-The mass incarceration of black men in our prison systems. America has the largest prison population in history and half of those men are black. The problem is that black people are only 13% of the general population. To the rest of the world, it looks like America has found a way to continue its historical pattern of killing off black men.
err.... uhm.... once again, it get part way thru a very looong thread and my ADHD kicks in....
I got this far, and had to stop. and pontificate.
first of all it is a terrible reality that so many young African Americans are locked up in prisons. It is a terrible blight on our country.
I would suggest to you that first, the vast vast vast majority are guilty of the crimes they were convicted of.
second, I would suggest to you that modernday liberalism is the catalyst for this sad reality.
__________________ If I do something stupid blame the Lortab!
Those Black men are in prison for a reason. They are committing crimes. If Black civil rights leaders spent half as much time teaching the Black community to develop a value system that embraced education, a work ethic, ambition, goals, etc as they do perpetuating the victim mentality perhaps there would not be so many young black men in prison.
Black on black crime is endemic not to mention black on white crime that you don't hear reported as such much of the time because of "sensitivties". This is a horrible problem for the black community but it is not the white man's fault. At some point they have to take personal responsibility. I applaud Bill Cosby for finally addressing these issues, because as you point out it has to come from within. People like me are just some honkey they don't listen to.
By: Ronald Kessler
If there is anything more disturbing than watching the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s paranoid denunciations of whites and America, it’s seeing the reactions of many well-educated blacks who agree with him or find ways to justify his hate-filled comments.
“I am so proud of Reverand Wright, who speaks with unreserved passion, who accepts no quarter and gives no quarter,” said former civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot of Barack Obama’s speech addressing his longtime minister’s claims that America started the AIDS virus, trains professional killers, imports drugs, and has created a racist society to keep blacks down.
Culture of Conspiracy
While some of Wright’s language is “offensive,” the “reality out of which he speaks is that black people have suffered in America and continue to suffer because of the unfairness of the system,” said professor Cheryl Sanders of the Howard University School of Divinity. The black church “has always had prophetic preachers,” she said. “Prophetic voice goes all the way back to the days of slavery, when people were protesting being in bondage. And so protest is just kind of a part of how we do ministry.”
While saying he does not believe that the government created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, as Wright has said, professor R. L’Heureux Lewis of the City College of New York gave credence to the conspiracy theory by saying that he does “respect the right of some people to question the unfettered arrival of AIDS and HIV to the community and the ravishing effects it’s had.”
Responding to my Newsmax stories about Obama and Wright going back to Jan. 7, many blacks said whites could not understand what it means to be black.
“It is not a secret that black people were slaves and that we are still victims and suffering from slavery, a black woman from Inglewood, Calif., wrote. “The pastor is just expressing a reality that we black people are going through.”
In his speech on race, Obama implicitly condoned this backward-looking perspective.
“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,” Obama said. "While the anger is not always productive," Obama continued, "[it is] real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Yet while Wright, 66, no doubt had brushes with discrimination growing up in Philadelphia, it was nothing compared with what Condoleezza Rice faced — or, for that matter, what six million Jews who were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler faced.
In contrast to Wright, who attended an integrated school, Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala. Denise McNair, one of Rice’s friends and classmates, was one of the four girls who was killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Rice's Unbridled Courage
Rice had to sit at the back of buses. When more whites got on, the driver would move a “Colored” sign farther back in the bus, making less room for blacks. Rice could not eat at the same restaurants as whites unless the restaurant had a separate room with a separate entrance for blacks.
She was not allowed to use the same drinking fountains or public restrooms as whites. But Condi Rice, a descendant of slaves and white slave owners, had something else going for her: Her middle-class black neighborhood had developed a culture separate from the rest of the city, one that shut out the racism all around and taught children they had to be “twice as good” to pull even with whites.
Instead of teaching Rice to carry a chip on her shoulder, as she has told me, Rice’s parents amplified those positive values, giving her a strong sense of self-worth.
Rice’s father, the Rev. John W. Rice Jr., instilled in his daughter the faith that she brought with her into the White House and the State Department.
