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[Heavy breathing, clip suggesting a slave escaping from a plantation]posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:36 AM on November 9, 2010 [2 favorites]
[Words in caps are flashed across the screen]
ARE YOU WHITE
CONSERVATIVE
FASCIST
BLACK
LIBERAL
SOCIALIST
REPUBLICAN
DEMOCRAT
SLAVE
I'm C. L. Bryant
PASTOR
ACTIVIST
FORMER NAACP RADICAL
And I am a runaway slave
Wake up America! Tell me why you're great! Is it because of our government? Or is it because of your people?
Run america
Run away from socialism!
Run from statism!
Run away from progressivism!
Who holds your liberty?
Who holds your freedom?
We don't get our freedoms from Republicans.
We don't get our freedoms from Democrats.
We lend them our power!
America is perhaps the greatest success story that the world has ever known. And here I am, the grandson of former slaves. I encourage Americans everywhere to run away from economic slavery and run toward the blessings of liberty guaranteed by our Constitution. So join me america, as we travel the underground railroad and we seek to free ourselves from the slavery of tyranny
Pre-1960, most African Americans were Republicans. After Martin Luther King was freed from jail by John F. Kennedy, the African American vote has gone Democratic. What exactly did we get in exchange for our 95% Democratic swing vote. We gave up 3:1 odds in abortion.
14 million black babies have died since 1973.
...dependent on welfare systems...
They begin to take young women, and they begin to tell the young women "We will give you money if you just stay home." But what if I want to get married? You lose your benefits.
When you remove the black men out of the house the likelihood of the young black men going to jail increases by 60%.
This is what this party has given on a platter to African Americans. Sometimes you can't tell the difference between now and 200 years ago. And we by 95% support this.
Go on back to the plantation. You have a group of people on the plantation, and we run away. We ran away - we got free.
The more the government gives us, the more debt and more control we accumulate.
But here we come back to the plantation. And we're telling them "Y'all can be free!"
Anyone that comes along and talks to me about taking away what I've given you, they must be evil, they've got to be Republicans.
You have 40 or 50 years the entire culture of people - this is all they know - they don't know anything else.
Because see in the black community there's always someone's gotta keep them niggers in control.
You can call it slavery in the slave quarters or now in the urban ghettos of America.
Life is about the future and making decisions that you feel like will serve you best.
We have an opportunity in this nation as blacks that we could not find anywhere else.
We the people are [unclear]
We joined up with these people who are haters and..and they're racists...but they're not! All we're doing is telling the others that are still on the plantation, "you can be free!"
This is not the land of guarantees, but it's the land of opportunites.
They sky's the limit as to what we can achieve here.
But when you say racism is the problem, you put the power for your future in someone else's hands.
What we need in this country today is more black men to confront it, because you have the white man who can't confront it. Right now you say anything to the black community and you will be accused of racism.
...I guess I'm racist too, right?
Tyranny is colorblind!
White or black!
It will control you!
Run America! Run faster! Don't give up! Don't give in! Are you tired yet? Run harder!
Perhaps that would have slowed down this circle jerk of outrage over someone daring to question whether the government's actions have resulted in gains for blacks.Dude. The movie you're defending doesn't make the case that "government's actions have resulted in losses for blacks," it proposes very specifically that the election of liberals and democrats have led to high black abortion and incarceration rates. The same crowd that is promoting this movie argues that policies that Republicans have advanced over the past several decades as an explicit, deliberate part of the "Southern Strategy" can't possibly be racism. Either case can be made carefully, but making both of them is pretty disingenuous. Even silly.
The article does not announce that taxation and slavery are the same thing...That is precisely what the article says. It claims that they differ only in degree and not kind. It's just as reasonable to say that employment, panhandling, and being born are instances of theft. Perhaps not in degree, but at least in kind.
Personally I'm a fan of that social contract, so I'd rather not pretend it's just a business transaction.Either is slavery. MORE PROOF THEY'RE THE SAME!
If someone was to put a gun to my head, empty my wallet of a few hundred bucks and then stick a two liter bottle of Big K's Red Kreme Soda in my hand, I wouldn't describe it as "giving payment for goods received".You wouldn't describe it as "taxation" either.
You're free to opt out of the system anytime you want. I hope you don't use any public roads while you leave the country however. That would be theft if you're not paying for them.Actually you can't, not easily. That's one of the fundamental complaints that a number of anarchist and hardcore libertarian friends of mine point out. There is no good way to emigrate out of the United States and "opt out." We will continue to try to tax you unless some other country is willing to give you citizenship.
It's those who don't seem to have thought through their arguments who get shouted down, no matter which side they're on.Having been shouted down, I can say this is sometimes (perhaps even "often") true. The difficulty is that groups with rarely-overlapping circles of discourse tend to arrive at conclusions and consider them givens. When these groups collide, their respective givens appear to be terribly silly statements of dogma -- things that haven't been "thought through."
Republicans are bitter that they haven't been able to get black voters to vote against their own self interests based on nonsensical fear tactics.It's interesting that Martin Luther started out imploring Christians to be kind to Jews, condemning European anti-semitism and enthusiastically sharing the gospel with them.
I meant a circle jerk of outrage that anyone makes this argument at all.Sadly, that would make your posts a simple jerk-off of outrage that someone disagrees with the argument.
On the other, other hand:I see nothing LOL worthy about the statement that if someone truly and firmly believes that they are being oppressed by the taxation imposed by the US government they can leave that system.
You're free to opt out of the system anytime you want.
LOL
On the other, other hand:Are you, or are you not free to opt out of the system anytime you want?
You're free to opt out of the system anytime you want.
LOL
Similarly, reminding me that I can renounce my citizenship at will, doesn't have anything to do with my argument against portraying taxes as the equivalent of a business transaction. It's just playing to a friendly crowd.BigSky, I definitely agree that "Oh yeah go to Somalia" is fundamentally unhelpful; it's like telling someone who wants to raise the minimum wage, "Oh yeah? Move to France, you socialist."
OK. I understand this and I want to clarify my own position. I'm only objecting to the phrase "social contract" to describe the relationship between state and citizen, I'm not objecting to government, and I'm not objecting to taxes.Fair point, and I'll admit that I was not using the phrase "social contract" in a very precise way. The obligatory trip to WikiPedia produced this definition: "The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed."
The idea of a social contract is an answer to the question of where the authority of the state comes from. It's a rhetorical fiction; there is no consensus to establish such a contract.Well, in the sense that there is not a literal piece of paper labeled 'Social Contract' with the signature of The State at the top and every citizen at the bottom, sure, it's a rhetorical fiction. The idea of "Natural Law" is a rhetorical fiction, too, along with "Rights" and "Freedom," but they're useful constructs for explaining the way things work.
I think you're conflating my obections to the idea of a social contract with the rejection of community. You don't need to love government to have a sense of obligation to others.Actually, I referred specifically to society, not community -- "A large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations" is what I was suggesting requires a willingness to support the structure. But now I fear we're veering into a war of definitions, so I'll move on.
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posted by box at 6:02 AM on November 9, 2010 [1 favorite]