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I find it funny that so many conservatives in this country are so ready to quote the "founding fathers" like they're the final authority on anything ever. Are we so incapable of original thought that we automatically have to default to what a bunch of old rich white guys thought 250 years ago in a much different society? The mind boggles. And who the hell uses the term gobbledy-gook anymore?
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Dec 15, 2010 17:53
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Blarghalt posted:I find it funny that so many conservatives in this country are so ready to quote the "founding fathers" like they're the final authority on anything ever. Are we so incapable of original thought that we automatically have to default to what a bunch of old rich white guys thought 250 years ago in a much different society? The mind boggles. Well you see we're supposed to govern the country according to the Constitution exactly as it was written. Thus to know what, exactly, was written into the Constitution, its necessary to consult the writings of all these men who may or may not have had particularly large contributions in the writing of the Constitution to see what their thoughts on government were...
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Dec 15, 2010 18:06
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Weiner had a good, albeit somewhat misunderstood, point during an interview with Fox News. He was asked why he should tax the income that those people have earned. Why those people should pay a tax. And he said, "We're not taxing them. They're dead. They're not being taxed." And he's right. The people aren't being forced to pay a tax twice. The tax is levied against the heirs, the ones who didn't earn the income, who are simply getting a load of income at no loss to them.
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Dec 15, 2010 18:11
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Pornographic Memory posted:Well you see we're supposed to govern the country according to the Constitution exactly as it was written. Thus to know what, exactly, was written into the Constitution, its necessary to consult the writings of all these men who may or may not have had particularly large contributions in the writing of the Constitution to see what their thoughts on government were... I'm talking about people who, in place of thinking or making an argument, just like to quote Thomas Jefferson ad nauseum. It's just intellectually lazy.
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Dec 15, 2010 18:32
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Internet Cliche posted:One of its most immoral features is the Death Tax that will, if President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats have their way, confiscate 45 percent of estates of at least $3.5 million ($7 million for couples), despite the fact taxes have previously been paid on the assets of these estates. You heard it here first, 45% of 500,000 is 1.8 million.
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Dec 15, 2010 18:49
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moron who writes in the small-town weekly newspaper posted:Here’s a very real scenario: A man invests everything he has to start a business. He works long hours to build the business and his spouse and children work in it and help it grow. After several years the man dies, leaving the business to his wife, who continues to operate it with the children. The business continues to grow in size and value, and employs several non-family members. And then the widowed spouse dies. Enter Anthony Weiner to tell the children that their inheritance is valued at $4 million and the government is going to take $1.8 million in Death Taxes. They are forced to sell the business to pay the taxes. It’s only fair, you know. So, why didn't the wife pay any estate tax when the husband died and left her the business? Armyman25 fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 15, 2010 |
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Dec 15, 2010 19:03
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Blarghalt posted:I'm talking about people who, in place of thinking or making an argument, just like to quote Thomas Jefferson ad nauseum. It's just intellectually lazy. I do wish more people would at least quote the men properly instead of just picking, choosing, and combining the parts they like. Still they were human beings and wrong about things. Probably the best line from 1776 is from Franklin - "What will posterity think we were, demigods? We're men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed."
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Dec 15, 2010 19:04
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This cant be right?  quote:With welfare it makes sense to work less
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Dec 15, 2010 20:12
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So I got this e-mail from my landlord about election time in 2008. I'm not sure if it's been posted but here we go:quote:>No, I did not write this. It was forwarded to me, but I feel that in this I remember reading it and knowing that a lot of it was taken out of context. And my landlord isn't a stupid person so I was surprised why she just kind of took all that for granted.
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Dec 15, 2010 20:29
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streetlamp posted:If the one-week-a-month worker maintains an unreported cash-only job on the side, the deal gets better than a regular $60,000-a-year job. "So you see, by committing crimes, people earn more money than honest people! The solution is obviously to cut welfare." In the last few years in Mississippi, I've seen the Oreck Vacuum factory close, the Triton ATM factory close, and the Whirlpool factory close. All were fully employed (with temp workers who they refused to hire on, to avoid paying benefits). Lack of workforce is such horseshit. Not one of those places was hiring, I checked. I applied at them, and they said they weren't looking for new people. Friends I had that were working there were laid off.