While Rice is comfortable with her own heritage and often speaks before black groups, she does not dwell on the racism she experienced growing up. Above all, Rice is proud of America and the opportunities that everyone now has. Witness the fact that she is secretary of state.
What a contrast to the poisonous atmosphere at the church that Obama has chosen to attend for more than two decades and the demagoguery of the man he calls his friend, sounding board, and mentor.
Encouraging Failure
As my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams told me after publication of his book “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America,” many black leaders orchestrate support for themselves by promoting victimhood, creating a black “culture of failure.”
That self-defeating attitude tells blacks, “You can’t help yourself; you can’t help your family; and therefore, all you can do is wait for the government to do something for you,” Williams says. “I think it is a message of weakness and ineffectual thinking that is absolutely crippling the poor and especially minorities in the United States.”
Sounding a similar theme in his book “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America,” black author John McWhorter calls the culture of victimhood “therapeutic alienation,” a form of self-medication that is “disconnected from current reality” and continues to hold blacks back.
To be sure, most largely black churches preach an uplifting message.
“As a pastor of a bi-racial church, I cannot accept that Wright’s way is the right way to do ‘black church,’ the Rev. Wally Shifflett, a minister from Charlotte, N.C., wrote to me. “Sen. Obama has been wrongly accused of being a Muslim — and why should that matter? We can hardly disqualify a candidate, offhandedly, because of his or her religion. But the senator’s continued participation in a church stoked with such anti-American rhetoric should no more be acceptable than if he openly supported one of the Islamic-extremist’s madrasses that teach their young to hate Americans. Is there any difference?”
The answer, of course, is no.
Both Islamic extremism and the black cult of victimhood generate support by conjuring up largely imaginary grievances and exploiting them.
The Rev. Otis Moss III, who recently took over from Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ, continued that theme on Sunday. Referring to the media’s belated exposure of Wright’s hate sermons. Moss said the church had been the victim of a “lynching.”
In contrast to the message of Obama’s church and its award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, as one of its core values, Shifflett’s church adheres to inclusiveness: “Convinced that all people ever to be born have one common ancestor; and that God’s love for all people caused him to send the one Savior into the world to seek and save all people; we believe that he has reconciled all people to himself, and to one another.”
If Barack Obama were the unifier he claims to be, that is the kind of church he would attend and support with $22,500 in donations over a two-year period.
Instead of saying he understands where Wright and his “God ************ America” are coming from and refusing to sever ties with him, if he really wanted to help blacks and further racial progress, he would denounce Wright’s message of hatred and the culture of victimhood that continues to undermine black society.
And if Obama were a leader who genuinely had the interests of all the country’s citizens at heart, he would be citing Condoleezza Rice as an example of what blacks can achieve in America.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
e-mail. Go here now.
Those Black men are in prison for a reason. They are committing crimes. If Black civil rights leaders spent half as much time teaching the Black community to develop a value system that embraced education, a work ethic, ambition, goals, etc as they do perpetuating the victim mentality perhaps there would not be so many young black men in prison.
Black on black crime is endemic not to mention black on white crime that you don't hear reported as such much of the time because of "sensitivties". This is a horrible problem for the black community but it is not the white man's fault. At some point they have to take personal responsibility. I applaud Bill Cosby for finally addressing these issues, because as you point out it has to come from within. People like me are just some honkey they don't listen to.
well, I think one could say that rich white liberals bear some degree of responsibility....
__________________ If I do something stupid blame the Lortab!
This man was was LT. Col in Vietnam and his son was one of the few officers killed in Iraq so the chickenhawks can't attack his patriot credentials.
The Right Choice?
The conservative case for Barack Obama
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination, come November principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives—and the state of the conservative movement—they could do worse.
Granted, when it comes to defining exactly what authentic conservatism entails, considerable disagreement exists even (or especially) among conservatives themselves. My own definition emphasizes the following:
a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;
a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;
veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;
a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;
respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;
a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.
Accept that definition and it quickly becomes apparent that the Republican Party does not represent conservative principles. The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives—especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire—have prospered. But conservatism as such has not.
