Symptomatic
A few days ago I happened to be listening to "Marketplace"* on PBS. In particular, the segment was on demand-driven publishing: digitizing content means that printers can nearly as efficiently print one copy of a book as a whole run. That, in turn, means a few good things: far less wastage, greatly tightening the supply chain, and the ability to satisfy demand, no matter how small.
One of the examples given was the consequences of a recent Glen Beck program, touting " ... an obscure economics text ... ": there was a sudden demand for copies, which these demand-driven printing companies were easily and quickly able to satisfy.
The name of that "obscure economics text"? Road to Serfdom.
*Any program that features Robert Reich as a commentator, or considers Road to Serfdom obscure, and calls itself "Marketplace", must be utterly immune to irony.
One of the examples given was the consequences of a recent Glen Beck program, touting " ... an obscure economics text ... ": there was a sudden demand for copies, which these demand-driven printing companies were easily and quickly able to satisfy.
The name of that "obscure economics text"? Road to Serfdom.
*Any program that features Robert Reich as a commentator, or considers Road to Serfdom obscure, and calls itself "Marketplace", must be utterly immune to irony.
posted by Hey Skipper at 8:22 PM
113 Comments:
Famous in its day, which passed 50 years ago when anybody who cared noticed that none of Hayek's predictions came true.
Until Beck, 'Road' readership was pretty much limited to libertarians, a fringe political movement.
One wonders whether Hayek would be well pleased to share Beck's shelf with some of his other recommendations.
Where Marketplace erred was to esuppose that 'Serfdom' was a good example to illustrate on-demand publishing. It isn't. It's been in ordinary circulation all along.
My copy, printed in the '90s, includes Hayek's hilariously lame mid-'50s attempt to explain why serfs had disappeared.
We must not have read the same book.
Solyndra went bust a few months ago. Some other solar manufacturer is on the verge, as is Fisker.
IIRC, and since it has been a few years, my memory might be off, RtS predicted those outcomes.
And was prescient about the predations of fascism/communism.
But, like I said, perhaps we didn't read the same book.
Skipper, the book was the same, it was the reading comprehension that differed. You read the words as written, Harry read it the same way he reads and processes everything, through a glass of lefty presuppositions darkly.
Hayek predicted predatory pricing?
Well, he should have, but he didn't.
Where are the serfs? He promised serfs.
Now, if he had written a book entitled 'The Road to Stability and Democracy through Bigger Government and Higher Taxes,' he'd have been on to something.
This is Europe's golden age.
For once I agree with Harry. When Europe reaches rock bottom, this will seem like its Golden Age.
Hayek predicted that goverment would make bad investment choices, which it did. The people who really should have predicted predatory pricing are Solyndra and its government backers, but they didn't really care because it was OPM.
As for serfs, we are moving that direction with public sector unions vs. taxpayers. In Illinois, for example, the state constitution forbids reduction of state worker pensions. So the ruling class can hand over unlimited amounts of citizen cash to their loyalists, and they have done so. That's basically how serfs started out in Europe as well, where the government acquired de facto unlimited rights over the output of their labor.
In real history,of course, serfdom arose from the absence of government, but I can see why a min-archist would want to pretend that was not so.
erp, given your background, I am shocked you would say such a thing, since I know you are old enough to remember when Europe was almost entirely fascist, violent and unfree.
We saved them from that fascism in pretty short order, but we should have saved ourselves the trouble and a lot of lives and treasure if we just stayed home especially now that they refer to those unpleasantries as the "European Civil War"
They voluntarily and with great enthusiusm embraced the kind of fascism you like and they'll need to get out of that all by themselves although if the election in France is a harbinger of things to come, Euroweenies haven't hit rock bottom yet and are looking for more, not less, state interference in their lives and it doesn't look like their are any people like our founding fathers in the wings to lead them out of the darkness.
BTW - IMO it'll be a lot more violent and unfree with Islamists to contend with as well as the EU aristocrats in power pandering to them with both hands.
This summer in London with the olympics will be quite an eye-opener and I hope a lesson learned for voters here who may still be thinking of giving the great black and white hope another four years to bring us to the paradise of Euroland.
Europe's golden age.
You want to suggest a time in Europe that was better than today? Go ahead. I'm all ears.
But linking to racist sites does not impress me, not favorably, anyway.
erp, want to have a fiver on the Olympics being at least as peaceful as the ones in 'o8? Don't people read Joseph Conrad these days? 'The Secret Agent' is any eyeopener.
I would say the 1980s or 1990s were better for Europe than today. That was probably the peak for them.
"linking to racist sites"
Yes, if you can't dispute the facts, pound the table. I just laugh when I read the word "racist" from you.
Harry Eagar wrote: "...serfdom arose from the absence of government..."
So first complete anarchy, then wallah, serfdom? No monarchy or anything like that? No kings, warlords, or anything around as feudal society developed?
Just a bunch of people mindin' their own business with no one doin' any governin' or rulin' and BANG, overnight, everybody's a serf except the rulers (i.e. government) that mysteriously appeared out of the blue.
Who knew?
aog wrote: "That was probably the peak for them [europeans]"
Peak what?
Peak relative power? Probably peaked about a century ago.
Peak per capita income? Things will still get better over time as new technology comes on line.
Peak per capita income relative to China? Hard to know. That peak may be a few decades old, or China may implode with the peak yet to come.
Peak per capita income relative to country X? Depends on how country X does.
Peak socialism? Maybe still in the future, though countries like Sweden have been cutting back their welfare state (and Sweden is doing pretty well at the moment).
Regarding "racist" and "racism".
I heard the following conversation. Person 1, "Damn, I forgot the beer at the store". Person 2, "You Racist!"
I'll have to give that to Obama. He single handedly managed to remove all relevant meaning from those words. I guest that's what they all meant by "post-racial society". Everybody hates everybody else more than ever, but the words that one might describe that hatred with have no meaning anymore.
So yes, yes, we're all racist all the time. I certainly don't take those terms seriously anymore.
I would say peak as a civilization, or quality of life.
I think peak as a civilization is hard to define. I think that ability to project force is the dominant measure there.
Quality of life has a subjective component, but objectively, GDP per capita is a decent measure. I bet in 50 years their GDP per capita is higher than it is now.
I see you guys don,t know about serfs. No surprise, really. Economic history is a closed book to most people.
No, no kings. Those came later. Their is a school of historians, the Annalistes, who have elucidated the history of serfdom. The Germans murdered one of the greatest of them, among the reasons I think this is Europe's golden age.
Few historians are murdered for being nationalists, although the number is not quite down to 0.
That NRO is a racist site is, of course, well known. It fired Derbyshire for blatant racism, although the genteel kind is still the norm there.
It's you who don't know, as we went around on this before and you had no idea what "latifundia" were. If you don't know that, you don't understand serfdom. But history that doesn't agree with you is a non-existent book for you.
P.S. Thanks for the laugh at the end, I was feeling a bit down this morning.