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Dec 15, 2010 20:34
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streetlamp posted:This cant be right? Even if all of those calculations are correct, and I really can't comment on that, he's comparing apples and oranges by shoving it all under the umbrella term of 'economic benefit.' There's a big difference between having $30k of food stamps and medical benefits, and $30k of general income that can be applied to anything (and is probably coming in top of any health / medical benefits people who earn more than $40k/yr are likely to have).
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Dec 15, 2010 20:40
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The choice of Mississippi for that article is hilarious. Yeah, the area hit by Katrina, the oil spill, and the recession. Yeah, they lost all their business because of lazy poors. Mississippi has always been the poorest in the nation. We've always gotten almost twice as much from the government as we give. Welfare, which has been a major economic factor in MS for the last 90 years, is what caused business to leave MS these last three years. Not those series of disasters which have been covered in the world press.
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Dec 15, 2010 21:00
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streetlamp posted:This cant be right? Oh boy, time to quit my job!!!
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Dec 15, 2010 21:37
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streetlamp posted:This cant be right? Wait, I thought China, being a Communist country, would have all the necessities of life guaranteed? And the conclusion I draw from his chart is that it costs approx $30,000 to have all the basic requirements of life met, regardless of income.
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Dec 15, 2010 22:17
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Yes, you see, you can work 14 hours a week at minimum wage and make the same as someone working 40 hours as a week at a minimum wage job. You could live that same glamorous, minimum wage lifestyle. And if you commit fraud, narcotics trafficking, and tax evasion, then you could live like a (middle class) king! And apparently people are doing this in droves! Why, look at all the businesses that are packing up and leaving Mississippi!
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Dec 15, 2010 22:33
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RagnarokAngel posted:Yeah there was. Othello was basically all about this. I know it was post-New World but it was about the Moors, a long established, if vaguely defined group. The Moors were thought of as "foreigners with bad ideas that will send you to hell." If a brown person had been brought up in Venice from a youth and everyone knew their life history and they spoke Italian and were loyal to the Doge, they would not have been the Other. This is not true of racism, and your point is misleading. Its also instructive to look at the review of commentary/criticism of Othello and when people started questioning what race he was or how the distinction between an Arab or African American changes the story, etc. It takes at least 100 years for people to start thinking of it as a big "thing" instead of just a story about the mistrust of foreigners Tape Speed fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Dec 15, 2010 |
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Dec 15, 2010 22:47
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namesake posted:I think you need to add a forth category to your list there: The same is true for socialism, the classic/original definition has evolved since then (as well as differs between cultures). The socialist party in my country for instance doesn't want to "bring about communism" or end market mechanisms, they want progressive taxes and the free market to be accountable and transparent. Other socialist parties in the west, or hell, Bernie Sanders don't want to bring about communism either. But other than this, thanks for the insight, and I'll look forward to what else you have to say. Anyway, my problem with complaints about socialism have more to do with the fact that people think socialism equals (or leads to) communism and that makes it bad. Their entire argumentation is based on the slippery slope fallacy or strawmanning. You don't end up discussing whatever issue is at hand but communism, and people like that just aren't worth talking to. streetlamp posted:This cant be right? Angry Avocado fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 15, 2010 22:48
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Tape Speed posted:The Moors were thought of as "foreigners with bad ideas that will send you to hell." If a brown person had been brought up in Venice from a youth and everyone knew their life history and they spoke Italian and were loyal to the Doge, they would not have been the Other. This is not true of racism, and your point is misleading. At the time the Arabian Nights was written, around the 10th century, calling someone black was a clear insult. The black africans from sub-sahara were held up as "other". In Cordoba you'd call someone "black as an eggplant" as a term of abuse. (it was a double insult: first for being black, second because its juices were associated with insanity). [I got this from a footnote in Sir Richard Burton's translation] What you describe IS true of racism. It's equivalent to modern day "Oh I don't like darkies because they smell. Well not my friend Joe, obviously -- he's decent. It's the rest I don't like." Which is hand-in-hand with the equally racist "I'm not racist! Some of my best friends are black! As long as they're brought up right in a proper English household they can turn out fine."
