I'm going to get myself in trouble here...just saying.CowboyT wrote:Then how about more of us in the firearms community actually doing this? I have seen, time and again, rants on how evil/bad the "Muslims" or the "Arabs" are. This is even going so far as to call the new Miss USA "Miss Shiite Muslim America". Some other members here (correctly) said "hey, both are hot!" But too many others, not only here but many other places, see just "an Arab/Muslim, therefore an enemy." Not exactly Dr. King's reasoning.zephyp wrote:Well, consider outright discrimination of whites in the past and currently while we are still a majority. How do you think that's going to work when we the minority? There are still bigots on both sides and discrimination isnt going to go away until they all go away.CowboyT wrote: 'Scuze me...sounds like you're (assuming you're white) afraid of not being the majority any more. Why would you consider that necessarily a bad thing?
There would be no fear from anyone if we could all apply Dr King's reasoning...let a man not be judged by the color of his skin...
I have seen "the majority", i. e. whites, doing all sorts of bad things to folks who don't look like them (e. g. my Dad, a black man--oh, could I tell you stories!). I've heard several call Pres. Obama "Sambo" at gun shows (I was behind the VCDL booth at the time) and elsewhere. Again, not exactly Dr. King's reasoning.
These people correctly criticize Jeremiah Wright. "Rev." Wright is a wacko nutjob. But they'll be quick to defend even the likes of David Duke and Chris Plante when they go on similar racial/religious tirades (in Plante's case, I know about this from personal experience). These backers of such bigotry will also say the most hateful of things themselves, and unfortunately, there are a whole lot of 'em doing it.
When I see more in the firearms community (e. g. at this board and many others) applying Dr. King's reasoning, then I might say, "OK, you guys have much more moral ground to stand on" to quote Dr. King like that. If folks are going to quote him, then they need to act on it, too. Fair is fair.
Zehpyp, it would be interesting to discuss this with you over a Frappucino or whatever. I imagine it would be enlightening on both ends.
I interpreted Zephyp's comments through the following two lenses.
First, the founding fathers ideals have all but disintegrated within our society. It use to be that everyone who came here was expected to learn these ideals and adhere to them, not just demonstrate basic English skills and pledge allegiance to the current government. This disintegration is occurring within even the "white" population. When we discuss places like Kalifornia, people in the South jokingly comment about it falling off into the ocean or being given back to Mexico with no great loss as long as the people living there go with it too. It is getting to the point we agree on virtually nothing, not even the meaning of "is."
One social ill that contributed to this was slavery. It has nothing to do with the color of the slaves skin, but rather the concept. Generally, a slave either hates or loves his master (in a weird kind of way). A whole segment of the American populace was taught, through their experiences, to hate those ideals and anyone who wishes to uphold them. See, they incorrectly blame those ideals for their conditions. The government furthers this myth by controlling the public education system. It has become accepted fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery rather than Lincoln freeing the slaves as an economic penalty to the South. Taggure probably still has the references to this from his recent history class...Lincoln's own words.
This disintegration isn't about race. Case in point. I am a libertarian and want a very limited government. Every time we argue something where I believe the government has overstepped its' bounds and is causing a suboptimal (or rather a dismal) result, some people completely shut down. They were taught in government schools that we have checks and balances, that what we have today is the highest form of freedom available to the people and government is the solution to whatever troubles us. In a way, they are a form of slaves to an ideal which the government only puts on a façade of upholding. Any argument to the contrary and they don't even know where to start with it (usually because government schools don't teach people how to think, but rather what to think). Of course there are exceptions.
See, whole generations of whites, blacks, and all the other races have been conditioned to accept that the founder's ideology upheld the system of slavery rather than a social ill we inherited (no, we aren't innocent, but it wasn't a Southern phenomenon) from our British brothern. Ironically, the empire ideology was one thing we rebelled against which was the economic reason for keeping slaves. Today, laissez-faire capitalists know, understand and have shown that there were far cheaper ways to pick cotton and other things. I.e. getting rid of slavery makes economic sense; everyone gets richer. The government schools fail to teach the fact that Adam Smith published his famous book the same year we declared independence. Furthermore, capitalism as a formal system wasn't really getting formulated until Carl Menger after the Civil War. Economic thought was significantly behind other fields. It was Meger who really got this whole capitalism theory rolling with his theory of marginal utility, which everyone now accepts as true. Classical economists were still searching for the hidden value function of all objects, which Menger showed doesn't exist.
The founder's ideology contradicted slavery and many of them were deeply concerned about it. They lacked the economic theory to show it made everyone poorer, not richer. Yet, the founders get a black eye for it and whole segments of the minority population (and even a lot of whites) are searching for a new ideology and they have found it in statism and collectivism.
American's today agree on words which we have virtually no understanding of what they actually meant when that contract, the US Constitution, was written. It is not a lack of source documents either.
How can any country survive its' own disintegration? It can't. Due to the awful social ill of slavery, most blacks reject the founders ideals. The same is true for many whites. The same is true for many other minorities, but for other reasons like illegal immigration. The immigrants in southern Kalifornia don't want to become Americans and uphold our ideals, they want it back!
It takes people like CowbowT who have an epiphany about the founder's ideals.
Second, the lack of morals in all racial segments is worrisome, but the fact that the two segments who statistically make up most of the gang violence are becoming the majority is a problem. There are many moral Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, etc., but they seem to be disproportionally missing from the Black and Hispanic cultures. There are a lot of reasons for this and not all of them are the Blacks/Hispanics fault, but some of them are. They have whole sections of their culture that glorify violence to women, to other races, to each other. E.g. being a gang member and bustin a cap in someone's a$$ is glorified, it is an achievement.
That culture of violence, no self respect and lack of self control is contrary to the founder's ideals. It is a culture thing. For example, Muslims have a similar problem. The reason women must remain covered is that men can not control themselves. If a man sees a women uncovered, even just her face, he may lose control and have sexual intercourse with her. Here in the West, men are expected to control themselves and are convicted of rape when they don't. In Muslim cultures they generally stone the women to death while the man goes free; he was the victim after all.
The founders culture is superior to any other in the world today or then. The United States did not grow this prosperous and powerful by accident. Whenever a culture is consistent with the Creators laws, it will be prosperous. It will face advisories, it will have troubles and social ills, but it will prosper in the end if it continues to uphold those ideals. If it falls from those ideals it will collapse. The statistical results are merely measuring the natural outcome of the culture. All is not well with the various white cultures either.
The founder's culture had its flaws and we have fixed some of them. The problem is we also threw the baby out with the bathwater. Our culture was predominately white due to historical reasons, but the founder's ideals aren't only for white people. We must defend our culture against all comers because the alternatives are inferior. Our culture and our ideals are not our government. When necessary, we must protect liberty against even our own leaders.
