GreenEarthAl
05-31-2005, 01:15 PM
That other threads got ten billion words in it. Bloody hell.
When I was a little boy we went on welfare for about 6 months. That was typical of people on welfare: poor (obviously), white, dependant children, and off it in under 2 years. It really helped butress my family at a vulnerable time and my mom really took off after that.
At nearly the same time, Ronald Reagan (or as I like to refer to him, Satan), began villifying "welfare Queens" and enraging middle American about a phenominon that barely existed, using an example that did not exist at all. He told the story of a Chicago Cadliac Welfare queen and the story got reported at face value and repeated as true. It certainly wasn't the whole key to his election, there were Iran hostages and Oil embargoes and what not, but very much in the mix was his welfare villification and distortion.
It wasn't until after the election that people began looking for the supposed welfare queen and discovered that no such cadillac queen existed in Chicago and so elements of the liberal media (when there was a such thing) tried to debunk the story but they got shouted down by Conservatarian think tanks repeating the story over and over even louder with more and more indignation. "Well of CORSE there are rotund black women selling their food stamps and driving around in a Cadillac! EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!" with no evidence. But the echo chamber needs no evidence.
The people in the mid eighties who started complaining about welfare's habbit forming tendencies and family destroying nature were in fact, Liberals. All kinds of liberal sociologists, adademics, and even rap musicians were crying about how the welfare system traps the poor in a cycle of dependency long before the Contract on America stole their homework for the 104th Congress Party.
Bill Clinton made some rhetorical overtures to "Mend it, don't end it", but really, what the hell did he care? He's already rich. He had sex with interns or some other business to occupy his time and coudn't be bothered with fighting for anything he'd promised us he'd fight for.
So anyway. QDrop says he feels bad for the children. Fine. Let's start there. Children don't ask to be born into any one family over another. How is it affording them an equal opportunity if they have admitedly inferior education? Inferior nutrition? Inferior child care? Inferior family support structures.
Clearly society can't equalize the playing feild completely, but why do we bear no responsability at all when we see disadvantaged children and wash our hands of them?
On the nature vs nurture argument I come down heavily on the side of nurture. That is to say that we are a product of our environment first and foremost. Our experiences shape who we are far more than any other factors.
And I am an athiest. But I see a absolute crystal clear logic in the golden rule. It makes absolute sense to me that human relations work best when we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
I firmly believe that with as poor as I was born, as poor as I am now, and how close my life has taken me to the edge many, many times over, I am easily one or two life events away from being a WAY different person. I thrive, but I have needed every single person that has stopped to help me, teach me and reach me. Somewhere there is a six year old kid who is not going to have the same quality of mentorship as this six year old that you are going to mentor some day soon. And twenty years from now you are going to still be here, on the Beastie Boys MB, writing some 10 billion word essay about how six year old #1 made his own bad choices and how your six year old pulled himself up by his bootstraps and overcame adversity.
When I was a little boy we went on welfare for about 6 months. That was typical of people on welfare: poor (obviously), white, dependant children, and off it in under 2 years. It really helped butress my family at a vulnerable time and my mom really took off after that.
At nearly the same time, Ronald Reagan (or as I like to refer to him, Satan), began villifying "welfare Queens" and enraging middle American about a phenominon that barely existed, using an example that did not exist at all. He told the story of a Chicago Cadliac Welfare queen and the story got reported at face value and repeated as true. It certainly wasn't the whole key to his election, there were Iran hostages and Oil embargoes and what not, but very much in the mix was his welfare villification and distortion.
It wasn't until after the election that people began looking for the supposed welfare queen and discovered that no such cadillac queen existed in Chicago and so elements of the liberal media (when there was a such thing) tried to debunk the story but they got shouted down by Conservatarian think tanks repeating the story over and over even louder with more and more indignation. "Well of CORSE there are rotund black women selling their food stamps and driving around in a Cadillac! EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!" with no evidence. But the echo chamber needs no evidence.
The people in the mid eighties who started complaining about welfare's habbit forming tendencies and family destroying nature were in fact, Liberals. All kinds of liberal sociologists, adademics, and even rap musicians were crying about how the welfare system traps the poor in a cycle of dependency long before the Contract on America stole their homework for the 104th Congress Party.
Bill Clinton made some rhetorical overtures to "Mend it, don't end it", but really, what the hell did he care? He's already rich. He had sex with interns or some other business to occupy his time and coudn't be bothered with fighting for anything he'd promised us he'd fight for.
So anyway. QDrop says he feels bad for the children. Fine. Let's start there. Children don't ask to be born into any one family over another. How is it affording them an equal opportunity if they have admitedly inferior education? Inferior nutrition? Inferior child care? Inferior family support structures.
Clearly society can't equalize the playing feild completely, but why do we bear no responsability at all when we see disadvantaged children and wash our hands of them?
On the nature vs nurture argument I come down heavily on the side of nurture. That is to say that we are a product of our environment first and foremost. Our experiences shape who we are far more than any other factors.
And I am an athiest. But I see a absolute crystal clear logic in the golden rule. It makes absolute sense to me that human relations work best when we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
I firmly believe that with as poor as I was born, as poor as I am now, and how close my life has taken me to the edge many, many times over, I am easily one or two life events away from being a WAY different person. I thrive, but I have needed every single person that has stopped to help me, teach me and reach me. Somewhere there is a six year old kid who is not going to have the same quality of mentorship as this six year old that you are going to mentor some day soon. And twenty years from now you are going to still be here, on the Beastie Boys MB, writing some 10 billion word essay about how six year old #1 made his own bad choices and how your six year old pulled himself up by his bootstraps and overcame adversity.