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Dec 15, 2010 23:18
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Tape Speed posted:The Moors were thought of as "foreigners with bad ideas that will send you to hell." If a brown person had been brought up in Venice from a youth and everyone knew their life history and they spoke Italian and were loyal to the Doge, they would not have been the Other. This is not true of racism, and your point is misleading. Not Othello but "If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me." People hate. People hate for a lot of reasons. Racism isn't an invention by the rich elites to control the poor, although it certainly is used as a tool to do that same end.
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Dec 15, 2010 23:27
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ljw1004 posted:At the time the Arabian Nights was written, around the 10th century, calling someone black was a clear insult. The black africans from sub-sahara were held up as "other". In Cordoba you'd call someone "black as an eggplant" as a term of abuse. (it was a double insult: first for being black, second because its juices were associated with insanity). Racism did emerge earlier in Muslim/Arabian cultures than in Western ones, but it too was a result of chattel slavery (which they also got into earlier) The use of the word black as an insult in the West before colonialism/slavery was a remark about plague, rottenness, having a dirty job, having to sin to survive, and other things that proved you were lower class. quote:What you describe IS true of racism. It's equivalent to modern day "Oh I don't like darkies because they smell. Well not my friend Joe, obviously -- he's decent. It's the rest I don't like." Which is hand-in-hand with the equally racist "I'm not racist! Some of my best friends are black! As long as they're brought up right in a proper English household they can turn out fine." Only on the surface level. The presumption of inherent, to-the-bone inferiority that guaranteed most of the Other peoples would never be able to be "Good Ones" and their constant temptation to slip into a more primal, thieving, lying nature without constant guidance/subjugation was not there. The Moor was clearly capable of his own advanced understanding of mathematics, construction, culture, etc. he just had a heathen religion. Racism was not a social discourse/mode of thought separate from xenophobia in earlier times TGLT posted:Racism isn't an invention by the rich elites to control the poor Tape Speed fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 00:07
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Tape Speed posted:Yea, no, it is Did you know the origin of the word Barbarian is from the Greek opinion that everyone else is just saying "Bar bar bar" nonsense? Aristotle suggested that 'barbarians', or non-greeks, were just more prone to docility and slavery because that's just how it was. Racism is just othering based on race. It's just hatred. It's not magical or unique or so specially cruel and hateful that a human being can't manage it without rich people. You accept that people can be xenophobic just fine but that they need help getting to racism? It's generated from the same basic fear - of the other who is not you. How about the treatment of the Jewish people? They didn't exactly get treated well and it was certainly more than just being of the Jewish faith. How about the story of the descendants of Ham? They were cursed to be black. Or how about Miriam who was cursed to be incredibly white? Certainly the whole Ham nonsense saw increasing popularity as justification during the 18th and 19th century slave trade but it didn't come from no where and it was always with the slave trade to begin with. TGLT fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 03:47
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TGLT posted:Certainly the whole Ham nonsense saw increasing popularity as justification during the 18th and 19th century slave trade but it didn't come from no where and it was always with the slave trade to begin with. While I agree with the thrust of your argument, I have to point out that the slave trade of the 18th century was not particularly similar to the slave trade of earlier times. The idea that only black people should be slaves, along with the idea that it's in any way acceptable to just chill out on the coast of Africa and kidnap them and the idea that slavery is permanent and hereditary, are pretty unique to the early modern West.
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Dec 16, 2010 05:02
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Tape Speed posted:Yea, no, it is No I don't think it is. Is it used that way? Almost all the time. But I think racism stems from a more biological issue. Fear of outsiders, and different "races", even if that is a social construct, appear to people as being more of an outsider than others.
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Dec 16, 2010 05:40
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TGLT posted:Did you know the origin of the word Barbarian is from the Greek opinion that everyone else is just saying "Bar bar bar" nonsense? Aristotle suggested that 'barbarians', or non-greeks, were just more prone to docility and slavery because that's just how it was. But, Aristotle was undeniably part of the rich elite...
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Dec 16, 2010 19:53
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Armyman25 posted:So, why didn't the wife pay any estate tax when the husband died and left her the business? Because the wife helped build the estate and tax law grants certain privileges to spouses?
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Dec 16, 2010 20:27
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Chunk posted:Because the wife helped build the estate and tax law grants certain privileges to spouses? Eh, I'm really not up on all the law's details.
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Dec 16, 2010 20:33
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Armyman25 posted:Eh, I'm really not up on all the law's details.
