It’s LBJ’s (not so) Great Society.
Yes. It’s been a half-century of social disaster for blacks.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Jason Riley tells some hard truths:
Once upon a time, Eric Holder called for us to engage in a conversation about race. If that conversation were to be frank, it would have to start with the brute and ugly fact pointed out by Jason Riley. I do not doubt that racial prejudice still exists, but it does not constitute a serious obstacle to African-American advancement. The most grievous problems that African-Americans face today have little or nothing to do with the conduct of ordinary white people. Of course, they may well have something to do with white conduct in the past, which has a lingering effect. But nothing can be done about that. Long before they encountered George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were on the downward path. Given their taste for dope, their instinct for defiance, and their predilection for violence, they were both likely to end up as killers or as killed.
If Barack Obama and Eric Holder were actually interested in the welfare of the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, they would level with their fellow African-Americans. They would initiate a genuinely frank conversation about race aimed at altering African-American conduct. As things stand, they are only interested in manipulating African-American fear and anger for short-term political gain — and the same can be said for the scoundrels (largely white) who manage CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Pravda-on-the-Hudson, and Pravda-on-the-Potomac and who treat the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as national news.
Yup. When it comes to discussing race, it’s not we who are the cowards. It’s the race hustlers like Al Sharpton. And Eric Holder.
[Bumped]
Through centuries of slavery and persecution, black families and churches were the backbone that allowed them to survive. Had LBJ turned over the creation of his “Great Society” to the KKK with the express purpose of destroying black families, they couldn’t have done a much better job of it.
What does Ferguson have to do with the state of black families? Brown wasn’t shot because there was something wrong with his family. Journalists weren’t arrested because of the state of the black family. Demonstrators weren’t gassed and shot with steel pellets because of the state of the black family. The black family didn’t deploy armored vehicles and snipers to face non-violent protestors.
The problem in Ferguson is that law enforcement seems incapable of holding itself accountable to the law, or of respecting the First Amendment rights of citizens. LBJ, the Great Society and the black family aren’t to blame for that.
Brown wasn’t shot because there was something wrong with his family.
How do you know?
The problem in Ferguson is that law enforcement seems incapable of holding itself accountable to the law, or of respecting the First Amendment rights of citizens.
Welcome to the Tea Party, Jim. You’re beginning to understand power and corruption.
“What does Ferguson have to do with the state of black families? ”
The state of black families is terrible, taken as a whole. Rampant broken families.
Also Ferguson has suffered money flight as the people who could get out did get out thanks to Democrat control – the area was slowly decaying. The state of the families remaining isn’t great.
“What does Ferguson have to do with the state of black families? ”
So you think the looting burning destroying is a result of strong families inculcating strong morals?
“The problem in Ferguson is that law enforcement seems incapable of holding itself accountable to the law, or of respecting the First Amendment rights of citizens.”
Explain how Law enforcement did not hold itself accountable nor respect the 1st amendment.
And please – facts….not conjecture.
Ferguson has everything to do with black families. The Great Society removed men from the picture. You have to admit that a family run by a single mom is terrible for a young boy.
“The black family didn’t deploy armored vehicles and snipers to face non-violent protestors.”
You don’t know what “non-violent” means. Non-violent protests is what we had when the Tea Party was protesting Obamacare, at least until Obama and the Democrats sicced their militant protesters on them. When Obama called out the SWAT teams and DHS paramilitary riot squads for peaceful Tea Party protests, Democrats cheered it on and said the Tea Party were the violent ones.
But even though the cops were in full battle rattle, the Tea Party protesters did not seek physical confrontation through verbal abuse and combat with police officers, like OWS and some of the Ferguson protesters did.
I was impressed by the protesters a few nights back when they took it on themselves to prevent their fellow protesters from engaging in combat with the community’s business people and the police. This was in sharp contrast to the Democrat’s OWS style of protest which sought to provoke police response through the protester’s use of violence, property damage, and militant rhetoric. I am glad the OWS style of protesters were not accepted by the local community.
Really?
OK, let’s try this narrative on for size. You start with massive upheavals in the black/inner city community during the 50s through 70s, a very important aspect of which being “great society” programs including a marked transformation of personal life away from local community involvement towards impersonalized, government programs, especially in regards to social assistance of the economically disadvantaged. One of the major programs of Johnson’s administration involved the creation of the HUD and the institution of low-income “housing projects” as an attempt to aid low income families. Housing projects were not just a failure but a catastrophe, they shattered communities and transformed families from proud, most self-reliant units into effective wards of the state. The result on morale and disintegration of black and inner city families was profound. So much so that “the projects” today has a very specific set of connotations, none of them good, most of them frightening.