Derbyshire was fired because Republicans in leadership positions are mostly callous cowards who are perfectly satisfied with the status quo which allows them comfortable lives in the media/politics. They have no intention of discussing any contentious issues or the conventional wisdom of their overseers, so it's easier to fire somebody who says something contrarian than to have reasoned discourse about it.
BTW, you might take a moment from telling those who disagree with your viewpoint that we're evil morons and review the various meanings of the homonyms: there, their, they're.
BTW 2, what's your definition of "serf"?
erp,
Derbyshire's post was pretty bad. Did you read it? The gist was avoid areas that might have blacks because it's likely you'll get hurt. If he was writing for my blog, I would've asked him to go somewhere else to do his writing after that particular screed.
There are many ways to discuss race and crime statistics. He pretty much chose the nastiest approach possible with the least opportunity for constructive debate.
No, he was fired because he declared himself a racist. At least, that was what NRO said.
Not sure why you think I don't know what latifundia are. I do know.
Have known since I was a teenager.
A serf, erp, is a farmer who places himself in servitude to a warrior in exchange for protection. It was, of course, one of those free market relations you guys are so enthusastic about, for reasons that escape me.
It is not clear why Hayek thought a road to serfdom was undesireable, since it was a voluntary arrangement of the type he claimed to admire so much.
Possibly, he didn't know much about the subject.
Harry,
Soooooooooo, serfs voluntarily placed themselves in servitude aka gave up their freedom to a lord/strongman/o'erweening government for their security/protection and by you this is how the free market works?
Sounds like the opposite to me. Sounds like socialism. The gunmint gives you other people’s hard earned money and you voluntarily (or illegally) vote for them and every election, they have to up the ante till the economy is in the shape of the Golden Age of Euroweenieland.
I hope it doesn't take us as long and that we won't have as hard a time getting out from under your version of the free market as the serfs did.
Bret,
I didn't read what Derbyshire wrote (and didn't read "analyses" of it in the media) because reading NRO and leftwing propaganda depresses and annoys me, but it doesn't matter whether what he said was true, false, a lie, etc. because firing him just pandered to lefties. Perhaps Derbyshire made some good points or his arguments were so silly they could have been blown away.
The end result is more grist for the lefty mill, i.e., big influential right wing (I wish) media outlet fires rabid racist writer they had on the payroll for many year proving conservatives (couldn’t find one at NR with a GPS) love money and hate people of color, gays, women, the homeless, helpless animals on land and in the sea and air …
erp, Derbyshire wasn't the only open racist NRO fired.
The Martin case brought the closet racists out in droves, and the stench was too much even for NRO to stand.
The idea that NRO was currying favor with leftists is too funny. The tea parties and the rightwing of the Republican party are full of racists, and they are welcome as long as they are a bit genteel about it.
It is to the credit of the mainstream of the right that is has become uncomfortable with open racism. It used to wallow in it, but even rightwingers can be taught decency, although it does take a discouragingly long time.
I took my grandchildren to a public play area in the Deep South today, and the little black and white kids played unconcernedly together.
That could not have happened before leftism crept over the South.
The reason I suspect rightwingers of racism is that, until I was 20 years old, I had never met one who wasn't. It was quite a few years before I met another, too.
Now, over 40 years later, non-racist rightwingers are not uncommon. But the old kind are not uncommon either.
It wasn't just the Derbyshire's last post was rancid. The Internet never forgets. He'd been writing the same stuff, slightly less frank, all along, NRO never objected until the Martin case spotlighted it.
erp;
I think he means the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case, which certainly did bring out a lot of racists who presumed that since Martin was black, Zimmerman had to be guilty. That Zimmerman is an hispanic, Democratic Party member made The Narrative a little harder to sustain, but the racists just invented the term "white hispanic" and it was on.
Sorry, for some reason I thought the poor murdered-in-cold-blood child's name was Miller.
The fact the Zimmerman would be widely thought of as being Jewish didn't hurt the narrative either.
On both sides. But more interestingly on the right. I mean, NRO claims to speak for the Republican right. That's what it was set up to do.
If any equivalent voice on the left exposed its racism, I haven't seen it. Just some random idiots.
ero, simply defining everything good as 'right' won't get the job done. The right oppressed the American blacks as a matter of, shall we say, right. I see much (though not everything) through a lens of racism because where and when I was brought up, that's how the dominant social class defined everything.
It wasn'ty leftists, you know, who put up 'colored only' water fountains.
Should you like to read something about it (I know you won't, you refuse to read anything), the first four chapters of 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' wouldn't take long and would disabuse you of a few prejudices.
It was Democrats who put up the "colored only" signs, not Republicans. There were few Republicans in the south if you recall and they certainly didn’t run things.
Who cares what NRO claims? They can claim the earth is flat and pigs can fly, but it doesn't change the facts and the fact is, they don't speak for us.
BTW - the left's entire schtick is racist, i.e., if one's skin is dark, according to the Compassionates, one is ipso facto incapable of becoming a self-sufficient member of We, the People, ready and able to shoulder the responsibilities of adulthood and contribute to the common weal while enjoying the freedom that comes with it. Dark skinned people, in the cant of the left, must be herded and kept in custodial care, goaded to be as childlike and irresponsible as possible so that poverty pimps and community organizers can live like pashas off their misery. That’s a lot worse than name-calling in the school yard. Too bad young kids aren’t taught that, as George Herbert said, “Living well is the best revenge.”
If black leaders and other lefties had any integrity, they would stop doing what they’re doing and start cleaning up their acts, get the unions out of the schools and insist they are made safe havens where children are taught to love learning, give them positive role models, etc. It’s a proven and easy method, works for kids of all skin colors and could put the welfare state out of business in one generation or less.
BTW Harry – you didn’t speak to fact that black immigrants don’t seem to have any trouble entering into every sector American society and don’t need to rely on affirmative action to do so. Ya got any obscure books and graphs to show why this is so?
"If any equivalent voice on the left exposed its racism, I haven't seen it."
I have no doubt of that - there are none so blind as those who will not see, even though I mentioned one here already, the New York Times and their "white hispanic" pander. There's MSNBC with Al Sharpton. The Congressional Black Caucus. President Obama. CNN. CBS. But I suppose one might well label all of those as "random idiots" and it would be hard to object. Who that would leave on the left as not a random idiot is a different question.
I also agree that it was "more interestingly on the right" because this kind of blatant racism is simply what rational observers expect from the left. "Yes, the Obama Administration is opening embracing Al Sharpton, racist fomenter of civil unrest". Same old, same old, as erp points out.
erp, you are completely delusional. It wasn't leftists putting up all those 'Impeach Earl Warren' billboards eveey 10 miles.
It's true the people putting them up were Democrats, but that were far rightists. We know them today as the Republican 'base.'
You say, "It's true that people putting up 'Impeach Earl Warren' billboards were Democrats," but you and all the other cool kids were on to them becoming future rightwingers -- and you call me delusional ... and we, i.e., people not consumed with guilt, know nothing about yesterday's lefties becoming the Republican base.
