Apologies for my uncharitable ‘en-framing’ of your key points. I will try to get my hands on the Sowell work, as you find it so interesting. And I will try my hardest to suspend my ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ in working through a work of a Hoover Institute member . ;) You can imagine how hard that will be for me!

a) there are plenty of a-holes in any given population segment

b) On average, there is more than one cause of any given phenomenon

Take for example ghetto culture – slavery forced blacks into being owned by a particular segment of the American population. This led to them taking over many traits of said population and in turn internalizing them and viewing them as ‘authentic’. How many are aware that even ‘black’ dialect frequently stems from England ? It’s long died out among English and Southerners. More isolated communities tend to perpetuate various traits. As an example – the Amish speak a German that’s been extinct for ages in Germany.

Or lynchings – lynching had been an uh recreational activity for those particular Anglos back in England. They then transplanted that when they moved. Paired with racism, they lynched people even more easily.

I really recommend Sowell’s essay.

You overstate the case that liberals are somehow foisting an ‘authentic’ black culture, that is actually a form of North Britton crackerdom.

I see your point that there is a destructive embracement of an anti-culture, in the social phenomena of hyper-violent rap, drugs etc., in some urban (and other) centers in our country. And I totally agree that we can never bypass the virtues as a means of self-improvement, no matter what is the socio-economic and culturo-historical situation.

But I contend that you are wrong a) to generalize a culturally malignant “black underclass culture” as THE prime and self-generating cause of social ills; b)and to assume that “institutionalized racism was (has been) removed.”

Donna is upset that we focus on killings that involve whites and the U.S. as perpetrators. It seems that many others are doing it, so what’s all the fuss about us and the U.S?

Is this more of the ‘false guilt’ that we East and West Coast liberals suffer?

Gerald reminds us that “race is a shoddy concept” after all; and enlightens us that blacks were not discriminated against in the North until they acted like Southern white crackers.

I wish history would have deemed the concept so shoody. And those bamboozled African Americans, why did they become so stubborn and mimick their redneck neighbors. The whole world awaited them…

And T. Shaw …

Charity, patience, intellectual honesty, and simple rationality are fleeting. It sounds like most people have given up on constructive dialogue a long time ago and are content with interminable shouting matches.

Can there be no balance?????

Pax Christi,

MM: So it was Nixon’s fault that Pol Pot and his cadre of Marxist thugs murdered everyone in Cambodia who wore glasses and drove everyone out into the countryside to create a socialist uptopia? It’s Bush’s fault that brutal Islamists killed a bishop and blow up innocents in marketplaces? Oh, I guess it is. Because when you look at the world through pink-colored glasses, rule one is Nothing is ever the fault of brown or black people. They have no moral volition, no responsibility – all they can do is react (violently) to what whites or the west does.

At Easter dinner today, 2 liberal members of my family told me they had voted for Obama in the Wisconsin primary, but would not vote for him now. And when I said, teasingly, “So what about McCain?” one startled me by saying “I could live with McCain” while the other one unhappily said he’s thinking of sitting this one out. So they weren’t racist when they voted for OB in the primary, but I guess they’ve became racist over the past week. Because everyone who votes against OB or takes exception to the Rev. Wright must be racist, according to Vox Nova logic.

Politics aside, I hope everyone had a blessed Easter, even my political opposites!

Then denounce their liberalism and shut up about them being black.

And trust me, I think any resemblance you see in your brand of libertarianism and my brand of anarchism is an illusion.

MI: I asked you a question. You did not see the ‘?’ marks????????

Someone’s had too much coffee today.

MI: Do you believe Our Lord gets crucified and harrows hell each and every year?

I think Christ is crucified again every single day. Not sure why the question was directed to me.

T. Shaw, you should watch it with your comments. You’re crossing lines.