Posted on 06/05/2009 1:28:43 PM PDT by Sgt_Schultze
Here is the column that was submitted by Ron Smith, a weekly Baltimore Sun columnist, to the newspaper. However, The Sun decided not to run the piece today for various reasons. Decide for yourself whether the decision makers at The Sun made the right decision.
Because of all the reports I've read and conversations I've had on the radio this week about Baltimore's notorious violence being directed these days randomly at people going about their daily business even in the supposedly safe "touristy" areas of the city, I reached for my copy of Anthropologist Jack Weatherford's book, "Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?"
Weatherford has traveled just about everywhere in his long and distinguished career and during his research began to perceive that the modern world was near its end. He argues that cities, the centers of civilization, are inherently destructive. "They consume the areas around themselves," he writes, "and if they cannot find new materials, they die." Think of it this way: the discipline of archeology arose from what? From the study of dead cities, strewn about the landscape of the world. What kills them? He says the cause is the extravagant habits of consumption and destruction that are at the heart of civilization. Everything is eventually consumed. The forests are denuded. Water, plants, stone, metal, animals, even the land itself is used up. It took thousands of years to consume and destroy the birthplace of civilization in Mesopotamia, and then the pattern continued in the Mediterranean and Europe, with the eventual need to find vast new areas, the Americas and Australia, in order to obtain the resources to replace that which had been consumed.
That game is now over. What can be civilized has been. How, you might wonder, does this tie into the increasing violence in our big cities? I'll tell you. Jack Weatherford is an expert on tribal cultures. He has written books about the epic clash between the Native American and European cultures during the 300 years of warfare between the two. Civilized people have defeated the tribal peoples of the world, who have been killed or scattered. But the tribal people who survived have been moving en masse into the worlds' major urban areas. And as he notes, "Neither the classless society of communism nor the global village of capitalism managed to homogenize the world during the twentieth century." Group conflict, far from being eradicated, has been heightened in modern times. The nation-state swallowed the remaining tribal people but could not digest them.
And that brings us to this startling observation from Mr. Weatherford after spending some time doing field research in Washington, D.C.: "Nowhere in the world had I witnessed as much savagery, brutality, crime and cruelty as I did on the streets of the capital city of the United States." He worked at a bookstore. The clerk who worked at it before him was shot in the head and killed. The clerk who replaced him was beaten with a metal pipe and left for dead. "On the streets of Washington," he writes, "I saw forms of social organization and culture that I had never seen among any tribal people. Everywhere in the world, tribal life centers on the family and family units, but in the center cities of America, the family has broken down." The welfare state put the finishing touches on the destruction of the family.
In the fifteen years since his book was published, we can safely assume things have degenerated even more. Young males in the inner cities pursue their lives and interests separate from the females with whom they beget children. "Much of the male activity," Weatherford observes, "varies between idle boredom and fierce violence." The males coalesce into gangs that operate with warrior bravado. This is the reality: "Aside from a few exclusive and heavily guarded enclaves, the central city is home to the lost." And the lost are lashing out at the rest of us. Wherever uncontrolled crime appears, vigilantism soon follows.
"Soon," writes Weatherford, "it becomes difficult to distinguish one group from the other as the criminals and vigilantes both operate outside the law...in their struggle for control of the streets and the neighborhoods."
Strange things are happening. Unease is widespread. With good reason.
Anthropology is a quaint diversion.
Using terms like savages and tribes to describe the roving gangs of blacks that attack whites for fun in Baltimore will guarantee that your column will not be run by the nations most liberal paper.
“HAAAAA!!!! The only paper more liberal is the Baltimore Sun”
-Chris Mathews of MSNBC on why a Philadelphia paper could not be trusted as unbiased.
“Tribal”.......”Urban”....”young males - bravado, warrior culture” Curious. He is brave enough to insinuate the problem, yet he never specifically gets down to brass tacks. When we finally stop dancing around the words, it will be (is?) too late. They all now think their guy is ‘in charge’......
Good column. The author is stating the obvious. Maybe that’s why they didn’t publish the column.
This simply validates what most of us have known by observation and personal experience.
But the liberal elites say, “Who are you gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?”
An interesting theory
But ‘The One’ will save us
I've been thinking that, especially with all the whack-job lefty stunts going on. It's like the inmates are trying to take control of the asylum or prison rather...
Christ is the only path to lasting civilization. There is no other. As Christ’s following rises and falls, so goes “civilization”. Bank on it.
It emboldened them enough to have black thugs with billy clubs outside of a polling place telling white people “you’re about to be ruled by the black man, cracker”.
Sure as hell they are emboldened, you can see it in their eye, walk, talk, everything.
And, ironically, you never get down to brass tacks, either.
But here's the deal, FRiend -- it isn't the fact that these guys are black that makes them savages. It's the culture in which they grew up.
You'll find essentially the same sort of savagery among any group of males so-raised, regardless of their race.
Really?
Those pesky Jews might have something else to say about this.
After all, they’ve been around A LOT LONGER.
Although I’ll agree culture has a lot to do with it, my experience tells me differently than yours. We just disagree.
We are being undone by barbarians. Barbarian is not a race or a creed. Barbarian is a place where the law does not exist. Survival of the strong is a barbarian creed.
So... you think black people are genetically pre-disposed to be savages?
Yes, we will indeed "just disagree."
Look, when called to form a word for tribal, urban, etc. you were the one whose first thoughts put the word “black” to it, hypocrit! Don’t put words in my mouth, you aren’t man enough. You could have just as easily put “Hispanic, Chinese, etc.” to it but you chose otherwise. Go away.
I was merely putting into words the words what you were actually saying ... and had ironically criticized Mr. Smith for not saying.
What you implied was perfectly clear, sir. I'm just calling you out for it.
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