Why not give it a rest now. You probably have/had the best of intentions, but your philosophy doesn't work. It harms everyone and those you purport to help the most.
Still waiting for your take on why black immigrants don't experience the rabid white racism that impedes success blacks born here claim is keeping them poor and ignorant ... and please don't invoke slavery unless you'd like to comment on the Luo, President's Obama's ancestral tribe, who sold their fellow Africans to the Arab slave traders and converted to Islam in the bargain.
The first candidate to ask Obama about his African roots in the slave trade will get a very generous campaign contribution from me.
Then there's this.
erp;
Typical disingenuousness from Old Media. Publish the lie, get it established as The Narrative, then walk it back so later, when we point out the former, they can point to the latter despite the non-equivalent effect. Another theory is Old Media is worrying about legal liability for publishing libelous "news".
NBC is already on life support and a huge lawsuit by Zimmerman may well finish them off. Other media not far behind. I got an email from a legal eagle type speculating that Zimmerman will include Obama and Holder among other poverty pimps in his lawsuit. He'll need a big payoff because unlike Bork, he has nothing to fall back on being just a working class stiff and not a Yale professor.
This may turn out to the October suprise the Won didn't hope for.
a. I went to Catholic school because it was convenient. They took me in and I had a great time there, but I didn't buy into the theology.
b. It isn't I who says that U.S. blacks can't do well. It's your side who tells them they can't succeed because white racism is keeping them back.
c. Your frequent recital of the vagaries of the Republican and Democratic mix and matches over the decades makes no sense.
d. Impeach Earl Warren signs smell like the work of rabble rousing community organizers and aren't relevant to this reasoned discourse.
BTW - I never even met a Republican or a Prostestant until I was married and we moved to Connecticut at age 23. I knew a lot of Jews though because the Orthodox temple was within walking distance of our house.
You're wrong about Zimmerman and repeating all the media lies after even NBC and CNN have walked them back is just plain orneriness.
PS: I am not a Republican nor a racist as you know very well.
Well, since I haven't said a word about Zimmerman, I could hardly be wrong about him.
I was talking about Catholic theology. I was thinking about the fake history the sisters taught you. Like McCarthy was right and a hero.
No doubt you learned that in school. So did I. But later on, I found out I had been lied to.
Harry Eagar writes
"when you assume, like Zimmerman, that all people with black skin are criminal failures."
"I haven't said a word about Zimmerman"
If you are this willing to discard inconvenient bits of history, why should we trust you on any other statements about history?
Harry, I'm a lot older than that.
McCarthy wasn't even a cinder in the eye of the pinkoes when I left the 8th grade, but I was told that he was wrong in public high school. Luckily by then I was an old hand at thinking for myself and didn't believe that catechism either.
I have since been proven right on McCarthy. It remains to be seen if I was also right about Catholicism.
You might be amused to know that even then I was able to separate the chaff from the wheat and took the part of defending McCarthy in a school debate and, much to the chagrin of the teacher, won the point with the other students. :-)
The only history the nuns taught that might be considered a bit exaggerated was the part played by Jesuits in the winning of the west, but I forgave them that little conceit because they gave me the most precious gift of all, the English language and along with that mathematics, history, geography, music, art ...
For that and for their kindness, I am forever grateful.
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You want to suggest a time in Europe that was better than today? Go ahead. I'm all ears.
After Thatcher, through about 2007.
It is worth remembering that unemployment in nearly all European countries during that period would be high by US standards (8-10%).
Of course, there were two reasons it was going as well as it was for Europe: socialism hadn't yet used up other people's money, and they had been free-riding on the US for both internal and external security; Libya and the FYR both make that point perfectly.
European demographics are in the tank, and socialism there has put deadweights, no accounts, and the lazy in charge. And just to make sure it would all explode, the EU cooked up the Euro. There were plenty of non-socialist economists who forecast precisely how that was all going to go wrong. Unfortunately, socialist magical thinking is almost completely immune to reality.
But linking to racist sites does not impress me, not favorably, anyway.
A perfect example of the ad hominem fallacy. The link could have been to a nose-picking site, but all that matters is what the link itself contained. The fact you attacked the alleged characteristic of the site, rather than the argument on offer, says nothing good about your point.
I happened to read the item for which Derbyshire got fired. Aside from a decidedly impolitic presentation, I was a little mystified about which parts were, in fact, racist.
Within the last week, the NYT ran a long form article on gun violence — it came from a conference of police chiefs from mid-size (populations of 300,000 - 600,000), and was based upon the same week's worth of crime reports. One of the main observations from the article was that gun violence was concentrated in urban "minority" neighborhoods.
Is that racist?
Eliminate African Americans from US mortality stats, and the US becomes statistically indistinguishable from all those European countries that we are supposed to be emulating.
Is that racist?
Several years ago, in City Journal, Heather MacDonald wrote a piece highlighting the differences in crime rates between blacks and everyone else.
Is that racist?
I'm pretty certain the answer in each case is no. Which leaves me wondering what it is, precisely, that makes what Derbyshire said that is actually racist, and what it is that makes NRO a racist site.
I didn't say he was polite, or that he was constructive. But I'd like to see a definition of the word "racist", and a comparison of that definition with what he wrote.
In real history,of course, serfdom arose from the absence of government …
Serfdom arose, and was perpetuated in, a set of circumstances so vastly different from today's that you would be better served discussing the similarities between pigs and eagles.
erp, given your background, I am shocked you would say such a thing, since I know you are old enough to remember when Europe was almost entirely fascist, violent and unfree.
Harry, could you perhaps explain the significant differences between socialism and fascism?
A serf, erp, is a farmer who places himself in servitude to a warrior in exchange for protection. It was, of course, one of those free market relations you guys are so enthusiastic about, for reasons that escape me.
It is not clear why Hayek thought a road to serfdom was undesirable, since it was a voluntary arrangement of the type he claimed to admire so much.
So let me see if I have your reasoning right here. Serfdom was one voluntary arrangement among many, within a context of widely voluntary relationships.
Therefore, since we live in a largely meritorious society characterized by voluntary arrangements, we have lots of serfs.
Right?
It is to the credit of the mainstream of the right that is has become uncomfortable with open racism.
Perhaps you should review the history of Progressives and race.
As for US=born blacks not doing so well, my wife's surgeon is one. You reveal yourself to have swallowed the current Republican line when you assume, like Zimmerman, that all people with black skin are criminal failures.
That is an epic comprehension failure. You wife's surgeon is not native born blacks. To review, singular are not plural. It is objectively true that, as a group, blacks suffer virtually all social pathologies at rates far higher than any other ethnically identifiable group.
For you to suggest that erp meant otherwise is puzzling. Although not as much, perhaps, as the accusation that the Republican line is that ALL people with black are criminal failures. Cite please? Even one that is nearly as toxic as what routinely spews from Progressives would be nice.