The presidency of George W. Bush illustrates the point. In 2001, President Bush took command of a massive, inefficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, he has substantially increased the size of that apparatus, which during his tenure has displayed breathtaking ineptitude both at home and abroad. Over the course of Bush’s two terms in office, federal spending has increased 50 percent to $3 trillion per year. Disregarding any obligation to balance the budget, Bush has allowed the national debt to balloon from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion. Worse, under the guise of keeping Americans “safe,” he has arrogated to the executive branch unprecedented powers, thereby subverting the Constitution. Whatever else may be said about this record of achievement, it does not accord with conservative principles.
As with every Republican leader since Reagan, President Bush has routinely expressed his support for traditional values. He portrays himself as pro-life and pro-family. He offers testimonials to old-fashioned civic virtues. Yet apart from sporting an American flag lapel-pin, he has done little to promote these values. If anything, the reverse is true. In the defining moment of his presidency, rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship.
Should conservatives hold President Bush accountable for the nation’s cultural crisis? Of course not. The pursuit of instant gratification, the compulsion to accumulate, and the exaltation of celebrity that have become central to the American way of life predate this administration and derive from forces that lie far beyond the control of any president. Yet conservatives should fault the president and his party for pretending that they are seriously committed to curbing or reversing such tendencies. They might also blame themselves for failing to see the GOP’s cultural agenda as contrived and cynical.
Finally, there is President Bush’s misguided approach to foreign policy, based on expectations of deploying American military might to eliminate tyranny, transform the Greater Middle East, and expunge evil from the face of the earth. The result has been the very inverse of conservatism. For Bush, in the wake of 9/11, ideology supplanted statecraft. As a result, his administration has squandered American lives and treasure in the pursuit of objectives that make little strategic sense.
For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is.
Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves. Within this camp, abortion has long been the flagship issue. Yet only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.
Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.
The essential point is this: conservatives intent on voting in November for a candidate who shares their views might as well plan on spending Election Day at home. The Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, and McCain no longer accommodates such a candidate.
So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.
To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.
The neoconservatives understand this. If history renders a negative verdict on Iraq, that judgment will discredit the doctrine of preventive war. The “freedom agenda” will command as much authority as the domino theory. Advocates of “World War IV” will be treated with the derision they deserve. The claim that open-ended “global war” offers the proper antidote to Islamic radicalism will become subject to long overdue reconsideration.
Give the neocons this much: they appreciate the stakes. This explains the intensity with which they proclaim that, even with the fighting in Iraq entering its sixth year, we are now “winning”—as if war were an athletic contest in which nothing matters except the final score. The neoconservatives brazenly ignore or minimize all that we have flung away in lives, dollars, political influence, moral standing, and lost opportunities. They have to: once acknowledged, those costs make the folly of the entire neoconservative project apparent. All those confident manifestos calling for the United States to liberate the world’s oppressed, exercise benign global hegemony, and extend forever the “unipolar moment” end up getting filed under dumb ideas.
Yet history’s judgment of the Iraq War will affect matters well beyond the realm of foreign policy. As was true over 40 years ago when the issue was Vietnam, how we remember Iraq will have large political and even cultural implications.
As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can “keep us safe.” Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government.
Above all, there is this: the Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny.
Of all the obstacles to a revival of genuine conservatism, this absence of self-awareness constitutes the greatest. As long as we refuse to see ourselves as we really are, the status quo will persist, and conservative values will continue to be marginalized. Here, too, recognition that the Iraq War has been a fool’s errand—that cheap oil, the essential lubricant of the American way of life, is gone for good—may have a salutary effect. Acknowledging failure just might open the door to self-reflection.
None of these concerns number among those that inspired Barack Obama’s run for the White House. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s habit of spouting internationalist bromides suggests little affinity for serious realism. His views are those of a conventional liberal. Nor has Obama expressed any interest in shrinking the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions. He does not cite Calvin Coolidge among his role models. And however inspiring, Obama’s speeches are unlikely to make much of a dent in the culture. The next generation will continue to take its cues from Hollywood rather than from the Oval Office.
Yet if Obama does become the nation’s 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama’s age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.
Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail.
But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation’s heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them.
For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one.