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Dec 16, 2010 20:48
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Guys! Guys! It's that time of year again! I am making a conscious effort to wish everyone a Merry Christmas this year! Just my way of saying that I am celebrating the birth Of Jesus Christ. So, I am asking you, and all of my email friends, if you agree, to please do the same. And if you'll pass this on to your email friends, and so on... maybe we can prevent one more American tradition from being lost in the sea of "Political Correctness" nonsense!  All of the bolded words were colored red and like 40 point size.
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Dec 16, 2010 21:39
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TGLT posted:Did you know the origin of the word Barbarian is from the Greek opinion that everyone else is just saying "Bar bar bar" nonsense? Aristotle suggested that 'barbarians', or non-greeks, were just more prone to docility and slavery because that's just how it was. Slavery in antiquity was little like chattel slavery and to make the comparison is silly, much less to use it as a sign that racist attitudes were around that long ago. It was not just reserved for some class of intrinsically inferior people, it was a consequence of being conquered or something along those lines. The Romans regarded the Greeks as their intellectual predecessors and a civilized people capable of greatness, but were more than happy to take a conquered Greek town down to the aristocrats and make them into slaves. Also, they could be bought out of slavery, or the government could forgive a certain segment of the slave class for political reasons, or someone might end up working off their debts which made their offspring free, and people would deal with it and treat them as free. A legitimately free black in the Southern United States during times of slavery, on the other hand, was just uppity and prone to being put back into his "natural" position. Obviously we had a civil war, too, and so the idea that the government could say some large number of people weren't slaves anymore was not widely accepted. Offspring of slaves were not free, either, and couldn't expect to work to get to that point. quote:Racism is just othering based on race. Race in that sense didn't emerge until colonialism/the beginnings of capitalism. quote:It's just hatred. It's not magical or unique or so specially cruel and hateful that a human being can't manage it without rich people. You accept that people can be xenophobic just fine but that they need help getting to racism? It's generated from the same basic fear - of the other who is not you. There's nothing magical about it. It emerges from the social needs of the elites once a society has reached a point in its development where it becomes useful. People need to be brought up in a society at or past that point which has adopted racist attitudes for any innate xenophobic feelings to be expressed as specifically racist ideas and attitudes, yes quote:How about the treatment of the Jewish people? They didn't exactly get treated well and it was certainly more than just being of the Jewish faith. It was about the practical effects of having that faith and the resentment it caused common folks, though. The conception of Jews as their own separate "race" doesn't emerge until nationalism does, following Westphalia and the waning of the Holy Roman Empire in the middle of Europe. quote:How about the story of the descendants of Ham? They were cursed to be black. Or how about Miriam who was cursed to be incredibly white? Certainly the whole Ham nonsense saw increasing popularity as justification during the 18th and 19th century slave trade but it didn't come from no where and it was always with the slave trade to begin with. quote:18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth. The Curse of Ham as presented in the Torah does not mention skin color, only slavery. It didn't just see "increasing popularity as justification" in the 18th and 19th Century slave trade, that is where the (dubious) association is invented, as a retroactive justification for what society was already in the middle of doing quote:No I don't think it is. Is it used that way? Almost all the time. But I think racism stems from a more biological issue. Fear of outsiders, and different "races", even if that is a social construct, appear to people as being more of an outsider than others. Of course hatred and xenophobia are natural or biological or instinctual or whatever you want to call it. Those negative attitudes being expressed as racism, however, is a consequence of specific social conditions. There are a number of physical traits that just make us uncomfortable to see in people, or make us think they are incommensurably different on an instinctual cringe level that we did not classify as races, or were not treated so until after racism was in place. (notice how the group of deformities roughly approximating what is now Downs syndrome people were only clumped together as a group once racism had established "Mongoloid" as a racial category, for instance, in the 1860s)
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Dec 16, 2010 21:40
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Erm...you're being a bit confusing here. If people were always unsettled by certain biological appearances (which may belong to other races) why did racism not exist until it was named as such? People were afraid of other cultures long before you're describing simply for being different.
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Dec 16, 2010 21:55
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You are all mistaking racism for otherism or xenophobia. The moors, the barbarians, etc. were all hated on for being outside the boundaries. The others. Not simply because. What I'm pointing out is that racism in the west is unique because it was not based on "These people from far off lands." so much because like I said, many poor whites had more in common with poor blacks than they did with rich whites. It was an "invented other" as opposed to an other of circumstance. The only "other" about them was that their skin was black and they were slaves (although many poor whites were enslaved by lesser means economically).