Skipper;
I remember when the Chicago Tribune did a year long effort on children killed by shooting in Chicago. They put them on the front page, every one, to "raise awareness". Of course it was labeled "racist" because all of the children were black. That's when the term lost its original meaning for me, and changed to "anything negative about non-whites, particularly blacks, irrespective of accuracy".
That's a lot of demands, Skipper, but allow me to call in Professor Nolte ('Three Faces of Fascism,' a highly regarded intellectual history of the movements) about the difference between socialism and fascism.
I don't have my copy handy, but after about 700 pages of close analysis, he wound up along these lines:
The one factor common to all fascist movements and the original motivating factor, was anti-marxism.
As for your comments on social ills in black communities, all would be valid if you had said, 'poor black communities.'
They are not valid for middle-class blacks, although if you find similarly poor white communities (and I can direct you to a few), the differences start narrowing.
That's a lot of demands, Skipper, but allow me to call in Professor Nolte ('Three Faces of Fascism,' a highly regarded intellectual history of the movements) about the difference between socialism and fascism.
I don't have my copy handy, but after about 700 pages of close analysis, he wound up along these lines:
The one factor common to all fascist movements and the original motivating factor, was anti-marxism.
As for your comments on social ills in black communities, all would be valid if you had said, 'poor black communities.'
They are not valid for middle-class blacks, although if you find similarly poor white communities (and I can direct you to a few), the differences start narrowing.
Harry, ... "highly regarded by whom"?
Gosh I could have saved the good professor all his effort, saved the lives of thousands of trees and taxes payers tons of grant money because fascism is communism not controlled by Moscow, hence Hitler's name for his kind of communism was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
I forgot to note we are responding to your charges of racism. That's why we're not including poor whites in the discussion, but I'd be glad to change the subject now that you have conceded our point that racism is not the reason blacks don't reach their full potential.
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That's not what I said, erp. And Nolte is German, so American taxpayers did not pay for his research.
You can repeat that fascism is socialism all you want, but history belies you.
Of course, your views on race are delusional. Before the civil rights laws, hardly any American blacks were able to get management jobs in business. Now millions do. (And the differences for white women are equally striking.)
That not all have done so well does not mean that racism does not exist or does not explain why they didn't.
Again, you are reading into what I (and others) say your own biases.
You said blacks can't succeed because of racism. We say that it isn't racism, but poverty pimping that keep many (of course, not all) blacks in the custodial care of public handouts.
The civil rights act that forced equality in public institutions was correct. It was when the left forced private institutions and individuals to follow suit that led to the late unpleasantness and exacerbated an already heated situation before the effects could move in an orderly succession and may I remind you that it was those rascally Republicans who forced the civil rights act through congress.
Things were, if you recall, already moving in the right (pun intended) direction when the military was unsegregated and Eisenhower sent the national guard to protect black students in the south...
My world views, no less than your own, are colored by my own experiences which aren't tortured by an unfortunate childhood that causes you to see a world skewed by race.
Fascism is no less socialism than Marxism, Maosim, Statism and all the other euphemisms for collectivism and central control by elites -- the learned pronouncements of lefty professors notwithstanding.
Nolte is a rightwinger.
And on the issue of 'forcing' the rule of law on 'private' institutions, it didn't.
That's why gthe 'seg academies' flourished throughout the South.
You don't know what you're talking about
By your definition. Just like Hitler and Nixon were right wingers and as is anyone your crowd doesn't like ...
All schools were forced to integrate if they took public money. If they didn't, then it's none of our business anymore than it's our business who anyone invites to dinner ... unless you're referring to home schoolers who so far haven't been forced to take in anyone they don't want, but I'm sure that's coming if we don't get the expletive deleted lefties out of our hair.
I do so wish you could make your points without eruptions of name calling. It's really tedious.
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Hey Skipper: "I was a little mystified about which parts [of the Derbyshire article] were, in fact, racist."
The following is a comment I wrote in a discussion of this post...
====
A violent crime has at least one actor, but it also has a place. [...]
If asked to boil down Derbyshire’s advice into two word, those two words would be “avoid blacks”. Sure, it’s much more complicated than that and he adds plenty of nuance, but the takeaway for anyone predisposed to following Derbyshire’s advice would be exactly that since people generally don’t keep multi-paragraph mental notes. They would boil it down into something much simpler.
Let me propose some alternatives for advice that Derbyshire could’ve offered:
1. Avoid dangerous areas if the risk of being in those areas outweighs the benefits.
2. Avoid dangerous areas.
3. Avoid dangerous areas, and by the way, the density of black people is likely to be higher in those areas than would be explained by random chance.
4. Avoid areas frequented by blacks.
5. Avoid areas frequented by blacks because they might be dangerous.
(1) is neither racist nor cowardly and is about as rational as you can get.
(2) is somewhat cowardly. For example, for some it might make sense to forgo the great job in a dangerous area, while for others it might not. To not even consider taking the job because it’s dangerous, is irrational cowardice (in my opinion).
(3) is possibly racist and somewhat cowardly. The information about race has nothing to do with the action (avoiding the area) and the fact that race information is thrown in without purpose seems to indicate an over emphasis on race.
(4) is racist.
(5) is close to a simplified version of Derbyshire’s advice. This is what I consider to be either racist, innumerate, or cowardly (or possibly he’s just trying to yank people’s chains – in which case he succeeded fairly spectacularly with his employer). Consider his “(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally”. So if I’m in a store in a mall in a reasonably nice neighborhood with adequate security and a “concentration” of blacks walks in, I’m to somehow avoid them? To be safe? Forget the shopping I was doing and leave? Of course not. It’s safe because the place is safe and it’s almost certainly going to stay that way after the “concentration” of blacks arrive. The only person who would leave such a situation is a bigot or a coward. If one considers most of his points in (10), it becomes clear that it’s really the place that matters, not the mix of people. Going to a jazz/blues concert where the audience is mostly black is probably not dangerous. Going to a park in a wealthier part of town that blacks also picnic at (sometimes in high “concentrations”) is probably not terribly dangerous either. And so forth.
Derbyshire could’ve offered (1). Instead, he essentially offered (5) (yes, yes, with some nuance). (5) doesn’t make him look good in my eyes.
==== End
The cowardice and/or innumerate part is written because about 200 whites are murdered by someone who's black in a given year making the odds just slightly worse than 1 in a million for a white person to be murdered by a black person. Just for reference, your odds of dying in a car crash are a couple of orders of magnitude worse, yet I suspect Derbyshire drives. So the only way to use statistics to justify what Derbyshire said was to assume extraordinary risk aversion (but not to driving) or that he doesn't understand the statistics he's citing.
erp, I know it is hard to imagine an antifascist rightwinger, but there are a few.
As for who considers Nolte a rightwinger, will Deborah Lipstadt do?
You know nothing, but nothing about southern racism. In the worst counties, the white establishment set up seg academies for its children, then used its political control to reduce school taxes to almost nothing, leaving black children hollowed out schools to go to.