That effort contributed strongly to the destruction of black community/society in urban areas (so much so that “urban” today has a very different meaning than it did in 1950) and to the rise of gang and drug activity in black communities.
That in turn gave rise to growing crime levels and slowly transformed black/urban communities from coherent, stable, and civil communities into crime ridden hell-holes where it was difficult just to get by from day to day without employing some fairly scary coping and survival skills that no one in a civilized society should be forced to rely on just to get by.
So then you have black communities that no longer are functional, black families that are no longer coherent (because the social fabric has been destroyed), high crime rates in black areas of major cities, and a widespread problem of black children growing up without fathers around combined with facing massive degrees of adversity related to the communities they are in and their socio-economic state. Studies have shown that once you adjust for socio-economic level the crime rates amongst “blacks” and “whites” in the US are roughly equal, but that doesn’t stop the crime rates in black communities from being higher due to depressed socio-economic levels (and so forth).
That in turn has led to a situation which has spanned decades where black communities and black offenders are a constant and expected adversary of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Which has in turn bred and amplified a significant disparity in the way law enforcement interacts with “whites” vs “blacks”.
And so we come to where we are today.
To say that there is nothing that the “great society” has done to contribute to the situation is nothing more than naivete or ignorance. Just because something was done under an umbrella of good intentions does not mean that the results were not catastrophic (which they have been for much of the great society programs). In 1950 black communities were monetarily poorer than they were in 1975, but they were immensely stronger, more cohesive, self-reliant, and capable. In some respects there are parallels to the treatment of native americans, as in a sense black communities were rounded up and institutionalized under certain programs “for their own good”, and it didn’t work out well in either case.
“Demonstrators weren’t gassed and shot with steel pellets because of the state of the black family. ”
You spelled looters and rioters wrong, and they most certainly partially were, because if they had been raised with a proper sense of ethics they wouldn’t have been looting.
It’s LBJ’s (not so) Great Society.
The Great Society is why a police officer used deadly force against an unarmed black man? That sort of thing was known to happen even before LBJ was President.
the Great Society convinced, and then reassured, black people that they were victims
Blacks needed the Great Society to let them know they’d been victims? It wasn’t something they could observe firsthand?
You willfully ignore so many relevant details that it is really a waste of time to discuss this with you.
That’s generally the case.
No, the police officer used deadly force because the unarmed black man, who was 6’5 and about 280 pounds, had just given the officer an orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket, then apparently reached in and grabbed the officer’s gun, discharging it and nearly shooting him in the groin, before fleeing on foot with his accomplice in the convenient store robbery. When the officer got out of his truck and pursued, the unarmed black man turned around and rushed head-on at him, as confirmed by a dozen witnesses. At that point the officer opened fire and kept on firing till the unarmed black man stopped his oncoming assault.
If the officer executed a kid by shooting him in the back, why were all the shots from the front and why was the officer’s eye socket broken?
I don’t trust GP.
There is too much misinformation out there.
The chief of police already admitted the robbery had nothing to do with the stop, they did not even know they was suspecets at that time, and the video that the police posted that everyone keeps talking about did not have the correct date on it, it was dated the 6th month wich is June..This is August the 9th month. The cheif admitted that too on live tv.The stop was because Mike B. and his friend Dorian J.was walking in the road, The officer pulled up told them to get out of the street and then there was words exchanged and then the officer pulled over on side of road,and yes there was a struggle and a careless shot fired where kids was outside playing, hit an apartment building, the officers recovered and hid the eveidence of that bullet.. So at that time they took off running because they was scared. Then one was hiding behind a vehichle and the other was someplace else, but Mike walked from behind a vehichle and put his hand up..Thats is when the officer fired 6 more shots, Four in the arm and neck area, his eye,and one being right in the middle of the top of his head … Explain that shot! Sounds to me like he did have his hands up and head was down, like several witnesses have said you dont run with your head down, and if he was over 6 ft charging at the officer how did the shot get on top of his head…How could the officer been in fear of his life when he was over 35ft away…The officer already knew he was unarmed from the struggle that he claimed that he tried taking his gun, So why didnt the officer call for back up when the boys took off running, he started chasing them.He wasnt in fear for is life nor was he worried about the safty of the children and people around them….There was no dispatch call from the officer saying there had been a shooting he shot him and left the scene and him lay there to bleed out in the middle of the street, over 5 hours he layed there uncovered and the puddle of blood kept getting bigger n bigger…That officer needs to be charged in my opinion. There are alot of good honest police out there, but there are also crooked shady snakey ones too…In this case I belueve that the officer is wrong, and should have to pay his consequences…
Really? So you were there, and saw the whole thing?
