Oh brother, you guys just don't give up, do you?
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Originally Posted by
Bearinabox
But that's not what we have.
Well, I was responding to your post. I thought you were contending that socialism has prevented the Netherlands from becoming like Detroit.
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That's just what you tell yourself so you don't have to share responsibility for what all of us collectively have done to Detroit.
All of us haven't collectively done to Detroit the damage that Detroit has done to itself.
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People born into generational urban poverty in America, especially with the additional hindrance of being stereotyped due to their skin color as people who "don't want to live nicely, and don't want to work, and cannot control their drug intake," ...
Again, I was using your words.
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...aren't in control of their fates,...
Then who the heck is?????
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and the few who make it out of such situations do nothing to disprove that reality.
They sure do!
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It's funny that, in the New Deal/FDR era, nobody minded Big Government much at all.
Wrong! There was very much opposition against the New Deal. Even the Supreme Court ruled some of it unconstitutional. Please re-read your history.
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We identified with the recipients of the new programs, which at the time were essentially closed off to nonwhites,...
I agree that there was some discrimination, but many nonwhites benefited from the New Deal. One example: http://newdeal.feri.org/aaccc/index.htm
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...and as long as we had to look at people on welfare and say "there but for the grace of God," we considered the expenditures worthwhile investments in a functioning society. Then along comes the Civil Rights Act, and suddenly the image of a recipient of social services goes from a broke-but-hardworking Oklahoma farmer to a black "welfare queen" and the next thing you know we've elected Ronald fucking Reagan to come along and tell us how we don't owe Those Lazy Black Folks anything.
Not true. The same people that were against much of the social welfare programs within the New Deal were against much of the social welfare programs within LBJ's Great Society [[which I think is what you are referring to, not specifically the Civil Rights Act.)
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It's quite sinister, really, and you can hardly be blamed for not wanting to confront it, but it's destroying our city and our country and it's in all of our best interests for it to stop sooner rather than later.
What is destroying Detroit is not a lack of government programs. It's a lack of morality, integrity, respect, education, leadership, etc. of many of the people of Detroit.