You can spare me all your grieving for the poor oppressed racists. I ain't ever buying it. Been there, faced down their shotguns.
erp;
Note how in Eagar's story the damage is done via government -- that is control of taxes and the public school system. Yet the lesson he draws from that is to oppose the private sector and strengthen the public one. That is, he wants those who do what he calls evil to have more power to do it.
Harry,
I guess I'll have to brush up on making clear declarative sentences. I have no truck with those who oppress others and nothing I've ever said or done would lead anyone to believe that to be true. However, I also believe that individuals can be as bigoted as they wish as long as they don't impose their hatred on others. If a bunch of people for whatever reason want to establish a school, club, church, bowling league, etc. on private property using private funds, and limit the membership to people they like, they are perfectly within their rights to do so.
Personally, I've never belonged to any organization other than my kids' school PTA.
Let's review the bidding here:
In the bad old days black children had bad schools where they learned the basics while white children had good, or at least better, schools paid for by local taxes. Other than accoutrements, I doubt the white kids in the deep south public schools were better educated.
So here we are:
Blacks or negroes/coloreds as they were known then, who didn’t ignore the admonition not to be like whitey and move into the middle and upper classes, but who relied on handouts from poverty pimps are in on a plantation far worse than one their forefathers endured. Their children don’t have the security of family life and church congregations, their schools are filled with drugs and violence and their lives are filled with anger and hopelessness.
The teachers unions having done their job superbly, instead of the informed citizenry our founding fathers foresaw for our future, we have a citizenry totally propagandized with leftwing cant and many, if not most graduates of our public schools are innumerate, illiterate and have a totally skewed idea of history, etc., so,
the masterminds of the world socialist movement having failed during the cultural revolution of the 60’s to destroy our Republic saw another opportunity and installed Bill Clinton into the White House, but while a charming cad, he couldn’t get the job done.
Enter George W. Bush who stopped Gore’s attempted coup d’état and against all odds was a darn good president. Eight years of relentless media Bush Derangement Syndrome bashing convinced people that we needed change. One of the most amusing examples of media derangement was this screaming headline, “Unemployment Plummets” on the front page of our local liberal rag.
So the big money boys bring out another great white hope. This time he’s black and white, but like Clinton he isn’t up to the job of being a front man either.
Republican leaders through the years help out by putting up, I believe intentionally, the worst candidates in Christendom who even with widespread voter fraud actually almost win and with Romney the tradition continues.
What to do now?
Hold your nose and vote for the candidates without a ‘D’ next to their names.
Teachers in the South weren't unionized, erp.
They were by the 60's and 70's.
That's a lot of demands, Skipper, but allow me to call in Professor Nolte ('Three Faces of Fascism,' a highly regarded intellectual history of the movements) about the difference between socialism and fascism.
I don't have my copy handy, but after about 700 pages of close analysis, he wound up along these lines:
The one factor common to all fascist movements and the original motivating factor, was anti-marxism.
The point I was making, and you helped with, is that functionally speaking, there is no difference worth mentioning between socialism and fascism. Which, makes the terms "Left" and "Right" virtually meaningless. There are collectivists, and everyone else. We really should be using the terms Left (=collectivists) and not-Left.
You are a collectivist, so be careful accusing others of being fascist; it is a pot calling the kettle black kind of thing.
As for your comments on social ills in black communities, all would be valid if you had said, 'poor black communities.'
Which would have meant repeating myself.
To take but one example, if you remove all blacks, regardless of class, from mortality statistics, the average US life expectancy increases by almost seven years. Virtually every area of social pathology is the same. The differences are appalling. In and of itself, that doesn't mean middle-class blacks suffer these pathologies to anywhere the same degree, or even at all. But it does mean a combination of two things: there aren't enough middle-class blacks to significantly affect the overall numbers; middle class blacks do suffer these pathologies. I'm going with the former. But, the point is that at the societal, statistical level, the distinction between blacks and poor blacks isn't meaningful.
The immediate problem here is that Progressives have labelled every race based distinction as racism. That more black kids spend time in detention is racism. That more blacks are pulled over by the police is racism. That more blacks are in prison is racism.
Nonsense.
There is a proper meaning of the word: racism is the assigning to an individual the putative characteristics of the individual's ethnic group. So, if NRO in fact promotes the notion that each black should be treated with suspicion / disregard / etc solely due to being black, then NRO is, in fact, racist.
I have to plead ignorance here. I scarcely ever read NRO, but when I have, I haven't seen any hints of racism. Since it appears you are better informed in this regard, I'm sure you can provide me with a link or two to substantiate your accusation.
Which segues into Bret's comment:
If asked to boil down Derbyshire’s advice into two word, those two words would be “avoid blacks”.
Consider this possibility: that Derbyshire is not a racist, and that the article was not, in fact, advice, but rather a rhetorical device to convey very real social pathologies. Which means it is not the least bit racist in any sense of the term that doesn't entail Progressives' abuse of language, or cowardly, or innumerate.
Your risk analogy with driving doesn't work, BTW. Some risks are avoidable, others are unavoidable but, to a greater or lesser extent, are controllable. In our society, driving is essentially unavoidable, and yields significant benefits. What's more, the risks are to some extent controllable: the fatality rate of those who are sober, drive with the flow of traffic, use their turn signals, and don't tailgate is a heck of a lot lower than those who do none of those things.
In contrast, that only 200 whites are murdered by blacks in a year is no doubt in part due to avoiding unnecessary risk in the first place — that number would certainly be higher if whites already didn't assiduously avoid areas with lots of blacks. Which is precisely what Derbyshire is saying. By your lights, he is a racist for stating the obvious.
So if I’m in a store in a mall in a reasonably nice neighborhood with adequate security and a “concentration” of blacks walks in, I’m to somehow avoid them? To be safe? Forget the shopping I was doing and leave?
Google [malls + wilding]. That just might be exactly what you should do.
(BTW: I removed two of erp's comments because they were repeats.)
Skipper, thanks. Don't know that's happening and it's not only here.
... don't know why that's ...
BTW - I like left and non-left as designations. All the other terms have lost their original meaning with the semantical chicanery of a century's worth of smear and spin.
By the way, erp, your defense of the rights of private actors to be racists is, word-for-word, the argument used by the KKK to fight civil rights laws.
I'm sure it's just convergence, great minds thinking alike and all.
And that was why rightists considered they could open a lunchroom and serve out sandwiches according to skin color, until leftists intervened with state coercion.
Peaceful coercion by public opinion is a valid tool to change minds and hearts. My opinion as stated many times is that desegregation would have happened peacefully one sandwich shop and coffee counter at a time anyway without the rock throwing, etc. which set back the civil rights movement, not moved it forward and we're seeing evidence of that mentality with mobs in the streets still using the same violent methods to force their will.
An argument isn't wrong just because people you don't like make it. For instance, I agree with a lot of what ACLU puts out -- doesn't mean I'm a member of the CPUSA. ;-}
erp;
I am sure Eagar would never allow you to say that if despicable group X made the same argument he does, that he is therefor just like X. But he has no problem doing that to you.