“and the video that the police posted that everyone keeps talking about did not have the correct date on it, it was dated the 6th month wich is June.”
Have a link for that? I haven’t heard that yet and the guy was wearing the same clothes.
“and yes there was a struggle and a careless shot fired where kids was outside playing, hit an apartment building,”
I am not sure how you could characterize this situation as a “careless” shot if a struggle was taking place. Also, when anyone, white or black, gets in a physical fight with a cop, the chances of getting shot approach 100%.
“like several witnesses have said you dont run with your head down”
Why not? People run with their head down, for various reasons, all the time. Look at how any sprinter starts their sprint, always with their head down.
“So why didnt the officer call for back up when the boys took off running”
Do we know when he called for back up? There is so much that we don’t know. Most of the stuff floating around is pure speculation.
“There was no dispatch call from the officer saying there had been a shooting he shot him and left the scene and him lay there to bleed out in the middle of the street,”
There were other cops there very shortly, so there must have been some call. Where did you get the idea the cop left the scene? There were pictures of him there with other cops and the people who took the pictures said it was shortly after the shooting.
“There are alot of good honest police out there, but there are also crooked shady snakey ones too”
Ya, there are bad cops out there and bad young men, which is why no one should making assumptions at this point. One important note, no witnesses have said the cop was acting out of racial animus. There are no indications that race played any role in what happened. That is very important to keep in mind when the protesters are saying this was a racially motivated shooting.
Sorry – you lost all credibility.
A police officer hitting a target 6 times at 35 feet? Not possible, not without 10 clips.
I wonder how close a LEO is ‘supposed’ to let a charging person get, before shooting them? Or, should they ever shoot them?
And, if shooting isn’t right, then HOW do YOU propose they stop a guy that size who is running toward them?
BTW, the guy he was with, told the MSM and the cops that Brown WAS running toward the cop when he was shot. So jim, what’s the plan or ROE for situations like this?
If I was the cop in Ferguson, I would have stopped the charging perp by shooting off his pinky toe. We would then engage in witty banter while he rolled around on the ground in pain, before I dragged him back to the station house by his ear.
At least that’s the way it plays out in my mental movie. Oh, and Bruce Willis plays me, by the way.
“I wonder how close a LEO is ‘supposed’ to let a charging person get, before shooting them? ”
A running man can easily reach a shooter and stab them from 21 feet.
Google Tueller drill.
Holder sent 40 FBI agents to Ferguson to investigate…
How many were sent to Florida when the visiting rabbi was gunned down while walking to Temple?
crickets……
Or to Chicago when there were 40 people shot (7 of them killed) – most, if not all, of them black – this past weekend……
can’t be bothered……
Or the over 30 shootings during each of the past 2 weekends in Detroit
FBI has more pressing business…….
Or the 13 shot last weekend in NYC – up 43 percent in just the last month?
More crickets…………….
How many were sent to Florida when the visiting rabbi was gunned down while walking to Temple?
Does Florida need the FBI’s help to handle that case? Ferguson clearly needs a lot of help.
Ferguson does not need fifty FBI agents.
Ferguson does not need fifty FBI agents.
It doesn’t? The local PD made a total, incompetent hash of the initial response. If they can’t handle it, who else should step in? Why not the FBI?
I didn’t say the FBI shouldn’t necessarily step in. I said that fifty agents are overkill. Because they are.
The FBI is an investigative body, not a riot control force.
Why can’t the governor take over? Why does everything have to go to Washington DC?
“Does Florida need the FBI’s help to handle that case? Ferguson clearly needs a lot of help.”
Ferguson doesn’t need the FBI’s help to handle that case.
“Does Florida need the FBI’s help to handle that case? Ferguson clearly needs a lot of help.”
The DOJ announced it was taking things over but they should have gone through the proper channels and requests rather than usurp power that belongs to local and state police. Someone must have clued them in that this was not the right way because they backed off and the state police stepped in. Pretty typical of the Obama administration to ignore the law and rule by decree though.
