Posted on 05/03/2015 12:04:52 PM PDT by Uhhh
If you read anything tonight, read this.
Some protestors in Baltimore are receiving a lot of criticism from conservatives for the way that they are expressing themselves. I find it interesting that one of the most conservative & most vocal groups, the Tea Party libertarians, are named after an event where colonists destroyed property in Boston in order to make a point about their rights. I find it very interesting that these same conservatives celebrate our violent succession from the motherland, & throw elaborate celebrations on the 4th of July to mark the day of our independence.
I've not once heard a conservative wish that the colonists, who felt they were not represented fairly by the ruling government, had instead held peaceful protests in order that parliament would itself implement changes on behalf of the colonists.
This is full blown hypocrisy.
Fighting for your rights, standing up against an oppressive, non-representative government are the principles our country was founded on. Our bill of rights says that all men were created equal, even when equal rights weren't anything close to a reality at the time, for minorities or for women. But when white people assert themselves, it's patriotic. When black people assert themselves, they're thugs. They're criminals. They're rioters.
Let's all acknowledge that black poverty & much of the resulting crime remains a function of slaves being freed with no education, no family support, & no wealth. And even after emancipation, their humanity went unacknowledged by many. In my mother's lifetime, Emmett Till was lynched in Chicago. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered as my mom graduated from high school. We are all just a single generation removed from integration, from Lester Maddox openly marketing ax handles in opposition to President Lyndon Johnson's assertion of blacks' civil rights.
The protests are about an unarmed black man being violently mistreated & killed while in police custody. And, make no mistake, each & every police officer should be trained to subdue an unarmed detainee without severing his spine. And in such a tragic situation, medics should be called to keep the man from dying, if that's even possible. But this is also about decades of accumulated mistreatment & oppression. This is about manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. This is about the minimum wage remaining stagnant. This is about broken window policing tactics. This is about economic growth tiptoeing around black neighborhoods. This is about an unjust war on drugs & the privatized industrial prison complex. This is about leaving the lower class behind as wealth inequality soars, & then punishing them for it with harsh policing.
The solution here is obvious. Make examples of bad cops by punishing them for the crimes that they're committing against civilians. But also we have implement policies that grow the lower & middle class, that return upward mobility to the lower rungs of our economy & make the American Dream possible for all. Dramatically increase minimum wage, raise taxes on the rich & punish them for outsourcing jobs. Create infrastructure building/maintaining jobs out of increased tax revenue. Even as the rich continue to get richer, our economy has grown at a laughable 2.2% since the '08 recession because there is very little middle class spending, which is the engine of American economic growth.
Paying taxes was once considered to be patriotic, & the wealthiest tax bracket paid as much as 90% in taxes after World War II (before tax breaks, obviously, but these tax breaks allowed the government to encourage the wealthy to spend money in ways that benefitted the country, rather than pay that money in taxes). This is how our country was built, & how it became the predominant super power that it is.
Today the opposite is true. The rich want no part of taxes, & yet they take all of the credit for building our country. And we're growing ever weaker for it. These protests are exposing cracks in the facade. Quite simply, we are not moving in a positive direction as a country, with giant corporations deciding legislation & most decisions being made at the expense of the majority of us. These are functions of economic inequality.
The Baltimore police ought to respond to these protests by reviewing their policies, implementing real changes in the way that they police the streets in Baltimore, & levying criminal charges against the officers involved in Freddie Gray's death. But it is ALSO our own responsibility to acknowledge what's happening in Baltimore & around the country, & to vote in politicians who will implement policies on behalf of the lower & middle class, restore our economy to health, & end the joyride that the rich are currently taking at our expense.
Well of course it’s ridiculous....I expect nothing less from the left. They are all about twisting and manipulating anything and everything to attain the “perception” they want seen and heard to the masses..... They are always masquerading behind something else.
BTW.... Welcome to FR.
"exploitin' the workers -- by 'hanging' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and' social differences in our society! .."
But when white people assert themselves, it's patriotic. When black people assert themselves, they're thugs. They're criminals. They're rioters.
This isn't a matter of "asserting yourself." Those jerks in the streets of Baltimordor Monday were having the time of their lives.