You should also note that despite Eagar's claims, when Rosa Parks sat on the bus, she was violating a municipal regulation, not a corporate one. To quote, "her refusal amounted to an act of civil disobedience, resulted in her arrest and conviction by a local court". As usual when you know your history you find the heavy hand of government.
In the minds of lefties, the fault isn't that it's a government action, the fault is that we have oppressive fascist rightwing governments in bed with evil corporations that are at fault who make the folks who ran Dickensian poor houses look good.
Once Harry's people install a truly compassionate fair completely centralized government then only Republicans will be forced to sit in back of the bus.
Boy Harry sure does hate those guys.
I find that so amusing because there were probably fewer Republicans in Georgia when he was growing up than there were Blacks in Vermont when we lived there during the 1970's and 80's.
BTW - Harry, my husband offers you his condolences if you think you'll win an argument with me. :-)
Distinction without a difference, SH.
And erp, if you think lunchrooms would have peacefully desegregated, please explain how Lester Maddox, who handed out ax handles to the white patrons of his chicken palace to use against any black customers was elected governor.
You are delusional.
No, a distinction of the most fundamental kind, consent vs. force. You think it's not because it doesn't favor your point of view.
Still waiting for any reaction to your denial of your own comment about Zimmerman who, it turns out, used to tutor young black kids, despite (according to you) thinking them all "criminal failures". Not that you had any evidence for that claim in the first place (especially since Zimmerman is part black, half hispanic, and a registered member of the Democratic Party).
Harry, you're right.
If it weren't for the red brigade marching south, those axe handles would still be swinging.
Signing out,
e
SH, do you suppose that a representative government would have had those laws?
Clue: That city now has representative government and those laws are gone.
Answer the question, erp. Don't duck it.
As for Zimmerman, he said it himself: Saw a black man walking, found that suspicious. It appears a great many rightwingers see that as OK.
"do you suppose that a representative government would have had those laws?"
Probably, given the tenor of the times. I fail to see how the private sector is to blame in either case, as you seem to think. The lesson I take is the better thing is to prohibit governments from making such laws at all.
"As for Zimmerman, he said it himself: Saw a black man walking, found that suspicious"
No. Turns out it was a faked report. MSNBC has already fired 3 of the staff involved. It appears a lot of left wingers see such fake reportage as OK.
Sorry, I forgot. s/off
I explained it at nauseum. Instead of orderly desegregation, the Compassionates fomented hatred and violence and they're still at it, to wit, the world-wide disinformation campaign against Zimmerman who said none of the things you claim he did and since it's uncomprehensible to me that you don't know that, all I can think is that you are deliberately misstating the obvious and it's literally making me sick.
As I said above, I'm done.
e
Harry,
"The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws)
In other words, laws enacted by representative government to enforce segregation.
So erp is wrong in that as long as Jim Crow laws were enforced, desegregation probably would've made very slow progress.
But it's hard for me to see government as a force of good here since government retarded advancement on the issue of race equal rights for hundreds of years.
In addition, it's hard to claim that desegregation wouldn't have happened if such laws never existed. After all, if everybody was going to be racist and keep the blacks segregated anyway, why were Jim Crow Laws needed in the first place? Seems to me, that most people realized that without such, greedy businessmen would be happy to serve blacks in order to be more profitable.
Hey Skipper wrote: "Consider this possibility: that Derbyshire is not a racist, and that the article was not, in fact, advice, but rather a rhetorical device to convey very real social pathologies".
Sorry, that just doesn't seem plausible to me. And even if so, it seems like the article was a pretty ineffective way to accomplish that sort of conveyance.
Hey Skipper wrote: "Google [malls + wilding]. That just might be exactly what you should do."
Because of one single anecdote? I'll continue to take my chances, thanks.
SH, you seem to be forgetting something: black Americans couldn't vote, so we can imagine (at least, I can) that if it HAD been a representative government of all citizens, the laws would have been different; as, in fact, they are now.
erp, do you realize that black Georgians in the USA were denied the vote longer than white Georgians in the USSR were?
Do you really think that black citizens should have waited longer for their right to vote to be emforced? How much longer?
Do you think the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was meant to foment violence?
Do you, as many rightwingers do today, want to see it repealed?
Yes or no answers, please.
Bret, the history of Jim Crow is more complicated than that.
When the white rebels took the oath of allegiance in '76 and the army was withdrawn, there was a period of murderous violence by whites against blacks (contrary to what erp fantasizes), but it did take a while for the white economic elite to retake control of government from the poor whites and poor blacks.
Interracial slates were elected in Virginia and N. Carolina even into the '90s, which is why the Jim Crow (and especially, poll tax) laws were necessary to complete the counterrevolution.
erp, is, as usual, just making shit up.
And my remarl about Zimmerman is not based on NBC, which I didn't see (I don't have a TV) but on the 911 tapes, which I did listen to.
By the way, erp, your defense of the rights of private actors to be racists is, word-for-word, the argument used by the KKK to fight civil rights laws.
Really? Word for word?
Somehow, I doubt it.
In fact, I think you have it completely backwards. What the KKK wanted was collectivist decision making: laws prohibiting certain individual decisions. What the KKK was fighting against was other laws, which they disagreed with, prohibiting certain individual decisions they did agree with.
The crux of the matter, which erp ascertains, and you do not, is whether collectivism -- the sine qua non of the left -- produced better results than individualism would have.
Granting there is no re-running the experiment, I think there are at least a few reasons to suspect it would have.
Avoiding the obvious, but often fallen into, trap of judging our predecessors by contemporary standards, up until comparatively recently, everyone, self anointed Progressives most definitely included, was racist in the sense of the term I mentioned above: blacks were an inferior variation of humanity, and each black embodied the presumed characteristics of blacks as a group.
That, like it or not, was the social milieu.
What if, instead of busing to integrate schools, in Plessey (IIRC), the SCOTUS had simply stated that equal protection required per capita student funding?
What if The Great Society was replaced with nothing?
What if individual decisions were allowed free reign?
The changes in attitudes about blacks have been astonishing both in degree and speed. I think those changes came about through the elimination of collectivism (i.e., getting rid of Jim Crow laws).
Collectivist impositions -- every depredation visited on black culture by Progressives -- have been incredibly expensive, and have inarguably made matters far worse in at least a few regards.
Progressives never revisit the consequences of their policies. And they also insist on having it both ways: capitalists are money grubbing exploiters of the working class. Capitalists will forego money on the hoof rather than serve a black.
Oh, and one other thing about Progressives. The inability to distinguish insult from argument: I'm sure it's just convergence, great minds thinking alike and all. is just one of too many examples in this thread.
Bret:
Sorry, that just doesn't seem plausible to me. And even if so, it seems like the article was a pretty ineffective way to accomplish that sort of conveyance.
You have given no evidence to substantiate the conclusion Derbyshire is a racist. I'm not talking about the intellectually empty version of the term that the Left relies upon, but rather its actual meaning.