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Dec 16, 2010 22:23
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RagnarokAngel posted:Erm...you're being a bit confusing here. If people were always unsettled by certain biological appearances (which may belong to other races) why did racism not exist until it was named as such? People were afraid of other cultures long before you're describing simply for being different. I think Tape Speed is much less saying RagnarokAngel posted:people were always unsettled by certain biological appearances EDIT - "Barbars" were Others because they lived entirely outside of the land-owners' democratic, centralized government and hierarchical society of ancient Greece, and it profited the architects of empirical expansion to paint the surrounding non-conformists as a sort of rabble-rousers in the eyes of the people for popular support of their actions, not because they had a different skin tone or were from another land. JMBosch fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 22:29
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Alright fair enough I see your point. I'd say "here's some new mail" but I dont have any so does anyone have anything to bring this back on topic?
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Dec 16, 2010 23:34
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RagnarokAngel posted:Alright fair enough I see your point. I'd say "here's some new mail" but I dont have any so does anyone have anything to bring this back on topic? I tried but political correctness got in the way 
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Dec 16, 2010 23:44
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As a non-American, this war on Christmas stuff is profoundly confusing. It comes up every year, and I've been hearing about it for a few years now, but I only ever hear one side, the Christian "we are such a repressed minority look at what those liberal PC-types are trying to do to our great traditions, soon we'll all be thrown to the lions" kind of stuff. Basically, all I ever read, hear or see is a lot of complaining about the war on Christmas. I never read or saw any of the actual war on Christmas itself. So was this a thing at some point and it has blown over but the crazies won't let go, or is it a thing that's still there but at a pretty low level and completely overshadowed by the crazies or was it never a thing at all and it just exists in the heads of the crazies?
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Dec 16, 2010 23:58
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TGLT posted:Did you know the origin of the word Barbarian is from the Greek opinion that everyone else is just saying "Bar bar bar" nonsense? This etymology is very much disputed. That doesn't change your point, particularly, but the idea that the Greeks heard all non-Greek speech as 'barbarbarbar,' while not outrageous, has almost no evidence to support it.
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Dec 16, 2010 23:59
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Orange Devil posted:As a non-American, this war on Christmas stuff is profoundly confusing. It comes up every year, and I've been hearing about it for a few years now, but I only ever hear one side, the Christian "we are such a repressed minority look at what those liberal PC-types are trying to do to our great traditions, soon we'll all be thrown to the lions" kind of stuff. Basically, all I ever read, hear or see is a lot of complaining about the war on Christmas. I never read or saw any of the actual war on Christmas itself. So was this a thing at some point and it has blown over but the crazies won't let go, or is it a thing that's still there but at a pretty low level and completely overshadowed by the crazies or was it never a thing at all and it just exists in the heads of the crazies? 
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Dec 17, 2010 00:03
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^^^^ I did watch that, must have missed or forgot that part though. a foolish pianist posted:This etymology is very much disputed. That doesn't change your point, particularly, but the idea that the Greeks heard all non-Greek speech as 'barbarbarbar,' while not outrageous, has almost no evidence to support it. This sounds an awful lot like the whole Team America: World Police 'derka derka' thing.
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Dec 17, 2010 00:05
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Not an email, but a similar level of crazy, a guy at my workplace coming in to fix a machine tried to argue that universal health care was bad. Why? Big Macs cost two dollars more in New York City than here. Big Macs are a reliable index of the cost of living. Where else do Big Macs cost two dollars more? Canada. Therefore UHC drives the cost of living up too high. I didn't really argue with him since I was tired and just wanted the guy to fix the machine and get out.
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Dec 17, 2010 00:07
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So it's not an e-mail but this strange thing keeps happening every time I talk to my folks. Somewhere in the conversation usually completely apropos of nothing they will bring up the "fact" that France is a post apocalyptic hellhole that is on the verge of total collapse. Then they use that as a justification for why unemployment benefits need to end in the US. Now they get 100% of their news from the christian broadcasting network so I am sure it is something they have heard on there but is there any even slight truth to this? Or is there a good resource I can use to counteract this BS?
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Dec 17, 2010 00:20
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