The writer speaketh excrement. And that is as nice as I can put it.
Nice that fighting for their rights and standing up against oppression happened to endow some of them with a new wide screen TV, new Nike shoes, or whatever else — free of charge. I remember back when it was a crime to steal. Now I guess it is just free speech?
“uhhh. I have no words.”
Seems that way.
This is full blown hypocrisy.
This ignorant bloviator has never once heard a conservative wish that the colonists, who felt they were not represented fairly by the ruling government, had instead held peaceful protests in order that parliament would itself implement changes on behalf of the colonists. That is because educated Americans (i.e., conservatives) know that the colonists held months of peaceful protests over taxation without representation in the Tea Acts of 1773. In every colony except Massachusetts, peaceful protests led to the return of the taxed tea to England. In Massachusetts, Governor Hutchinson refused to return the tea because his sons would have profited from the shipment.
This is full blown ignorance from a liberal. Again.
He was world-class powerlifter, Olympic weightlifter and all-around strongman. He also held the shot put and discus throwing records at ASU in the mid-60's. He was a versatile athlete, holding the distinction of being the only person in the world to win two AAU national titles is two sports, powerlifting and track and field.
He ran the 100 yard dash at an ASU track meet in 1969 at 258 lbs., in 9.9 seconds He threw a javelin 281 ft. in an AAU track meet in 1968, the discus 231 ft. and the shot put over 71 ft. at an AAU meet in 1972. He was documented and verified to have thrown a baseball 435 ft and placed kicked a football 68 yards in 1967 at ASU.
I lost track of Jon after school when I went into the Air Force. I heard from some school classmates that he passed away in 2013. He was the best all-around athlete in individual sports there was in the 1960s and 70s.
thanks for warm welcome. I will try to dig up the guy that wrote it. But it was a Facebook post that was being circulated like dogma. I thought you creepers would enjoy the read. You have to hand it to the leftist activists. They are very creative in twisting facts to paint the picture they want shown. Its really sucks that they are changing the perception of police and rich people. And the Demecrats ability to capitalize on this divisiveness is even more frustrating. Punish the rich and reward failure might as well be their slogan.
I located him on FB. He is a white guy from Athens, GA with hipster features. He goes on to excuse the actions of the few violent protesters in a comment:
“Also, to be fair, the violent protestors are the minority of the protestors... I don’t mean to paint the entire protest as violent. I was mostly responding to something I heard on Sean Hannity’s radio program yesterday & the general hypocrisy/unwillingness to understand that I see mostly coming from conservatives.
But even though the violent protestors are the minority & even though the violence may have been sparked by folks with ulterior motives, as Martin Luther King said, rioting is the language of the unheard, & this is no less true today than it was in 1773. To condemn the rioting is to condone the conditions that have created a widespread feeling of helplessness in Baltimore, & if the peaceful protests go unheard, the violence is then justified. So it’s up to those in charge to make the violent protests unnecessary by listening & responding to the people the Baltimore, & the people elsewhere who empathize with the protestors. And it’s up to us to vote in politicians who will respond.”
Damn - the guy didn't even make it through the second sentence. Our bill of rights says nothing of the sort. The Declaration of Independence does.
Black cops, black city council, black mayor. Whatever the rioters in Baltimore are protesting, it isn't lack of representation.
You want to declare independence? By all means, do it! Please! No more depending on the white man for your food, your shelter, your income, your enfranchisement ... GO! Found your own independent country and leave mine the F-— alone!
Unfortunately, I think the Jon Cole I knew, who’s picture you posted, is not the same Jon Cole who wrote this article He died in 2013 and the article was written in 2015.
Once and for all, the TEA Party is NOT named for the Boston Tea Party. It is the Taxed Enough Already MOVEMENT. We are NOT a political party (not yet, anyway and certainly not part of the Uniparty).
Allowing Liberals to continue this mischaracterization is as bad as they doing it.
Riots are caused by THUGS who think they can bully their way through law enforcement
Riots are to tea party as Bruce Jenner is to Miss America.
“Tea Party Libertarians...” Ha. That is funny. This guy is sooooooo smart.
WELL PLAYED!
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