In a thread elsewhere, I read a Leftist accuse Limbaugh of being a racist. When challenged, said Leftist used as an example Limbaugh saying Donovan McNabb got a lot more media attention than he would have otherwise because he is black.
That is not racism, any more than suggesting Danica Patrick gets much more attention than if she was instead a he is sexist.
They are both observations which may, or may not, be true; the latter certainly is.
Just so with Derbyshire. Has he actually said anything racist? Or merely gotten in trouble for stating the obvious?
Mr. Eagar writes
"you seem to be forgetting something: black Americans couldn't vote"
"it did take a while for the white economic elite to retake control of government from the poor whites and poor blacks"
Why would they have to do that if blacks couldn't vote? Your first observation doesn't follow given the population statistics and Skipper's observations (e.g., Planned Parenthood).
You have clearly listened to a different 911 tape of Zimmerman from everyone else. In our world Zimmerman doesn't bring up race, the dispatcher does.
He didn't have to.
A man was walking. Zimmerman found that suspicious. Why? Skin color.
No other reason.
I despair. Do any of you guys know history? Poll tax anybody?
Yes, it took a while, a lot of individualistic terrorism, to take away black voting rights. And, people always forget, voting rights of poor whites, who also were largely illiterate.
It didn't happen overnight.
It was what you would call collectivists who believed every citizen should be allowed to vote.
The individualists still today don't believe that. They are trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act.
The individualists today still don't believe that. They are trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act.
No, they are not.
In fact, not only are "individualists" not trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act, no one else is, either.
However, Section 5 of the VRA, which imposes "pre-clearance" requirements on certain states and some localities, is under heavy fire.
Including in the Supreme Court. Google [voting rights act repeal]. One of the top hits will be that famously individualist web site, Politico.com.
On page three, you will find a para that, absent a bunch of throat clearing in front of it, would have been on page one. It seems even liberals concede that Section 5 is likely to be found unconstitutional.
Why? Because it is arbitrary, long since overcome by events, and leads to preposterous outcomes. Such as the DOJ turning down a Texas public utility's request to move its election from a private home to a public school.
Even though the utility does not register voters, nor does it have any history of discrimination.
You might have mentioned those details.
"A man was walking. Zimmerman found that suspicious. Why? Skin color."
No. Zimmerman stated why and that wasn't included. It's unclear from the 911 call that Zimmerman had even noticed until asked. But you simply can't accept that.
Hey Skipper wrote: "You have given no evidence to substantiate the conclusion Derbyshire is a racist."
The evidence that I gave was that he is either racist, cowardly, or innumerate. I've also mentioned (at esr's blog) that he might've just been yanking people's chains (in which case he succeeded spectacularly - to the point of being fired). I will also concede that he might have been using a "rhetorical device" as you proposed but if so, that approach seems incredibly incompetent to me as I think there were far better, less inflammatory, and more easily absorbed ways to present that information.
To summarize, I agree that there are other possible explanations besides racism. None of them, however, make Derbyshire look good to me.
Bret:
Consider the possibility that you are making a category mistake. Derbyshire was making a series of observations that are, by and large, objectively correct.
Now, if he had concluded that blacks are inherently prone to those observations, then he is, in fact, a racist.
However, he didn't. What he did was criticize a culture that, for all manner of reasons having nothing to do with genetics, is almost completely identified with a particular race. Thomas Sowell in "Intellectuals and Society" explains this point far better than I ever could.
I happen to agree that Derbyshire was unnecessarily inflammatory; he lacked the skill that day to recapitulate A Modest Proposal. But I don't think there is anything he said that actually qualifies as racism, anymore than Limbaugh has.
Unfortunately, the Left, by promiscuously slinging the term about has made any discussion about black culture radioactive.
Mr. Eagar writes
"As for Zimmerman, he said it himself"
[In our world Zimmerman doesn't bring up race, the dispatcher does]
"He doesn't have to"
Zimmerman said it himself, except he didn't because he didn't have to. Right. What's the point of listening to the 911 tape if it doesn't matter what Zimmerman actually said? Eagar is, as usual, just making shit up.
From what I've seen, Harry rarely makes stuff up. To me, Harry is the embodiment of a fascinating set of facts and interpretations. I find that his facts, which I often hadn't heard before, generally check out. His interpretations, which I used to find bizarre, actually sort of make sense if one dives into the deep but narrow well of Harry's facts.
Be nice to Harry. It's hard to find people with deep pools of knowledge that can credibly challenge one's worldview. Sure, he puts forth some silly stuff, but last I looked, none of the rest of us are perfect either.
In Liberalspeak, Zimmerman was confessing to the fault of fingering a black guy for the crime we lefties call 'walking while black.'
Zimmerman saw someone he thought was 'suspicious.' Now, what was he doing that was suspicious? Walking.
We know that, because Zimmerman said he was following him. Martin wasn't on tiptoes, peering into somebody's window.
Now walking is not in itself a suspicious activity, unless, of course, you think a person does not belong where he is.
Not the case with Martin.
We also know (from Z's friends, as told to Reuters) that Zimmerman was on the lookout for black burglars, of whom there were some in the residential area.
So it wasn't because Martin was carrying a bag of burglary tools. He wasn't. And he wasn't carrying off a bag of swag.
The suspicious activity that day was that a man with a violent history had a gun and was stalking teenagers in the rain.
Now, it's possible (but on evidence revealed so far unlikely) that Martin interrupted his walk and confronted Zimmerman, and that the shooting might be, in some sense, justified (although the justification for Zimmerman's going armed is going to be hard to make).
But the initial call fingering Martin? Case closed there.
Bret;
I pointed out two such things on just this comment thread. I could point out a third of Eagar's description of Zimmerman on the 911 call as at least mendacious (as anyone can verify by listening or reading a transcript). That sort of thing would be easier to overlook if Eagar himself didn't go on so much about other people's ignorance, but I'll just smile and nod instead :)
I found this remark curious coming from a resident of Illinois:
'(especially since Zimmerman is part black, half hispanic,'
But remember Frank Collin.
Mr. Eagar;
Even without Bret's admonition, I don't think you're the same as Frank Collin.
If you read the newspapers, you'd know Collin was mischlinge.
I did know that when I commented. I still don't think you're similar to him.
As for reading newspapers which get things completely wrong I think you're more likely to be informed if you avoid them. Better to be ignorant than to know things that just aren't true.
My point was that Collin was mischlinge.
If you read the newspapers, you'd know that.
As I stated, I did know that even though I don't read the newspapers.
Then your contention about the significance of Zimmerman's great grandma was poorly argued, wasn't it?
No. Feel free to read the comment again if you didn't understand it the first time and ask for any clarification. You may also feel free to describe why that off hand mention in a list of many items struck you as so significant. Explaining the relevance of Collin would be useful as well. On a meta level it would be nice to hear why you are so reticent about actually writing out your point instead of playing guessing games.
I suspect most people outside Illinois wouldn't recognize the name, but Collin must be the state's best-known racist (unless he has been overtaken by Jeremiah Wright).