I have to agree with the comments about this being overkill. You probably could do it with five. It’s mostly interviewing witnesses and gathering a modest amount of evidence. Probably have two people do each of those tasks with a fifth acting as gofer.
And of course, each state has it’s own FBI office with it’s own FBI agents.
But no, we had to have the Feds send an army of 50 – great for the newsreels you know.
What I want to know is what does the shooting of Brown have to do with the looting of the stores?
Nothing whatsoever.
………especially since some (most?) of those store are owned by, employ, and serve minorities.
The wrong kind of minorities. Democrat politicians have not exactly been kind in their rhetoric directed toward Indians.
CBS Report: People in Ferguson will Loot and Destroy Business until Businesses give them jobs
So essentially this is typical shakedown racketeering.
And of course, Obama wants to make the plight of the black community even worse by accepting millions of illegal aliens….black leaders have sent Obama letters explaining how this is hurting the black citizen community’s job prospects.
I await further evidence; but so far, based on evidence Jim either hasn’t seen or (like the evidence in the IRS scandal) would prefer to ignore, the Brown shooting seems like just another case of a piece of ghetto trash getting iced after attacking someone–followed by the usual “poor innocent baby” stuff from the kinfolk and the Mensans in the ‘hood, supported by the usual “Useful Idiots” in the online commentariat. (See Jim’s posts, above. Awaiting Admiral Gerrib and Sidetrack Bob’s responses. Stay tuned.) And of course the urban lumpenproletariat protesting the shooting by looting high-end electronics.
Brown might have been a dirt bag and his lifestyle choices may have meant a long future of encounters with the police but the important thing about the legality of the shooting is what happened in the street and that is something there is very little good information about. It could be that the cop was in the wrong.
Rushing to assume Brown was at fault is as bad as rushing to assume the cop was at fault. There is just so much we don’t know about what took place.
I haven’t rushed to assume anything, other than that the media will do a terrible job of coverage. I think I’m pretty safe with that one.
Me neither. I’m just seeing more and more evidence to suggest the shooting was clean, and that the Mensans In the ‘Hood with their Useful Idiot mouthpieces in the commentariat are basically closing their ears and eyes to that evidence and humming loudly, “LA-LA-LA, I CAN”T HEAR YOU!”
And by the way, although, like soldiers, they perform a useful service, I don’t particularly like cops. Don’t hate ’em, either (as the old bumper sticker used to day, “If you don’t like cops, the next time you’re in trouble, call a hippie!”), but don’t general like ’em either. As a friend of mine once said, “Never met a cop yet who wasn’t on an ego trip.”
This blogpost from “Neo-Neocon” asks a very pertinent question, and quotes from Missouri law on when an officer is allowed to use deadly force on an unarmed individual.
Sorry–forgot to post the link:
http://neoneocon.com/2014/08/19/question-for-the-ferguson-protestors-when-is-an-officer-allowed-to-defend-himherself-with-the-use-of-deadly-force/
They could have just tasered him. The Ferguson police seem to be a great deal like the New Orleans Police when I was in college a very long time ago. Back then, everybody was afraid of them, black and white. They shot people of both races with equal incompetence.
Do they arm cops with tasers in Ferguson? Maybe they should; but did the cop who shot Michael Brown have the taser option?
“Back then, everybody was afraid of them, black and white. They shot people of both races with equal incompetence.”
Had Brown been white and struck a police officer, there is a high probability that he would still be dead.
Black activists should get behind this idea. I don’t know what life is like in Ferguson but this particular incident wasn’t caused by racism and I doubt all of the racist accusations because they are so frequently wrong. But most people think cops are too quick to shoot, use violence, and abuse their authority. Black activists create an us vs them mentality, all white people are racists, cops are racist, the system is racist. They are dismissive of all of the white people shot by cops, even though the number is far larger.They are too quick to say criminals are angels, which ruins good will in cases where actual angels are victims. This alienates everyone.
In order to get society to act against police misconduct is to appeal to all groups that are victims and not frame everything in terms of white/black racial animosity.
Speaking of jumping to conclusions:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/20/6-times-black-poll
Reminds me of the Black Studies professor in Atlanta who reportedly said that logic was a tool of the White Devil.
That sort of thing was known to happen even before LBJ was President.
Unbelievably stupid argument Jim. It in no way invalidates any criticism of the great society. You are not so stupid that you don’t know that. Is winning an argument so important to you that you would stoop so low?
Why don’t you engage in an honest debate and address the actual issues being presented to you. That might even result in real enlightenment considering that many here may agree with you regarding police policy.