Re: Social Security Reform - Today's News.........
I've really tried to avoid this debate, but this last posting makes me want to repeat Cutthroat's question . . . What are you suggesting?
Several posters seem to be saying, "I'm not a racist but I believe that there are intelligence and/or fundamental moral difference between the races." Or maybe you are just saying that you are open to the idea that there may be such a difference.
If you look carefully at what I said, you will see that an underclass is not racially distinct. Because of its urban location and political strength, in the USA people are often talking about African-Americans with this term. (See for example Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Thomas Sowell, and many others.) I am not. There is a white underclass, more often rural, that is also very resistant to change. Likewise the former East Germans, who are as white as people can get are resistant to change, no matter how much money gets thrown at them. I didn't mention this, but there are the Turks in Germany, and North African Arabs in France. These groups have nothing in common with North American underclasses, other than they are very resistant to being mainstreamed and they represent a burden of crime and social support.
What I am suggesting is that throwing money at this problem hasn't worked, and won't work.
You are correct that that is an assertion, not a statement of fact. This is true of 85% of what gets posted here, or in the newspaper, or anywhere else.
It won't be fact until the US ceases to exist and historians have a go at it, and even then surviving liberals can say we just didn't keep it up long enough.
Just like in everything else in life you assess probabilities and take your best estimate. I am not a political leader. Even if I had an idea what might work, which I don't, I couldn't bring it about. People sometimes speak against criticizing something unless you have a solution. This is ignorance, pure and simple. If people cannot criticize what is not working, how in the world could they ever begin to figure out better approaches? If a patient in the ICU is going downhill on some drug, the doctor doesn't just keep giving it to him. He tries something else
I am against uncontrolled immigration. The biggest reason is that the new unskilled immigrants legal and otherwise are taking jobs that might otherwise be available to the underclass that is already here. In my opinion, we owe more to the struggling people already here of whatever race (or as one poster suggested, there are no races) than to new imports. Incidentally, this is not an off the wall idea among people who are able to cut their own grass and take care of their own children. A recent book by Samuel Huntington, the Alfred Weatherhead University Professor of Political Science at Harvard makes this point and others about US national identity. The name of the book is Who Are We?
The only thing that bothers you about my post is that it is well reasoned and I believe it shows that we are in the soup.
The only thing that bothers me about your post is that it seems to signal an astonishing fear of even contemplating the possibility that we as a society may have made and are continuing to make some mistaken choices.
Mikey