For those who haven't heard of him, when Dan Ackroyd said "I hate Illinois nazis" in "The Blues Brothers," he was talking about Collin.
According to leaked FBI reports (leaked to newspapers, so if you knew it, you knew it from newspapers, one way or the other), Collin was half-Jewish.
Arguments that one has to be racially pure to be a racist are, sociologically, invalid. So the Zimmerman argument is invalid.
I could have deconstructed the rest of your list just as easily.
I don't know the exact circumstances of Zimmerman's tutoring, for example, but it has commonly been observed among other people that being introduced to a hitherto unfamiliar race/class milieu can set off negative generalizations among people who previously had no particular ideas about the group one way or the other.
And so on.
"Arguments that one has to be racially pure to be a racist are, sociologically, invalid"
The Collins example doesn't apply here since Collins hid mixed race. Zimmerman didn't. But that's a side issue.
The point was that you've decided Zimmerman is a racist ("A man was walking. Zimmerman found that suspicious. Why? Skin color") on no basis whatsoever. I thought it possibly because you thought Zimmerman was white but that's not the case. It's just "because". I should have realized that from the start.
Well, maybe Zimmerman was just anti-hoodie. I learned, from the pro-Zimmerman comments, that hoodies are worn only by thugs and criminals.
Funny, here they are worn by surfers. Who knew?
You're going to have a hard time demonstating to me that Zimmerman would have called in his suspicions for a white guy doing the same as Martin.
And I fail to see why Collin's hiding of his background makes any difference. The point is that half-Jews can be professional antisemites. At least for illustrative purposes, eighth-blacks could be antiblack racists.
It would help the Zimmerman side's argument if they could show he stalked white teenagers, but so far as I have seen, there's no evidence for that.
Perhaps you can correct me on that.
"maybe Zimmerman was just anti-hoodie"
You could try listening to the tapes of Zimmerman's call to the police dispatcher and hear for yourself why Zimmerman was suspicious, instead of reading comments by random people who weren't there.
Or could you review the evidence the prosecution has for Zimmerman "profiling" Martin. Oh, wait, the prosecution admitted in court that the prosecution has no such evidence.
You could give them a call and straighten them out on that, just to be a helpful citizen.
I did listen. There's nothing to indicate Martin was doing anything.
But you could correct me. What words on the tape describe questionable behavior?
"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about".
Well, that's certainly specific. Somehow, Zimmerman noticed he was 'on drugs' (though he wasn't) but didn't notice he was 'black.'
The person who was obviously walking around and acting suspicious was Zimmerman, wasn't he?
The person who was a danger to the community that night was Zimmerman, wasn't he?
Even if he wasn't a racist, he was a menace. While no one has supplied a scrap of evidence that Martin was.
'Zimmerman noticed he was 'on drugs' (though he wasn't)'
How do you know that? That's what I mean by your Narrative - you simply assume facts not in evidence and then make your judgement based on those assumed facts, then are surprised with others don't immediately agree.
"The person who was obviously walking around and acting suspicious was Zimmerman, wasn't he?"
No, Zimmerman was in his car.
"The person who was a danger to the community that night was Zimmerman, wasn't he?"
No, all evidence indicates it was Martin who initiated the physical confrontation.
"no one has supplied a scrap of evidence that Martin was"
Assaulting a stranger on the street makes you a menace and there is plenty of evidence for Martin doing so. Eye witness accounts, police reports, medical records of Zimmerman's and Martins injuries. That's not even looking at Martin's history of, ah, "problems with authority". I realize that's not relevant to the legal issues but it to your claim of "no evidence".
You ought to take your own advice and listen to the tape.
Obviously, Martin was walking, since he wasn't driving. 'Looking around' is the kind of evidence that would satisfy a McCarthyite but no reasonable person.
And we have the videotape from the store to show that Martin was acting normally, which is more than anybody can say about Zimmerman.
Curious, how -- if Zimmerman was in his car -- somebody on foot ran him down.
Recall Zimmerman said the assholes always get away with it. You can hear the gears revolving in his brain. 'Not this time. I got my heater and the asshole ain't gettin' away this time.'
And he didn't.
Crazy armed racist stalking strangers in the rain. What could possibly go wrong?
"You can hear the gears revolving in his brain. 'Not this time. I got my heater and the asshole ain't gettin' away this time.'"
The Narrative is just too strong for you, I see. If you need facts for it, you just create them. There's no arguing with that.
It's speculative but based on 45 years of covering the police beat.
Something has to explain how Martin came into contact with Zimmerman. Zimmerman had to have initiated that. Martin could not have.
"Zimmerman had to have initiated that. Martin could not have."
Why not? There's plenty of evidence for that, including the fact that Martin was less than 100 yards from his father's apartments for at least a couple of minutes after Zimmerman lost sight of him initially. He could have easily simply gone there, or even called the police on his cell phone. The prosecution's star witness, Dee Dee, testified to that.
The simple explanation of contact was initiated is that Martin broke contact, waited for Zimmerman to head back to his car, then came up and accosted Zimmerman. I fail to see why you find that such an implausible scenario, despite quite a bit of evidence supporting it.
So you agree that Zimmerman was stalking Martin? that's progress.
More generally, you are unclear on the concept here. What needs explaining is why an armed nut was hunting teenagers that night.
Zimmerman killed Martin. Martin did not kill Zimmerman.
Keep that in mind.
No.You've reset again. Read through the thread to get back to the discussion.
So you agree that Zimmerman was stalking Martin? that's progress.
To recap: the area had something of a crime and vandalism problem, which wasn't going on during high noon.
Under the circumstances, then, someone, particularly a young male of any ethnic persuasion, wandering around at midnight is bound to arouse suspicion.
The fact that this particular young male happened to be black is wholly beside the point, UNLESS you are so empathic as to get inside Zimmerman's head and know that he wouldn't have bothered with the exact same actions had the kid been white.
Guess what: you can't.
Which means you are the one making a baseless racist argument.
Unfortunately, as the facts unfold, they are increasingly unfriendly to The Narrative.
In the rain.
One thing us old police reporters know is that burglars stay home in the rain.
Except maybe where they don't have a choice, like Portland.
And he wasn't wandering around. He was, as even Guy admits, going home.
Would Zimmerman have called in a white guy? Who knows? We do know that he called in several "suspects" (none of whom turned out to be actual, you know, criminals) and all of them, police record show, were black.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
One thing us old police reporters know is that burglars stay home in the rain.
Shenanigans.
"he wasn't wandering around. He was, as even Guy admits, going home."
I wrote no such thing. I wrote he _could_ have gone home, but didn't.
One need merely check the time stamps on the 7-11 video vs. the dispatcher calls by Zimmerman to note that Martin must have been wandering around or he would not have still been outside.
"Would Zimmerman have called in a white guy? Who knows?"
You do, apparently, as you've claimed that Zimmerman would not have done so.
"he called in several "suspects" [...] and all of them, police record show, were black."
Do you have a cite for that? I have not seen that claim anywhere else.
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