got back a large portion of British Parliament. So, let’s look at Fascism and see how it relates to American Conservativism. (Fascism is quite complex as an ideology. This is not an academic journal, so I am just using Wikipedia as my reference for any information on Fascism that are listed here. I do not believe that Wikipedia is the absolute authority on the subject, or even the best authority, but I’m trying to keep this as short as possible, so… I accept that flaw for the time being.)
First we have the basic ideology of Fascism:
Fascism is a “radical and authoritarian, nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as a political system and the economy.“
If you were to go to a Tea Party website, such as the Tea Party Patroits‘ website, you would see, their “Core values” are “Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.” – “organize the nation on corporatist perspectives, values and systems such as political system and the economy.”
Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. . . . They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism. In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety. They advocate the creation of a single-party state. . . . Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists’ nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated.They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation.
That’s a long block, I know. I felt it was spelled out better than I could reword it.
The Tea Party and their cohorts have been extolling the virtues of “What makes America great” and that the “LiberalElite” want to destroy them and make the US culture a multi-cultural, pluralist society that will lead the nation into ruin. Arizona just passed a law that will fundamentally restrict autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups that are not considered part of the nation. It will also penalize anyone who refuses to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They definitely find immigrants with foreign customs to be an “affront and threat to the nation.“
“Fascism is strongly opposed to core aspects of the Enlightenment and is an opponent of liberalism, Marxism, and mainstream socialism for being associated with failures that fascists claim are inherent in the Enlightenment.”
I was just looking at Al-Sonja Schmidt (who I have much to say about in a future time) and there were a lot of references to Marx, Socialism, Black Nationalism and such. To get the whole trifecta, she said that President Obama was influenced by Marx and is a tyrant. (He has a foreign sounding name, is pluralistic, and a product of the Enlightenment.)
I don’t think it is really worth spending much time on how the New Right feels everyone should stay in the Cold War and we need to start the Red Scare back up. I have spent enough time on this ridiculous garbage.
THE CORE TENANTS OF FASCISM:
Nationalism is probably one of the most obvious core tenants of Fascism. I also highly doubt any Conservative would decry that Nationalism is not a massive “core value” of their ideology. Is it even worth examining farther? The real question is if people truly understand the true meaning of Nationalism.
Fascists saw the struggle of nation and race as fundamental in society, in opposition to communism’s perception of class struggle. The fascist view of nation is as a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people. Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.