_________________________________
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His next book, The Limits of Power, will be published in August.
While reading over Wright's life's history and achievements, I had a hard time understanding how anyone could honestly match the slanderous accusations spinning from FOX News and the neo-cons with this man's many accomplishments.
He had THREE presidential commendations for goodness sake!
[B][SIZE="2"]Courses Taught
Chicago Theological Union The History of the Black Religious Experience (With emphasis on Black worship, understanding and designing Black worship services) Liturgy and Eucharist: Worship in the Black Church (Team taught with Ralph Kieffer)
Chicago Theological Seminary History and Meaning of the Black Church (Team taught with Dr. Robert Meyners) The History of the Black Church in North America
North Park Theological Seminary Black Theology
Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education Liberation Theology in the Black Church (Team taught with Dr. James White) The Black Church in North America: Structure and Process in the Black Community
La Vern University History of the Black Religious Tradition (Chicago Extension for undergraduate credit)
United Theological Seminary Two Doctor of Ministry Programs Afrocentric Preaching and Pastoring
Garrett Evangelical Seminary Homiletics
Education
2002 Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters
North Park University North Park, Illinois Honorary Doctor of Divinity
2000 Bethune Cookman College Daytona Beach, Florida Honorary Doctor of Laws
1999 Colgate University Syracuse, New York Honorary Doctor of Letters
1990 United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio Doctor of Ministry Degree, Black Sacred music Samuel D. Proctor Fellow
1985 Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois Honorary Doctor of Divinity
Monrovia Liberia, West Africa Honorary Doctor of Divinity
1982 Chicago Theological Seminary Chicago, Illinois Honorary Doctor of Divinity
1969-75 University of Chicago Divinity School Chicago, Illinois Master of Arts Degree Rockefeller Fellowship
1967-69 Howard University, Washington, DC Master of Arts Degree, Graduate Fellowship Bachelor of Arts Degree, Dean's List
1959-61 Virginia Union University Richmond, Virginia University Scholarship
Accomplishments
Honors
1970-75 Rockefeller Fellowship The Fund for Theological Education
1965-66 3 Presidential Commendations from President Lyndon B. Johnson
1961 Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society
Special Projects
1997 CD Recording, "The Artist" recorded by The Sanctuary Choir of Trinity UCC
1976 Author & Composer, "Jesus Is his Name", recorded by The Trinity Choral Ensemble, Trinity Label, Chicago, Illinois
1975 Author & Composer, "God Will Answer Prayer", recorded by The Trinity Choral Ensemble Trinity Label, Chicago, Illinois
Researcher for and Contributor to: Black Song: The Forge and the Flame, written by John Lovell.
Career Accomplishments
1972- Pastor present Trinity United Church of Christ Chicago, Illinois
1999 Professor Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary
1998 Professor Chicago Theological Seminary
1994-96 professor and Mentor for Wright/ Asante/West Fellows, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
1992-94 Professor and Mentor for Wright/Kunjufu Fellows, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
1976-92 Adjunct professor, Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education
1975 Adjunct professor, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, Illinois
1974-75 Adjunct Professor, 1996 Chicago Theological Seminary Chicago, Illinois
1974 Executive Director, Chicago Center for Black Religious Studies Chicago, Illinois
McCormick Theological Seminary, "Martin Luther King Memorial" Lectures
Princeton Seminary, Preacher (1988, 1997)
The Urban Congress of the Seminary Consortium, "Spiritual Roots for Survival & Liberation Study of the Black Religious Tradition in the Perspective of an Urban Setting"
Yale Divinity School, Preacher (1986)
Riverside Church, New York, Fosdick Convocation on Preaching and Worship, "Preaching: The Art of Connecting People with God" (1997)
National Council of Churches, San Jose Costa Rica, Lecturer, "The Incarnation of Faith in African American Culture: The Struggle for Minority Rights in The North" (1997)
Festival of Homiletics, 4th Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois, "Preaching in the Growing Church" (1997)
The most note worthy is the fact he is a biggit and racist!
Many men have flushed their accomplishments.
Just because u can point to others who have extreme views does not reduce this man feeding a church with continued hate speech.
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