How We Got Here (And How We Got To Wise Up)

"While hanging out yesterday at Ace's yesterday as he was flogging racists, I happened to mention that many if not most black Americans view the federal government as beneficial and friendly. Some other commenters were surprised and I was surprised at their surprise, because it isn't difficult to figure out why this is. Whether it's the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.

What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black. And that is what it was supposed to do.

The present problem in my unlearned opinion is this: the federal government began overstepping its bounds during the Great Depression and did so most infamously in the late sixties via the Great Society programs. Doing more that getting local racists out of the way, the federal government sought to and succeeded in making itself the suppliers of life, liberty and, putatively, the happiness of many black Americans. (Try telling a senior of any race that Social Security is sending the country to financial ruin. You'll get an earful about her 'rights'.)

And even many black Americans who do not rely on the federal government still view the fed as our friend because of that history."

-- baldilocks

"Americans are less enthusiastic about free trade than Europeans, and their enthusiasm for free markets is at the European average. US workers strike at about the same rate as the Italians, but they are much more highly paid. To be sure, they can be fired more easily, but there are European levels of regulation on hiring them, and their workplaces are safer.

Americans take fewer holidays but it seems not to affect the national mood, for they commit suicide less frequently than most Europeans. That may be because they are generally prouder of their country. US tax, which is on the low side by European standards, is more progressive than the European norm, and tax revenue per head is higher than Ireland, Greece and Switzerland.

Health outcomes are not good, especially given the huge amounts spent. People live shorter lives (though not much – three years less than the Euro leader, Italy) and more infants die. On the other hand, cancer cure rates are generally higher and the billions spent on medical research has benefits worldwide. Crime is high, especially the murder rate, and the prisons bulge more; but there are fewer police per head than in Italy and fewer guns per head than in Finland.

The good universities are very good, with high private spending; schools are middling, as is the number of public libraries. Americans vote less, trust government more, volunteer and give to charities much more. They have more faith in God but less in astrology and homeopathy; and they are more welcoming to immigrants. At the same time, they have more gay experiences, more gay marriages and more three-in-a-bed sex than almost all Europeans.

One fact stalks these figures: it is that the black underclass accounts for many of those few areas where a stark difference exists between the US and Europe: 'Take out black homicide and the American murder rate falls to European levels. Child poverty rates...fall to below British, Italian and Spanish levels if we look at the figures for whites only.' Baldwin’s conclusion is that what most distinguishes New World from Old 'is not a grand opposition of worldviews or ideologies...it is the still unresolved legacy of slavery and its tragic modern consequence of a ghettoized and racially identifiable underclass'."

-- John Lloyd, charging Europeans flatter themselves at America's expense - he's taking information from Peter Baldwin's new book, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike - since we're "more like European countries than these individual countries are like each other", to The Financial Times.

Conclusion: we are Americans, and the government is here for our purposes (not to rule over us as they do in Europe) and once "We The People", regardless of race, decide to take control over our government - and not give our power away to it - we will once again discover the pride of knowing that, probably because of a bunch of old racists, there wasn't ever a chance we'd fall behind any other country in the world. We've just got to stop trying to be like Europe - because we ain't. We've got a different history - and a much, much different future.

It's liberal NewAge Americans, seeing race today and denying it, that's screwing us up - and European-style political correctness is, definitely, the "new racism" that's one of our country's biggest problems.

Personally, I - as a black man - don't think Barack Obama, many of my fellow blacks, or the average European, understands that,...

U Can't Touch This: