(Part 2) Best united states history books according to redditors
We found 14,384 Reddit comments discussing the best united states history books. We ranked the 4,954 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
This is a well-known story in the region around the Park and those of us who are native to the area are well-acquainted with the usual response to the story, which is "What a fucking idiot, what was he thinking?"
Kirwan survived long enough to be pulled from the water, and was clearly in shock -- but even in that state he obviously regretted the action, saying "That was stupid . . . That was a stupid thing I did." Unsurprisingly he died later in the hospital.
The horror of knowing you have literally cooked yourself to death makes me shudder every time.
Edit: also, for context, the Celestine Pool where this happened does not necessarily "look hot". It's named for the extremely deep blue color of the pool (caused by minerals/bacteria) and while the temperatures are well above lethal to humans and animals, the surface is still and smooth, not rolling/boiling. There was a lot of signage around it in 1981 reminding visitors of the deadly nature of the hot water and there's even more today, but to someone not used to Yellowstone, Celestine Pool might not have initially appeared as deadly as it is.
Edit 2: Since the link apparently does not work for some viewers, you can also read about it at Snopes here and in this Chicago Tribune review of the book I linked. The book is Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park by Lee H. Whittlesey. As other commenters have mentioned it's an excellent book in general, and right up /r/MorbidReality's alley.
For those interested
https://www.amazon.ca/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
An entire book describing the accidental deaths at Yellowstone national park.
Example: One guy was saving his dog which jumped into one of the sulfur ponds to chase.....something. He got his dog out, but was burned to badly and swallowed so much sulfur water that he slowly died after he was pulled out of the pond. He was constantly saying how stupid he was and how much he regretted it
IOW: Its the most entertaining Darwin Awards compilation you'll ever see.
While the stereotype is of the kid forced to work to help their impoverished parents, this book argues that sweatshop kids kept most of their earnings for themselves, and their combined spending power on non-necessities powered the rise of Coca-Cola, fast food, and baseball:
http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123
The book also argues that most sweatshop child labor only worked part-time - they essentially worked just long enough to earn that day's spending money.
If true, it makes additional sense why they preferred work over school.
The last time a major political party died was the Whigs in the lead up to the Civil War. The Whig Party broke apart on the question of slavery. Northern factions became more anti-slavery, while Southern factions refused to abandon slavery. The Party could not contain these contradictory ideas, so it lost support and quickly found its members deserting the Whig Party for alternatives.
As the former Whigs began to abandon their party, new political parties appeared to take them in. Those parties included: the Free Soil Party, the American Party (sometimes known as the 'know-nothing' party) and the Republican Party. By the election of 1856, the Whigs were gone.
Interestingly enough, the Democratic Party also split on the issue of slavery in 1860, with Northern and Southern factions emerging to nominate their own candidates. However, the Democrats were able to recover after the Civil War and continue to be a major party to this day (of course).
The other major parties that died (The Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, National Republicans kinda) weren't really political parties in the sense that we understand them. They were more alliances of elites competing against each other, as opposed to mass mobilizing voters. The Federalists died largely as a result of the total victory of the Democratic-Republicans and the Democratic-Republicans also died largely as a result of their victory, leading to the somewhat party-less period known as the 'Era of Good Feelings.'
All the other parties you mention were minor parties that were either formed as result of a brief split from the major parties (Southern Democrats) or as a the result of a single influential man creating the party as a platform to run on (the Progressive Party).
In a sense the only true major political party that has died was the Whig Party.
So now comes the real question, why has there not been another party collapse in the 150 or so years after the Civil War? Why have we stuck to the Democrat/Republican divide, even as those parties have changed radically both in supporters and in issues?
The answer is that absent an issue so divisive as that it literally led to civil war, parties are pretty damn durable. Every time a major challenger to the two parties has emerged (such as the Progressive Party in 1912), one or both of the two parties have adjusted themselves and their issues to try to be welcoming to those voters and issues. Thus the Democratic Party moves from being a small government party in the 19th century, to being a progressive party in the early 20th to being the party of the New Deal in the mid-20th century.
In America's two party system, which is reinforced by our first-past-the-post system of elections, parties should be viewed less as solid ideological actors and more as alliances of disparate interests that come together in order to seek political advantage. Thus you have labor and environmentalists largely in the same party, not because those two views are immediately reconcilable, but because it is an advantageous political alliance. When those alliances break down, groups may switch from one party to another (something called 'realignment'). Thus the two parties survive, even as supporters and issues may change.
This is quickly veering into the realm of a political science discussion, so I'll just end here with a few quick answers to your questions.
Sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X
https://www.amazon.com/John-Quincy-Adams-American-Visionary/dp/0061915416/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
https://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Theodore-Roosevelt-Journalism-ebook/dp/B00BAWHPX2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468985270&sr=1-1&keywords=bully+pulpit+doris+kearns+goodwin#nav-subnav
https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Campaigns-George-Washington-Bush/dp/0195167163
People fall into the Grand Canyon every year because they simply think they because they're on vacation or at some sort of attraction they won't get hurt. There's a book about this mentality written by a twenty year park ranger I have on my shelf. When I get home I'll give you the title. It's a good one.
Edit: Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon I was originally drawn to this book because it has accounts of most of the known, fairly recent deaths and how they occurred. I also need to correct myself in saying that people fall in every year. It is less frequent than that but I'm still sticking to the point I made earlier because this book has some seriously good stories in it about exactly what we're discussing.
We're discussing present systemic oppression rooted in past systemic oppression, and also proportionally how much that past systemic oppression has contributed to the present systemic oppression.
Comparing the traffic of the Irish and of British debtors--rated around 300K tops according to the one reputable source published by an academic press--to the 12.5 million slaves of African origins--as demonstrating equivalence is downright laughable mathematically.
While conceding the point that voluntary and involuntary indentures often faced conditions exactly the same as African slaves, they are distinct from slaves in that after their terrible indenture period was ended, their holders legally had to free them and provide them land.
Additionally, the grounds on which white indentures were sent to North America--they were politically undesirable--is substantially different from the grounds on which African slaves werte sent to North America--they were seen as inherently and genetically inferior, rather than merely a political nuisance.
Fast-forward some three hundred years and ask the following questions: (1) Statistically, how do white persons of Irish descent compare to other white persons in their proportional educational attainment, income levels, and political influence? and (2) Statistically, how do black persons compare to white persons proportionally on the same measures?
The results, I venture, will be starkly different--and thus showcases the differentially systemic impact of African slavery and the admittedly terrible conditions of white indentured servitude.
Nerd alert tiem!
Let me open my bookmarks...
ACLU study of arrest rates and self reported usage rates of black/white Marijuana users.
USSC report showing discrepancy in sentencing of black vs white inmates when controlling for other variables
For some background:
EPI paper on de jure segregation in education and it's effect on Black youth.
Book written by Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, great book on how the government enforced segregation in previously unsegregated communities.
Chris Hedges (co-founder of Truth Dig and a graduate of Harvard Seminary) has a potent critique of American Dominion Theology (where I first learned the term "Dominionist") called American Fascists.
A fantstic read if you have the time. There is also a pretty funny take-down of a dude named Ken Ham in there (Ken started the creationist museum that seeks to discredit any scientific evidence that human creation did not happen exactly as it says in the Bible, Bill Maher also interviews him in Religulous).
Bonus link to the Audio Book
For anyone who wants to hear more stories like this I recommend This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
Rice's father is far from the only black southerner who used firearms to keep the Klan away and his family safe.
Bart Ehrman - Jesus Interrupted (2010)
In this deliciously satisfying book, the author, a New Testament scholar, carefully reviews and assesses the New Testament with a detailed and extremely thorough analysis of the figure we call Jesus. This is not a rant, not an attack on Christianity, this is an objective and critical analysis of the New Testament, showing how the entire Jesus myth and indeed, all of Christianity is a purposely-designed fabrication rife with contradictions, inaccuracies, and sometimes outright falsehoods.
John Loftus - Why I Became an Atheist (2008)
If you want a one-stop total critique of Christianity, this is the book you're looking for. The author is a former Christian apologist turned extremely angry and prolific atheist. In this book Loftus attacks the full span of Christianity, addressing the philosophical arguments against theism, the historical incompatibilities and inaccuracies of the Bible, and the contradictions between creationism and modern science, and throughout it all is an undercurrent of personal experience as Loftus explains his own deconversion from devout evangelicalism to enraged atheist.
Concerning atheism.
These are for the people going "Well, I'm an atheist. Now what?" There's more to atheism than eating babies and posting fake facebook conversations on r/atheism. There's much more truth, beauty, and value in a universe without a celestial supervisor, where humans are free to make our own purposes and dictate our own paths. Thinking for yourself and recognizing the natural wonder of the universe is far greater than the false consolation any religion can provide you. These books show how.
Michael Martin - Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1989)
In this book, Martin attempts a two-pronged defense of atheism: first by attacking theistic arguments regarding the implausibility of morality and purpose without God, second by defending against attacks specifically on atheism. In such a manner he makes a strong case for both negative and positive atheism. Though extremely dated, this book is a classic and a must-read for any atheist.
Erik J. Wielenberg - Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe (2005)
In this book, Wielenberg advances a naturalist philosophy and addresses the problem of nontheistic morality as weakly espoused by the likes of Dostoevsky and C.S. Lewis. First he challenges the claims of theistic morality, next he advances naturalistic ethics and displays how theological justification is unnecessary for a good and moral life. Concepts such as intrinsic morality, inherent human tendencies such as charity and altruism, and the idea of moral obligations are all addressed.
Richard Carrier - Sense and Goodness Without God (2005)
In this book, Richard Carrier, perhaps most well-known as one of the major modern debunkers of the Jesus myth, continues the trend of expanding metaphysical naturalism, but this is a more complex and thorough work covering the full spectrum of a developed worldview, addressing nearly every topic beyond just morality, and presents a complete philosophical outlook on life that is easy to comprehend and evaluate. A solid starting point for the newly atheist.
My personal picks.
Now, since this is my list after all, and after typing up all of that, I think I've earned the right to make my own recommendations. These are books that I think people should read that don't necessarily have anything to do with atheism.
Markos Moulitsas - American Taliban (2010)
This book reads like a collection of loosely-related blog entries, some of them written by angry teenagers, and Moulitsas himself is no philosopher or professor, but is still an important read for those of you who haven't been paying attention. In this book, the founder of Daily Kos draws the extremely obvious and transparent similarities between the religious right of America, and the Islamofascists across the pond, and displays how modern conservatism has largely been hijacked and/or replaced by a complex political machine intent on maintaining the power of a small group of white, male, Christian elite.
Chris Hedges - American Fascists (2007)
Okay, time for a more sophisticated take on the issue than Daily Kos stuff. Those of you who plan on staying and fighting in the US rather than simply getting the fuck out while you still can need this book. With a critical and objective eye, Hedges displays the dark and tumultuous underbelly of America and shows how an extremely powerful and well-organized coalition of dominionists is slowly taking over the country and seeking to transform it into a theocratic state. Those of you who are moderate Christians and similarly despise the lunatic fringe of Christians should also read this book. Hedges analyzes this Christian Right movement, allied with totalitarianism and a denial of reality, that has declared a jihad (or a "teahad", if you're a Tea Partier) on secularism and even on Christianity itself, utilizing religion for its darkest and most sinister purpose - committing cruelty and intolerance upon others in the name of divine supervision.
CJ Werleman - God Hates You, Hate Him Back (2009)
This is one of my favorite books and is a great book to unwind with after a critical look at Christianity. The biggest problem with the Bible is not the contradictions, the outright falsehoods, or even the blatantly made-up and ridiculous bullshit about magic and miracles and supernatural nonsense - it's the fact that, taking it all at face value, the God described in the Bible is the single most despicable and terrifying fictional villain ever imagined by humanity. This is a character that seems to actively despise mankind, and in this book, Werleman shows why with a hilarious and thorough analysis of the Bible. This book reads like Monty Python and is just as funny - not meant to be taken seriously of course unless you're a Biblical literalist, but still a great read.
Well, that's all I got. This list took about half a day to compile and is itself also woefully inadequate, there's quite a bit of books I haven't gotten around to reading yet. But, it should be much more sufficient than the current r/atheism reading lists and I've done my best to include the most recent works. If you have any books to add that you feel are noteworthy, please feel free to post them. I hope this list can help many people in their understanding of philosophy and atheism.
THIS!
It never ended, it just became the prison industry. The Jim Crow laws made sure of that.
You should read this book on Generations theory. The "science" of generations basically comes down to: people affect history, then history affects people, repeated ad nauseum. This wikipedia article also helps.
Developmentally, people are most affected in like the first 20 years by that history, specifically by events that take place, and those events will change them more than they will change someone who is older. This makes the events a good way to gauge when a generational shift has occurred after the fact.
For example, those younger than 20 during 9/11/2001 would be different than those who are older than 20 at the same time. That catalyzing event made an impact on the lives of millennials, born after 1980, than it did on Generation X, born between 1960 and 1980. But those who weren't old enough to be aware of the events on 9/11 wouldn't have felt that catalyzing event in the same way that the millennials did, meaning they'd belong to a different generation.
A History of the American People
or if you are a dirty commie
A People's History.
Honestly they are a yin and yang that do an amazing job of giving you US history in broad strokes.
Other than those Chernow on Washington or just this.
i didn't know this until i read The Color of Law, but back in the early 20th century the popularity of personal automobiles skyrocketed to such a size that cities simply weren't able to keep up with the congestion they caused. the number of people who owned cars essentially doubled every year for a while and traffic was a plague. it's one of the reasons why cities embraced the idea of widening roads and eventually building highways so much in the first place, even back then they thought doing so would solve congestion
Texts and Reference Books
Days in the Lives of Social Workers
DSM-5
Child Development, Third Edition: A Practitioner's Guide
Racial and Ethnic Groups
Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording
Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond
[Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life]
(https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Feelings-Harbinger-Self-Help-Workbook/dp/1608822087/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3ZW7PRW5TK2PB0MDR9R3)
Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model
[The Clinical Assessment Workbook: Balancing Strengths and Differential Diagnosis]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534578438/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_38?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ARCO1HGQTQFT8)
Helping Abused and Traumatized Children
Essential Research Methods for Social Work
Navigating Human Service Organizations
Privilege: A Reader
Play Therapy with Children in Crisis
The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives
The School Counseling and School Social Work Treatment Planner
Streets of Hope : The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood
Deviant Behavior
Social Work with Older Adults
The Aging Networks: A Guide to Programs and Services
[Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415884810/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change
Ethnicity and Family Therapy
Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Perspectives on Development and the Life Course
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Generalist Social Work Practice: An Empowering Approach
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents
DBT Skills Manual
DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets
Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need
Novels
[A People’s History of the United States]
(https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511070674&sr=1-1&keywords=howard+zinn&dpID=51pps1C9%252BGL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Tuesdays with Morrie
The Death Class <- This one is based off of a course I took at my undergrad university
The Quiet Room
Girl, Interrupted
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Flowers for Algernon
Of Mice and Men
A Child Called It
Go Ask Alice
Under the Udala Trees
Prozac Nation
It's Kind of a Funny Story
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Bell Jar
The Outsiders
To Kill a Mockingbird
There's a book about deaths in the Grand Canyon, and one of the conclusions made is that children hardly ever are the ones involved in falls or other accidents; they seem to have an innate sense of danger that keeps them from doing really stupid things around cliffs. The highest demographic for deaths in the GC: males in their early 20s.
Douglas Blackman wrote a book about this that won a pulitzer. It's actually a really easy read and delves into detail about sharecropping and prison labor. It's absolutely heartbreaking what people did to the freed slaves.
[Slavery by another name] (https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1525272338&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=douglas+blackman)
Hey, no problem: Here's a couple I really enjoyed that helped me learn how to really articulate what I think and understand what others were saying about politics in those sorts of discussions:
Brings to mind this Monty Python line: Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
But seriously though, are you talking about this book?
Come on, dude. The guy is a professor of THEOLOGY and he's supposed to have a better understanding of engineering/physics than engineers? Just because some 9/11 Truther nut writes a book, doesn't mean it debunks actual science.
If you would like a detailed report of what happens when people do jump or fall into the pools, check out Death in Yellowstone. You can read most of the first chapter using the 'Look Inside', which has the 'boiling to death' stories.
Fact of the matter is that the NRA does not represent gun owners. The NRA membership accounts for about 7% of gun owners in the United States yet has been positioned as the de facto voice of gun owners.
It isn't.
Unfortunately, there are no non-partisan groups representing gun owners at close to the same scale. There are some smaller groups like the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and Pink Pistols that support, educate, and advocate for gun ownership amongst African Americans and LGBTQ communities (respectively). But the NRA manages to suck all the oxygen out of the room and other groups are rarely acknowledged by the public.
I suspect that some gun control advocates like having the NRA as a foil. By crystallizing the debate across party lines, it allows both sides to ignore complexities like racism -- see the NRA's response to the shooting of Philando Castile, Reagan signing the ban on open carry as governor of California in response to the Black Panthers, or the role of firearms in the Civil Rights Movement (see Deacons for Defense and Justice for one example or a book by Charles E. Cobb Jr., Brown University professor and former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible").
Gun ownership isn't a White, Christian, Conservative thing. I am a gun owner and none of those things.
Gun owners are also not against gun control. I support increased gun control and even the NRA's Wayne LePierre testified before Congress in favor of universal background checks in 1999.
Gun ownership and regulation is not a simple issue and it cannot be boiled down to pure partisanship without silencing communities that are already routinely deprived of a voice.
The notion of the NRA representing gun owners-at-large needs to be taken out back and shot.
> because we don’t have a mass fascist movement in the US.
Eh... The Evangelical movement lets be real is basically in every way a Fascist movement cloaked in a very thin mask of theology.
Reaction of the middle classes, worshipping the nation as god, worshipping Capitalism, hero narratives and hero idol worship, Class collaboration, extreme reaction against "Degeneracy", very thinly veiled white supremacy. They don't call themselves Fascists, but they're basically a Fascist movement.
Yeah it happened in the
70's. I read a whole sociological study on it.Edit: I went ahead and found where I had read it, but it started post WWII, when america became "Sub-urbanized". Basically they got access to the same housing benefits as whites and started living around white people, until they were considered white. https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
Had a friend who worked at Yellowstone for Xanterra (the folks who run concessions and lodges in the park). He had so many stories of the completely insane things people do when they have never been exposed to nature before.
I think my favorite story was a guy getting out of his car and walking up to a bison, trying to put his kid on its back for a ride. Bison are wild herd animals, are fucking huge, and are at LEAST as dangerous as a grizzly (most of the time). The bison flipped out and charged, managing to gore the guy pretty badly (he survived). The kid got away fine, and probably has a little goddamn respect for nature and the wild now.
If you're a bit morbid, and want to marvel at the stupidity of people in a national park, check out Death in Yellowstone. It's a book full of this sort of shit.
> Still wondering why anyone really cares where people choose to live.
Actually, where people live is one of the biggest drivers of life outcomes. If you're born in KCK instead of Leawood - your probable life outcomes is much worse.
At one time, segregation was official city/state/fed policy, which subsidized the development of all-white suburbs (like Prairie Village was one of the first) and movement of people from urban areas to the suburbs - aka 'white flight'. Today, we're still living with white flight. If there were a middle to upper income suburb of Kansas City that were 88% black, do you think many white people would choose to move there? Me neither.
Check out Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law", or his lectures on YouTube. Great history and info about the relationship between housing segregation and life outcomes in the US.
As the Vox illustrates, segregation is still going on today (it's actually getting worse) due to policies like zoning laws and drive to prevent low-income housing and apartment complexes from being improved in middle-upper income cities, resulting in low income minorities living in a small number of areas in the metro (as illustrated by the original Vox piece map).
Stories abound that this assessment that you just "picked your family" or "picked your state" aren't correct, just FYI. It was much more complicated than you think.
Same with "citations" for arguments. Read this book as a starting place. It is pretty settled that the only valid reason that the South had for secession was economic anxiety from the removal of the barbaric slave trade. They were to choose between owning people as property (an untenable act) and having less money. They chose owning people. They lost.
We must've had different history classes. :/
But yep. I'm finally going to have to read this book, huh?
This is completely wrong. The consequences were intended. FHA loans were first set up so that African Americans could not buy them. Then mortgage insurers drew maps that labeled AA neighborhoods and neighborhoods close to AA neighborhoods uninsurable. The government adopted those maps in its own regulations and so redlining continued to be an issue through the 70s. We still had segregated public housing through the early 80s. 3 of the 9 supreme court justices ruling on restrictive covenants banning sale to minorities had to recuse themselves because their mortgages had those covenants. The issue was never social engineering's unintended consequences, it was always the intended consequence of discrimination. It's taken decades to make any headway in remediating the problems that our earliest attempts at regulating homeownership have caused. The problem was never that the government guaranteed loans to people who couldn't afford them, there's a system in place to prevent default on FHA loans, the problem was that we withheld homeownership from minorities for decades.
African Americans earn 60 percent of the wages White Americans do, and yet they have less than 10 percent of the total wealth that White Americans do. That's because our system of homeownership has systemically discriminated against them for almost 100 years. Don't believe it? read this book. Too lazy for that? Listen to this interview. Don't have the time for either? Then don't comment on threads about race and housing.
I'm sorry, but yours is a very disingenuous take. Not only do you get the facts wrong about this article and the history which is its context, but you also get the basic premise of government backed mortgages wrong too. Also, the one-two punch of "poor minorities" is either ignorant or bigoted take your pick. The government guarantees loans to plenty of poor people, regardless of their race, and the idea that it sets them up to fail is almost Breitbartesque.
I was with you until your last paragraph. While slavery and racism in the U.S. were deeply intertwined, it's important to make the distinction that being anti-slavery does not imply being anti-racism, especially up until the Civil Rights Movement.
Often, abolitionists weren't advocating for the end of slavery out of a love or respect for black enslaved workers. They were arguing from a moral, theoretical standpoint of the concept of owning other people as being reprehensible. Which it is - but then if you go around and treat black people as inferiors - you're still racist, just a racist who doesn't like slavery. For one example of this, check out this essay on Walt Whitman - prime example of a Northern abolitionist who held some decidedly racist views. He was by no means the only example.
My point in saying this is that it does little good to split the nation between north and south when it comes to prevalence of racism. It's going to be difficult to quantify how racist a geographic region is. But even when you take even the most cursory glance at various metrics, you'll find that racism is not isolated to the South.
If you look for racism in the South 100 times, you'll find it 100 times. If you look for the same examples of racism in the North, or out West, or anywhere else in the country, guess what - you'll find it 100 times.
It is disingenuous to say that the South bears the only, or even largest, burden of racism in the history of the U.S. That holds true even "to this damn day". You can definitely remove Democrat and Republican from the equation. But you also must remove South or North or East or West from the equation. No region, no state, no city in this country is free from countless examples of racism. Everywhere is guilty of it.
We need to be realistic and honest about the problems we have. It doesn't matter which region is more racist (if you could ever even determine that). We need to realize that while the South has a history of racism, that history extends to the North and the rest of this country just as much. Overlooking that is a surefire way to make sure all of our racist policies and institutions never change.
> A) what should I call the group of people that split off from other lineages up to 200000 years ago? A subspecies? A clade? Race is the colloquial, and it works well to describe what I mean. There is pretty clear evidence the different 'races' split off at a specific time in the past and evolved to suit different evolutionary pressures.
"Race" is a fine word to describe what you're talking about. But my point is that what we are all talking about is a human invention. There is a lot of genetic variation in humans. We can create groups based on things like skin and hair color. Or we might decide that there are other characteristics around which we would like to group people, like height and hand size.
I understand what you are getting at. Of course it's possible that traits like intelligence are somehow genetically linked to traits for dark skin and woolly hair. But we haven't found such genes. And it strikes me as very unlikely that any association, if it did exist, would be meaningful in size.
> Jews were literally raped, murdered, pillaged, and exiled from various european countries for over a millenia. They are now the most successful group on the planet. Reconcile their history, along with asian's treatment in America and their current condition
The oppression experienced by Jewish and Asian Americans is neither as large nor as recent. Less than a generation ago, government policy explicitly prevented black Americans from buying housing and generating the wealth that white Americans of your parents' and grandparents' generations built in the period after World War II, relegating them to ghettos.
Asian and Jewish Americans of course experienced discrimination, and continue to experience it in specific instances. These groups lived in ethnic enclaves for the first generation or so after immigration (as immigrants tend to do). But they have not experienced the legally enforced segregation that Black Americans have throughout our entire history and into our very recent past.
I haven't read What We Owe to Each Other, but from what I'm familiar with it's an attempt by Scanlon to explain and justify his particular brand of moral contractualism, and not an introductory book on ethics and moral philosophy. I believe Chidi is a contractualist and deontologist so it makes sense why he would like that book (as a philosophy professor), but that's just one area of moral philosophy.
One of the problems with philosophy is that the works are intended for students and educated audiences and not laymen, so most of the books for example that I read when I first started college (and books that you'll find listed in "good for beginners" lists) like Nicomachean Ethics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals I would never, ever recommend to a general audience. They're full of confusing philosophy terminology and long, multi-stage logical arguments.
Instead I highly recommend what I suspect you're really looking for in Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel. While clearly aimed at an American audience, it's a very good and more importantly very readable general introduction to ethics and the varying schools of thought in the field. It's a really short read for a philosophy text and is peppered with real-life examples and dilemmas.
Another book that I actually read recently and quite enjoyed is A Concise Introduction to Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau. Unfortunately, this one is intended for a student audience and is more of a textbook (complete with end of chapter quizzes), but it goes really broad and over not just all the big schools of ethics but also the fundamentals of moral reasoning, and metaethics and natural law (two things that don't always show up in ethics books which are usually about normative ethics).
I took my SJ class as an online course around 2010 or so. It was pretty milquetoast in comparison to yours and mostly technical. I think the most interesting stuff to me were the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham vs. John Stuart Mill. We used the book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel
I do not know what the birdcage analogy is and there was no discussion, I recall, about agents, allies, and accomplices.
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
Chris Hedges, January 8, 2008
“American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
of course they are, thats where people go when they are lost. they think it will lead them out of the forest. (it doesn't)
-There is a geographical clustering of disappearances
-Bad weather usually occurs just as the search party gets under way
What? This doesn't make any sense. to be able to make a claim like that, you have to analyze thousands of NPS records to find a correlation between weather and searches. Also most searches take place right after someone went missing, which is probably also connected to the weather.
-Swamps and briar patches play a role in the disappearances
Do you know how easy it is to get lost in a swamp?
-Many disappearances occur in the late afternoon
Late afternoon is the time when people are usually expected back from outings, if they left in the morning. They may have disappeared earlier, but are not reported until later.
-If a person is later found, they usually are unable or unwilling to remember what happened to them.
PTSD. Simple as that.
-The missing are often found in places that were previously searched
The people doing the searches are not usually well trained parks staff, but locals and volunteers. Also, most bodies are found years later when someone stumbles on the body accidentally.
-Berries are somehow related to the disappearances.
that is so vague I honestly don't know where to start. "he ate berries." "there were berries on the trail." "they had a blueberry pie yesterday." you claim pretty much anything is related to the disappearances if you try hard enough.
how i feel right now
/rant
for anybody actually interested in National Parks search and rescue, i suggest this book, written by two park rangers who get paid by the government to rescue people
Read The Gun by CJ Chivers. Very interesting book on the history and people involved in the creation of the AK.
How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
Debunking 9/11 Debunking
Popular Mechanics (Hearst Publishing) pushed Fema's initial "pancake theory', which NIST ended up throwing out in favor of the "crush down" theory. Even the government doesn't agree with Popular Mechanics.
That's not to say everything Pop Mech's said was wrong. They debunked some of the obviously silly claims (no planes, etc.).
Addressing the credibility that Pop Mech's is an authority on mechanics and mechanical engineering, Jim Meigs was responsible for a lot of their work and is their major spokesperson, and he's just an editor. His last job was editing Entertainment Weekly.
I hear what you're saying. Memphis is in desperate need of redevelopment, revitalization, an increased tax base, more jobs, greater density, increased walkability/bikeability/livability, less violent crime, etc. All of the good things that come along with gentrification are things we really need. But we have to consider the bad along with the good (warning: wall of text incoming).
I think the big reason why people are so concerned about the negative aspects of gentrification has to do with the fact that the displacement of the black community is, in effect (if not by design although that is debatable), a continuation of the unequal and unjust housing discrimination that has existed in this country for generations.
Ghettos didn't happen by accident. They are a byproduct of explicit racial discrimination at the federal (and, in the case of Memphis, also presumably the local) level.
In the mid-20th century, the federal government actively encouraged and subsidized suburbanization. The FHA, the federal agency tasked with overseeing this policy, required that the developers who received these government subsidies sell the new properties only to white people and institute racially discriminatory restrictive covenants that would prevent them from being sold to any non-whites moving forward. Black veterans following WWII were excluded from applying their GI Bill benefits to buying homes in these areas.
By the time these practices ended, the deed had been done. White suburban subdivisions/municipalities had been created, the values of the homes had increased significantly from the prices they had initially been sold for, and they were by and large prohibitively expensive to black people (who needless to say were also subject to economic discrimination). Not to mention the fact that they weren't exactly the most welcoming places on Earth for the middle-class black families who could have afforded to live there by the time they were legally able to do so.
The end result of these policies had a massive impact on racial disparities in wealth, as the working-class white families who bought government-subsidized homes with government-subsidized mortgages were able to accrue enormous gains in equity while black people (many of whom could have afforded these homes had they not been precluded from buying them at the outset) realized none of those gains, as the areas of town they were forced to live in were effectively abandoned by the rest of society. If you are not familiar with the history of housing discrimination in this country, I recommend listening to this recent episode of Fresh Air and following up with the book the episode is based on.
So, bringing this full circle, if we sit on our hands as the black community is displaced in gentrifying areas around Memphis, then we are complicit in perpetuating unjust racial disparities in housing for the next generation. How would you feel if your family had been forced to live in a shitty part of town by means of discrimination, and then as soon as that area became vibrant and livable again you were forced out by economic forces? You'd be fucking outraged, and rightfully so.
The good news is that displacement is not an inevitable byproduct of redevelopment. The mechanisms by which displacement occur are rising rents and increased property tax liabilities, which are issues that can be remedied by public policy (namely upzoning and property tax abatement for incumbent property owners).
But if redevelopment is going to occur in a just fashion, we're going to have to give real consideration to preventing the negative aspects of gentrification and stop focusing on whether the upper-middle class white people of Lea's Woods might have to, GASP, park their second car around the corner from their house as Binghampton urbanizes (for example).
tl;dr Memphis needs redevelopment but sitting back and allowing the black community to be displaced in gentrifying areas would be to perpetuate a long history of unjust housing discrimination. The good news is that it isn't inevitable.
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853
This is an excellent summary. White Americans got success by making sure the lowest rungs of the economic ladder were full of black people. It was done intentionally with laws and descrimination at all levels of society, city, state and federal.
These should be the top recommendations hands down, both of these books were designed with your specific goal in mind:
A People's History of America - This focuses on history of the US from the perspective of the everyman rather than the 'big man' side of history where every politician is a gentle statesman. It shows just how barbaric and ghoulish those in charge often are.
Lies My Teacher Told Me. - Similar to the last one, this one shows how modern history loves to pretend all sorts of shit did not happen or ignore anything that's even slightly discomforting, like the idea that Henry Ford literally inspired Hitler, both in a model industry and anti-semitism.
These are both relatively easy reads with lots of praise.
Adam Curtis docs are always good, I recommend starting with one called "Black Power" which answers the question "What happens to African countries when they try to play ball with the west?"
If anyone reading this guy's comment finds this sort of stuff interesting, I would highly, highly recommend this book on Morality, Justice, Society, that sort of thing. This comment reminded me of this guy's writing style & I couldn't put this thing down:
Justice by Michael J. Sandel
I don't know about outright "denial" outside of fringe circles, but it's not uncommon to see folks engage in mental gymnastics to downplay the legacy of imperialism, chattel slavery, etc., or even attempt to turn it into a "good" thing. Think about it:
How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1422282600&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=white+cargo
>President Roosevelt was responsible for Pearl Harbor attack, knew about it in advance but didn't warn the Hawaiian commanders, because he wanted to sucker Hitler to declare war? -- That would easily find a mention in my list of worst conspiracy theories ever.
Actually this is very likely the case. This guy offers plenty of evidence to back it up: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4489636-8060653?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1179674151&amp;sr=8-1
It's not a totally crazy conspiracy theory. Throughout history there have always been cases of leaders setting up, provoking or allowing attacks in order to convince the populace into supporting a war. It would be naive to think that that practice would have any reason to have stopped.
The gold standard on this topic is definitely Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
That non-violence shit will get you killed.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
There's actually a whole book detailing all of the people who have died in the Canyon over the years. The overwhelming majority of deaths can be attributed to being young and male. There's also a maybe not surprisingly large number of guys who died while peeing off the side of the Canyon.
> t’s not surprising to anyone who has lived in or visited a major American metropolitan region that the nation’s cities tend to be organized in their own particular racial pattern. In Chicago, it’s a north/south divide. In Austin, it’s west/east. In some cities, it’s a division based around infrastructure, as with Detroit’s 8 Mile Road. In other cities, nature—such as Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River—is the barrier. Sometimes these divisions are man-made, sometimes natural, but none are coincidental.
The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything But Accidental
A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city Smithsonian magazine recently ran an article about this. The article is about a recent book that was written by an economist at Berkeley.
Here are a couple of excellent books about blacks using firearms to defend themselves against white supremacists.
https://www.amazon.com/Negroes-Guns-Robert-F-Williams/dp/1773230522
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
The authors of the book Generations make a pretty good description of it. Basically, the Boomer generation was born into the 'perfect world' created for them by the GI Generation (their parents).
Their whole world-view is basically self-centered and idealistic, and you can see this in advertisements for retirement funds that are targeted at boomers. (There's one I think narrated by Dennis Hopper: "We were the generation that was going to change everything, and now we're changing the way we retire")
Much of the Woodstock stuff was idealistic. As a generation, they are basically narcissistic, which is why the 70s was the "Me" decade, and why so many members of Generation X were either latchkey kids, or children of divorce - the Boomers were more obsessed with career climbing or their personal 'happiness' than institutions of marriage or family.
Although their self-centered independence was counter-culture in the 60s and 70s, in the 80s as they grew up and became more corporate and career-centered it became less about peace and love and more about profits and low taxes. (Wall Street - Gordon Gekko: "Greed is Good") Conservativism/Libertarianism is another form of dreamy-eyed Idealism.
As you would find out if you read Generations or The Fourth Turning by the same authors, this is nothing new as the general 'lifestyles and values' of generations tend to repeat cyclically, due to the complex interaction between generations. Hence, the Baby Boomer generation had a lot in common with the Missionary Generation of the 1860s-1880s.
A People's History of the United States, but only if you are an American
> And in response to the hordes of people who will insist that not voting is irresponsible and support the age old lie that if we just can get the right people in power then, then, the system will turn around – Such naive assertions should be met with a dose of reality which is glaringly clear through a cursory look at history. Such people should have to explain at what point in time there has been a sea change in our system from where it started from genocidal slavers to benevolent rulers, because such a change is nonexistent, and all one need do to figure this out is pick up a copy of Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States. What’s been there from the get go to present is abuse, stemming from the very origins of western civilization and top down social hierarchy.
>
>When the people claim they achieved a victory what they have really achieved amounts to a gesture that shuts them up. It’s analogous to hungry child crying that has just irritated their abusive parent enough they finally concede to give them an extra morsel of food. The child then celebrates like they won a battle however the child is still in the abusive state but now thinks their wails do something. What they don’t realize is if they get annoying enough what they will be met with is not another conciliatory gesture but a beating.
We live in a perpetual system of abuse.
Seconded; for a great history of this, check out Cadillac Desert
Also, one problem I have with this graphic is how the United States is treated as a single entity. While the West is running out of water, the Great Lakes region sits on 1/5 of the world's available fresh water. To this day one of America's strengths is abundant natural resources.
https://smile.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X?sa-no-redirect=1
There's even a book.
Morbid, but interesting read about every death in the Grand Canyon. It's a lot. Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
Edit: ~12 per year (700ish total and counting)
I hate that I don't know how to link you to the right spot, but hit "look inside" on this book. You want to read the chapter titled "Hold Fast to Your Children: Death in Hot Water". It gives actual accounts of people who went into the pools. One man dove, most fell accidentally; either way it isn't pretty.
ah, "ye ol' america sucks" argument
a popular form of entertainment around this snowy time of year as we gather around the fireplace drinking cocoa with peppermint...
to recount wondrous yet bone-chilling tales of the slender man of damnable wallstreet, the ghost of guts in generations past and of course those lazy, fat, incorrigible americans... luckily the third little piggie builds a house out of bricks
I wonder how much the appropriately named /u/gloomdoom actually knows about generational cycles?
very detailed information from generations book on amazon
that is....... a cycle of 4
the extroverted generations are the generations that get shit done.... the introverted generations are more of a regroup from the failures (pragmatic vs idealistic) of the previous generation... it takes time to turn the social ship around so to speak.
now some people don't like gen theory because they think it's woo woo-- but it's likely based in psychology/sociology-- that this action and style of generation has a predictable social reaction.
also the cycle was broken during the civil war into a generational cycle of 3 rather than 4 because of that event-- so it's not like the social pattern can't be disrupted by events either.
the upshot is-- millennials-- yours is a generation of successfully getting shit done...... so don't be so gloomy.... you have a great pragmatic base already established (from gen x) so you are mentally prepared to tackle massive structural challenges.
not every generation is so lucky
Okay, here is a copy/paste of a comment I made previously:
"The Principles of Communism" by Friedrich Engels was an early draft of the Manifesto that many feel is actually easier to understand. I still recommend reading the manifesto as well if you haven't yet.
Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein and The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde are two short, simple, and very eloquent introductory essays that everyone should read.
"Marx for Beginners" by Rius is an illustrated book explaining the history and basics of Marx's ideas. I know it sounds absurd that it's basically like a comic book, but it seriously does a great job of concisely stating a lot of the basics. I recommend it to all beginners.
"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels. It outlines socialism and distinguishes the scientific socialism of Marx/Engels from the utopian socialism that preceded it.
"Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Bertrand Russell analyzes several different leftist views and their origins. Russell has a simple, reasonable way of explaining things. I don't agree with him on everything, but he does his best to be fair when explaining things and it is a valuable introductory work.
"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by Engels. This does what it says on the tin.
One of the best things to get is the Marx-Engels Reader. It contains "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" and many of the other works by Marx and Engels that I and others mention. (Here it is for free)
Everything I've listed so far, with the exception of "Principles of Scientific Socialism" and "Roads To Freedom" is a pretty short read.
Here's some slightly more advanced reading:
"Wage Labor and Capital" and "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" by Marx
"The Holy Family" by Marx and Engels
State and Revolution by Lenin
Once you're informed enough, it's definitely worth is to read through Marx's Capital with these David Harvey lectures as a guide.
Also, this guy's youtube channel has been a great help to me. I've especially found his series on the Law of Value to be very useful lately but he has tons of great videos. His videos on manufacturing consent, crisis, commodities, and credit are just a few good examples. If you go to his website you can see a list of all his videos on the right hand side. He's certainly not perfect, but he's helped me to learn a lot and helped to point me to other resources as well.
Edit: Found free copies of Marx for Beginners and Marx-Engels reader, added links. Now I link to free copies of every work I mention but one. Free education, comrades!
Edit2: I've rearranged this some and tried to order it better. I removed one book since it's hard to find and out of print but here's the description I had of it:
"Principles of Scientific Socialism" by Philip Sharnoff. I haven't been able to find this book to order online... maybe it's out of print, but I picked it up at a used book store and it's pretty great. It concisely explains all about Marxism, Leninism and modern socialist movements. I like it because he uses more or less plain English and gets straight to the point. It even goes into basic history about the Russian and Chinese Revolution, the USSR and the cold war. It's really fantastic. I'm sure there are other books that do this and if anyone knows of them, let me know. I'd love to find one to recommend that is in print.
Always amuses me the similarities (in general) between Pearl harbor and 9/11 and how they were able to get away with the same thing 60+ years later.
If you're bored, grab Day of Deceit....great book on the PH conspiracy
I've not read that one yet, but I did just finish "The Gun" by CJ Chivers, which covers a lot of the same ground. Also excellent in my estimation.
http://amzn.com/0743271734
Most of the Jews who moved initially were not wealthy or well off; and, why would their wealth matter?
Your assertion that Jews are "Westerners" is an idea that has only developed in America after the formation of Israel. (See: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America) For the extreme majority of Jewish history, no one considered Jews to be "Western".
Further: you cannot "colonize" your homeland. Would you consider the displacement of the existing Jewish inhabitants of settlements by incoming descendants of Palestinians who became refugees in 1948 "colonization"? Likely not - because you consider them native and that they have a right to live there.
How long does it take for an ethnically cleansed native people to stop being "native"? A century? A millennia? What if that people maintained their national identity and refused to forget the homeland they lost?
All peoples have the right to self-determination. Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) reads: "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."(See: the Wikipedia article on Self-Determination) We have a human right to exercise our national self-determination, and as a people forced into extensive diaspora, we chose to exercise that right by reestablishing ourselves in our homeland.
The violent displacement of local Palestinians was a tragedy. I wish it could have been avoided. But as I noted in another thread that blame cannot be laid at our feet.
Many of us rejected the formation of an independent Jewish nation-state and tried to live with Palestinians in a single binational state; those anti-Zionist Arabized Jews of Hebron were massacred in 1920. That turned the political tide. So we agreed to split the land, since they refused to share what we both had a claim to; Palestinians and their many Arab-state allies violently rejected that, too.
If either the Hebron Massacre or the 1948 Arab War had not noccurred, then the Nakba would not have occurred. Note that Israel still has a 20% Arab minority. Note that most of those Arabs are the descendants of Palestinians who refused to leave in 1948. They have full rights as citizens and serve at the highest positions of government. If there had been no war, most of the 1948 refugees would not have fled the war.
Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews in the 1800s and 1900s for many reasons. Their leader during the Hebron Massacre was an outright antisemite and Nazi collaborator, for example. But blaming Jews for being massacred simply because they had the audacity to exercise their human right to live their is crass victim blaming.
That is why you cannot lay the blame of the Nakba at our feet: Jews had a right to live there in peace; Palestinians and other Arabs refused to live in peace with us; blaming the victims of racist aggression is immoral.
And further - I see you're a cultural Hindu. What are your thoughts on the Partition of India and Paksitan? Fourteen million people were violently displaced as part of Partition. That's ten times the number of people displaced as part of Israel's founding. Yes, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced in the Nakba. Seven hundred thousand Jews were displaced from surrounding Arab states as well, both before 1948 and after.
Was the Partition of India and Pakistan invalid? Was it ten times as invalid?
it's based on the real life shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick. Other posters point to the Nathaniel Philbrick non-fiction book [In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex] (http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828)
lol. the book is totally amazing if you want to learn more.
It's a bit of fact and a bit of propaganda. There are many claims in here, so I'll probably miss some, but let me start with the first big red flag that's demonstrably not true:
>And in the blighting shadow of Slavery letters die and art cannot live. What book has the South ever given to the libraries of the world? What work of art has she ever added to its galleries? What artist has she produced…
There were several big names from the south in literature during the Antebellum period. The best example I can think of, William Gilmore Simms, whom Edgar Allen Poe praised as "the best novelist which this country, on the whole, has produced.". The south even had at least one literary magazine that I know of, The Southern Literary Messenger, also edited by Poe for a short time, coincidentally. It's safe to say the south was not suffering for lack of writers during that period.
As for fine arts, I'm struggling to come up with native southern painters who remained in the south through their lives, though I'm not well-versed in art history. If you expand that to painters born elsewhere who worked in the south, I can come up with some like John Audubon and George Caleb Bingham. There are probably others, but I have to admit that art history is totally out of my realm of knowledge.
As for the greater claim of the entire article:
>Possessed of all the raw materials of manufactures and the arts, its inhabitants look to the North for everything they need from the cradle to the coffin. Essentially agricultural in its constitution, with every blessing Nature can bestow upon it, the gross value of all its productions is less by millions than that of the simple grass of the field gathered into Northern barns. With all the means and materials of wealth, the South is poor.
There's some truth in that. No, the south did not have much industry outside of agriculture, save for a few places in eastern states like Virginia. However, I'd say it's a stretch to say that the South looked to the North for everything they needed. Most of the whites in the south weren't plantation owners, but subsistence farmers who mostly took care of their own needs. The claim that the difference in economy was due to slavery is mostly true. In order to support industry, you need people to sell things to. Slaves don't need that many goods, so producing goods to sell is less enticing in such a market.
>Why are they subjected to a censorship of the press, which dictates to them what they may or may not read, and which punishes booksellers with exile and ruin for keeping for sale what they want to buy? Why must Northern publishers expurgate and emasculate the literature of the world before it is permitted to reach them?
There's a small bit of truth to the censorship, but I only know of one very specific case of censorship. There was an outrage among southerners in 1835 over mailed abolitionist pamphlets, Post Master General Amos Kendall allowed them to be banned them from being mailed to the south. During this time, several southern states also passed laws against distributing abolitionist literature.
The bigger issue here might be that of self-censorship. I think this goes beyond people who might have believed in abolition privately, but publicly denounced it (although those certainly existed as well). Newspapers in the south, even those that took a more liberal stance, seemed unable to reconcile that the system of slavery their part of the country relied on was an inherent evil. A great example of this is Brownlow's Whig, a newspaper created by William Brownlow, who would eventually serve as governor and senator of TN, following the Civil War. I choose Brownlow because he's the perfect example of this confusing dichotomy and the shifting view of some southerners on slavery. When the paper begins in the 1830s, he is decidedly pro-slavery. As the war approaches, he continues to support slavery, but he is staunchly opposed to secession. During and after secession, he continues to oppose secession and in the meantime, his views on slavery shift. First, he begins to admit that Union is more important than slavery before finally taking a flat-out abolitionist stance by the end of the war.
From a transcript published in the July 2, 1864 issue of his paper, illustrating the strange position before advocating complete abolition:
>I do now know that I would be willing to go so far as probably he would. But I cordially agree with him in this -- I think, considering what has been done about slavery, taking the thing as it now stands, overlooking altogether, either in the way of condemnation or in the way of approval, any act that has brought us to the point where we are, but believing in my conscience and with all my heart, that what has brought us where we are in the matter of slavery, is the original sin and folly of treason and secession, because you remember that the Chicago Convention itself was understood today and I believe it virtually did explicitly say that they would not touch slavery in the States. ... We are prepared to demand not only that the whole territory of the United States shall not be made slave, but that the General Government, both the war power and the peace power, to put slavery as nearly possible back where it was -- for although that would be a fearful state of society, it is better than anarchy; or else use the whole power of the Government, both of war and peace, and all the practicable power that the people of the United States will give them to exterminate and extinguish slavery.
It's pretty clear that no one told Brownlow not to talk about abolition. His paper was known for being inflammatory and he didn't really care what the authorities had to say. It was shut down and reopened several times over the years as he fled from public backlash, assassination attempts, and eventually the Confederate army. It changed names almost as often as he changed locations including: Tennessee Whig, The Whig, The Jonesborough Whig, The Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, The Knoxville Whig and Independent Journal, and perhaps most colorfully, Brownlow's Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator. My point being, it was pretty clear that he didn't care if he upset people and wasn't the type of man who wouldn't talk about abolition because it might against some regulation. He didn't believe in abolition for other, personal reasons until later on. I think this might be indicative of the more widespread form of "censorship" and not talking about abolition.
As far as the entire article, it seems to fall into the old view of looking reasons why the south was backward rather than seeing the north as revolutionary and the south as being more in step with other countries, like those in Europe and Russia. I agree with James McPherson's assessment in Battle Cry of Freedom that the war was the south's counter revolution to an economic, social, and political revolution that was happening in the north. In short: the article presents a heavily biased, though not completely untrue view of the south and its problems.
edit: added more sources and expanded a bit.
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/
This book changed my whole worldview.
This book is a great beginner's guide to Marx, very easy to understand and has all of the basics.
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is also a great socialist history of the US and includes some anecdotes about radical religious figures.
I would also point him towards anything by Father Dan Berrigan.
You might be interested in Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It’s a little old but he does an amazing job of laying out the issues with California’s water system.
The paper was primarily focused on Mississippi and Alabama during the period immediately following the Civil War to 1900. Since it isn't published in a journal or theoretically available outside of my school, I'm not particularly comfortable with providing the text.
I would recommend two books, they're very well written, and really do focus very specifically on the topic of Black Codes and the Pig Laws.
http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462423372&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Slavery+by+Another+Name
and
http://www.amazon.com/Worse-than-Slavery-Parchman-Justice/dp/0684830957?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;redirect=true&amp;ref_=od_aui_detailpages00
If you were to pick only one, I would read "Worse Than Slavery."
Please read this so you understand what role firearms play in peaceful protest and societal change. https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X/ref=asc_df_082236123X/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=312425492373&amp;hvpos=1o1&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=2120017822570763225&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9026941&amp;hvtargid=pla-561430308896&amp;psc=1
Want to know more about Grand Canyon fatalities? I have a book recommendation for you.
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
Death in Yellowstone is a very interesting book. But I just couldn't finish it. It was too depressing, especially the stories of little children who died horrible or painful deaths.
I highly recommend the book "Death in Yellowstone"
A LOT of people have died from the hot springs.
One of the people mauled by a bear was someone from my hometown and a good friend of my dads at the time.
There is a whole chapter about horrible deaths resulting from people getting too close to the hot springs in the book Death in Yellowstone. It should be required reading before entering the park.
Highly recommended book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Rothstein goes back to the 1920s to trace the various methods government, and mostly federal government, used to create and maintain segregation.
I have to agree. Although many were privately in favor of segregation they required the law to hold it up. Even gentlemen's agreement deed restrictions were subject to block busting.
There's quite a few good books I'd recommend on the subject:
tagging /u/NotGerkonanaken since they said they were interested
edit: obligatory 'thanks for the gold' edit. :)
> Because white people didn't go through slavery.
Wrong.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm
http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
There's a whole book of this stuff. We read stories aloud as we drove to and from the park. "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park." Many stories of attempts at hot tubbing the pools, falling into the pools, rocks falling on heads, etc.
Here's some reading for you.
And ignoring the oversimplified and outright false accusation that "so many black men abandon their children", what else is wrong? You learn how to be a father from your father. And if your father didn't have the opportunity to learn from his father because they were property? Well, there's another difficulty, isn't there? And it's a difficulty that's not going to go away in one generation in the best of circumstances.
And why is it so far away from being "the best of circumstances"? Well, you could read Slavery by Another Name and The New Jim Crow to see how slavery actually lasted well past its abolishment and how the for-profit prison complex is preventing black people from simply "working past it". It's really such a complicated, horrible web... It's too much for me to try to discuss in one post.
But put simply: No other enslaved group, not the Irish, not the Japanese, not any other group of people has faced the same level of obstruction while attempting to rise up to equality. And if you think that these issues aren't part of the cause rather than the result of crime and drug use and poverty which results in black fathers being taken from their families... well, you're wrong.
It's a fantastic and fascinating book. Check it out.
Yes. Read this book.
Contemporary Christianity is functionally a fascist movement. Who saw that coming?
Good book on this topic
To be fair, Jews weren't considered white until relatively recently.
This is an interesting book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
I won't give any direct answers because this is something you need to know for yourself, not because someone told you.
So if you want to know how to approach this, first you need to know the history. Read for example A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn to see specific instances how was government behaving in last 500 years. Watch documentaries from John Pilger. Watch Assassination of Russia to see how Putin got into power. Read War is a Racket. I could go on and on; there are hundreds and hundreds of great books and documentaries and unclassified documents which you can get today and check for yourself.
Also I need to point out - don't make a (common) mistake thinking of any government as a single entity. It is made of people, each of them having his own agenda. More proper question then would be, could some people in government have so much power and skill and at the same time be so unscrupulous, that they plan, commit, and get away with committing terrorist (false-flag) acts for their own profits?
I can't offer you squat on job hunting, but I used to be a water lawyer here in California and if you want to read an insanely interesting book, that will always up your interest with anyone in any part of the water business in the US (or probably Canada, too), read Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert, which all about the history of the aquafication of the West. Looks like you are Europe-based from your job applications, but it is a fascinating story well worth your time.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
Since you didn't specifically mention it: it was a whaleship that was attacked and sunk by a whale. For those who want to read more on this, I enjoyed this book.
For the American Civil War:
Jean Edward Smith's Grant biography goes into some detail regarding logistics, as Grant's experience as a Quartermaster during the Mexican-American War, in particular when Scott's army was cut off from supplies during the Mexico City campaign, influenced actions like Grant's mule train to Chattanooga to relieve Rosecrans, and Sherman's March to the Sea.
However, it's not purely about the logistics of the war, which is covered in some more detail in McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, especially the comparisons of the economics of the Union and Confederate states.
And regarding World War II, the US Army Center of Military History has published two free books:
> What college departments usually offer logistics courses? Business Administration usually?
Or a dedicated logistics department. MIT has its Logistics and Supply Chain Management course available online.
Yes - all other things being equal. This exact situation has played out countless times in real life with ships lost at sea, and sailors on barren islands. Just look at what happened to the whaleship Essex (the inspiration for Moby Dick, and very well documented in Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea) - the fattest sailors lived the longest/survived, while the skinniest ones died first. In the case of the Essex and many other ships of the 17th-19th centuries, the white sailors lived longer than the black sailors because they had more privileged lifestyles and thus weren't as skinny. This is also why, apart from other social and diet factors, Polynesian peoples are bigger on average - when their ancestors where colonizing the Pacific and on the sea for months at a time, the naturally larger individuals didn't die of starvation as often, and were thus selected for.
The most-often recommended single volume is Battle Cry of Freedom.
If Gettysburg is an interest, I found Hallowed Ground by the same author to be a good read. More exhaustive is Sears's Gettysburg, which helped me to understand a very dynamic picture.
Finally, we often get inquiries about the roots of the war. The Pulitzer Prize winning
Impending Crisis is first-rate.
Read the book This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible I am only a couple of chapters in but so far it has illustrated to me how firearms ownership in the black community kept a lot of people alive during the civil rights movement.
Those are some old, old official story talking points there man. I mean really, you are mocking NORAD & the biggest military budget, several times over, on the face of the earth? We weren't capable of intercepting/defending against 3 civilian airlines gone hostile? Come on. It's 2014. All the things you've listed have been debunked by researchers - not paid pundits & propagandists.
Testimony from Controlled Demolition Expert Danny Jowenko (deceased) ON WTC7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHHvo6U4lA
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: 4/5 stars http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410494781&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=debunking+9%2F11+debunking
POP Mechanics Debunking 9/11 Myths (latest 2011 version) 2 1/2 stars: http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Myths-Conspiracy-Theories/dp/1588165477/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410494819&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=debunking+9%2F11
9/11 commission report: 2 1/2 stars http://www.amazon.com/11-Commission-Report-Terrorist-Authorized/dp/0393326713/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410494837&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=9%2F11+commision
9/11 New Jersey Police Officer Breaks Silence: Israeli Mossad Involved in 9/11 attacks](https://archive.org/details/9-11CopBreaksSilence-IsraeliMossadInvolvementInAttacks)
Army General Wesley Clark: Wars are Planned RE: Memo to take out 7 countries in 5 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
US MAJOR Stubblebine exposes 9/11 cover up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0xzsbSbVUE
Professors
Architects & Engineers
Pilots
220+Senior Government & Intelligence Officials
Military Officers
Actors and Artists
300+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members
Although the 5 min summary mentioned before is decent, none of the previous comments fairly describe the evidence being claimed by the truth movement. Short of reading a book like David Ray Griffin's definitive Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, I offer the following.
The strongest 9/11 truth arguments are related to the complete demolition of both towers and the nearby 47 story building 7, by two airplanes. Although these arguments are best presented by the videos at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, where over 1,600 professional architects and engineers have put their entire professional careers on the line for the sake of this evidence, I will try to summarize a few salient points.
The speed of the collapse of each tower approximated free fall, and in the case of building 7, was admitted as free fall by the NIST. In response, Truthers have asked the valid question: how is it possible for a steel structured building to fall through itself at that rate? What is the physical explanation for every connection in an undamaged section of a building failing at once? To this day the NIST and others such as Popular Mechanics have not provided a scientifically satisfactory explanation. Most people don't even know the pancake theory was abandoned. I would love to get into details, but to summarize, those reports work like a Hollywood set, they were written to give people a reason to believe, not to apply science and generate a hypotheses based on evidence. For example, did you know the NIST didn't even analyze the behavior of the building post collapse initiation, stating that what happened next was clear from the video?
That ain't science folks. Really, watch that video. It truly angers me when people say our arguments have no evidentiary basis. The evidence is extremely strong and it's been their tact to distort and hide the evidence, not ours.
To continue, there's only one method for bringing a heavily fortified steel structured building down in it's footprint at free fall speed: demolition. So the Truthers have also asked the valid question: was there any evidence of demolition. And the answer is yes many times over. First, there was molten steel in the rubble lasting for days (jet fuel is basically kerosene, doesn't get hot enough and doesn't burn for days). But again this fact was brazenly denied in full by the NIST despite tons of evidence to the contrary. Further, independent labs studying steel and dust from the towers have found unexploded red nanothermite chips. And the list goes on, from explosions in the basement prior to airplane impact, to explosions seen below the damaged area of the building, to thermite that can be seen pouring out of the building.
Really there's too much evidence to list here. And worse, the blatant lies proffered as explanations can be found in every strand of the fantastical official story. For example did you know that in order to accept NORADS current explanation for why scrambled jets never reached the hijacked planes you have to accept that they were lying for years previously? Or that the hijackers were staying with intelligence assets prior to the events?
It's also worth mentioning that all those claiming "too many people had to be in on it" are painfully naive about how the world works in our era. Go ahead, try and yell the truth from the mountaintops. See what happens.
TL;DR On 9/11 both the upper building sections pictured here fell at the same speed. Based on physics that is impossible without explosives, evidence for which was everywhere.
"...considering how old it is"? You don't need to go back all that far to find a time when restrictive covenents were still stipulated and enforced. If you'd like a pretty in-depth treatment of the subject, check out the book, The Color of Law.
It is a very complex issue, and certainly on the poorer end of the spectrum housing policy, especially pernicious starting in the New Deal era from the Federal level which was deliberately racist and codified segregation, still accounts for much of the racial segregation in the country today (see The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein for a very good analysis).
But what is interesting about the wealthier end of the spectrum is that many middle class black families are choosing to live below their means in majority-black suburbs rather than be a minority in the common majority-white suburbs. This is a really interesting paper about the issue. While there are several factors, including discrimination, a major factor is that many black families prefer not being a minority in their own neighborhoods even if it comes at the costs of de facto segregation.
It just is not as simple as people like Klein want it to be. Klein's point is definitely not the slam-dunk he thinks it is. First, his talking point is based on statistics specific to a few large urban areas. It is not representative of the country as a whole and shouldn't be framed that way as Klein did in the podcast. It is much more complicated than simply looking at New York, LA, and Chicago and the average income of neighborhoods to determine the relative quality of social services, schools, etc.
>this is silly. By this logic, Africans have the sole right to dominate the world.
Then why do Whites keep yapping about made-up Tibetan genocides and other bullshit? You realize how idiotic white people look when they're talking about "their lands"
http://i.imgur.com/WyRZmaH.jpg
&nbsp;
>We do want it to be a friendly competition though.
You do not speak for your history or your leaders. Whether you realize this or not (I think you don't, your race as a whole is insanely aggressive and racist)
http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/us-is-the-greatest-threat-to-world-peace-poll/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5348804
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-C-I-Interventions-II--Updated/dp/1567512526/
http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/
Native Indians
● http://www.amazon.com/Bury-My-Heart-Wounded-Knee/dp/0805086846/
&nbsp;
Blacks
● http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/
&nbsp;
Cambodia
http://www.amazon.com/Sideshow-Kissinger-Nixon-Destruction-Cambodia/dp/0671835254/
&nbsp;
Laos
Hiding America’s War Crimes in Laos | http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2715
&nbsp;
Vietnam
● http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/1250045061/
● http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Program-Americas-Forbidden-Bookshelf-ebook/dp/B00KGMIW6Q/
&nbsp;
Korea
● http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Korean-1950-1951-Nonconformist/dp/0316817708/
&nbsp;
Philippines
● http://www.amazon.com/Benevolent-Assimilation-American-Philippines-1899-1903/dp/0300030819/
&nbsp;
China
● China’s Rise, Fall, and Re-Emergence as a Global Power | http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/03/chinas-rise-fall-and-re-emergence-as-a-global-power/
● USA’s warfare against China ½ | http://www.voltairenet.org/article177063.html
&nbsp;
That was only USA.
&nbsp;
>developing a multi-racial coalition to compete against whites.
Why are you surprised?
When Blacks march peacefully, you leaders unleash attack dogs on them. When they finally get to vote, a "mysterious" drug epidemic destroys their areas. If your group would stop being such dicks, these people wouldn't even need a coalition. Look at the context - always. These angry people don't come from haunted houses.
&nbsp;
>we have a lot of work to do in waking our people up to the nature of group conflict
You are retarded. You have entire international organizations mean to rape and pillage colored nations. ICC = International Caucasian Court. Why haven't USA war crimes (there are dozens) ever been punished? Here's the latest and greatest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw Why aren't there movements to free Australia, NZ, Canada, America, Hawaii, Guam, etc but a bunch of bs about freeing Tibet?
IMF and World bank http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/
Anglo five eyes - that's right. five WHITE nations lurking like perverts and peering into everyone's bedrooms.
&nbsp;
>You keep calling us "racist", which frankly I don't mind, but the implication seems to be that you're not racist, which is ridiculous. We're both doing the same thing, engaging in group competition for the advancement of our groups. Don't believe the leftist lies that you have the moral high ground against the evil white man. Frankly, I think you're better than that.
Tell me. Would you want to switch places with "just as evil Asians" and live in BOTH the West and the East? Where's your centuries long list of war crime committed against whites by "just the same as Whites" Asians? Not one of you would switch places with Asians in either countries. Stop making false equivalences.
&nbsp;
>Europe has been the home of depraved brutality, as well as of intense beauty. I accept it all.
Good. I can respect that.
gonna plug the “marx-engels reader”
best thing is each work included has an introduction by the editor that explains why he chose to include that work and why it’s important.
In their book 'Generations', they trace the generational archetypes back to the 1400s, so that's 25 generations total, spanning seven 'seculums' (four-generation cycles). It's a huge thick volume full of sources, quotes, explanations, and dense analysis that I can't do justice here, but I found it very compelling.
>hurr durr source is funny
now fuck off
Marx-Engels Reader by Robert Tucker
Start with:
if you want secondary discussions, PM me.
We weren't taken by surprise at Pearl:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
And the French were surprised by Hitler. They were well prepared for war sadly they were prepared for WWI
Read "White Cargo" http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. You won't read about this in High School History textbooks
https://www.salon.com/2000/06/15/white_slaves/
https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
https://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056
Just because you didn't learn about it in school or see it on TV, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
To be fair, the textbooks most of us studied in school (in the US anyway) tended to gloss over some of these more uncomfortable truths about our history. I highly recommend reading A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn. It really put things in perpective for me.
Cadillac Desert, one of the greatest books pn the topic of vanishing water and the American West.
According to the beef industry, it takes somewhere between 450-850 gallons water/pound of beef. Less biased research has put that number as high as 5,000 gallons water/pound of beef. Even at 450 gallons water/pound of beef it is still pretty ridiculous.
The vast majority of this water is consumed by irrigating fields to produce feed for cows. And this is no small portion of total water supplies. In CO, 30% of the total water use in the state goes directly to the livestock industry.
Cadillac Desert put it very succinctly "The West’s water crisis — and many of its environmental problems as well — can be summed up, implausible as this may seem, in a single word: livestock." As a restoration ecologist working in the western US, there is no greater hurdle I face than damage from cattle and cattle related activities.
If we're dropping books with mundane topics count me in
Cadillac Desert is a great book that talks about this Dam and the general messed up water policy in the America West that led to it (and many other misguided projects).
Fascinating read that gives a lot of context to just messed up water policy is in the USA.
here's the book. I myself haven't gotten around to it:
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376622637&amp;sr=8-1-spell&amp;keywords=wahleship+essex
It depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want a clear, intro-level overview of the subject, check out Shafer-Landau's Fundamental's of Ethics. It's a fantastic place to start, and it is the book I recommend if you really want to understand the subject and plan to read outside the context of a class.
If you want primary texts, I suggest that you get the book's companion, The Ethical Life.
If you want a textbook that is a little shorter and more engaging, check out Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy.
If you want an introduction that's informative and fun to read but less informative than the Rachels or the Shafer-Landau, check out Sandel's Justice. You can also watch his Justice lectures online. This book, as opposed to the other two, is written for a popular audience.
> All slaves have died, all of those who owned or directly, socioeconomically benefitted from the slave trade have died, and all ancient American companies have ceased slave labor.
Here is what I meant, and why I think your statement quoted above is not true: Blacks were put into debt slavery up until the second world war. That's only 75 years ago. A fascinating read is Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
> these genuine problems aren't exactly being approached the right way by the Democrats, historically the party of the minority voter.
Absolutely true and for the last fifty years, neither party has done well. Specifically Mr. Clinton made awful policy choices for Blacks in America with his "tough on crime" choices like three-strikes and mandatory sentencing. "Tough on crime" is a popular message that both sides of the aisle espouse.
>To your last point, indentured servitude is not slavery. The idea is that you have a debt which you pay off through work directly for a person. Slavery is the absence of wages and freedom but being required to work. An indentured servant is paid a wage and generally has freedom outside of their job.
In real history, that distinction is not as sharp as you seem to think. "Indentured Servitude" has very often been slavery in everything but name. This has been true globally, though the book I linked focuses on the US.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X/
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010/
https://www.amazon.com/Gunfight-Battle-Over-Right-America/dp/0393345831
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Guns-Liberals-Second-Amendment/dp/1610391691/
https://www.amazon.com/More-Guns-Less-Crime-Understanding/dp/0226493660/
https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Second-Amendment-Documentary-Commentaries/dp/0962366439
https://www.amazon.com/Armed-America-Remarkable-Became-American/dp/1595552847
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Bear-Arms-Origins-Anglo-American/dp/0674893077
https://www.amazon.com/Targeting-Guns-Firearms-Control-Institutions/dp/0202305694
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Biography-Michael-Waldman/dp/147674744X
There's actually quite a few good books on this, including "That Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles Cobb.
NPR did a short interview with the author earlier this year.
"Negros With Guns," by Robert Williams, is another great read.
>Rob Williams was using boycott and pacifists or passive resistance in the '50s.
> But finally, after a couple of court cases when it was just egregious examples of misjustice on behalf of the African American community said enough. If you bring violence to our door, we will not run into our houses, lock up and close the windows and hide.
>"The federal government is not coming to the aid of people who are oppressed, and it is time for Negro men to stand up and be men, and that if it's necessary for us to die, we must be willing to die; if it's necessary for us to kill, we must be willing to kill."
The right to bear arms should be available to all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin.
I recommend this book. Without guns, the civil rights movement would have been impossible.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
Counterpoint
Most of the "violence" people have been worried about from Trump protests has been property damage anyway. Don't beat up people in MAGA hats [who aren't otherwise threatening people etc]. Intimidate Trump, or the outright Neo-Nazis, not your dumb neighbors. Beyond that... extraordinary times.
Obligatory link to one of my favorite books.
There's an entire book about people who die in the Grand Canyon: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
I read part of it and I recall that the most common death was 30ish males who died of dehydration because they underestimated their water needs. A lot of them thought it was a quick day trip to the bottom of the canyon and back. Didn't take any water and succumbed to thirst and exhaustion on the trip up.
This reminded me of a book I bought in Arizona... There is a book that documents every death in the Grand Canyon. A large chunk of those deaths is people who died trying to pee into it. http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1570980217/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ZPwTAb8JCFRZX
I don't know of a single place that has compiled all of the relevant information through history, you have to look on a smaller scale and combine all of it. I guess you could start with these:
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056
But you have to go so much further back before you see just how many whites were enslaved, mainly in Europe. You also have to be specific with how you define "white" people. In America, anyone with white skin is white, and if you expand on that it's pretty obvious there have been more white slaves throughout history than blacks, there are simply more white people. But if you get more specific and only include English/British people, then probably not.
You should really read up more on the history of the Civil Rights movement and the vital role the 2nd Amendment played, I'd recommend starting with This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible which details this. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself applied for a concealed handgun license for self-defense purposes (and was denied by the state) for Pete's sake.
Books I’d recommend:
House of Rain by Craig Childs: Part travel journal, part science. It gives the best account of pre-historic and historic southwestern history I’ve ever read. I really recommend this to anyone who knows a little (or a lot) about the Ancestral Puebloan (formerly Anasazi) culture and wants something that puts it all together. If you only visited Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Wupatki, Chaco, or Walnut Canyon, you might be a little confused by the different narratives. This’ll straighten you out and is just a really great read.
The Outlaw Trail by Charles Kelly: Written in the 1920’s by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park. What makes this different from other books about Butch Cassidy is that Kelly interviewed former members of the Wild Bunch. Many of them were still alive, so it’s a great historical account, as well as being a great western story. If you plan to visit SE Utah at any time, read this and you’ll recognize a lot of the place names as you drive from Arches to Canyonlands and Capitol Reef.
Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Ghiglieri & Myers: Tired of the books filled with heartwarming ranger tales about baby bears? This contains an account or listing of every person who’s ever died in the Grand Canyon. Drowning, suicide, accidents, falls, snake bites, tetnus - it’s all there. Has just as much nitty gritty info as you ever wanted, if kind of morbid, but extremely fascinating - and now part of a series.
Photographing the Southwest by Laurent Martres: Obviously a great book for photography tips, but I use it mostly as a guidebook. He has fantastic directions to all the popular spots as well as some little-known areas. What makes it even better is he’s very clear on if a normal sedan can drive there, or if you’ll need a Jeep. As a Camry owner in the land of Jeep trails, this is invaluable. His information is accurate in the National Parks and he doesn’t direct people into dangerous or illegal situations. It’s an excellent book for areas outside the parks as well. Then, when you get to your cool spot, you’ll know how to get a good photo of it.
You should carry your research one step further by checking out those who debunk the debunkers, especially with 9/11.
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
Edit: 9/11 WTC-chips are not paint and produce a thermite reaction: Dr. James Millette is wrong
I'm not the person you asked, but I would look at David Ray Griffin's book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking", or this video of a talk he gave about the book.
Unfortunately these stories are nothing new. It's odd to have a lot of stupid people this early, but the whole history of Yellowstone has people dying due to their own stupidity.
One of my favorite books is Death in Yellowstone. Glad to know they're getting plenty of material for Volume 2.
have you ever read Deaths in Yellowstone? I spent a week there years ago and read that book during my stay. it made for some very interesting talking points at various sites.
Probably this.
https://www.amazon.de/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
Edit: Here is a small interview, topic related.
http://www.yellowstonepark.com/unnatural-deaths-yellowstone-national-park-avoid/
> Re the comments on this tweet: Does Bernie get reparations for the fact that his father came to the US without a cent to his name because his relatives were destined to be slaughtered by the Nazis?
Why would the U.S. be responsible for restitution? Or is this yet another demonstration of your willing, abject ignorance and deliberate blindness with respect to the documented facts and nuance associated with this issue?
To this day, Jewish families in Germany that survived the Holocaust are receiving reparations. And it looks like others may not be done collecting yet:
Poles look to charge Germans $850 billion to mark 80 years since Nazi invasion
>A Polish lawmaker said Friday that a committee examining potential German reparations to Poland hoped to complete its report by September 1, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion, and would likely demand up to $850 billion for the damage inflicted during World War II.
It's interesting to see which groups can push for (and have been successful at obtaining) reparations without catching predictable, often nonsensical flak/closed-minded idiocy that obscures discussion on the merits and who cannot.
Some are even offered an extra boost! Like Joe Biden proposing $30 million for Holocaust survivors in 2013. Forget the American citizens whose lives were continually destroyed for centuries and their descendants' futures harmed with the help of the U.S. government, let's try to take on the moral obligations of other countries first!
Slavery, Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration, The War on Drugs, Redlining, race rioting targeting black businesses, VA home loans that shut out Black WW2 vets, etc. are extremely consequential uncompensated crimes. As late as the 1960s, blacks were still separated in public and prisons from most all other races. Just blacks. Not latino, not Jewish, not Irish. Just black! Not even a lifetime ago. If your sense of justice leads you to believe no form of compensation should ever be provided, or even explored, and that a large percentage of black Americans should just shut their faces after absorbing the enormity of the generational injury visited upon them (starkly illustrated by the racial wealth gap, imprisonment statistics, etc.), that's completely on you.
Just don't be surprised when others make inroads with affected populations who know full well just how thoroughly they've been fucked with for hundreds of years (regardless of how effectively this dark history has been suppressed).
>"Tepid solutions are not enough for the times in which we live; we need huge, strategized acts of righteousness, now. Just as Germany has paid $89 Billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since WW2, the United States should pay reparations for slavery." -@marwilliamson
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Cornel West gets it, why don't you:
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/07/cornel-west-on-bernie-trump-and-racism/
> MH: And that’s to do with the man himself. You’re endorsing him as a person, as your brother. In terms of policies, is there a particular policy that you think is crucial to his campaign that makes him stand out from the rest?
>
>
CW: No, the policies have to do — policies against militarism, policies against poverty, the critiques of Wall Street, the consistency of his call for Democratic accountability of corporate elites and financial elites and basically the greed that we see among so many of those elites. And the same is true about racism. I want to hit this issue head-on because there’s been some talk about reparations and it’s true. I’ve supported reparations. I’ve been struggling for reparations for over 40 years, but I don’t see an endorsement of reparations as the only precondition of fighting against white supremacy. There’s no doubt that his policies will benefit poor and working people and poor and working black people and brown people more than any other candidate. And so, yes, when it comes to just reparations as a whole and larger dialogue certainly, I’m for it, but I hope that a lot of black folk don’t get confused and sit back on this issue of reparations.
>
> MH: You think you can get him to move on reparations? Because he was asked on ABC’s The View about whether he backed it and he said well, you know, we’ve got crises in our communities and there’s other better ways to address that than by “just writing out a check.” A lot of people criticized him for that as you say, do you think he can move on that like he’s moved on other issues? That people like you persuade him to a different position?
>
> CW: No doubt about that, but the core is ensuring that there’s fundamental transformation in the racist system under which we live so that the lives of black and brown and yellow peoples are much better. And so, that’s the real issue. And so, it seems to me I don’t want reparations to be an issue that gets us away from him taking a stand on those issues so much better than any other of the other candidates.
>
> MH: So you say he takes a takes a better position on those issues than other candidates.
>
> CW: Oh, no doubt about it.
>
> MH: A lot of those liberal critics, as you know, have said for a long time, especially in recent days that he’s not good on race issues. They say he has a blind spot when it comes to race both in terms of his rhetoric, in terms of the people he surrounded himself with in the past. What do you say to those liberal critics as someone who has been writing and thinking about race and racism your whole life and yet is a Bernie supporter?
>
> CW: Well, one, it’s a matter of his heart. He’s an anti-racist in his heart. Two, he’s old-school. He’s like me. He doesn’t know the buzzwords. He doesn’t endorse reparations, one moment in the last 30 years, silent on it. He has the consistency over the years decade after decade and therefore it’s true in his language, in his rhetoric. There are times in which he doesn’t, he doesn’t say the right thing. He doesn’t use the same kind of buzzwords. But when it comes to his fight against racism, going to jail in Chicago as a younger brother and he would go to jail again. He and I would go to jail together again in terms of fighting against police brutality. So in that sense, I would just tell my brothers and sisters, but especially my chocolate ones that they shouldn’t be blinded by certain kinds of words they’re looking for, that in the end, he is a long distance runner in the struggle against white supremacy.
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Even Trevor Noah, owned by the PTB and regardless of the motivations, gets it and sums it up concisely:
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1110293987536093184
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And one of the many great posters here, /u/jlalbrecht, eventually saw the light:
>Note I should have had a h/t regarding my reparations stance to both /u/ikissthisguy
and my wife.
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>cheers. Credit where it is due. You helped me see the issue from outside my personal experience, similar to how Killer Mike changed my opinion about US gun control.
Bolding mine. Try it sometime.
highly recommended book.
edit ok the free market decided
The Marx-Engels Reader is a pretty standard starting place, and it's easy to find cheap used copies of it.
If you are averse to readers of that sort, then check out the Grundrisse.
>our system is broken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory#Turnings
http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123/
Other theories I've seen:
People have argued that in fact Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor to specifically entice the Japanese into attacking because he knew it would make people demand involvement in the war. It sounds like a conspiracy theory but it's pretty documented.
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
this isnt a sudden phenomenon- American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
Chomsky in 1989 calling a Trump-like base
you might want to give this a quick read. Also, look up how the States treated the Chinese post Civil War, Native Americans at really any point in time, Hispanics post WWII...
Did black people get the worst of it? Yes, although the Natives come very close. Were there black people who weren't slaves? Yes. Were there black slave owners? Yes
Full disclosure: I am part Irish.
Its not about preference. That's like saying the difference between slavery, feudalism and capitalism is whichever someone prefers living under. Its mutually exclusive.
Communism is not your "life your life to the fullest" type of philosophy akin to Buddhism. Its not a way of life or a way of thought, its a set of viewpoints and conceptions about the nature of society, and of its respective institutions, with private property being its main focus. Communism is about viewing the contemporary world as a result of its logical, material precedents, known as historical materialism. Its about gaining an understanding into the nature of property relations and essentially of capitalism.
Marx's viewpoint in looking at history essentially centered these principles
>1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.
>2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.
>3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.
>4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.
>5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.
From this viewpoint he went on to conclude that capitalism inherently was a class system, based on an economic and political hierarchy, which give rise to many phenomenon that is harmful to humanity. Marx for example explained Imperialism as being the result of such a construct. This is a widely documented study and something you can find so easily.
Michael Parenti gives a good talk here which encompasses these ideas. I highly recommend watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZTrY3TQpzw
If you never heard of the book "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, I also highly suggest it. Its a great and popular book that tells the history of the US through the perspective the American proletariat, and clearly explains how dominant role economic hierarchy plays in history.
You see, communism is not just an opposition to commercialized lifestyle, and what not, its an explanation as to very contemporary problems within society itself. Problems that are very much deeply rooted within the system. For example, the mass media and its operation as a business. Noam Chomsky, considered US's best intellectual, along with Edward Herman wrote a great book called Manufacturing Consent that
deals with this topic.
You're operating on a huge straw man. You see, communism is more about understanding society from a logical, scientific perspective, rather than creating some utopia. I can point you to a few more sources that you might find of interest. Or at least start with Wikipedia articles. But I do recommend at least watching the Michael Parenti clip. Chomsky has good talks to but I don't like hes style as much. You don't even have to call yourself a "communist" to accept that world view and knowledge.
> that people on the downstream side of the watershed will not have enough water
...or more likely agribusiness, state/local governments, NA tribes, or other highly organized interests. A horrifying but thorough analysis of the Western water crisis can be found in Marc Reisner's 'Cadillac Desert.'
There are a lot of water rights disputes going on in court all the time. When it is one state suing another state, they have to start at the US Supreme Court, like Montana v. Wyoming (pdf). If you are ever in a law class and they ask you if the US Supreme Court could be the first court a case is held in, state vs state is it.
In this case, farmers in Wyoming switched from flood irrigation to sprinkler irrigation, and this resulted in less water running back into the river (and thus less water flowing to Montana). Wyoming still only took the same amount of water they always took, which was what the 1950 treaty/compact allowed. Montana claimed that the water treaty didn't allow this sort of behavior, but the Supremes ruled that if the treaty was going to work the way Montana wanted, it would have been written that way (and they gave examples of other state treaties that were written that way).
One older book that discusses how badly we've screwed our water up in the Western US is Cadillac Desert.
The book Cadillac Desert is an excellent read on water rights in the western US--I quite highly recommend it!
I recommend to everyone on this thread to read Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.
http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
"Whiskey is for drinking, Water is for fighting"
That would be news to the Confederates. They explicitly stated that their cause was slavery. Here's what the Mississippi declaration of secession had to say on the matter:
>Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Still not convinced? Read the other slave states' declarations of secession. Or read a good review book on the Civil War, like McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.
P.S.: It's actually interesting to note that the slave states didn't support states' rights in their declarations, beyond the right of secession. They actually cite the refusal of certain Northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act as a major cause of secession. Some Northern states had passed laws forbidding state officials from aiding in the capture and return of runaway slaves. South Carolina argued in its declaration of secession that by refusing to enforce federal laws, these Northern states were subverting the Union. They argued that this breach freed South Carolina of its obligations to the Union and justified secession.
John Rawls may be a good place for you to start for a "modern" perspective (look here first: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/ )
Michael Sandel wrote a pretty readable book based off his popular harvard course on the topic. You can find the book here ( https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508 ) or even just check out the course itself here ( http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/ )
&#x200B;
Hope this helps! This isn't my area of interest but I have come across them along the way.
I really enjoy Justice by Michale Sandel. It's a series of riveting lectures that serve as a great entry into philosophy through ethics and justice.
You can also read his book.
You aren't going to change his mind, but for your own peace of mind, here is a start off the top of my head:
> He didn't even know about it...
Then tell him he is literally living under a rock. It is listed in 10,000+ plus articles via Google news at the moment. While it is not likely to receive proper treatment in the conventional media, it has reached critical mass, they can no longer ignore it. And for the people who are there, they can verify that it is people from all walks of life, and now in cities all around the country. This just in as an example of senior protesters
> He says all the protesters don't have jobs because they made poor career choices with their lives.
Ask him to prove this (hint: he can't). Don't let him slide on sweeping generalization. There are people protesting across the spectrum including those who have jobs. They aren't protesting unemployment, but rather greed and corruption. While the unemployed might have more time to occupy, its not simply the unemployed who are there.
Edit: In fact, you can meet some of them in this article
Ask him if people in the Tea Party had jobs. Because while they aren't identical people, both movements have some similar populist origins. Also ask him if he smeared the Tea Party in the same way he is OWS. Because before they were corrupted by corporate interests, while I didn't agree with part of their message, at the time I could applaud their original effort. Look up various populist movements through US history and quiz him on them and draw parallels.
Also ask him why people are allowed or even celebrated in making poor choices when they are rich, but are condemned if they actually don't make bad choices (or even if they are human and make some) but get screwed by the system. Ask him if it is right that the class you are born into is a stronger indicator of upward mobility than education. (I can't find the link right now, but here is one and here is another one that can perhaps point you in the right direction.
> He says they're all to lazy to go find jobs.
Really? Then ask him about the number of places that make HAVING A JOB a REQUIREMENT for getting a job.
Ask him if he understands the law of supply and demand and can understand that The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies and then ask him if he knows something that a majority of economists don't know (because that's what they said in the survey referenced).
Edit: Also this self post looked pretty good regarding addressing that question
> He says they're all socialists looking for entitlements
Ask him if he likes weekends off, an 8-hour workday, minimum wage, or even just not dying while at his job then he can thank a socialist.
Check out the condensed version of The "S" Word and the book
Also for good measure, check out A People's History of The United States to find a lot of things neither he, nor probably you (no offense, just sayin'), would have learned in school.
Even though he may not like it, the current quality of life he enjoys was fought for by progressives, socialists, even anarchists and him denying that fact doesn't make it not true.
> He says they do not represent the 99% but the deadbeat 5% who can't do anything with their lives.
Tell him that both they, and he, whether he likes it or not, ARE part of the 99% percent unless he is tucking away millions that he hasn't told you about because this is what inequity looks like in numbers Also via NPR and this explains a lot in 11 graphs. You can also take a peek at 2012
> Talking to him is like talking to O'Reily...
But remember that there are people who can stand their ground with him, like Jon Stewart, or even Marylin Manson.
If Marylin Manson can do it, so can you. Don't sell yourself short, stand your ground! (I know it makes Thanksgiving and Christmas difficult, but if he is not an idiot, it still can be worth it in the long run).
> OH and he said that I'm messed up in the head cause I go on socialist websites...like Reddit
Ask him to define the word socialist. If he gets it wrong, ask him how his education failed him. Ask him if he thinks most of the other industrialized countries in the world are "socialist" too, and if so why are the leading in many quality of life metrics, health care, and general happiness? Ask him why our life expectancy is shorter or why we are working ourselves to death with other countries being able to have several weeks of vacation with people here who may not take any.
> OH OH and then he and my little brother then come in and say, "Is that gonna be your excuse when you can't find a job?" (I'm a college sophmore.)
Tell him that perhaps someone sold you and your brother a bill of goods
that "working hard" is the key to the American Dream while the banksters are offloading it out the backdoor. Ask him if it is called the American dream because you must be asleep to believe it
Ask him why your education costs 1000's and others abroad may not cost anything at all.
Ask him why teachers are treated as scum in recent sentiments when they agree to concessions but want to preserve their right to assemble and bargain as a group yet CEO's get paid for failure based on a peer system and half the country is lead to believe that the richest group of all are the "victims".
Ask him why foreign companies like Toyota can make products in America, but "Made in America" brands like Ford may be made in Mexico.
Ask him if he knows what NAFTA is and why it was bad (and do your homework to learn more, and surprise him by suggesting that Clinton was wrong to support it -- so he can't say you just cheerlead for one party -- but tell him that both he AND a Republican congress are at fault for screwing up our banking sector by repealing Glass-Stegall under Republican pressure, but at least Clinton at least is man enough to open regret the decision)
Ask him why it is right for people to do all these things, to make inequity on par with the 20's before the stock market crash, yet when people stand up to fight that he has nothing but ridicule.
> Edit: As for what to discuss, can anyone put together a clear and irrefutable counterargument? I'm sick of his condescending attitude.
There is not magic bullet. Even this list here is simply a stream of consciousness off the top of my head. But your best friend is true education and enlightenment. It means not accepting the status quo, not relying on only domestic, conventional sources for news and information. It means digging into history with true historians.
In the long run you may not win the battle, but you will be more prepared to try and win the war, even if its not with him. (P.S. I may add more links later if I have the time.)
Good Luck!
Added a new chapter to Five for Iron, set five years before canon. (Here's the ff.net link, for anyone who prefers that site.) Anywho, this chapter is my first from Winter's POV, and I'm hoping I did an OK job with that, while still keeping the premise engaging.
Reading:
I finished Cadillac Desert this week, and I've gotten about 100 pages into Animal, Vegetable, Miracle since then. Both are brilliantly written and wonderfully subversive, but considering my line of work I may be a smidge biased.
I'm surprised these haven't been mentioned yet:
In The Heart Of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick - The true story behind Moby Dick (and much easier to read).
Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons - Insane true story of a shipwreck, then it gets worse...
Also for fans of non-fiction novels try Longitude by Dava Sobel and Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson - both involve the sea. *edit for some obvious typo's
Not all of these have cannibalism, but most:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe, The Boat, In The Heart of The Sea (this is a really awesome book, as are the authors other works), Endurance, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, The Wreck of the Medusa, The Wreck of the Dumaru, Life of Pi
A couple non-fiction (with a legal focus) books about the Mignonette incident and the resulting famous case of Regina v Dudley and Stevens: Is Eating People Wrong?, and The Custom of the Sea
r/SocialistRA r/RedneckRevolt. Find your local chapter today!
And a friendly reminder:This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed
The book is Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon and it was written by the former head of the clinic at the South Rim and a biologist who leads river trips, in the hope of educating people about the fact that the Canyon is not an amusement park but a dangerous and demanding wild place. The book turned out to be an incredibly entertaining read, but whether it has prevented any deaths is hard to tell. There seems to be an unlimited supply of the sort of people most likely to act like jerks near the rim: 18-29 year old males.
As someone who is still in shock about the genuinely accidental fall and death of another expert hiker earlier this week, I'm having a lot of trouble finding this photo amusing.
>“Terrified by the 1917 Russian revolution, government officials came to believe that communism could be defeated in the United States by getting as many white Americans as possible to become homeowners—the idea being that those who owned property would be invested in the capitalist system. So in 1918 the Department of Labor promoted an “Own-Your-Own-Home” campaign, handing out “We Own Our Own Home” buttons to schoolchildren and distributing pamphlets saying that it was a ‘patriotic duty’ to cease renting and to build a single-family unit.”
From The Color of Law
Several years ago I read and was impressed by Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 . Although I've since come to recognize some of its flaws, I still think it's worth reading. Its science is pretty soft, though. If you're looking for hard science—such as that is in the social sciences—it probably won't scratch that itch.
Exactly. Most people still think that FDR had nothing to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor for example [1]. Since no one reads anymore (especially history), everyone still thinks FDR had no prior knowledge of the attack and are blissfully unaware that in fact he intentionally provoked the attack.
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[1] "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert Stinnett
C.J. Chiver's novel The Gun is a fantastic read about the AK's conception and how it was designed vs. the M-16, which had parts with tight
tolerancesclearances, causing them to readily jam in harsh (think Vietnam) conditions.edit thanks for /u/csl512 for the correction
If you are really interested, I really recommend The Gun by CJ Chivers
I certainly agree that the media is using it to shutdown all opposition, but again, it would be foolish to not see the true threat that Christian Right neofascist ideology represents in the country.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
This was a fine piece of reporting from a honest voice out there, who’s able to bring exposure to both the globalists and the fascists.
Highly recommend reading Chris Hedges' American Fascists. He opens the book with a good overview defining fascism, touching on Eco's, Arendt's and others' definitions.
There are the things EVERY Christian fundamentalist believes in... and everyone should read American Fascists by Chris Hedges. But things specific to the Organization would be predicting Armageddon, blood transfusions, the literal application of 144,000, the Great Crowd and Other Sheep, they surpass any religion in history to the disproportionate amount of child abuse scandals and they go farther than any other religion in keeping it covered up.
> Did you mean Ali doesn't like gefilte fish, or Ali dwells a little bit too much on "appropriation" of cuisine
Appropriation of cuisine. He's proposing a clear cut moral restriction against Jews eating Arabic food because of Jewish ancestry.
> We still have mansaf, and that can never be taken
Don't be so sure. Lots of Israeli restaurants here serve it as Israeli food.
> Jon Stewart though?
Yes. He's made fun of some Israeli policies much like he was other countries. Nothing outside his norm.
> If you have anything I could read [on Mondoweiss writers]
Nope. Just formed an opinion reading them. Some I've met IRL.
> The nuts that are burning and shooting up synagogues aren't leftists, they're alt-right.
I see the depth as more dangerous. My feeling is antisemitic attacks are little different than other random shootings in the USA.
> We're white. Until you know our names.
There is a famous book on this: https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
> I don't think it's about a "win-lose" deal. I'll be honest and say my ideal solution looks exactly like a Rick & Morty punchline. Smoke it out and get along
We've agreed on that one before. Don't do permanent damage, solve the smaller problems.
I think I was clear that my opinion was a reflection of my experience as a Black American. I would also like to point the out the title of the thread:It is frustrating to hear people in America blame their failure to succeed on their race/ethnicity/skin color.
I'm not really in the position to speak on European Colonialism and how it has affected West Africa and the Caribbean. I also am not really in the position to talk about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, if that's what you mean by Jews.
I would like to point you to a book titled How Jews Became White Folks if you were more interested in Jews in the US.
> Asians and whites on the whole stress education as a means to achieving financial success. That's all it comes down to.
If a minority works hard and thrive in America (becoming a "model minority"), they eventually become at least partially assimilated into American whiteness (becoming "privileged").
Economic and financial success is what made light-skinned Jews "white" in America. Check out How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America by Prof. Brodkin for an in-depth explanation. This "whitening" of Jewish-Americans wasn't complete: white supremacists see Jews are a perpetual and insidious Other (see Prof. Brodkins' more recent thoughts in How Jews Became White Folks — and May Become Nonwhite Under Trump; see also here), but it did happen to some degree.
That same process of (at least partial) whitening because of education and economic success is happening to Asian-Americans now, too. See here and here. It's even being talked about in The Atlantic: The ‘Whitening’ of Asian Americans.
More inconvenient information for the SJW/Marxists: http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/
Yes. Mainly from Ireland. It's not talked about often, and they're mainly refered to as "indentured servants" when talked about but... Yeah. Basically white slaves. There is a very good book about it called White Cargo.
This reminds me of a book that I'm looking forward to reading. It's called Slavery by Another Name and it's by Douglas A. Blackmon.
Here's another great book on that topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
The Marx-Engels reader is a great book. "On Capital" is a good start. You might try to find reading assignments from university courses (sometimes they're online) and that ought to give you some direction. I do recommend reading essays completely.
This study plan put out by /r/communism has some good stuff (although I haven't it read it all.) I'd recommend starting with the communist manifesto, and this Marx/Engels reader is really good for a basic understanding of Marxism.
The way I got into this stuff before school was going to marxists.org (which has LOTS of stuff scanned in) and picking out a random page or just browsing through the site to find something that seems interesting. Then reading it and if something caught my attention I'd look for a book about it. Lenin's State and Revolution is a classic for the Leninist perspective on the state and its interaction with capitalism too. I'm in a class right now reading Capital and I'd recommend everyone does it. I'd always been scared of the size and density of it but it's actually quite understandable when you get into it. Of course it also helps to have it guided by someone. :P
Check out The Marx-Engels Reader
actually, gen theory is super interesting regarding trends.
pragmatic vs idealistic
introverted vs extroverted
like gen x is introverted pragmatic and millennial predicted to be extroverted pragmatic. they don't rebel against the pragmatism vs idealism axis... they rebel against gen x introversion and lack of political involvement... which itself was a rebellion against boomer extroverted idealism.
generations book (origin of gen theory) doesn't use those terms, but the template is there... I just used more abstract terminology. I would really recommend the book before being so dismissive about the irrelevance of generations. it's a difficult and long read, but fascinating.
generations by strauss & howe (amazon link)
edit: they coined the term millennials
I love their book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069. Al Gore as VP gave a copy to everyone in the House and Senate.
This sounds like one of the many extremely evangelical, fundamentalist, revivalist &/or charismatic New Religious Movement ("NMR") congregations sprouting all over the place with and without seed money supplied by such as the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, John Arnold, Stewart Rahr, Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein, Ronald Cameron , et al.
The movement developed in an effort to convert the frightened, confused and unsuspecting to the same sort of "Radical Christianity" that backed the National Socialists and other fascists in central Europe in the 1920s when Communism threatened the "natural order" of right-wing, authoritarian, Capitalist control there in the wake of getting a very black eye during and after the incredible blood bath of World War I.
Find Nancy MacLean's and Jane Mayer's recent books explaining the slow, but steady, strategic evolution of the "alt right" since the late 1950s at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and George Mason Universities. Building such church congregations and preaching pentateuchal, Old Testament authoritarianism and fear of anyone but WASPs has been a bedrock of that strategy for decades. These political birds "came to roost" when New Gingrich became Speaker of the US House of Representatives in 1997.
Howe & Strauss predicted what we're seeing now in the marriage of radical right church-&-statism as part of a continuous four-segment cycle in their best-selling book Generations in 1992. They made a pretty good case for it, considering how much we know now about the Wesleyan Methodist and later evangelical movements of the late 1700s and then late 1800s and their effects upon politics in the English-speaking world.
FDR goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. Read Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit". And it was only b/c of America's imperial policies that Hawaii and the Philippines were ultimately targeted by the Japanese.
If you read the book "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" and ponder the evidence presented in it, you'll be either more terrified or reassured that our government has done similar crimes before.
The book is definitely recommended. In short, it'll shed new light on both the "good war" and the way the US government practices realpolitik and propaganda.
If you're curious, I strongly recommend the above-mentioned book.
The author is a WWII vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George Bush, and then went onto become a journalist and author.
He researched Pearl Harbor for decades, getting many first-hand testimonials, and a lot of key US gov't documents via Freedom of Information Act requests.
The most famous document, perhaps, is the so-called McCollum memo. This was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who, the son of an American diplomat, was raised in Japan. McCollum was the Naval liaison officer to the White House and met with FDR once a week or more.
The memo outlined 8 steps that the US would have to do in order to provoke the Japanese to attack the US. The book details those 8 steps and supports them with evidence.
The overall idea of provoking Japan to attack was due to the collapse of France in the spring of 1940. That shocked the world.
The US, being unsuccessful at provoking the Germans into responding to our sinking of German U-boats in the Atlantic, thus opted to provoke Japan into attacking and to use that event to enter the war in a united fashion to keep Europe from falling to the Nazis.
Edit: Typos, added link.
"I wish our wars could all be as clear as WWII was- an almost good vs. evil type conflict"
Two things you should know about WW2 ( my father was in it so I know a few things becuase I have asked him).
2.Until that time it was not clear cut at all about whether or not the new forms of government known as "Fascist" were good or not.
Time magazine made Hitler man of the year
in 1939
see it for yourself:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19390102,00.html
read the actual article here
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html
and the whole world envied the rapid German economic recovery under his lead and many in the US openly wanted the US government to move toward a "streamlined" form of government with a stronger central leader to more quickly replicate the miracle of the German recovery from the economic ruin that gripped the world.
There were many famous US supporters of Fascism.
Charles Lindbergh for example openly said the US should move toward that type of government.
So WW2 was NOT clear cut. It is only told to us that it was clear cut.
You are judging by movies not reality.
Never learn history by reading anything written after history.
Read only the things written during the times to understand history. Today with internet archives of old newspapers it's easy.
By the way I am merely relaying a historical fact and I in NO WAY support fascisms or Hitler etc etc. I just believe it is important for people considering war today to learn from how decisions were made in the past so mistakes are not repeated and successes are repeated. It's important to know it was NEVER CLEAR whether the US should enter WW2.
In fact historical research has now proven conclusively FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen to motivate the country to get behind his decision to enter WW2.
Best book on that which you would probably really be interested in reading is
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743201299?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=reddit0e-20
By the way many suspected FDR allowed Pearl harbor to happen to get us into the war AT THAT TIME. There were articles openly written about it just a week after Pearl Harbor happened.
> Assault rifles are precision machines, and they're actually designed to function with as little action (movement) as possible - that's why they're so fast.
I will buy you this book if you send me your address.
Conosco relativamente bene la storia dell'AK47 e dei suoi successori (tra le altre cose avendo letto questo libro).
Il mio punto e' che per lanciarsi in macchina contro dei pedoni o per attaccare dei passanti con un coltello da cucina non e' necessario avere gli "agganci giusti", come dici tu.
Quindi il folle isolato che si e' invasato a forza di vedere video jhiadisti su youtube e seguire gli account twitter dei simpatizzanti dell'ISIS in questi casi e' verosimile.
Procurarsi due Khalasnikov in Francia nel 2015 invece penso sia almeno un tantinello piu' complicato, ci vogliono gli "agganci", e quindi per questo mi sembra che questo attacco sia un atto di un livello un po' diverso.
I found CJ Chiver's book The Gun to be a fascinating investigation of the AK47's design and history. It also covers the development process of the AR10, which of course became XM16A1. The first generation of that gun was... not good. Constant fouling due to dirty rounds, cleaning equipment rarely issued with rifles, the exact wrong physical environment for maintenance, the list goes on.
The later revisions were a big improvement, and today's M16 is a far cry from the ones fielded in Vietnam. But in the first years of the war, the AKs carried by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were far more effective than the M16 supplied to American armed services.
Not to mention the lower recoil and minimized muzzle rise.
If anyone is interested in the history and distinctions between Battle Rifles and Assault Rifles as well as the development of the efficient modern man-killing machine that is the M series rifle, I recommend CJ Chivers' book, "The Gun." It will erase any doubt you may have that the modern assault rifle is a designed-by-committee literal weapon of mass death. Gun nuts like to 'hurr hurr, scary just because it's black,' but as a dude with a lot of guns, I promise you the tech in these things is sophisticated, refined, and tailored for the express person of killing people as efficiently and quickly as possible.
No actually, it’s a documented fact that the American Christian Right are American fascists, here is the evidence if you want to refute actual documented evidence:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/american-fascists-the-christian-right-and-the-war-on-america_chris-hedges/257126/#isbn=0743284461&amp;idiq=670149
Best response in the thread, imo. I had to read this book in college and it was really eye-opening.
My partner views themselves as white even though they were born in Israel and come from a sephardic background because their only American experiences are in liberal San Francisco. Which is fine, b/c "white" is a meaningless/useless label.
However, I grew up in Texas and my experience is very different. So, when the white nationalist uprisings started during the election and whatnot I had to explain to them that many people in America don't consider Jews to be white—it made them so angry and they didn't believe me until that whole disaster in Charlottesville.
> But then again the Irish earned their whiteness.
Exactly. Gotta earn your stars and stripes!
White Cargo
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
I keep hearing good things about this... it'll get you thinking outside the box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States
Oh, I remember it. I was educated in California public schools, which were excellent before they were destroyed in the 80s.
And it worked for me: I've only missed voting in a few elections in my three plus decades of voting eligibility, when I was out of my state or the country.
But, the thing is, it's largely bullshit, and it wasn't until I was an older adult that I've learned how corrupt and undemocratic our political system really is. 2016 kicked it up a whole new notch. Here's what would convince me that whatever curriculum they impose on the kids isn't just exceptionalist propaganda: they adopt Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as course curriculum.
There are several eras of US history and not many books that cover them all sadly:
If you want to listen: http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ for the american episodes, go to the 2.x numbered ones in your podcast player to get the skinny on era 2 and 3 from my above list. Backstory Radio www.backstoryradio.com also has great stories about american history from all 15 eras on my list
If you want to read: A People's History of the United States it is a survey of the history of the US. (from the left side of the political spectrum, but written as a corrective on all the OTHER books that were ignoring the common plight of the people)
Additionally http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R3W3WGWMB5IJ3V is good but long, https://www.amazon.com/America-Concise-History-One-1877/dp/0312643284 is a midlength textbook.
Lastly, easier than reading any of this (and targeted at HS students, but largely enjoyable by adults too): Crash Course US History
You keep saying that the Muslim ban isn't as alienating as killing innocent people there for decades, but that doesn't mean the Muslim ban isn't bad! Is your argument that it doesn't affect our safety? The ban alienates the people that would be translators or partners in reconstruction and peace building in a fragile region. More worrisome: Trump ignored established legal precedents for this sort of thing, which implies he's testing what he can get away with. Classic dictator rehearsal.
Yeah, John Oliver is a comedian who's kind of preaching to his choir, but you dismiss him just because he's a comedian. There are good points in there, though this Adam Ruins Everything segment is probably more informative (and a bit less cloying than John Oliver, though still a comedy show).
Lots of people on this thread have said there are more effective, less expensive ways to secure the border (this person ran some numbers above). But you're like, meh, it will stop some people, maybe, so let's do it. That's such a flippant attitude towards fiscal responsibility, cost effectiveness and actually dealing with immigration.
You keep saying economics is an area where you have a lot to learn. A lot of people have been really polite to you on this thread, and you've matched their civility, and I want you to know it's very hard for me to not just heap disdain on you for your ignorance about economics. Please read more.
And while you're reading, check out The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. You keep saying there's more to life than politics, but when fascists consolidate power and slaughter their opponents, there isn't more to life. I'm 100% sure you're rolling your eyes, just like people rolled their eyes at Hitler.
War with China would be terrible and a net loss for both sides. Lots of wars started over small economic disputes and spiraled out of control.
You seem to have a vague idea that "open borders" are unquestionably bad. Why? I'm not being facetious. Undocumented people are doing backbreaking labor that white citizens wouldn't do. Our birth rates are not that high; immigration is a component of growing the workforce and the economy.
And look, at this point, I doubt you or anyone else is reading this comment, but I have to say: the problem is capitalism. The whole point of capitalism is exploitation. The capitalist owns the business, you do the labor, he pays you less than the value of your labor and he keeps the excess as profit. Then they hiss aspersions to set the white worker against the black and against the latino.
This country has been bickering about immigrants forever but in a few years AI is going to reshape workplace productivity so dramatically that we'll see widespread unemployment across the whole economy. Law firms will lay off paralegals when they have better algorithms to search and understand cases. Then those paralegals will try to drive for Uber, but Uber will have self-driving cars. The economic displacement will ripple out. Then everybody will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs without enough time to learn new marketable skills. It wouldn't matter if we let all the immigrants in; market forces will increasingly replace or augment workers with better and better software. So we're probably headed for a technological utopia for the elites and a Hunger Games hellscape for the rest. At that point, it's going to get more and more violent.
Trump is the symptom, capitalism is the disease, socialism is the cure.
If this all sounds like a lunatic ranting to you, please please please fan that flame of self-doubt and curiosity that prompted you to make this CMV. Read A People's History of the United States. Trump is probably more of an Andrew Jackson than a Hitler, I hope, but Andrew Jackson was also a fucking monster who left a lot of innocent people dead in his wake.
I get that you're not really worried about name-calling or "PC" stuff; you probably think it's a bit silly that so many of us get scared when such a petty bully has so much power. But I think you're deaf to the echoes of history. You're assuming that your normal life is a lot less fragile than it actually is. And once you make a choice, it's very psychologically difficult to admit you're wrong, so you keep plugging your ears to those echoes. You want to believe it's going to be okay because you want to believe you're a reasonable person and that other people are reasonable, but history holds horrors you haven't comprehended. And the dead had routines and hopes and relationships that were interrupted, bewilderingly, by unreasonable monsters. I believe Trump is an unreasonable monster.
[edited for typos]
Normally I'm completely opposed to burning books... But if this abomination calls itself a textbook, then chuck it in the fire. Instead, pick up a copy of A People's History of the United States.
Read these:
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346
https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/1620973928
https://www.amazon.com/Bartolome-las-Casas-Destruction-Indies/dp/1451526997
https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059
https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Introduction-Philosophy-Michael-Patton/dp/0809033623
I read this book years ago and it talks all about the water shortage in the west. It has always been a problem and we've been slowly depleting underground stores for generation.
Relevant: I recently started reading Cadillac Desert, which is a really interesting treatise on the irrigation of the American West.
Well, one can like getting carrots for $0.99 a bag and still recognize that they're being delivered by a very suboptimal, screwed-up system of production that really needs to change. Problem is, not a lot of people seem to recognize that.
If you find this sort of subject interesting, and you've not read it before, you ought to pick up a copy of Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.
It gets a little dry sometimes when he gets into the nuts-and-bolts details, but overall it's a great, incisive look at how utterly FUBAR water policy in the West actually is.
Michael Pollan's [The Omnivore's Dilemma] (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1324994963&amp;sr=8-4)
[Freakonomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1324995084&amp;sr=1-1)
Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea
Agree with others on Erik Larson, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson.
In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is my all time favorite survival book. Read it before the movie comes out! It's absolutely crazytown.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828
If you like non fiction (and lots of detail), In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick about the sinking of the whaleship the Essex and the crew surviving (or not) at sea.
In the heart of the sea is a great book on the true account of a group of sailors this happened to in the 1700's...adrift in the pacific for like 69 days i think...it was the influence for Moby Dick because a whale sunk their ship...never has a nonfiction book read like such an action novel for me
This really depends on what aspects of the Civil War you are looking to learn about. If you're just looking for a general overview of the entire war it's hard to go wrong with James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. If you're looking for a shorter read I would recommend Bruce Catton's single volume history called The Civil War. These are common recommendations, but for good reason.
If you're interested in specific battles or topics, let me know and I may be able to recommend something.
The hard part for majority of people is that Historically events and the motives of individual's actions in those events are never "Black&White". Take the Civil War since that is the crux of this issue. In the book What They Fought For, 1861–1865 by James McPherson reported on his reading of hundreds of letters and diaries written by soldiers on both sides of the war on the question of what they believed they were fighting for. Not all Northerns cared for blacks in fact many were super racist they just didn't like slavery and in every major battle there were slave owning union soldiers fighting for the north, and non slave owning southern soldiers fighting for the south. On the other hand 80% of the Southern soldiers didn't own slaves and many felt that if slavery was to be ended it should like everyone born after 1/1/1861 are set free but given and education before hand.
“I was fighting for my home, and he had no business being there”
-Virginia confederate Solider Frank Potts
“We are fighting for the Union . . . a high and noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment. They are fighting for independence, and are animated by passion and hatred against invaders” - A Illinois officer.
“Believe me no solider on either side gave a **** about slaves, they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Southerns thought they were fighting the second American revolution norther's thought they were fighting to hold the union together [With a few abolitionist and fire eaters on both sides].”
Robert E. Lee is the biggest and the greatest paradox. He was against Virginia leaving the Union but felt his loyalty and duty, like many, was to his home state above the country: “If Virginia stands by the old Union,” Lee told a friend, “so will I. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution), then I will follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life.” While Lee never publicly came out on one side or the other of Slavery. In a letter to his Wife in 1856 he said “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.” But Lee's wife and daughters taught the slaves to read and write which was against Virginia law and Lee officially freed his inherited slaves, he had no other slaves, on December 29, 1862 five years after his father-in-law Georgie Washington Custis' death as stated in his will. And yes Georgie Washington Custis is a descendant of President Georgie Washington.
Besides once universal conscription was instituted by the Confederacy in 1862, it didn't matter what they fought for, whether they wanted to fight, or even if they supported the Confederacy they fought or become deserters and risk execution. The Union started conscription in 1863. One could argue those who were conscripted didn't care about slavery since if they did they would've volunteered earlier. Many were concerned more about their farms and family. One Confederate officer at the time noted, "The deserters belong almost entirely to the poorest class of non slave-holders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families" and that "When the father, husband or son is forced into the service, the suffering at home with them is inevitable. It is not in the nature of these men to remain quiet in the ranks under such circumstances." Which was used by both sides trying to get them on their side the Union offered pardons and the Confederacy offered jobs or land in some cases.
Now those caught deserted in the Union 147 were executed for desertion out of 200,000 deserters. In the Confederacy 229 were executed out of the 100,000 deserters. But since you can't kill off all the 300,000 men that deserted from both sides many were branded with a "D" on their hip. Many were just purely tortured:
"One punishment much affected in the light artillery was called 'tying on the spare wheel.' Springing upward and rearward from the center rail of every cassion was a fifth axel and on it was a spare wheel. A soldier who had been insubordinate was taken to the spare wheel and made to step upon it. His legs were drawn apart until they spanned three spokes. His arms were stretched until there were three or four spokes between his hands. Then the feet and hands were firmly bound to the felloes of the wheel. If the soldier was to be punished moderately then he was left, bound in an upright position on the wheel for five or six hours. If the punishment was to be severe, the ponderous wheel was given a quarter turn after the soldier had been lashed to it, which changed the position of the man from upright to horizontal. Then the prisoner had to exert all his strength to keep his weight from pulling heavily and cuttingly on the cords that bound his upper arm and leg to the wheel." -- Frank Wilkeson, Army of the Potomac in the Union Army.
In the end it is just easier for people paint with broad strokes the "good people"/The Union as saints and "bad guys"/The Confederacy as sinners. It is the same with all of those leaders/people we have had in History. In reality the Slavery had many shades of blue and grey and should be treated as such. There was good and bad in both the Union and the Confederacy.
Sources and other reading material:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a25915/punishment-and-torture-in-the-civil-war-111413/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170422015315/http://www.americanheritage.com/content/south%E2%80%99s-inner-civil-war-0
http://uncw.edu/csurf/explorations/documents/volume%209%202014/franch.pdf
https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/David%20Carr_0.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Know-Much-About-Civil/dp/0380719088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493924562&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Don%27t+Know+much+about+the+Civil+War
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493924743&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Battle+Cry+of+Freedom
https://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Volumes-1-3-Box/dp/0394749138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493924920&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Shelby+Foote
i would direct you to the fine book, battle cry of freedom.
two important things. one, many in the south realized that the slavery situation was not sustainable, and required expansion to survive. this meant slavery in new states was a necessity. northerners opposed this. two, it can be imagined that this is the time that states' rights and federal authority diverged. this is actually an illusion. the south wanted states' rights for slavery, but also demanded federal assistance to return escaped slaves from free territories. in my mind, the conflict is between an industrial, democratic society and a feudal one.
Well, actually they did. Manifest Destiny. It wasn't always sea to shining sea, it was by some , pole to pole. USA has no peasant population. Some saw Mexico, Central America and South America as a vast labor pool. There was even an incident where American adventures tried to invade Mexico but their ship was sunk by the British. It's mentioned in 'Battle Cry of Freedom'
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X/ref%3Dsr_1_2?tag=offersamzn-20&amp;ascsubtag=bst-13-1578750855127041134
Those adventures btw were Democrats
Read McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.
It's brilliantly written, engaging, authoritative, and generally accepted as "the book" for the Civil War in the minds of most historians.
You note you're a Tennessee boy. You may be interested in the older "New South" school vis-a-vis the War. Wm Dunning led a major push to view the War as one of Northern aggression. The Dunning School was quite influential until (roughly) the early Civil Rights Era.
There are also occasional, but lively debates on H-Net, South about how to view the Civil War.
As a side note, the whole Oxford History of the US series is worth reading. Some of the titles are dated, but they are all very good reads. (well, at least the ones I've read ;-) )
I've heard good things about Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel. There is a video of his Harvard class floating around somewhere.
Haven't read it, though, so I dunno...
>When Justice has been achieved and society is perfect.
Define justice, and define perfect. (Asking this question reminds me of this awesome book http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508 )
Here's one for you
>Progressives are the conservatives of the future.
Must reads:
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385722702/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_B0KwDbBN2MT7W
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness https://www.amazon.com/dp/1595586431/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_50KwDb9M4ECGM
Obvious disingenuous take by /r/Libertarian, but it's not entirely wrong. The Civil Rights movement relationship to self defense and violence is a lot more complicated than most give it credit for.
Recommended reading
This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement
It’s a desert, it’s always very dry – and if you’re not from a super dry place, you’ll feel awful if you don’t stay on top of keeping moisture in.
Take/drink plenty of water. Take lotion for your hands and chap stick for your lips.
The Grand Canyon is different from every other hike on Earth, because you start by walking down. So when you get to the bottom, you haven’t really done any of the work yet.
Stay on trails. Please take a map and a compass. Please take twice as much water on hikes as you think you need.
Take plenty of stuff to keep you warm. It gets down to freezing regularly at the Grand Canyon in April.
A pad to get you off the ground, a sleeping bag, and two good blankets. And even then you might be wearing sweats in bed to keep warm.
And if you’ve got $10 to spare, get this book used.
http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
Recommended reading.
The Grand Canyon is one of my favorite places to hike. Just make sure you have an idea of the weather above and below the rim, and be sure to pick up and read Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri. Armed with the stories and knowledge shared by the ranger(s) that wrote that book, you should be fully prepared when it's time to head out.
Popular Mechanics, brought to you by the good folks at Hearst Publishing, the inventors of Yellow Journalism!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Popular Mechanics has been thoroughly debunked here: http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X
> What bothers me the most about this is that the adults seem to either not care, or are clueless to the danger that this group, of mostly kids, is in.
I used to work as a Ranger in the park. This is, unfortunately, not uncommon. For some reason, otherwise normal, reasonably intelligent people just leave their brains behind when they go on vacation. I don't know if they think Yellowstone is like Disneyland, or a zoo, or what, but they just lose all sense of fear when it comes to the dangers around them.
One day, I was gassing up a Suburban in a clearly marked Rangers-only restricted area. A moose walked by. Okay, cool. This is awesome. This is why I'm here. I love nature. Nature is awesome.
But then...
Not ten yards behind the moose comes this group of 20-30 people, just completely ignoring all the signs telling them not to enter this area and completely ignoring any common sense that says you should not be anywhere near that close to a wild animal that could turn and charge them at any moment.
When I stopped them and asked them what they were doing, one guy finally said "We're trying to take pictures of the moose."
Sigh. Sigh. Fucking sigh. Now I have to be the asshole and tell them that they shouldn't be anywhere near that close to a dangerous wild animal in the first place, and second they should not have ignored the multiple signs telling them that they shouldn't be in a restricted area. And, that they need to go back and watch the moose from a safe distance.
Now, repeat this similar encounter nearly every single day. Sure, the specifics are different, but the same thing happens all the time, and I really don't get it. In spite of all the warnings people are given not to approach the wildlife, they still keep doing it.
As a side note, if you want some morbid but fascinating reading, check out Lee Whittlesey's book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. It's a fascinating book on all the various grisly ways people have managed to off themselves in the park, often through their own idiocy, and often ignoring many warnings in the process.
I have this book my pa gave me called Death in Yellowstone, which talks about Miss Weeks and others. The part this article does not kindly mention is the fact that all of the skin on her lower half slid off when she was pulled out. It happens to almost everyone who falls in a geyser in Yellowstone.
I felt the true meaning of the word "ambivalence" when visiting Yellowstone. Deadly, beautiful thermal features...
Anyone else ever read the book "Death in Yellowstone" while visiting/camping in Yellowstone? For true "trippyness", do it!
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
That's the one! It has some great stories in there, and yes, a lot of people have been scalded to death in the geysers. You can frequently witness tourists going off the boardwalks, illegally, to get closer to the geysers. Darwin was really on to something.
My mom read these books to me... they scared me a little. The trauma came from camping trips in Yellowstone National Park when she put those books away, then pulled out A Grizzly Death in Yellowstone and Death in Yellowstone so that she could read graphic stories of campers and hikers being mauled to death by bears in the same fucking place we were going to sleep.
I, to date, have a completely totally rational fear of bears.
Bear spray. And read the instructions on it, and wear bells or sing the whole time you're out.
I know, silly - but I just finished reading Death in Yellowstone and damn.
Bear spray, bro.
Also, ensure you're not camping with any food smells - or any other strong smells - in your tent.
If you really want to learn why people disagree with you, I recommend you read this book: The Color of Law. Brown folks (and many white folks too, who weren't 'anglo' enough) were systemically excluded from homeownership during the post-WWII boom.
Some people absolutely left for racist reasons, but others were responding to strong incentives, and even non-racists were right in recognizing that property values were falling in demographically changing neighborhoods.
The other, sometimes overlooked factor that explains a lot of that map are the institutions that encoded segregation into wide areas of the law. The book to read about that is The Color of Law.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1631492853/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=
only $20 if you have prime
edit: oh this is only 15 -- https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander-ebook/dp/B0067NCQVU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1510953399&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+new+jim+crow
> please read a book (like Spirit Level)
please read a book like https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853
Your arguments are ahistorical. I don't know if that's because you're not from the US or not aware of the economic history of 20th century racism here. But at a certain point it's less that you don't know than that you refuse to, and if you're not over that line you're certainly flirting with it.
[This guy is correct folks. Read this book if you don't believe him.] (https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853)
Some articles for him:
Gun control's racist past and present
The racist origin of gun control laws
Then you could follow up with the role that civilian firearms played in protecting african-americans during the civil rights movement. Here are a few books on the topic:
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement
Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
Not that I think you'll change his mind, but it'd be fun.
Relevant
Relevant.
There is a book about this.
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X/ref=nodl_
And here is a point-by-point refutation of the attempts to refute 9/11 truth. Just tell me who the hijackers were on the airplanes and I may believe the official conspiracy theory. Or look up the Wall Street Journal article on General Mahmud Ahmad of the ISI wiring $100,000 to Mohammad Atta and the Washington Post article that proves he was meeting with Porter Goss and Bob Graham (House and Senate Intelligence Committee leaders) on the morning of 9/11. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence and definitely NOT worth investigating, right?
It's not concise; it's incredibly well researched but it's quite a large book of around 300-400 pages. Unfortunately I don't think you can find it online, but it's the only book you would need to understand 9/11 alternative theories. Here's a link to the amazon page.
POPULAR MECHANICS! Wow is that your secret weapon? Popular Mechanics itself has been proven dozens of times to be deceptive, building strawmen arguments and never really addressing the issue. Not only in this book or this article but in dozens of interviews and videos
You call yourself rational while you only accept what confirms your pre-conceived belief.
If we must go there...
I would rather suggest that people read "debunking 9/11 debunking".
you're not arguing. you're posting a link.. here's my rebuttal for your link.. they can go have their own argument.
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
too bad you can't think or argue for yourself. what a shit job. next.
> Then can you explain why the overall time it took the building to descend was calculated to be 40% greater than freefall?
I must debunk you. The "40% longer" story is obsolete for years now. It was NIST line of defence BEFORE they admit, there was free fall. So update your info, because you are not telling truth.
QUOTE:
"In response [to NIST early claims that collapse "was roughly 40 percent longer than free fall"], high-school physics teacher David Chandler, who was allowed to submit a question to this briefing, challenged Sunder’s denial of free fall, stating that Sunder’s “40 percent longer” claim contradicted “a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity. Chandler then placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone understanding elementary physics could see that “for about two and a half seconds… , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall.”53 (This is, of course, free fall through the air, not through a vacuum.) In its final report on WTC 7, which came out in November 2008, NIST—rather amazingly—admitted free fall. Dividing the building’s descent into three stages, NIST described the second phase as “a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds].”54 NIST thereby accepted Chandler’s case—except for maintaining that the building was in absolute free fall for only 2.25, not 2.5, seconds (a trivial difference). NIST thereby affirmed a miracle, meaning a violation of one or more laws of physics."
>Once that column buckled, it caused more of the floors to collapse, leaving adjacent columns unstable, and also impacted adjacent columns, damaging them. This triggered a chain reaction in which
What chain reaction? What a nonsense!
It was not house of cards, it was steel!
You are saying that failure of one column collapsed whole 82 coulumns and whole building. Sorry, that makes no sense.
Can you give any other example from history, where fire collapsed building in few seconds with free fall? Of course you cant...
> As for your question 2.
> Unfortunately for you, I managed to find the actual paper that you quoted.
> The authors clearly state that:
> "The eutectic temperature for this mixture strongly suggests that the.....
You presented nothing new. What's more presence of sulfur is another red flag that explosives (Thermate) were used:
"...Second, the WPI professors reported not merely that there was sulfur in the debris, but that the steel had been sulfidized. This means that sulfur had entered into the intergranular structure of the steel (which the New York Times article had indicated by saying that sulfur had “combined with atoms in the steel”). As chemist Kevin Ryan has said, the question NIST would need to answer is: “[H]ow did sulfates, from wallboard, tunnel into the intergranular microstructure of the steel and then form sulfides within?”118 Physicist Steven Jones added: [I]f NIST claims that sulfur is present in the steel from gypsum, they should do an (easy) experiment to heat steel to about 1000°C in the presence of gypsum and then test whether sulfur has entered the steel… . [T]hey will find that sulfur does not enter steel under such circumstances.119 Chemistry professor Niels Harrit has explained why it would not: Although gypsum contains sulfur, this is not elemental sulfur, which can react with iron, but sulfur in the form of calcium sulfate, which cannot.120 The official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, therefore,implies that the sulfidized steel had been produced by a twofold miracle: Besides the fact that the fires, as we saw earlier, could have melted steel only if they had possessed miraculous powers, the sulfur in the wallboard could have entered into this melted steel only by virtue of supernatural powers. Once again, a non-miraculous explanation is available: We need only suppose that thermate, a well-known incendiary, had been employed. As Steven Jones has written: The thermate reaction proceeds rapidly and is in general faster than basic thermite in cutting through steel due to the presence of sulfur. (Elemental sulfur forms a low-melting-temperature eutectic with iron.)121 Besides providing an explanation for the eutectic reaction, thermate could also, Jones pointed out, explain the melting, oxidation, and sulfidation of the steel: When you put sulfur into thermite it makes the steel melt at a much lower temperature, so instead of melting at about 1,538°C [2,800°F] it melts at approximately 988°C [1,820°F], and you get sulfidation and oxidation in the attacked steel."
...and that's why you have melted steel in 1000C temp and signs of sulfur.
PS. Please do read any book by David Griffin, I recommend "Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory "
I dont have all day to copy-paste and correct all misinformation that you provide.
Read it and you will find plenty information and answer to your "debunking" there.
I got this book a while back: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
You'd be surprised how many morons die by falling into hot springs and the like.
I picked up a copy of Death in Yellowstone during a trip there a couple of years ago. Highly recommended.
The chapter on bears had many anecdotes about dog / bear interactions. Also people / bear interactions.
People can be really stupid.
Love Shoshone Geyser Basin. I've been there 3 times! Finally got to see Minute Man go off on the 3rd trip!
Ever read Death in Yellowstone? You'll never look at Shoshone Geyser Basin the same...
I worked a summer in Yellowstone a couple years ago. It's amazing how many people just lost their minds when they got near these large wild animals. The bison harmed FAR more people every year that bears ever do. Not because the bison are that aggressive, these people have never been around wild animals and think they are tame.
I was surprised how many times I was asked if they could swim in the hot springs. "I would not recommend it, since most of the springs are boiling or almost boiling. It would most likely be lethal"
FYI: the vast majority of deaths in Yellowstone are car accidents.
Check out Death in Yellowstone it's a great read
If you like spending money on something that wikipedia rendered obsolete-ish, I recommend
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
Picked it up as a young morbid person in the park. Fantastic.
For America, you definitely need to read "Color of Law". And it should be mandatory reading by Blue City residents and planners because most of the most racist systems like zoning and red-lining started in Blue Cities. Zoning is straight out of San Francisco and intended to limit, displace and steal the real estate of Chinese-Americans! It's a matter of public record! And yet zoning and very similar types of arbitrary and capricious planning is still practiced today.
Having been raised in the SF Bay Area, this doesn't surprise me because "Blue" value people are usually the most racist people I've met. They think they aren't but if you listen to their words and watch their deeds (e.g. the NIMBYism that has caused the current housing crisis in the SF Bay Area), you see it's primarily about racism, sometimes hidden by classicism, which is hidden by "preserving the community norms/feel".
Thank you for your reply.
Sensing that you are level headed and fair minded, I'd like to recommend a book for you to read. Maybe glance at the pages available on Amazon and see if you'd be interested...
The Color of Law..... by Richard Rothstein
Most poor people are white? Back that up, please, because these statistics look like you're pulling it out of your ass.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/ and
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/
What you have to realize is that black people have been MADE into criminals by a racist system in the US for as long as they have been "Free." If you really want to be educated on some things you probably never knew happened, read this: http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
Also, black people are sentenced to around 21 percent longer sentences than white people for the SAME crimes. They are 20% more likely to get a prison sentence than a white person for the same crime. In school, they are much more likely to be arrested than white students for the same crimes. This creates a distrust of a system that they are indeed right to distrust. In doing so, not only does it hurt the next generation by taking away fathers and mothers from their children, but it also succeeds in aiding the glorification of lifestyles such as gangs/selling drugs/etc. After all, if you have no guidance and know that you're likely to be arrested for something you shouldn't, why not live a life where you can actually get some money doing something worth getting arrested for? (source for statistics: http://www.sentencingproject.org/ )
The point of all this is that it's not just cut and black numbers. You need to see the reasons behind where people are. When, historically, laws are made specifically to make good people into criminals, you effectively "breed" crime into a race or society. (Example: After being "freed" from slavery, laws were enacted making it illegal to be a "vagrant." Well, what do you call someone who has no home, no money and no job because they were just released from slavery? Vagrant. Throw them in jail under forced labor, then add to their sentence for any and everything you can and call them a criminal. You think these things stopped back then? Why is crack considered much worse than cocaine on a criminal level? Think about it.)
Just some examples pointing out the ignorance of your statement.
This is absolutely true. Documented fact. There is a new documentary out on this: Slavery by Another Name (trailer).
Full documentary here
The Pulitizer Prize-winning book it was based upon
Capitalism and freedom/democracy are not the same thing. As this evil episode of U.S. history shows, sometimes they are directly at odds with each other.
If you ever needed evidence that those who don't know their own history are destined to repeat it, then this should put such naive, lazy skepticism to sleep, for good.
"From 2000 to 2010, the number of inmates kept in private prisons rose nearly 50%, from 87,000 to 128,000. While this amounts to less than 10% of all prisoners nationwide, it represents a serious trend toward privatization as budget-squeezed states look for ways to cut costs."
source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/06/28/why-private-prisons-will-lock-up-your-returns/
The real problem is when you look at the lobbying money that private prison companies are dumping in Washington and state capitals. For example these corporations are one of the largest advocates of maintaining or increasing in severity current drug laws.
"How much? A bundle. In the past five election cycles, the three biggest companies in the private prison industry have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state politicians. Democrats received 31.8 percent of the money, Republicans got 59.1 percent, and 8.7 percent went to ballot measures, according to the institute.
Lobbying is a big part of the industry’s approach. CCA had 41 lobbyists in just three states—Tennessee, Nevada and Florida—from 2003 to 2010. The institute found it impossible to track all the money spent on lobbying at the state level by these companies as a consequence of widely differing disclosure laws. With the arrival of the Citizens United ruling, that task will not become easier.
The “revolving door” also benefits the private prison industry, with many former government officials joining prison companies the same way ex-colonels and ex-generals join the weapons industry upon retirement, and for the same reason: influence among their former colleagues."
source: http://motleynews.net/2011/06/26/new-stats-out-private-prison-populations-up-120-lobbyists-paying-6-million-to-state-officials/
The real problem is a situation is arising where the corporations profit from incarcerating people, and then use that money to influence politicians to craft laws which incarcerate more and more people. This is eerily familiar to the era of neo-slavery that stretched from the post Civil War era until WWII. During this time many southern states passed laws so you could arrest blacks for almost anything, and then they were "leased" to people. "The lease (essentially the sale) of convicts to commercial interests between the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Usually, the criminal offense was loosely defined vagrancy or even changing employers without permission. The initial sentence was brutal enough; the actual penalty, reserved almost exclusively for black men, was a form of slavery in one of hundreds of forced labor camps operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers."
source: http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
Some statistics on the two largest private prison corporations.
"Corrections Corporation of America
66: number of facilities owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison company based on number of facilities
91,000: number of beds available in CCA facilities across 20 states and the District of Columbia
$1.7 billion: total revenue recorded by CCA in 2011
$17.4 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$1.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$3.7 million: executive compensation for CEO Damon T. Hininger in 2011
132: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at CCA-run Idaho Correctional Center between Sept. 2007 and Sept. 2008
42: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution in the same time frame (both prisons at the time held about 1,500 inmates)
The Geo Group, Inc., the U.S.’s second largest private detention company
$1.6 billion: total revenue in year 2011, according to its annual report
65: number of domestic correctional facilities owned and operated by Geo Group, Inc.
65,716: number of beds available in Geo Group, Inc.’s domestic correctional facilities
$2.5 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 8 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$2.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$5.7 million: executive compensation for CEO George C. Zoley in 2011
$6.5 million: damages awarded in a wrongful death lawsuit against the company last June for the beating death of an inmate by his cellmate at a GEO Group-run Oklahoma prison. An appeal has been filed and is pending.
$1.1 million: fine levied against the company in November 2011 by the New Mexico Department of Corrections for inadequate staffing at one of its prisons"
source: http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry
But yeah, you're right. I need to stop being melodramatic. Nothing to see here.
This might be closer to your search. The book Slavery By Another Name does a phenomenal job of describing the ways in which the status quo of Southern society and political life were restored closely following Reconstruction. The book places a lot of weight on Plessy v. Ferguson, arguing that Southern whites took the decision to mean that the North had gotten fed up with policing the South. To this day, most Southern states have Constitutions that were re-written in the years following Plessy. Legal codes were revised in a manner that created a practice the author considers to be debt slavery. http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
African American men were required to keep papers on them at all times indicating they were employed. If a black man were caught without his papers, he was arrested for vagrancy and put in jail overnight. The next day, he would receive a guilty verdict and a small fine. The fine was augmented by charges for the sheriff's time, the night in jail, the defense attorney, the prosecuting attorney, and the general court costs. These fines and fees would total hundreds of dollars at a time when even a middle-class person could expect to earn very little.
The man was then informed that he must pay the fees and fines immediately or else be jailed for contempt of court...and have additional fines added on. At this time, a "benevolent" white land owner would always appear and "volunteer" to pay the fine in exchange for a legally-binding agreement to work the debt off on the man's farm.
Upon arriving at the farm, the man was placed in precisely the structures that previously housed slaves and given the same agricultural work, complete with overseers authorized to beat slaves into submission.
A final twist increased the amount of the man's obligation by the cost of his quarters, his meals, his work clothes, and the tools he used. The debt would grow at a rate that was impossible to ever repay, so most black men in the post-Reconstruction era found themselves back in debt slavery for the rest of their lives.
The author notes that this debt slavery was more pernicious than actual slavery because it employed credit. A slave owner prior to the war was required to front considerable capital to buy a slave. Slaves were capital goods, so discipline was restrained by the need to keep the slave able to work. Debt slaves after the war, however, were "purchased" for the amount of their fine (and records are unclear regarding whether the white landowners ever actually paid the fines they assumed on behalf of the black men). Because the upfront investment was much smaller, and because the man could easily be replaced by another small debt purchase, the landowners no longer had any financial motive to treat the debt slaves with even the slightest degree of care. This is illustrated in the book Lay This Body Down, the account of a debt slaver who tossed eleven black men chained to rocks into his mill pond (after church on Sunday) because he learned that Federal inspectors were coming by the next day to ensure debt slavery was not occurring. http://www.amazon.com/Lay-This-Body-Down-Plantation/dp/1556524471/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1427315802&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=lay+this+body+down
The author notes the practice continued until WWII, when the manufacturing needs of the US grew so dramatically that black men were needed on assembly lines and the debt slavery practice couldn't profitably continue. The conclusion based on available records suggests that, practically speaking, slavery continued in the southern US until around 1942.
I've made my way through most of the Marx Engels Reader, and I've read Marx's Capital in its entirety.
https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Karl-Marx/dp/039309040X
The marx-engels reader gives a good grasp on it, direct from primary source and a few explanatory comments. Was pretty good to me. It may not qualify to what you expect of a summary (it has 700+ pages), but given the extension of Marxist theory I believe it does the job well.
I have a copy of the Marx-Engels reader and I find it pretty comprehensive.
> It may not be the profs. Student organizations are pretty popular here and many of them are very much ideological. I've seen at my uni that people joined a student org for their good marketing, network and famous parties then started to hold those views more and more themselves.
That's not the university or student organizations as much as it is people. People like to feel ideologically actualized. That's not a symptom of youth or studenthood nearly as much as it is symptomatic of humanity. I don't know how much experience you have outside of school (and I don't mean that to insult you, I just don't know you!), but my experience in the "real world" before going back to grad school is that if anything these kinds of ideological organizations are even more prevalent (insofar as them existing across spectra of activity and ideology). I lived in Washington, DC for a while before this and the amount of political clubs was just insane, but they're even in areas like rural Alaska and Florida.
> Personally I don't think that a communist society is viable in anything larger than a kibbutz (which I'd call a community, not society) because it goes against human nature and has significant technical difficulties regarding efficient and sufficient production.
I emphatically agree with this. I generally find communism an interesting framework to operate under, but it's almost impossible for me to see it applicable on any way on a grand scale. I have a rather pessimistic view of humanity - not that I believe humans are inherently evil or wrong, but that doing the right thing is often difficult and that peoples' definitions of what is "right" are different and applied differently. This getting a bit into a diatribe, but I'd say my personal identification is closer to classical anarchism/libertarianism (NOT what modern American libertarianism is, which has almost nothing to do with the ideology) for the reasons you describe.
> ...classes based on economics are not the only way to stratify a society. In the USA it was also races, in Eastern Europe it was ethnicities, language and religion. Even if all workers had the same rights, a Russian was still "culturally superior" to a Lithuanian. People have other loyalties than to their class, and this is something that I think Marx was wrong about.
This is actually something Marx writes about with Engels and something he'd agree with you on. Marx did not state that economics was the only way to interpret history, but that it was one of the main forces of the "modern" era. He makes a point that stratification through race, religion, and ethnicity are all just as salient, but that economics was the one that oppressors could wield most strongly. The idea that Marx exclusively focused on economic stratification is something that's come from misinterpretation of his writings, and I've noticed that's mostly in literature coming since the 1980s - which probably coincides with the rise of neoliberalism in the West.
> Do you mean that the workers in some countries became accomplices of the capitalists, and a strong party with a strong leader is needed to keep the movement "pure"? Surely in the top 10 conspiracy theories.
Sort of. This is one of the big differences between Marxism and Leninism. Marx emphatically believed that workers fighting against the capitalists must occur organically, and that any attempt to manufacture revolution would end up being a fake revolution that would end up being more dangerous and destructive in the long run (ironic, isn't it?). This was a strong reaction against the "great man" theory of the Enlightenment, which postulated that history is moved by the actions of "great men" and personae. Marx, on the other hand, believed that history was moved by class struggles - with "class" primarily operating under the economic definition but also including issues of race, nationality, and sex. That's one of several reasons why you'll see Leninism described as "not real communism", because it violates one of Marx's central tenants that revolution must come from the people and be sustained by the people, as any revolution stemming from a figure would end up becoming by and for the figure.
Seriously it's fascinating stuff, even if you or I don't subscribe to the political/ideological aspect of it. It's legitimately interesting reading, and you can get a cheap copy of collected works here if you don't feel like reading through several hundred pages of Das Capital (and I wouldn't recommend you do so).
> I'm an economist but I don't think that everything can be explained by economics.
I was a healthcare economist before starting grad school, and I think geographical inequalities (but not inequities) do better at influencing economic behavior. Most people look at economics as being the driver of human political and social behavior in the last couple of decades, but I think it's more like a descendant of a common variable (geography) than anything else.
> I'm a huge advocate of welfare economics and sustainable finance. The first one is concerned with using human welfare instead of GPD as a measure of economic success. The second uses environmental impact in the calculation of financial feasibility of projects.
Do you have any books or authors you'd recommend? I'm taking a course on sustainability that mostly focuses on health behavior, but I'd like to learn a bit more on the sustainability of welfare and environment.
By the way, I'm enjoying this talk with you. I like having to think critically about things I've read or experienced, and I'm definitely getting that this morning! I sincerely apologize for my initial frustration.
start with this, my dude
There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:
I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.
Instead of talking yourself out of becoming educated, imagine what would happen to society if everyone did so. Everyone, people like you included, has the potential to transform society through education, dialogue, and activism. Judging from some of your comments, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that you start with Karl Marx. If you're worried about exploitation, interested in socialism, etc., go to the source. Either the Communist Manifesto or Capital, depending on how heavy you're willing to get. If you want something that covers a wide selection of Marx and Engels, I highly recommend this reader. This includes the Manifesto, book 1 of Capital, and some other important essays. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll hate it. But it's a great place to start if you want first hand exposure to the foundation of critical theory. Keep in mind that everyone you talk to, even philosophy majors, even philosophy professors, are going to have a bias in one way or another. You have to pursue the truth yourself and don't let anyone scare you out of getting educated and engaged with improving society. Your silence supports the status quo, so if you're comfortable with things being the way they are, by all means stay at home.
There's a wide array of introductory material, but if you were to get just two individual books I'd suggest The Marx-Engels Reader and The Essential Works of Lenin.
I'd also suggest Marxist Classics volumes 1 and 2.
> It feels like everybody is talking about equality and kindness and all that...but it feels off. It feels artificial.
There was a peak of this sort of trend with the baby boomers this trend in the 60s (Y'know, tune and drop out/peace n' love). The elder generation called us spoiled brats who'd gone soft...I remember at the beginning of the Vietnam war when there was some support, some of the older conservative demographics felt that the war might even straighten some of the hippies out.
The anxieties you feel about generational shifts are natural. I'd highly suggest checking out the books:
https://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123
as well as their follow ups
https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=MPQAM9KQZ6HTVQ78QBZM
This book explains your point, in detail.
http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1464041367&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=generations+howe
Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal Second Edition, Revised and Expanded
I will also say that reading this:
Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
Did just as much for me in realizing the patterns this country repeats in a crazy comical fashion. Just seeing how things like robber barons and yellow journalism were inevitable to return, blew my mind.
It all comes from this book, Generations, published 1994.
The did a study on US generations from the 16th century.
Here's a wiki page.
Relevant to this sub (my assumption):
I guess it depends how deep down the proverbial rabbit hole you're willing to go. If you entertain the idea that the entire war was (at least partially) theater in order to justify extravagant military budgets and broad, sweeping societal/industrial changes, then it makes sense that nothing of strategic value was attacked by the Japanese. In a scenario like that, Japan and the US technically aren't "enemies" at all in the traditional sense. Japan would have been told what to bomb and how to bomb it so that nothing truly valuable was lost. The US would be willing to sack a few old battleships if they knew it could/would be used as the justification to enter the war and change the course of the country's and world's history forever (with the US at or near the top of the food chain, of course).
This is one of the only scenarios that makes any sense to me considering that nothing Japan did at Pearl Harbor really made sense from a military strategy perspective. They had every opportunity to do real damage to the US war effort by destroying a substantial amount of the Pacific fleet and infrastructure, and yet all they did was sink a few old battleships and "damage" some others. If you truly look at the alleged damage from Pearl Harbor compared to the amount of equipment, ships, infrastructure, etc. that was typically docked there, the level of Japan's failure is pretty unbelievable (literally).
It all reminds me a bit of how Hitler let the British escape at Dunkirk or how Hitler allegedly canceled all weapons research for a couple years during the war because he thought he could "win with what he had". None of it makes any tactical sense whatsoever, despite how all the mainstream historians try to spin us.
> Do you have any good reads or docs on this?
Most of this is just the overall information I've gleaned from lots of different sources. It's basically my theory of WWII based on everything I've learned with my own speculations peppered in. I just see a lot of details and "facts" surrounding the war that make no sense at all except from the perspective that both sides were ultimately working together.
One more significant detail of that era that I think sheds some light as well: the BIS was crawling with Germans/Nazis all through the late 1930's and '40's - so basically the entire time the war was going on. There was a clause in the BIS charter saying it was immune from seizure, closure, and censure, regardless of what happened and even if its members were at war. Some of the members of the charter were First National of NY, Bank of England, Reichsbank, Bank of Italy, Bank of France, etc. Basically all of the major players and "enemies" of the war. The BIS funneled money to Germany throughout the war with the obvious consent of its member banks. Ultimately, as with everything else, it all comes back to money and power in the end imo.
If you want a book specifically about Pearl Harbor, this one is pretty decent.. The author of the book appears to be a spook and the book itself is likely a limited hangout in my opinion, but it's still a good entry-point and I think a lot of the evidence it compiles actually supports my theory that Pearl Harbor was one act in the Grand Play that is WWII, with Japan "in on it", despite that not being the author's intention.
It's more than that it "never stopped" -- the US callously broke the agreement it made with Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east.
In the so-called Cold War, the USSR surrendered. It withdrew from eastern Europe and allowed itself to be broken up into over a dozen different countries -- but the US gov't acted treacherously and has never ended US aggression against Russia.
The entire Cold War strategy of provoking Russia and encircling it with military bases continued. The US pushed NATO east, and it tore up the ABM treaty placing an anti-missile base in Poland using the laughable excuse that we did that "because of Iran." Clearly the US wants to negate Russia's nuclear deterrence.
Twice in one decade the US has funded the overthrow of Ukraine's -- the historic birthplace of all of Russia -- government, with this last coup d'etat being a blatant violent and bloody affair.
Is it any wonder Russia is responding? We certainly have tried hard enough to provoke them!
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
I haven't read Shirley's book, but it seems obsolete, given the evidence that Robert Stinnett uncovered.
In his book "Day of Deceit" Stinnett documents that the Roosevelt administration definitely knew of the attack before Dec. 7th, but more than that, had a policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US. Prior knowledge of the attack has been a theory for many years, and many people talked about it immediately after Pearl Harbor, but Stinnett unearthed much new evidence from the US gov't itself using Freedom of Information Act requests.
The most startling evidence is a US gov't document written by a Naval officer who proposed provoking Japan into attacking the US. This officer was in contact with FDR and the highest Navy admirals on a daily basis. The memo proposed 8 steps which would provoke Japan to attack the US, and the US gov't then enacted all 8 steps and Stinnett documents these.
Stinnett also offers evidence and testimony that the US gov't had broken the Japanese naval codes (the US gov't only claims to have broken Japanese diplomatic codes) before Pearl Harbor and not afterward like the US gov't and our history books claim.
Stinnett's theory is that with the fall of France in the spring of 1940, the US was shocked and feared that Britain might fall to Germany; the administration then enacted a policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US so that the US could enter the war in Europe in a "backdoor" fashion and have the country united in the war effort as a result of the attack.
Edit: Clarity.
As documented by this author's discovery of the so-called "McCollum memo" (and other research), after the fall of France, the US gov't had an actual policy of provoking Japan so we enter WWII against Germany via the German-Japanese alliance.
Day of Deceit
You should check out Day of Deceit
The review reads, "Historians have long debated whether President Roosevelt had advance knowledge of Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Using documents pried loose through the Freedom of Information Act during 17 years of research, Stinnett provides overwhelming evidence that FDR and his top advisers knew that Japanese warships were heading toward Hawaii. The heart of his argument is even more inflammatory: Stinnett argues that FDR, who desired to sway public opinion in support of U.S. entry into WWII, instigated a policy intended to provoke a Japanese attack. The plan was outlined in a U.S. Naval Intelligence secret strategy memo of October 1940; Roosevelt immediately began implementing its eight steps (which included deploying U.S. warships in Japanese territorial waters and imposing a total embargo intended to strangle Japan's economy), all of which, according to Stinnett, climaxed in the Japanese attack."
The truth about Pearl Harbor was already uncovered by Robert Stinnett, who discovered the McCollum Memo and also wrote an extensive book about it. People tried to defame him, but it's ultimately up to the reader/researcher to decide truth from falsehood.
As other uses have pointed out, it didn't change things very much, but was more an adaptation to a battlefield that had already changed thanks to the increased deadliness of supporting arms.
I just wanted to add some supplementary materials you might be interested in.
The Gun is a pretty exhaustive history of the AK-47 and automatic weapons in general
On Infantry is a very dry study of infantry tactics from late 1890s through the 1970s. It is a bit out of date, but covers the period you are asking about.
There is also FM 3-21.8 which covers the US Army Infantry Platoon and squad organization and fighting style. It would be useful to understand exactly how a modern army expects its units to fight and how it organizes them to do so.
No rain, no mud, no sand. You might enjoy reading this: https://www.amazon.ca/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
The Gun by CJ Chivers is a really excellent and thorough history of the Kalashnikov and its significance. One of my favorite books and authors.
I can't recommend the book THE GUN enough. Amazing story about the AK47:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
I would like to participate.
Here are three books that might fit the theme.
CJ Chivers "The Gun" - Well written and details the development of the AK-47 which has impacted men's lives for three generations now.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
Geoff Colvin "Talent Is Overrated" - We are all trying to change ourselves for the better. That takes focus and determination. This book is definitely echoing that view.
http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948
Dean Karnazes, "Ultramarathon Man" - Good biography about a man transforming himself. Lots of fuck yeah moments.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultramarathon-Man-Confessions-All-Night-Runner/dp/1585424803
*All three of these have audiobook versions availible from Audible so that could be a boon for the dyslexic amoungst us who have issues reading.
Of the three I would say Talent Is Overrated would probably prompt more discussion. The Ultramarathon Man might be good for a working out themed choice. The Gun is just a damn good book that combines politics, engineering and war.
I'm a 19-year-old boy from Ottawa, Canada (you may have heard of our little country :P ). While I was not homeschooled per se during my public school years (I went to regular English schools), I definitely learned more quickly, more thoroughly and more widely due to my parents' constant efforts to teach me things that went way above and beyond what I was "learning" at my high school.
My parents are both high school teachers, and have each spent roughly 30 years teaching their respective subjects.
My dad actually just retired last year, but he taught most of the Social Studies curriculum during the course of his career (History, Philosophy, Psychology, World Religions, etc.). He is a bilingual Francophone from Ottawa, so he taught at one of the French Catholic high schools in our area. He also happens to be somewhat skeptical of religion (not an atheist, but damned close). Odd combination, yes, but it has resulted in him introducing me to
military history, everything from the Roman legions to the Knights Templar to the Taliban.
My mother was born in Ottawa, to Greek parents who had left Greece after the Second World War; my grandparents are from a village about 20 minutes away from the modern city of Sparti (Sparta). During the war, the village was at some point occupied by Axis forces (I'm not sure when or to what extent, because my grandparents' English is not great and only my mother speaks Greek).
I decided to include a list (below) of works that I've found particularly interesting (I've never actually written down a list of my favs before, so this may be somewhat... sprawling and will be in no particular order :P ). Depending on the ages of your kids, some of this stuff might be inappropriate for them right now, but they can always check it out when they're older. It's mostly military/wartime history that interests me (it's what I plan on studying in university), but I've learned so many little tidbits about other things as well from having access to these works. Since your kids are all boys, I hope they'll find at least some of this stuff to be interesting :) .
Books
Movies and TV
This is all non-fiction. If you like this list, let me know, and I can expand on it further, and also include my favourite works from other genres, as well as my favourite fiction books as well :) . I left out tons of stuff that I'm too much of a lazy teenager to type in here, lol.
This is the book for those curious.
http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
So I just finished this one: It's a non fiction that reads like a dystopian piece. It can be a little heavy at times but I found it a very intriguing and fair window into some of the more extreme viewpoints of political radicals, despite the inflammatory title. My family is very much like the subjects of the book so it was a bit personal for me. If you liked the handmaiden's tale it might spark some interest!
Read Me
> but refuse to add pretext on how these white European Zionists
So white Jews are not allowed a homeland, brown Palestinians are.
>Israel is no different than any other white European supremacist colonialist power
About that Jews are white thing. Maybe you need to read something like: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America. Jews were not "white" in the 19th century when modern Zionism started. Jews were not "white" after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. You make Jews white because for you it is easier to attack groups of "whites". But to call victims of multiple recent European mass killings "white European supremacists" is ignorant and bigoted.
>The colonialist terrorism towards the Arabs started all the way back in 1882 funded by the Rothschilds.
By the Rothschilds. Are we supposed to rear back and gasp? Are we supposed to react with a knowing nod because "those people" are like that?
>The beauty of your narrative is that anyone who uses the smallest amount of critical thinking or skepticism can see right through the lies.
I absolutely accept that you have the smallest amount of critical thinking or skepticism.
There is a whole book about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
Again, what evidence are you presenting?
Most Jewish people have been considered white by Americans for decades. Here's a good read about the shift in perceptions: http://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
No, they aren't.
I am a white person. That is my race, but that is not my ethnicity. My ethnicity is a mix of variety ethnicities, primarily Portuguese and Irish.
Race is a social construct, so it changes based on society's decision about who belongs to which race, (and which race is favored over another). Black and white are races, not ethnicities.
That's why we have books entitled "How Jews Became White Folks" and "How The Irish Became White," but we don't have books entitled "How The Irish Became Irish." That's because ethnicity is unchangeable - no one needs to know how an Irish person became Irish - while race is malleable.
In the US Jews weren't really considered white until the 1970s. There's a book that came out a while back called How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America that discusses this topic in detail.
I came here to suggest the same; I'm glad to see someone else recommend it. White Cargo is a pretty good read on the subject.
It's a good read
The Irish most likely.
Edit: There's this book
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
HEre's a good place to start
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/27/1265498/-The-slaves-that-time-forgot Here's another
I have a book called From Sea to Shining Sea I haven't erad it but it looks like something you're after.
I know you said fiction/pleasure, but I read A People's History of the USA. It's certainly not fictional, yet it is gripping.
-The Economist
-Slate
-The Atlantic
-Foreign Policy Magazine
(Just to name a few well rounded publications.)
A People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn is a great primer, but I'm sure some people will say that it leans too far to the left. Either way I thought it was great, regardless of your political view.
EDIT:
Start reading
Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States
Suggested reading [fixed]
My source is largely Who Built America? and A Peoples' History of the United States. What are yours?
I don't have a thorough knowledge of 19th century international property law, but a lot of it has carried by principle from then until now.
If you really don't know any physics I guess I can see how it could be a difficult read. I think you should push through it slowly and try to understand it. That kind of understanding can blow your world up so large it's beyond description. I found it to be leisurely but I've had an interest in physics for at least five years. If you want to learn more about physics after this I recommend Brian Greene.
But if you want to move on to something else that won't make you feel stupid maybe try A Short History of Nearly Everything which tells of the scientists lives as they discovered important things through history. A People's History of the United States, on a different track, gives you American history through the eyes of the common people. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Don't abandon every hard book - we're all guilty of it but pushing your mind through some tough ones is never something you will regret on your deathbed. Know what I mean?
Read http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
Clown, read your history, while you are at it look up the words corporatist and oligarchy. No taxation without representation, live free or die. Liberty was the foundation, not socialist nanny state horse shit. You are very obviously bereft of any historical context.
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html
http://www.reddit.com/domain/tenthamendmentcenter.com
Your inability to understand your mom is a side effect of no education.
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1494803789&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=a+peoples+history+of+the+united+states
This Thanksgiving I did a bunch of traveling and chose to listen to Howard Zinn's A people's history of the United States - and that book definitely keeps up a drumbeat of 'everything you thought was good about America was actually garbage which hurt people'. In that way, my views on America could be stereotyped as:
>the US is a deeply hateful, racist, and generally terrible place to live, especially for minorities and the poor.
But I don't think the US is a terrible place to live - far from it. America's one of the safest, most prosperous places on earth. But it's only sensible to be aware and cognizant of our troubled past and how many of those same issues linger today. Migrants trying to come here are escaping conditions much worse that those seen in America, but that doesn't mean America is prepared to do right by them or that living here wont be extremely difficult because of persecutions of class and race.
I have, actually. You might try a couple books I've found to be very helpful in that regard.
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
A People's History of the United States
I'm only halfway through the second one, but there's really nothing quite like reading history through the words of everyday people like you and me. Rather than the heroic narrative that glorifies and omits based upon the preferred narrative of the writer.
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26YP0Z8XLW9FE&keywords=the+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states&qid=1571044008&sprefix=the+people%27s+hi%2Caps%2C392&sr=8-1
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Read this. It'll change your perspective on the things you were taught in history class. It has a great chapter on Columbus, among others.
The Reluctant Metropolis by William Fulton. Not only does he talk about development and history of Los Angeles, but also how it relates to Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, and Las Vegas.
If you're interested in water and politics of the American west including Los Angeles, I also recommend Cadillac Desert -- pretty relevant in this multiyear drought
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is about water infrastructure in the American West and its politics.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is fiction but talks about human-nature relations.
That was anything but a free market purchase of water rights. LA used massive amounts of political muscle to get those water rights. Cadillac Desert has a really detailed account of this, but wikipedia has a decent summary
Some pretty shady shit went down to build the LA Aqueduct.
The book list just keeps growing in so many different directions that it's hard to identify which I want to tackle next (I also have a tendency to take meticulous notes while I read and that slows the process down even further!). Some of the topics I intend to read about once I'm done with the books mentioned:
Plus a bunch of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, and others. There are way too many. And all the fiction books I want to read too! It's not that I didn't read books before, but my faith transition has sparked an intense desire to study and learn far greater than I ever experienced before.
Here are half-a-dozen good ones for you:
I'd suggest taking a look at Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner. It's an excellent read in my opinion, more of an ecology book with it's central focus of water availability in the west. Having said that, the history, economics, and conflicts water policy/availability has created has had a huge impact on planning policy and how the western US developed.
In Cadillac Desert (I believe, I read it a while ago and could be mistaken on my source), there was a suggestion that the American west be divided along watersheds. That seems like a geographical feature that is not used very often, but causes quite a few problems between countries.
non-fiction:
I liked Eddie' Huang's Fresh Off The Boat. Don't let the shitty TV show (which the dude doesn't like) scare you off. It's an interesting book that covers a wide range of shit. Not just cooking or being Asian.
If you know who Eddie Huang is and you aren't a fan/don't want to give it a shot, maybe alternatively try one of Anthony Bourdain's books. I personally haven't ready them though.
The Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whale ship Essex again, ignore the shitty movie. Well, I haven't seen it but I assume so. Very interesting true story about a whaling ship in 1800 something that's destroyed by a sperm whale and the shipwrecked crew tries to survive. Basically a real life Moby Dick - Herman Melville based his story on the Essex.
Fiction:
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an easy entertaining easy read. I'm now realizing all of recommendations all seem to have movies but that's coincidence. I was also gonna say American Psycho.
Books are cool. I don't read enough anymore.
If you are not a land lubber you might try In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick or Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft by Alexander McKee.
Until just last night I had never heard of the Essex. I was talking with a guy at my local bar and he recommended I read this book.
Two naval books that are great reads:
http://www.amazon.com/To-Rule-Waves-British-Shaped/dp/0060534257
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship-Essex/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1382822400&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=whaleship+essex
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Link
This is a nice, easy reading book about the story Moby Dick is based on. The Essex was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale and her crew had to navigate home in whaleboats. It definitely falls more on the popular history side of the fence.
Don't know if this helps at all, but for historical context the story of the whalingship Essex was purportedly part of the inspiration for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book written from the perspective of a cabin boy on the Essex. It is one of the most riveting and haunting books I have ever read. This background stuff won't help too much on the literary criticism side of things, but helps put the story into a bit of historical context.
This book is exactly $12.34.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828
Jewish stuff aside, I'm currently in the middle of The Alchemy of Air about the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the Essex disaster, which inspired Moby Dick.
Battle Cry of Freedom is widely regarded as one of the best SINGLE VOLUME treatments of the US Civil war. There are better multi volume sets, and better treatments of specific events, but as a general knowledge base, this is top shelf material.
The Idea of America Is a great, short read discussing the formative years of the United States.
Older editions of Western Civilizations are quite good and informative. Yes, they're actual college textbooks, but they're easy to follow and surprisingly concise. Pick up a used copy for under $20, ignore the full retail price.
I'd actually take that as advice for just about any book on history. Many university level courses use the sorts of books recommended on this thread, and any used copies Amazon sells through its Marketplace are more likely than not copies read through once for a college course, and sold back for a few extra dollars. I have a substantial collection of used non fiction purchased at a discount for this exact reason, and there's nothing wrong with a few marks in the book, or a crease in the cover. The content is what matters.
So your position is that we should have monuments to monsters in places of high regard like the state house and public parks in order to remind us not to become monsters?
If that's the logic. It sure ain't working.
See the example of the klan standing with the bedford bust in the state house. Or the rally around the Robert E Lee monument in Charlottesville where they marched with torches shouting that the jews "will not replace us" and then murdered a woman.
The monuments aren't a deterrence to monsters, they are an incitement.
Should there be a monument to Osama bin Laden in order to remind us not to commit mass murder in the name of religious insanity? We consigned his corpse to the bottom of the ocean because we knew that was a bad idea.
> It was a different time which required different actions.
No, it wasn't a different time. There have always been people condemning white supremacy. The only difference now is that the white supremacists don't have quite as much power to muffle their critics as they used to.
ETA:
> The common man fought that war and died never knowing what they were really fighting over.
No, they absolutely knew what they were fighting for. They weren't dummies. The average foot soldier was well aware they were fighting for white supremacy. The declarations of secession explicitly spelled out they were fighting for white supremacy and they used that to recruit the cannon fodder - if black people were equal to white people, then poor whites would no longer have anyone below them in the social hierarchy.
Here's a quote from The Battlecry of Freedom: Civil War Era by James McPherson:
> So they undertook a campaign to convince nonslaveholders that they too had a stake in disunion. The stake was white supremacy. In this view, the Black Republican program of abolition was the first step toward racial equality and amalgamation. Georgia’s Governor Brown carried this message to his native uplands of north Georgia whose voters idolized him. Slavery “is the poor man’s best Government,” said Brown. “Among us the poor white laborer . . . does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. ... He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men” Thus yeoman farmers “will never consent to submit to abolition rule,” for they “know that in the event of the abolition of slavery, they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who would be able to protect themselves. . . . When it becomes necessary to defend our rights against so foul a domination, I would call upon the mountain boys as well as the people of the lowlands, and they would come down like an avalanche and swarm around the flag of Georgia.
> what I've come to realize is the North also was a beneficiary or at least opportunistically benefitted from the assistance of the Slave states
Yes, any book on Civil War history would address that. I recommend McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom for a good one-volume treatment of the war. No one said the North was pure as the driven snow, enlightened, embraced racial equality, etc. To "realize" that a caricature is false isn't that great of a leap. It's like "realizing" Lincoln wasn't an angel crusading since birth to free the slaves. It's true, but also rebuts only a cartoon version of history that no one really believes in.
>but the CSA was kind of caught holding the historical hot potato here that most western European powers previously benefited from while it was convenient.
Let's not act like they lacked agency. Those European powers had abolished slavery. The South was not in the process of moving away from slavery, rather they more of their wealth was tied up in slaves as we get closer to the Civil War. Their ideology and religion both celebrated slavery as a virtuous and enlightened structure of society.
>(in a southern state that never economically recovered 100%
Never recovered from having the slaves freed, but there are other issues too. The South rejected industrialization, rejected higher rates of education, rejected urbanization, etc. The South made cultural decisions regarding a rural, slow, relaxed existence, and decisions have consequences. The North's choices regarding urbanization, industrialization, automation, education, commerce etc also had consequences. These consequences are still playing out, because one set of choices creates wealth and the other does not, at least not nearly as well.
>This isn't really better than racism in a lot of ways.
This isn't about racism, though. It's about admitting what the Rebel flag actually stands for. We need to have the honesty of admitting that the flag was explicitly created as the national flag of a slave empire. Not a "fight the power" middle finger to "the man," but a confederacy of states dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and slavery, forever.
If I festoon my apartment with Nazi regalia, no one would be stupid enough to think maybe I was using the symbols in a value-neutral way. The swastika existed before Hitler, but the Rebel Flag did not exist before the Confederacy. It is not a value-neutral symbol, no more than this is a value-neutral symbol. We're not kids flipping people off at a Marilyn Manson or Insane Clown Posse concert.
I'm want to suggest folks looking to read Shelby Foote's Civil War series, consider Battle Cry of Freddom instead. McPherson's book is Pulitzer Prize-winning, included in the Oxford history of the United States, highly praised, and is included (along with Foote's series) in the top books recommended by the Library of Congress on the subject.
Battle Cry of Freedom, your civil war bible.
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Oxford-History/dp/019516895X
Cracks knuckles. I, as what Tony Horwitz calls, "A Civil War Bore" (But also one for the American War of Independence) can give you some recommendations. You gotta read Gen. Grant's memoirs. Out of all the memoirs by the major players, Grant is the most readable of them all, it is so well written. Ken Burns' famous Documentary introduced me to the memoirs of two common soldiers. "Company Aytch" follows Sam Watkins as he fights in the Western Theater, from Shiloh to Nashville, and "All for the Union" by Elisha Hunt Rhodes follows one Federal soldier as he survives the entire war in the East, from 1st Bull Run to Appomattox. For a general history, "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson is the absolute best. For more detailed studies on the lives of the individual soldiers, the two classic works "The Life of Johnny Reb" and "The Life of Johnny Yank" are fantastic. Similar works and more modern works include "Fighting Means Killing", a detailed study on Civil War combat, and "The War for the Common Soldier", basically a general summary of the life of the common lad during the war. Now, if you want legacy, there is but one place to go: Tony Horwitz's legendary 1998 Magnum Opus "Confederates in the Attic." Over the course of two years, Tony takes you all across the American South, running into everything as varied as the KKK one county over from where I live in Kentucky (Yeah, I apologize on behalf of South-Central Kentucky in advance, but at least they're in Todd County and not Logan!!!), a Scarlet O' Harra impersonator in Atlanta, and a massive Civil War road trip in Virginia with a reactor buddy. Well written, Mr. Horwitz can make you feel whatever he wants. Tony is was of the best writers out there, and it is a shame we lost him in May. May he rest in peace.
Edit: Amazon Links
The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Company Aytch
All For the Union
Battle Cry of Freedom
The Life of Johnny Reb
The Life of Billy Yank
Fighting Means Killing
The War for the Common Soldier
Confederates in the Attic (If you buy no other book from this list, buy Confederates in the Attic)
For the Revolutionary War
For the Civil War
I have to recommend Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, both fantastic military fiction.
I did some research and this is supposed to be one of the better comprehensive American Civil War books out there.
Democratic theory, which is a study area of political science, comes down to the question, "What is good?"
All our arguments are "normative," we are expressing a value or belief about what is good.
If we define politics as "a relationship of power between two or more individuals," then we can see how fragile all our relationships are, including between a person and their government.
Who do we decide to be? Where were we born? Why did we do something?
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is why I went to law school and why I work in government now.
If you are interested in different political theories, Justice by Michael Sandel and Political Philosophy by Ronald Beiner compare different political theorists or political philosophers, and are great companion pieces to LOGH.
Do you have a specific interest? Otherwise a general introduction like Think, Problems of Philosophy, or Justice are all well regarded. Though, all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are tons of accessible introductions though and depending on your interests it might be better to use one rather than another. All of those are fairly general
Some people take classes to punch a career ticket, but there are plenty of people that take classes just to learn.
I currently am taking a justice course taught at Harvard on moral philosophy. There is even an associated book you can read if you would like that pretty much covers the same material in the same order as the class, but I'm watching the lectures because I learn better that way. Moral philosophy has no chance of increasing my completely unrelated career and honestly I wouldn't even want to take my career in that direction if given the option, because I am just learning as a hobby for fun. I am also going through a game theory course at yale.
Right now I just casually watch lectures in my free time, but there are a few subjects I would like to tackle that will probably involve actually doing homework like differential equations, topology, and algorithms. Just reading a book doesn't cut it because you actually have to participate in subjects like that to fully understand them. And again, I plan on doing those just for fun because I believe learning is a life long experience.
I would recommend reading Michael Sandel’s book Justice and at the same time getting the Justice reader (book of selected readings in political philosophy) put together by Sandel, and watching Sandel’s online lecture series entitled Justice.
Justice book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374532508/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0374532508
Justice reader:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195335120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0195335120
Justice online lecture series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30C13C91CFFEFEA6
You really need to read some history and educate yourself on the realities of militarized policing and the treatment of black Americans.
Here are some suggestions where you can get started:
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americas/dp/1610394577
https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=37DDCSH6HQ7WTMAV25ZF
The US government has never really been 'of the people.' Blue-collar workers don't have the time and money to do serious campaigning. The federal government in particular has always consisted of the upper-middle or upper class. George Washington was the largest private landholder in the US when he was elected president.
It has always been a government by the rich, supported by the middle class, and vaguely aware of the poor. Read A People's History of the United States
Spoiler: politics is 90% about the money.
A good place to start to learn about the war the US Government has waged on its people since its inception:
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
You should take a look at The People's History of the United States. It's very broad and isn't always able to hunker down for a long time on one subject but it gives you a lot of starting points to jump off from and you can use that to dig deep and do your own research. It is very good to be suspicious because society has become too comfortable.
If you look at the history of the U.S there is an amazing amount of political work done by people when they don't vote. They get together and bring cities to standstill, etc. It doesn't have to be violent though sometimes I believe it is necessary. Yet now we have to "legally" protest which is a bunch of bullshit in my opinion. It pretty much defeats the purpose if I have to stand around in a designated protest area while nothing gets done around me.
Yes, that is exactly my point and it isn't a new tactic either. War is often used to gain mass support while glossing over the problems at home. It provides people with something else to fight rather than the system in which they live. I mean look at Afghanistan and Iraq. Every day people are coming under increased surveillance. Even the democratic president, Obama, continues to use his predecessors policies. Why? Because there are only two choices in a two party system. He hardly has to please his own base, just keep them hanging by a hairline because they don't want to go the other way and vote republican.
Edit: I don't advocate not voting. I'm Canadian and do. Though I support anti capitalist movements and if push comes to shove will stand with them.
you may like this book: http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
Ideas and time and mass social conflict. Quick history lesson:
The American Revolution was based upon the idea of Liberty. That the people should have control over their lives and their government. The idea of a "republic" only came back into being because of the return to classicalism (Greeks, Romans, etc.) during the Enlightenment. The enlightenment happened because of an invention called the Printing Press, making the works of classical authors available to the masses.
From the 16th century to the 18th, hundreds of authors were writing about these ideas of republicanism and liberty. You know the names of the big ones. Locke. Rousseau. Hobbes. They weren't all on the same side of the debate for sure (Hobbes was conservative, Locke created liberalism, Rousseau was the radical) but they all talked about ideas like the Social Contract, Mixed Government, and the State of Nature.
The leaders of the American Revolution were not fighters, they were scholars. They read these books, formulated their own ideas about them, and put them into effect. They owned printing presses and wrote articles and disseminated these ideas into the public.
It took hundreds of years for the ideas to take hold, but ideas are not enough. What pressed these scholars from the books to the battlefield was social conflict. The colonists and the british empire had irreconcilable differences that led to war.
There are similarities between this time and then. Ideas about the issues with capitalism and how government is run are circulating everywhere. Printing Press = Internet. We are coming into a second enlightenment. The majority of people are fed up with how our government works. Look at OWS, the Tea Party (which are two sides of the same coin, one just got co-opted by the Koch Bros). People are willing to go out and protest, which leads to more social conflict. The worse things get, the more people will pay attention to whats going on, the more people will act. Remember the masses are a mob, and follow mob mentality. 99.9% of people have no conception of what's actually going on in the world, because its only just beginning to be understood (see my second book link below).
What you can do personally is research. Read. Find out more infomration about what is going on. When you are confident in a topic talk to people about it. Try to inform them. Plant seeds. When enough are sown, there will be fruit. I'd recommend starting here and here.
If you want to make the whole process go faster, vote for romney. The social upheaval that will happen when they cut medicare will be nuts.
I second this, also Economics in One Lesson
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
Looks like you have something to learn about the working class in America. Read some labor history.
This is a good resource that explains it pretty well. At least the American side of the story. Unions originated mostly in Europe. In the beginning as just a bunch of workers fighting mostly against child labor. Then it evolved into a whole regulatory system. An essential regulatory system that's been forgotten and neglected here in America.
Canadian history. All those battles for independence and civil wars......so god damn fascinating
EDIT: or this
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
What?
Read the book. You can get a used copy for $5 at amazon. Great summer reading, well written, fascinating. You might just learn a few things you never knew.
I would highly recommend Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens was a journalist and essayist, heavily influenced by George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Leon Trotsky. He's one of the few people I can think of who described himself as a "socialist" of sorts who also admired the American Revolution. An interesting source, but he's a person who hugely admired Jefferson and was also willing to criticize his failings. Basically, you will get the general story that most Americans know, but Hitchens also writes about the more troubling/controversial aspects of Jefferson such as his ownership of slaves and his fathering of children with them.
Anyway, that's Jefferson. For general American history I would suggest reading both A People's History of the United States and A Patriot's History of the United States. Those books will provide general knowledge from two very distinct perspectives. People's is very critical of the country's past, while Patriot's is...well, patriotic.
Nu er jeg ikke historiker, men handlede det ikke om den kæmpe kløft mellem immigranterne og de indfødte, rent teknologisk?
Jeg er i gang med at lytte A People's History of the United States. Deri er der meget tydeligt beskrevet hvor stor en forskel der var på Columbus og de indfødte. Blandt andet kendte de indfødte ikke til metal, og skar sig på de sværd de prøvede at holde fordi de ikke forstod hvordan en klinge fungerede.
Hvis der er en kløft imellem immigranter og indfødte i vores nuværende tilfælde, er det da i høj grad os som har den klare fordel.
>We are not a nation of bullies, or zealots, or authoritarians.. they just got lucky.
Yes, we are. ^[1]
>Now they are scared. They are so scared that they will lose that hey are playing dirty. As long as we fight diligently we will win. It will take time.
No, they are not. They are so empowered, social security and Medicare are about to go bye-bye for an arms race.
I learned more about US history from the books below than anything I learned from my high school teachers. I did have some good college professors - but they are the ones who recommended these books. Also, "Untold History of The United States" documentary by Oliver Stone on Netflix. If you like dry stuff any Ken Burns documentary.
Lies My Teach Told Me
People's History of the United States
Congrats on getting hired!!! I'd recommend a mix of PD/teaching books and content. When you get bored of one switch to the other. Both are equally important (unless you feel stronger in one area than the other).
For PD, I'd recommend: Teach Like a Pirate, Blended, The Wild Card, and the classic Essential 55. Another one on grading is Fair Isn't Always Equal - this one really changed how I thought about grading in my classes.
As far as content, you have a couple ways to go - review an overview of history like Lies My Teacher Told Me, the classic People's History, or Teaching What Really Happened, or you can go with a really good book on a specific event or time period to make that unit really pop in the classroom. The Ron Chernow books on Hamilton, Washington, or Grant would be great (but long). I loved Undaunted Courage about Lewis & Clark and turned that into a really great lesson.
Have a great summer and best of luck next year!!
Since the issue seems to be coming up a lot in the comments, anyone interested in the water politics (and history) of the American West should read this book. It is a long read and can be hard to follow at times, but it's absolutely fascinating.
Cadillac Desert?
http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
It sounds like you have an Intro Geology book.
For a nice overview of historical geology, I was enraptured by "The Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. It starts slow but delves into the major developments and ideas of geology as the author visits many significant locales around the world.
Stephen Jay Gould was a very prolific science-writer across paleontology and evolution.
John McPhee has several excellent books related to geology. I would recommend "Rising from the Plains" and "The Control of Nature."
Mark Welland's book "SAND" is excellent, covering topics of sedimentology and geomorphology.
If you are interested in how society manages geologic issues, I would recommend Geo-Logic, The Control of Nature mentioned before, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Cadillac Desert.
These are some of the texts I used in university:
Thanks, I'll read the book mentioned in the article. A good starter/companion reader for those interested in water history out here is Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. It's older, but it's been revised over the years and is a great place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
Salon founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.
http://www.amazon.com/Season-Witch-Enchantment-Terror-Deliverance-ebook/dp/B005C6FDFY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=
Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal insight, deeply researched history, in-depth reporting, and lyrical prose to create an unparalleled portrait of San Francisco. Each of its 49 chapters explores a specific site or intersection in the city, from the mighty Golden Gate Bridge to the raunchy Tenderloin to the soaring sea cliffs at Land's End.
http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Gray-City-Love-Francisco-ebook/dp/B00D78R550/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451757678&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=cool+grey+city+of+love
Not a book, but this American Experiance episode is fantastic.
In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip -- an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
Also, not related to San Francisco directly, but focusing on California and the west, if you want to understand why California is the way it is today, this is on the list of essential reading material.
http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244
There are plenty of people whose careers (mine included) that revolve entirely around western water law, supply, growth, etc. It is pretty cool stuff.
Cadillac Desert is a good book to start learning about some of these issues.
Much longer than that. Cadillac Desert is 20 years old this year. Chinatown will be 40 years old next year.
If you haven't read the book 'Cadillac Desert' or seen the film, you absolutely should.
Ghost in the Wires - The story of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick
Any Mary Roach Book if you like Science
In the Heart of the Sea - The true story behind Moby Dick
The Omnivore's Dilemma - A great walk through our food landscape
Gang Leader for a Day - Behavioral Economist embeds with a Chicago Gang
Shadow Divers - My first audiobook. It's a thriller about a scuba discovery of a Nazi Submarine on the Eastern US coast.
The Devil In The White City - A story about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
Neither book was within my realm of interests, but they were both fascinating.
I'm from New England and never had a lobster 'til I went to Africa in my 30s :(
I would imagine this is true of lots of salt- and freshwater foods, oysters, scallops, crabs, tuna, salmon...I'm not real sure about the state of the lobster population, but I think high prices for this kind of stuff can be a good thing (depending on how the money is used and the fishing is carried out).
Reminds me of something I read in In the Heart of the Sea, an awesome book about the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick, but also more generally about the Nantucket Whaling industry. Nantucket was the world's whaling capital in the early 1800s, some days they could practically do their harpooning from the docks. A few decades later, they're sailing from Massachusetts to the Pacific to make their catches.
Then again, I'm sure some of that pricing is just high because it can be. There are weeds in my yard that fetch insane prices at microgreeneries and heirloom farms.
In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.
If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.
In the Heart of the Sea
Based on the Novel:
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
It's the nonfiction story about the Essex, and is a pretty amazing retelling of these men. The things they went through, and how they were forced to overcome. The story about the Essex is what inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. It's really quite incredible and gripping.
In the heart of the sea, the disturbing true story behind Melville's Moby Dick.
I was reading this book on the story of the whaling ship Essex and some of the survivors mention doing this as a rudamentary way of testing the ships speed. I'm curious if this is how it got named or if this is just what they did in a pinch.
The real life story it's based on is a really good read.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828
Not sure about the movie that came out recently.
Ever read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex? Not exactly the same kind of adventure, but it fits the disaster bill quite nicely, and I really enjoyed it.
The purpose of history is to learn from it. To discover who we were, where we have made missteps, and to correct them. It’s Santaya’s quote “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” in vivo.
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You said:
>My sense is that for conservatives, history is about monumentalization and triumphal identification, celebrating the achievements of great men (and sometimes women) who can set good moral examples.
I’d like to hear you say more, because my take on your perceptions is that they are reductivist, biased in the extreme (I’ll clarify when I share how you view the left), and not sufficiently broad to cover basic conservative principles like limited government, self-determination, and personal freedom.
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Let’s take the commanding generals of the Union Army and Confederate States of America, Grant and Lee, as an example. Here’s an image to move along the discussion, based on historical fact: when Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he was dressed carefully in his uniform, neatly groomed, and did everything he could to lend honor and dignity to the proceedings. Grant showed up unshaved and slovenly. We can look at this and read into it a lot about the character of each general...but if you do this, you are missing a crucial bit of context: Grant looked unprepared because he didn’t want to keep Lee waiting. His appearance was actually a function of his desire to lend dignity to the general who he could have rightfully punished for being on the losing side. To put a very fine point on what I am trying to say: context matters.
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Let me say a bit more about both generals before moving on to how you view the left...
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Lee has been vilified in the recent past, hopelessly linked to the institution of slavery due to his southern heritage. Almost everyone who lives north of the Mason-Dixon Line looks at him, and what he accomplished with a jaundiced eye. People call him a “traitor” and worse. This interpretation follows logically from his place in history, since he fought on the losing side. But...
&nbsp;
Lee was an amazing general, an outstanding field commander. He was educated at West Point, like almost every general during the Civil War, on both sides. He was a supremely capable leader, one who was able to get his men behind him, inspiring them to fight until they perished. I was looking for a quote from Jay Winik’s fantastic book, April 1865 that goes something like “I’ve heard about God, but I’ve seen General Lee!” to illustrate the fondness the soldiers under his command had for him when I found this quote from the General himself:
>It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it. We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them. I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself.
And what I’m hoping you’ll get out of this is that he wasn’t someone who rebelled in armed insurrection against an oppressive government. He was just a damn good general. He was so good, in fact, that scholar James Macphearson has made the intriguing claim in his one volume history of the war that, had it not been for Lee, the war would have been over within six months and slavery would have remained as an institution.
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Because I said context matters, and because I think it matters in a way that sometimes causes it to be overlooked, let me provide some context for Lee: He was from Virginia, which was a border state during the Civil War. That means it could have ended up with the Union, although it did not. Virginia was home to the Tredegar Iron Works, a massive asset that, by virtue of it’s capacity to churn out munitions, was a boon to the CSA. If Virginia has not succeeded, the war almost certainly would have been over in less than six months. Today, people in the north like to look down on people from the south, assuming that they have both cultural and moral superiority, simply because they have had the good fortune of being born in a part of the country where slavery was not practiced (because it wasn’t feasible, and really for no other reason). We treat Lee like an outlaw redneck, but there was this type called the “southern gentlemen” that Lee personified. Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe” was extremely popular during the era in which Lee lived. The story is a romance (literally featuring a main character who rescues a damsel in distress), and I want you to consider how it finds something noble in combat, while featuring a main character who is an exemplar of gentlemanly behavior.
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Now for Grant, who was an alcoholic and has also been called an anti-semite. He was also a fantastic general. He was the only military figure on the Union side who was a match for Lee. Lincoln cycled through five generals before finding one who was willing to take massive casualties (the single factor that made Grant successful), telling one of the four who didn’t cut the mustard, “If you aren’t going to use The Army of the Potomac, do you mind if I borrow it?” This is what we would call a “sick burn” in modern parlance.
&nbsp;
Now for some context on Grant: Asstated earlier, he had a drinking problem. There are reports of him being drunk during battle, even. But he was able to do the one thing that his predecessors wouldn’t: use the North’s manpower advantage and win through attrition. As for his alleged anti-semitism, he did sign Grant issued General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. But taking the order at face value and coming to the facile conclusion that he did this just to sock it to an ethic population isn’t fair to the historical circumstances that caused Grant to do this. According to his biographer, Ron Chernow, Grant issued the order after Jewish merchants used the high demand for cotton in the North to engage in profiteering, setting prices artificially high in a way that hurt the war effort. Yes, the order hurt Jewish families who were not merchants and had nothing to do with a small population of people who were being greedy, but calling Grant and anti-Semite and then calling it a day misses a very important nuance. Moreover, without Grant, the war drags on, and the outcome is uncertain. That is hard to fathom from our current perspective.
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I’ll get to your view of the left in a moment, but first let me test what you said about those on the right against what I believe. And to make it more interesting, let’s take a modern moment and filter it through the perspective you offered: the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was a reaction to the City Council in that town renaming “Lee Park” “Emancipation Park” and ordering the removal of a statue commemorating Lee. You said “For the right, history is about monumentalization and triumphal identification.” I have no problem with Lee being monumantalized and his efforts receiving recognition...but I don’t see this as a celebration of his “triumph.” He lost, after all. Instead, I see it as a pen acknowledgment that he was a central figure in this nation’s history. Removing the statue and renaming a park that had been named in his honor is an effort to whitewash the role he played, even if we today believe he stood for everything we detest, whether we are on the right or the left. It is important for me that we remember difficult times in American history. It is essential, even. If we fail to do this, it’s a form of hubris that allows us to believe that, because the “good guys” won, we have settled the issues that have plagued our nation through its formative years. Moreover, those statues and honorifics are a tribute to the man, not the things we think he stood for. Had I lived in Charlottesville, I would have proudly marched alongside people chanting “Jews will not replace us.” I’m Jewish. They are misguided. This is America...they have the right to be misguided in this country.
&nbsp;
Now then, you wrote of the left:
>For the left, it's about unmasking and unveiling, interrogating and teasing out the complex social, cultural, and economic causes of injustice.
I have to note that this is an extremely rosy view of your own side. We can take the modern day historical phenomenon that is the 1619 project, and test it against what you wrote. Since I do not agree that one side is more virtuous than the other, I’m going to point out some flaws—obvious to me—with this project. The most glaring of which is that there has been a lot of history since slavery was outlawed in this land that has shaped us far more than the historical blight that is slavery: industrialization, globalization, the boom-and-bust of the information economy, as well as the rise-and-fall of American manufacturing to name as many as I can off the top of my head. My question to you is this: what exactly is being “uncovered” by revisiting the date that slaves arrived on American soil? A key follow-up question is from whence you gained these powers of perception.
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Having said this, I don’t want you to think that I am dismissing or trying to poke holes in your position. I’m challenging it. I recognize that it is a proper, morally defensible, and self-contained position. It just happens to be one I disagree with. My main criticism of the argument is that it overlooks a lot of context, and basically starts with an answer and works back to an already-arrived-at conclusion. To me, a more valuable question to ask when considering the problems that black Americans face today, which they undeniably do, is “In what ways was slavery not a factor? Provocative, I suppose...but a completely fair question, and one that I feel deserves an answer.
There's always Shelby Foote's epic three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. A huge work that took me months to complete, but definitely worth it. Told mainly from a Southern perspective, but Foote keeps his objectivity throughout.
From the Northern perspective, you can't go wrong with James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom or Bruce Catton's many works on the war, especially the "Army of the Potomac" trilogy.
Right now I'm reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and I'm digging it. One of the few books I've read that really gets into the social relations of the era.
From an autobiographical perspective, Sam Watkin's Company Aytch is one of the best memoirs of a Confederate soldier serving in the Western theater, even if you have to take some of his stories with a grain of salt. Or if you want to take a darker look at the world of the irregular troops fighting west of the Mississippi, there's the Autobiography of Sam Hildebrand for a confederate perspective or William Monks' A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas for the Union side of things. Monks' book is especially notable because it's the only first person account we have of a Union guerrilla soldier.
If you're looking for fiction, I love The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara about the Battle of Gettysburg. A more recent novel about Sherman's March, The March by E.L. Doctorow is also pretty stellar.
James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. This is the first thing I thought of when I read your request for a good single-volume treatment of an entire war. Good luck to her.
>Read a history book on the civil war.
I just finished reading The Battlecry For Freedom, actually, by James McPherson. Great book, and you should check it out. Sounds like you're the one who's never actually read a book about the civil war.
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X
Regarding my idiocy, I'm not going to debate my intelligence with a stranger on the internet as I'm sure I've been called worse things by better people but below is a selection of quotes you that rebut your historical revisionism regarding the causes of the South's secession.
"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
~ Article IV of the Confederate Constitution
"The Confederate States may acquire new territory... In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government..."
~ Article IV Confederate Consitution
"We but imitate the policy of our fathers in dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates, and seeking a confederation with slaveholding States."
~ South Carolina's Dissolution of Union Statement.
"African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing."
~ Jefferson Davis, CSA President
"Our new Government is founded... upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
~ Alexander Stephens, CSA Vice President
And that's just a few.
The Civil War was a struggle over States' Rights inasmuch States had the right to enslave people and treat human beings like property. This whole "It wasn't about slavery," revisionism drives me up the wall. Gee well heck yeah the Federal Government SHOULD impugn upon your sovereignty if your soverignty is predicated upon something as immoral as slavery.
The Confederacy made clear in their very own founding documents that they wanted to enshrine human slavery as part of their society FOREVER. Anyone who wants to posit that the CSA seceded for other reasons, such as Federal tyranny, can get right TFOH with their apologetics for White Supremicism and enslavement of other human beings.
So you're telling me that if I pick up a history of the civil war, say this one: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson, which was written in 1988, 123 years after the events it records, then I can't know anything about the Civil War because a scientist didn't bother to verify anything Mr. McPherson wrote?
It seems to me you don't even know what scientific evidence is. Scientific evidence is that which is testable. How, exactly, do you propose we test the events of 2000 years ago to determine if they happened? Or even 150 years ago?
Edit: Got the date of the book's publication wrong.
James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is immediately the first book that comes to mind. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it is “the book” to read on the Civil War. It is a highly readable account of the build-up to the Civil War, causes, and the war itself. It also won a Pulitzer Prize. For more, I’d also check out Ta-Nehisi Coate’s online book club on Battle Cry of Freedom over at The Atlantic.
Other excellent works on the period I would recommend are:
Also, the Civil War produced some of the greatest memoirs in American letters:
And, I always recommend reading poetry and fiction, so I would also encourage you to look at Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, as well as the war poetry of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, particularly Melville’s poem The Martyr, written days after Lincoln’s assassination. More contemporary fiction would be Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, or EL Doctorow’s The March.
Finally, check out David Blight’s Open Yale Lectures on the Civil War. Prof. Blight is a fantastic lecturer. They are free, and the course syllabus is online, and in 26 hours you can take a full Yale course completely on your own.
If you have the patience and the time, and are really interested in learning about the Civil War, I cannot recommend Shelby Foote's The Civil War - A Narrative enough. It is an absolute masterpiece.
Another that is definitely worth reading is Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.
If you want to stick with Shaara, read his son's Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure.
The American Civil War is a goldmine for books.
For an interesting read about the impact of the Civil War even to this day read:
[Confederates in the Attic] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederates_in_the_Attic)
if you want something in depth read:
[Battle Cry of Freedom] (http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Oxford-History/dp/019516895X)
I'm not sure where your charge that I'm being bigoted comes from... I have nothing against southerners, as a group, at all. I love southern accents, I love southern food. I respect and admire many southerners. MLK was a southerner. What I have a problem with is people who display the confederate flag, and then act like I'm crazy, because I happen to know it's history.
What we call the "confederate flag" today was flown as the naval jack of the confederate armed forces. The Confederacy as a political body was intrinsically and inseparably racist. That fact is not controversial or revisionist at all, the confederates themselves wrote at length about how the basis of their new government was the superiority of the white man, and how black people's natural position was to be enslaved.
The confederate flag as we know it today is only widely recognized (could you recognize any other confederate flags, off hand?) because the KKK adopted it as a symbol in the early 20th century.
It's a symbol of slavery and racism, period.
I'm sorry that you didn't know any of this. You can say the confederate flag stands for whatever you want, just like I can say the Nazi flag stands for peace and brotherhood... but that doesn't make it true.
It's fine to not know much about civil war history, you're British after all. If you're interested in the Civil War, an excellent one-volume history is Battle Cry of Freedom.
I'm assuming you're American.
The Basics of American Politics together with Politics in Action and some regular political news reading would be a firm introduction to politics.
If you want to dig deep, then buy some books on economics and history. One thing I haven't seen in the answers yet is philosophy. It may not sound important, but it very much is. I would recommend Justice by Michael Sandel. It is a great introduction to different moral theories and ties them together with politics quite well. I left the book finally understanding why conservatives and liberals think the way they do.
Those 3 books should also introduce you to more resources that will take you down as far as you'd like to go.
Aww thanks. I definitely encounter people who have more formal training and I'm just blown away by their vocabulary and some of the concepts they present. I like to try to simplify difficult concepts into things that are more easily digested.
Philosophers are not known for being accessible in their writing. There's a ton of people out there like me who try to make philosophy more accessible.
I've listened to podcasts that delve into singular ideas. I find these particularly enlightening. I listened to Ayn Rand audiobooks (lol). I've bought used college textbooks for next to nothing, because once teachers stop using that edition nobody wants them. I've read 3 different people who analyzed Nietzsche's work because he's so unapproachable in writing style. I really love Nietzsche because he would mirror my own thoughts and sometimes take me to the next level and sometimes I feel I'd be at the next level of his thoughts.
I wish I remembered all the good podcast/audio stuff to recommend for ya. For more accessible books, Bernard Reginster's "The Affirmation of Life" was a really good analysis of Nietzsche. It's good because he would essentially take one concept Nietzsche presented and just really hammer it out in a more logical form before moving onto the next. Moral philosophy is most fascinating to me. I highly recommend Michael Sandel's Justice for a really great overview of positions with great examples and things to think about.
Sorry, it was Colbert, sounds like the same stuff you are interested in:
http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/07/1456/
http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508/
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508)
It will go over the various viewpoints, where they originate from, and how they compare to others.
"Justice: What's the right thing to do?" by Michael Sandel is a good book for an overview of different approaches to ethics.
"Practical Ethics" by Peter Singer is the one that really first made me think there's good reason to pick a side.
I've read that one, and it's ok. A slightly better, more engaging introduction to Political Philosophy would be Michael Sandel's Justice. It was written for his eponymous Harvard course, which is fantastic and available online here.
No you don't even have a basic idea. Nobody is asking for a 200 framework manifesto, but if it literally took me 2 seconds to think up a problem that you can't solve (and that I contend is logically impossible to solve through your system) then that says much about your "idea."
I really recommend that you read up on a little bit of moral philosophy and ethics (like the following) so you can see why you're running on an almost 4,000 year old OS. What presenting a horse and carriage would be to a technology show today is what your system is to ethics today. Since then, we've developed numerous other systems that have been proven to be objectively better for the well-being of society than retribution (yours). One of them is called utilitarianism, and it has given birth to systems of justice like the Norwegian one in this article that's called restorative justice. In their system punishment is irrelevant but fixing the criminal and making peace with the victims is. For example, if a house robber robs an innocent man's house, they're jailed for however longer until we know that it's a fact they won't ever rob again, be it 2 or 20 years. Then once they are out they have to work for their victim, like do their yard work for years, and then eventually make peace with their victim.
Because of this Norway has dramatically less crime than we do and the whole society's well-being is higher than ours. Norwegians also support this system, including all the victims of criminals. So in essence, if you lived in Norway and wanted to change it to your ancient system you would literally be working to make their society a worse place, just like a criminal. See the moral problem? The only logical escape is to say that you don't care for what's good for society, specifically reduce crime and increase everybody's happiness and well-being.
Great read on this topic. Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Justice might be a good place to start. Michael Sandel is a professor at Harvard and the class this book is based on is apparently one of the more popular undergraduate classes. I think a lot of his lectures are on Youtube if you want to get a sense of his style before buying.
I haven't read the book, but I did try his edX class during the spring. Very accessible, but thought provoking at the same time.
Try philosophy the Moral Landscape or https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374532508/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
here's a few that would absolutely blow the mind of anyone who thinks the civil war mostly ended our oppression of black americans and afforded them anything remotely resembling equality.
for starters...
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
> Douglas A. Blackmon exposes the horrific aftermath of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, when thousands of black people were unfairly arrested and then illegally “sold” into forced labor as punishment.
> “When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our ‘fault.’ But it is undeniably our inheritance.”
there's tons of awfulness in more modern times as well...
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
or...
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
and if you really don't want to recognize your old self...
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
anyways
i'd be shocked if you're actually interested in reading about this and not just posturing over it but good on you if so.
For reliable information, you'll have to go to largely offline sources. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh cover a lot of ground regarding Irish (and other) slavery in their book, White Cargo.
In all, there were some 300,000 to 500,000 Irish and poor British that were sent, or in frequent cases "spirited" (aka kidnapped), to the new colonies and Caribbean islands as slaves and indentured servants. A good part of this was the method by which the English combated Irish rebels -- the Tories. As described in White Cargo:
>One way of dealing with them was to hold four people hostage against the captures of any tory committing a crime. If within twenty-eight days the crime went unsolved and the tory had not given himself up, the four would be shipped off the colonies.
Either way, the English were satisfied.
Regarding the early numbers, they provide:
> Over the next ten years, several English privateers reportedly did arrive in the Chesapeake with Africans for sale, and men and women were brought in from the Dutch territory and from the West Indies, but Virginia continued to rely on the white servant trade. By the mid-seventeenth century, Africans numbered only 300 out of a total settler population of 11,000.
...
>Although there was no abrupt surge of Africans, the racial balance in the tobacco fields was changing. In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, white outnumbered black in the Chesapeake by more than twenty to one. By the last quarter of the century, the ratio had narrowed to three to one, with 2,000 black slaves in Virginia and 6,000 white servants.
As they also describe, it was a question of economics. White slaves and indentured servants were frequently cheaper to come by, and had higher survival rates, than African blacks. In time, this changed, and more and more blacks survived both the journey from Africa as well as the labor in the fields. And thus began the shift to African slaves instead of the largely Irish whites.
With regards to the slavery vs. indentured servitude aspect, Publisher's Weekly states:
>High school American history classes present indentured servitude as a benignly paternalistic system whereby colonial immigrants spent a few years working off their passage and went on to better things. Not so, this impassioned history argues: the indentured servitude of whites was comparable in most respects to the slavery endured by blacks.
Though many cases were time-limited (at least at the start), indentured servants were every bit as much treated like those who were bound for life.
oppressed minority is a relative term. A white man in a black ghetto is an oppressed minority. or a white in south africa. Issues such as slavery are rather funny to when you think abotu it. As an Irish American i have just as much of a right to declare myself a member of a formerly oppressed minority.
if you feel like a little light reading.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Irish-Slaves-indenture-Immigrants/dp/145630612X
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335295822&amp;sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0814742963
Added so far:
I don't think you're reading my comment charitably. He's one example, but it's not evidence per se. My full view would be closer to Cone's here.
That nonviolent movements work better is ahistorical and anti-intellectual. See This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed or Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, for example.
Nonviolence does not equal the Gospel. Nor does solidarity with the oppressed, per se. If you read above in Cone, the liberation of the oppressed is a sine qua non of the Gospel. And, as I said in the quoted comment, when nonviolent rhetoric works against those ends, it therefore works against the Gospel.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
I think keeping a dialogue open and abiding their decision for the time being is the best option. Try visiting ranges in when you're free, practicing skills, etc. and eventually ask if they'll join you. Exposing them to the history behind the LA riots might be worth while at some point. It's one thing to be an armchair-philosopher and say "I'd rather die than possibly take the life of another person.", but when things go to hell and the cops fall back to protected areas while the city burns, shit starts getting a lot more real.
If they're readers, maybe this would be worth a dabble. It's not just about their individual life and death. There are far worse fates than individual death, like having to watch those worse fates befall your family.
Ugh, I hate these kinds of questions but I'll bite.
I'm sort of picking my way through the book This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, about how a lot of the players in the Civil Rights movement armed themselves for self-defense against racists. This article argues that the Black Panthers were the forerunners of the modern pro-gun view of gun rights in the US.
There are several books, and many other articles, on similar topics. I think it would be good to include articles like these because it combats the "guns are for old, angry white men" narrative. A lot of people who talk about gun rights do so in pretty abstract terms, and providing concrete examples of people who were actually oppressed arming themselves and defending themselves successfully is more persuasive IMO.
Oh look typical erasure of Malcolm X's influence of a whitewashed vision of MLK. Civil rights movements have always allowed protecting yourself. Not being ready to do so is a luxury that southern activist didn't have back then and still really don't today. I suggest reading This nonviolent stuff'll get you killed to learn about guns and self defense in the movement. I'm on phone right now so can't properly format but will post the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/319208570/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed-how-guns-made-the-civil-rights-movement-p
https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
Charles Cobb describes how the people most crucial to the success of the civil rights movement were nonviolent activists who carried firearms, and discusses the role guns played in the Southern freedom movement.
...Why don't we ever learn about that? Wonder why we just hear about the pacifist history? It is possible that the powers that be prefer a pacified population?
You might want to check out https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X - its about the broader MLK idea of nonviolent resistance rather than MR's work but it does address how even King's movement etc was in reality backed up by the ability and willingness to meet force with force.
>> Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self-defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend’s Montgomery, Alabama, home as "an arsenal."
He mentioned the book https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
Just in case you forgot to check back
If you're into this sort of story I'd recommend Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
She looks far enough away from the ledge, but you should check out "Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon" http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
My favorite is the people stepping over the edge backing up with camera in hand trying to get a good shot of the lodges.
Not search&rescue really, but I guiltily enjoyed the book "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon" way too much. It outlined almost every single death that occurred in the Grand Canyon over a large number of years -- falls, hikes that go wrong, river rapid troubles, and so forth.
I bought after my own trip to the Grand Canyon, where I was boggled at the sight of tourists leaping about on slippery rocks at the edge of the canyon in the rain. Granted, I'm overly paranoid (and very clumsy), but it still didn't seem like the wisest thing. I got to thinking that surely people must just fall in, and searching led me to that book.
I visited the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago and picked up the book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. In it was a similar story. Someone fell off, and they couldn't find the body. They searched and searched but couldn't find it. Someone had the idea of dropping a bale of hay and watched where it landed. Sure enough, just like in your case, the bale landed right near where the body lay.
Niiiice. This reminds me of a book I have. Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. I'm kinda into the macabre.
All I could find when searching "Death Above the Rim" was a movie about basketball ("Above the Rim"). Is this the book you're referring to: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X
Very intrigued.
Here's a book about deaths in the Grand Canyon. It's an interesting read.
Not true! One of the most common questions asked of park rangers is how many people have died in the Canyon, and this is the best-selling book in the park. When I worked for the local paper, we always covered the deaths whether from falls, exposure, exertion, suicide or drowning in the river.
You know, the last time I was at the grand canyon, I bought a book there: Death in Grand Canyon.
It was interesting in how it detailed all the various ways people died, were murdered, committed suicide, etc.
Fascinating reading.
change the aw/d to product
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097009731X
SovereignMan: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link
&gt; Popular Mechanics already debunked every single thing that there was to be debunked
The Popular Mechanics article and book has itself been completely debunked 6 years ago. You're a little behind the times.
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory.
Woah. I'm dealing with a know-nothing. Do you know what a straw man argument is. Your whole argument is not based off of evidence but essentially saying that, because someone hasn't made tons of money with absolute proof that 9/11 was an inside job, it wasn't one. Well guess what, dumbass, people have made money off of proving 9/11 was an inside job.
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X
This will be a complete waste of time, but I'll go ahead anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu0xfz4DEN4&amp;feature=related
And some of the suspected hijackers were alive after 9/11. Even the BBC reported on it. Explain that to me dipshit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
Watch this whole clip below. Focus on the Able Danger part.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2bBYwNojY&amp;feature=related
People who came out about 9/11 inside our government were forced to no longer investigate terrorism.
Watch "Fabled enemies" for free on youtube or google video to its entirety. You won't though because you are willfully ignorant, and a little stupid on the side.
2)And then there are the scientists, engineers, architects and eyewitnesses that flat out fucking agree with my claims. Below is plenty of testifiers reporting that what they heard sounded like bombs before the collapse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRHPlAxkpHc
You haven't done a spec of research, very pathetic. Come on, you're so dumb, forget about whether I should have children, it's a shame you were ever born in the first place.
Damning evidence? Plenty of it. Remember, 9/11 was never proven to be done by 19 hijackers alone. Where's your damning evidence. I've read the whole 9/1 commission report, and I can assure you, that poor excuse for an investigation resolved nothing.
http://www.anomalynews.com/index.php?s=crater
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNuosBnlw5s
http://projectcamelot.org/elizabeth_nelson_flight_93_transcript.html
Here's a picture of the crash at Shanksville. Compare that to any plane crash image ever, and you might notice something about this pic, THERE ISN'T A PLANE!!!
http://theoldoak.info/shanksville16.jpg
Can you disprove that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset? No.
You are very ignorant, now I know that you haven't done any research even though you claimed that you had read every book I would propose before I ever proposed one.
And what a surprise, you couldn't disprove any of my claims could you. Notice how I have links to evidence, you know why, because I've done my research.
Poor baby. It's time to gut up to the fraudulent War on Terror. I'm done with you. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. You can show an idiot the truth but you can't make him think.
Don't be a classic case of denial.
ok so you either know nothing about this subject or you are working it. if it is the former and you actually have the stomach to face the truth try reading this: [Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory] (http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X)
"The sprinkler system and the FDNY"
That is not structural redundancy. A single column failing should not lead to a 100% collapse. Wouldn't you agree?
"NIST says they were fairly run-of-the-mill office fires."
So why have steel framed skyscrapers burned hotter, and longer, and more completely, without a 100% collapse? Have you seen any photos of the fires that day? The fires are frankly pretty minimal. Nothing that would have turned the building to dust.
"What do you expect them to do, rebuild WTC7, set it on fire and see what happens"
I expect them to not destroy a crime scene and haul away the evidence without a thorough forensic investigation. I expect the data to be real. Since the data was speculative, the resulting computer simulation is completely unscientific. I expect them to admit that their simulation is magical, not scientific.
"paradigm of collapse no truther has been able to rebut"
So many people have rebutted the unscientific nonsense of the NIST report. It took 10 years of avoiding the subject for NIST to finally slap together a wholly unscientific and nonsensical explanation for why a building that was clearly demolished wasn't.
If you are interested in hearing both sides, I recommend this book. Not written by a loony and you can probably find it at the library:
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X
But seriously, that animation doesn't reflect an sense of reality does it?
It is also interesting that both John Kerry and Larry Silverstein have already admitted that WTC7 was demolished. They both did so before the NIST report came out.
If you are in a campground as big as that one, there is zero chance of bear attack. But, if you want to suitably freak yourself out about the ways Yellowstone is trying to kill you besides bears read this book while there, (in every gift shop) http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
Loved this as a kid
I think I read it in this book actually.
I could be wrong though
Death in Yellowstone changed my opinion on kid-leashes. Of course, taking a toddler to a massive caldera/wildlife preserve is a bit of a risky idea in the first place. But leashing them up could mitigate most of that risk.
Oh - yeah, like BeTee said, tourists (or tourons as the staff called them [moron tourists]) are notorious for their naivete. There is an entire book dedicated to the dumb ways tourons have gotten themselves killed in Yellowstone over the years.
After reading this I know how easily that could have turned into Thai Soup
They have graphic fliers and signs which I am positive they saw. Especially since the lady was joking about the danger. There is a good book called Death in Yellowstone that has many good stories about what dumbasses people can be.
In addition to the comment above, check out the book Color of Law
>Any "segregation" which does exist is entirely self-imposed by people choosing of their own free will to live in certain neighborhoods which are populated by people who match their own ethnicity or socio-economic class
"There’s this idea that people self-segregate, but the reality is that there’s never really been self-segregation in Milwaukee"
Segregation was literally the law of the land for 400 entire goddamn years. Not to mention Milwaukee was littered with sundown towns that helped create the racial landscape. If you think Milwaukee's racial demographics are just some happy accident, then you REALLY need to educate yourself, because there's no excuse for being this ignorant in 2019. If you haven't read The Color of Law or Sundown Towns (which very obviously you haven't) then don't bother responding.
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Description|Jordan Peele's 'Us' - Everything Explained and Deeper Meaning⤶⤶Chapter Times:⤶⤶00:13 Intro⤶01:22 Plot Synopsis and Ending Explained⤶03:18 Reading the Twist and Trauma Theory⤶04:00 Foreshadowing the Twist⤶07:41 Sci-Fi Tropes, Postcolonialism and Post-Colonial Guilt⤶08:56 White Savior Archetype⤶11:04 'Us' as 'Black Cinema'⤶13:07 Is Jason a tethered?⤶15:37 Kitty/Dahlia - Why doesn't she kill Adelaide?⤶16:29 Jeremiah 11:11 What's up with that?⤶18:26 Mirroring and the visual motif of the Scissors explained.⤶19:06 Deeper Meaning - What, or who do the tethered represent?⤶ 19:35 Probably the right answer⤶ 20:14 Bad Answer⤶ 20:41 Good Answer⤶22:20 Further Racial Commentary⤶23:08 Problematising Black Masculinity⤶24:28 Reoccurring Motif's in Jordan Peele's work.⤶25:28 Outro⤶⤶⤶Resources: ⤶⤶Ash, Erin -- ‘Emotional Responses to Savior Films: Concealing Privilege or Appealing to Our Better Selves?’⤶⤶https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/projections/11/2/proj110203.xml⤶⤶Caruth, Cathy - Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. ⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unclaimed-Experience-Trauma-Narrative-History/dp/1421421658/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Unclaimed+Experience%3A+Trauma%2C+Narrative%2C+and+History.&amp;qid=1554213916&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1-fkmrnull⤶⤶Froude, J.A. -- The English In The West Indies [Remember this is explicitly an example of Colonial Racism and needs to be understood as such.]⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Indies-James-Anthony-Froude/dp/1546922687/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+english+in+the+west+indies&amp;qid=1554211922&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1 ⤶⤶Lazarus, Neil (ed) -- The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Companion-Postcolonial-Companions-Literature/dp/0521534186⤶⤶Le Guin, Ursula – The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas⤶⤶https://www.amazon.com/Ones-Who-Walk-Away-Omelas-ebook/dp/B01N0PZ35J⤶⤶Newman, Stephanie -- Too Afraid To Protest⤶https://www.writingonglass.com/content/too-afraid-to-protest ⤶⤶Rankine, Claudia – Citizen⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905⤶⤶Rothstein, Richard – The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853⤶⤶Sharf, Zack - Lupita Nyong’o Used Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Inspiration for ‘Us’ Doppelgänger Voice⤶⤶https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/lupita-nyongo-us-voice-robert-f-kennedy-jr-1202052716/⤶⤶Tarrant-Reid, Linda – Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century ⤶⤶https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Black-America-Exploration-Twenty-First/dp/0810970988⤶⤶Touré – Who’s Afraid Of Post-Blackness? : What it Means to be Black Now.⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Afraid-Post-Blackness-Means-Black/dp/1439177562⤶⤶Victims of Crime.org – Black Children Exposed to Violence and Victimization⤶⤶http://victimsofcrime.org/our-programs/other-projects/youth-initiative/interventions-for-black-children's-exposure-to-violence/black-children-exposed-to-violence⤶⤶Vera, Hernan & Gordon, Andrew – Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Screen-Saviors-Hollywood-Fictions-Whiteness/dp/0847699471⤶⤶Wells, H.G. – The Time Machine⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Machine-Penguin-Classics/dp/0141439971/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wells%2C+H.G.+%E2%80%93+The+Time+Machine&amp;qid=1554213879&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1⤶⤶YouGov -- Statistics on Black American’s Fear of Police Violence⤶⤶https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/03/15/black-americans-police⤶⤶⤶Buy our artwork at Displate.com!⤶https://displate.com/displate/942054?art=2291045ae0750b448c3⤶⤶⤶⤶For a tutorial video for our intro effects check out this video:⤶https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH7jZ...⤶And follow @bloomandglare on Instagram.⤶⤶Audio mixing by Christopher Hall.⤶Follow @christopher_thomas_hall on Instagram! ⤶(Message me for contact information.)
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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1631492853/
sanitized
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
Thanks, ill be sure to send you a link once I finish the project this summer. The project is my chosen thesis project for graduate school and my professor is thrilled someone is finally making the case that the convict lease system and southern chain gang systems in many ways represented Soviet Gulags, from the death rates and conditions found in prison mines, prison plantations, road and forrest camps, etc to the role such penal projects played in infrastructure development. I've found numerous newspaper articles and convict interviews from the late 1800s and early 1900s and reading them, there are so many overlaps with Soviet Gulag memoirs.
I really dislike how Reagan focused so much on the Soviet Union as being an "evil empire" while he himself built up a massive prison industrial complex. Solzhenitsyn and Reagan were close friends and while they were correct to denounce the abuses that went on under communism, they have done a lot of damage in distorting American history and culture. State capitalism in America has done equally horrific things to what the Soviet Union did just like the Bush's, Clintons, and Trump have done equally bad things to what Putin has done.
Here's some sources you might find interesting. Top one is a documentary slavery by another name and then there's a bunch of books
https://vimeo.com/78437511
https://www.amazon.com/Twice-Work-Free-Labor-Political/dp/1859840868
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Prisoners-Their-World-1865-1900/dp/0813919843/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=black+prisoners+and+their+world&amp;qid=1550435064&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/One-Dies-Get-Another-1866-1928/dp/1570030839/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=one+dies+get+another&amp;qid=1550435037&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2AVK8K7PCQ5GM&amp;keywords=slavery+by+another+name+book&amp;qid=1550435091&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=Slavery+by+anothe&amp;sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Chained-Silence-Convict-Justice-Politics-ebook/dp/B00VKMOP94/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=black+women+georgia+convict+lease&amp;qid=1550435149&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1-fkmr0
> Is there anything "disgusting" or "racist" about the video?
I watched a few minutes, but the only thing I found disgusting was the lack of engagement with any serious issues of race inequality in the US.
> I think that intellectual challenge is a good thing.
Maybe read some about issues of race, then? Here is another one.
> Unfortunately, many leftists seem to find intellectual challenge disgusting/bad/racist.
This is way too vague to be meaningful.
> https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702
I'm putting that on my kindle. Thanks for the recc! I recently read 'Devil in the Grove' and 'Warriors Don't Cry,' too. Both really excellent examinations of integration efforts and the criminal justice system during Jim Crow.
Okay based on that I'm going to suggest a few things you could add to your wish list. I promise I won't be offended if you don't like them, but you might find something you're interested in. :)
Tea things:
First for cute tea things, I highly recommend the flowering tea pot I received it as an Arbitrary Day gift and it's awesome. The teas are delicious and most importantly, to me, the tea pot is sooo cute.
Mana Tea infuser a lot of people have this on their wish lists. I should add it to mine too.
Tea Sampler There are several samplers with different types of tea from this company and a bunch of others. You should look around for sure.
Hello Kitty Stuff:
Add on Hello Kitty alarm clock
This Hello Kitty toy It's adorable.
Mug
Ceramic travel mug
History related:
Hitler Youth This looks like it would be a fascinating read.
The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers
Gypsies Under the Swastika
The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Well, if you actually do have an open mind, you should look into these resources:
You write:
> Asians are better scholars, and blacks are better athletes than whites, and yet you blithely say that "nothing in the physical makeup" of these people makes them more or less anything. I guess only the good things count.
No and no. It is you who are asserting false things without evidence on your side. You need to read more, and you need to experience more.
For me, the coin really dropped when I was tutoring a Chinese girl in Calculus when I was finally in a big college in a major city. Every Asian I had known until then in my provincial upbringing had been smart and engaging. I fully believed the stereotype of scholarly asians. Even there in college, my girlfriend at the time was Chinese and wicked smart. So I had "evidence" for my belief, but it was being contradicted by her stubborn inability to understand the math in front of her. It finally just hit me right then that this lady I was tutoring was kind of stupid as far as math went. Nothing wrong with that, but that was the moment that it hit me that the positive stereotype I had had was blinding me to the reality of the situation, and what she could literally understand.
I hope you'll consider what I've written, and read one or more of the books I've suggested. They've all been important to me.
Yes, really.
The truth is there's simply no way to separate American law enforcement from its historical purpose of suppressing minorities and the poor.
Richard Nixon outright said, on tape, that the government needed to come up with a way to single out blacks without appearing racist and that the way was a war on drugs.
Be that as it may. 30 days is ridiculous for this but let's say it isn't. There is a legal doctrine that is available to render the offended parties satisfaction.
The doctrine is called "respondeat superior" or "let the superior answer". This doctrine holds employers responsible for employee misconduct if the employee is acting within the scope of her duties. Basically, the employer is responsible if, while doing her job, the employee offends.
So, let's say this employee, while picking up a dumpster, drops it on someone's car. His employer is liable for the damages.
Let's say this employee, after work, takes the trash truck to an apartment building who's owner is paying him under the table to remove their trash and drops a dumpster on a car. His employer is not liable.
So, in this case, if the employee, with the knowledge of his employer, went out and picked up trash early from the neighborhood, the employer is liable.
If the employee went and got the truck keys on his own without the employer knowing and went to pick up trash early in that neighborhood, the employee is liable.
From the information provided in the video and the fact that I live about ten minutes from that neighborhood, I would say that the prosecutor was outright being an asshole. First, he was being an asshole because he was obviously up against someone who did not even know to bring a lawyer with him.
Second, he is an asshole for not seeking a fine against the company which is clearly the superior party here.
Third, he is an asshole because he could have sought a day in jail which would have been just as effective in sending a message.
Fourth, he is an asshole because he just started or added to a criminal record for the guy who was just busting his ass to make a living.
Fifth, he is an asshole because, as a lawyer, he is carrying on the practice of seeking the most punishment possible for a minor offense. The guy, while in jail on the weekends, will probably have to do some manual labor for the benefit of a local company probably partly owned by the judge or the prosecutor or both.
On the last point: If you find this hard to believe, read a book called "Slavery by Another Name".
Is the prosecutor racist? I believe so. Can I prove it? I can't. Take it for what it's worth.
I got a book from a yard sale called "The Marx-Engels Reader" and it has a huge amount of their works compiled.
https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Karl-Marx/dp/039309040X
So I would second Integrald's list as great, and I think everyone should read all of the books in the Core section. If you're interested in political economy, I'd specifically point out these from it as nice general-interest introductions:
If you're interested in alternative models, there are two particular works that I'd recommend reading. The first is probably obvious - get yourself the big old Marx reader. Marxist thought is less important than it used to be, but still worth getting acquainted with.
The second might be less familiar but I think is also very important - Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. It is basically a sociologically-oriented history of the rise of capitalism. Polanyi's argument is that the "free market" is no less a utopian vision than the communist one, and that in many times and places people seek protection from the market rather than a desire to participate in it. This is one of the very few books I've read as an adult that actually changed my perspective in a meaningful way, and if you're interested in the "big questions" of politics and economics I can't recommend it highly enough.
Get Robert Tucker's book
There’s the Marx-Engels reader, I can find it on amazon but I’m sure there’s a better means to purchase it without supporting bezos:
https://www.amazon.com/The-Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Edition/dp/039309040X
I have some experience, if only as an antagonist, and my reference of choice is: http://www.amazon.com/The-Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Edition/dp/039309040X
And in that vein, Eubank's explication of the myriad shortcomings of Marxian philosophy and economics is also very good: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Marx-Wrong-Lawrence-Eubank/dp/1463434154/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1418694320&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Why+Marx+was+wrong
Happy reading. Grappling with Marx is like learning calculus; you're not truly educated until this is under your belt.
The fact remains reading Manifesto alone and adopting the proposals presented within wholeheartedly makes one a Marxist. Marxism is VERY easy to grasp and can be explained in under 20 minutes with graphs, slides, photos and quotes in a YouTube video.
It only requires two hours a day of intensive studying over a two week period to keep up in a conversation with any professor on earth.
Wholeheartedly accepting all the contents of [this] (https://www.amazon.com/The-Marx-Engels-Reader-Second-Edition/dp/039309040X/ref=zg_bs_11089_4?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=HQ08HS50M36NG9P09WMT) book alone can a Marxist make.
OP needs a demography lesson. This is terrible.
Start with Strauss and Howe's "Generations."
Well, Hemmingway wrote of a "lost generation," in 1926, but it was more of a poetic term and no one of that group would have called themselves/their cohorts that.
Likewise, Kerouac referred to a Beat Generation, but that never caught on and was really just a subculture, rather than a description of an entire generation.
The "Silent Generation" was first used in a Time magazine article in 1951, but again it was more poetic/metaphorical/descriptive term rather than a nominative. There was a book in the 80's called "Generations" that used the Silent Generation name to describe that group, but again, the actual people in that group would mostly never have referred to themselves that way and it wasn't really a "thing" until people started delineating the generations. Plus this name, like Gen Y, is a reactionary name to the Greatest and the Boomers, so it's more of a default than anything else.
Similarly, "While evidence exists for greatest generation being used to refer to these men and women during the Second World War, Greatest Generation as a moniker was more or less coined by journalist Tom Brokaw in his 1998 book The Greatest Generation. This generation is also sometimes known as the G.I. Generation.
You might find this book interesting to read. The culture of the US is not quite a pendulum that is just going back and forth, it's slightly more complex than that.
Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
Seriously, read this book.
Or the wiki version
"Hero generations are born after an Awakening, during an Unraveling, a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening.[44]
Due to their location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their collective military triumphs in young adulthood and their political achievements as elders. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Their best-known historical leaders include Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. These have been vigorous and rational institution builders. In midlife, all have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism, and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence in old age. (Examples among today’s living generations: G.I. Generation and the Millennials.)[45]"
Obama's mother was born in 1942, her father fought in WWII and Obama was 7 years old in 1968. She was eighteen when Obama was born in 1961. She was a boomer, an early hipster and Barry is an early GenXer.
When we talk about the Baby Boom it is a well-defined timeframe describing people born in the 40s and 50s when there was a huge increase in birth rates in the US. This generational cohort shares common set of experiences, marked by historical, cultural and social events that everyone reacts to in their own way, but which mark that generation in a way that younger/older generations don't share.
You are right from the perspective of a biological family unit that the parents belong to one generation, and the children to another. This fact gives us no insight into how different generations (in the sense of age-group cohorts) might react to the same set of historical circumstances.
A lot of what I see in these threads on reddit is a familiar intergenerational resentment that probably dates back to the dawn of civilization. Old people gripe at the young, because they resent their youth. Young people resent old people hanging on to economic resources and social status. So what else is new?
What's more interesting is the interplay between generations that become defined by watershed events (like WWII or the Vietnam War) that demand a collective response from young adults. As they get older they are still defined to a large degree by those events (think about how the Boomers have continued to play out old traumas of the 60s on current events).
Back in the early 90s a book was published that posed a theory of the way these generational tensions played out through American history:
Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
It's amazing to me how much influence these ideas have today, over 30(!) years later. Here's a wiki on the theory.
In a nutshell, the authors argue that there are 4 different generational types that repeat in a cycle which can be traced back in the US to before the American Revolution. Each generation is roughly 20-22 years in historical time.
Corporations and political parties spend tens of millions of dollars trying to predict generational trends for marketing and campaign purposes. The authors even set up their own consulting business because of the predictive accuracy of their model.
Millennials, they say, correspond to the Greatest Generation, marked by idealism, hard work, and if predictions come true they will successfully "clean up the mess" left by prior generations, as did the WWII cohort. GenX, marked by well-earned cynicism and world-weary pragmatism, will serve as cautionary elder council to the exuberance of the Millennials.
It's not surprising that so many twenty-somethings resent being characterized as slackers because I don't see that at all. As a GenXer I know we invented that shit. We had reasons.
Rather than point fingers and decide which generation is good or bad, maybe we should take into account the different experiences and challenges and baggage each generation brings to the game.
BTW. Douglas Copeland would be mighty surprised to hear that people over 50 aren't GenX, since he was certainly considered as such when he wrote the book that defined the generation.
"Who are they? Does Generation X even exist? If so, how can we make money from it? Are they boomers or are they different? Do they require a different management style?
"And on and on.
"I’ve never had an answer to any of these questions, although, as a shorthand, I said, and continue to say, that if you liked the Talking Heads back in the day, then you’re probably X. Or if you liked New Order. Or Joy Division. Or something, anything, other than that wretched Forrest Gumpy baby-boomer we-run-the-planety crap that boomers endlessly yammer on about – I mean, good for them, have and enjoy your generation! – but please don’t tell me that that’s me, too, because it’s not, it never was and it never will be. The whole point of Gen X was, and continues to be, a negation of being forced into Baby Boomerdom against one’s will." -DC
That's speculative theory, of course. What we know is what happened.
But to project, it depends on whether we deliberately provoked Japan into attacking the US or not.
Some people -- like this author and journalist, and WWII vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as President George H.W. Bush -- claim that after trying to provoke Germany into declaring war on us by sinking German subs in the Atlantic in int'l waters, we enacted a plan to enter WWII via the "back door:" the German-Japanese alliance.
That author uncovered a US document via Freedom of Info Act request which outlined steps for the US to provoke Japan into attacking us, and the book details the fact that we carried out those steps. One -- moving Pacific Fleet HQ from well-equipped San Francisco to the isolated, vulnerable backwater port of Pearl Harbor in our colony/territory of Hawaii, was so controversial that the Pacific Fleet commander resigned in protest over the move.
The logic goes that the US was so shocked (as was the world) at the lightning fast defeat of France, then the world's 2nd largest global empire, that the US felt compelled to enter the war. But FDR wanted to enter the war with the country united (it wasn't during WWI) so he felt he needed to be attacked -- thus the secret policy.
The author also claims, based on first-hand testimony by WWII cryptographers, that we had broken the Japanese naval code before Pearl Harbor (the US gov't claims we only broke it afterwards). That would've given us knowledge of the Japanese attack, and allowed us to move our aircraft carriers and new ships out of Pearl Harbor leaving only old, mostly obsolete ships to be attacked -- exactly what happened.
While this seems nuts to us today, in the 1940s it wasn't (see quote below). In fact, a Hawaiian newspaper ran a front page story the week before Pearl Harbor which said Japan was about to attack Hawaii.
If you subscribe to that theory, we entered WWII unjustly without cause, just like we did WWI.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" documents that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
Wise Japanese diplomats and people on Obama's team will remember that the US actively and deliberately manipulated, maneuvered and provoked Japan into attacking the US at Pearl Harbor, as was proven in the book Day of Deceit.
Given the costs of that war to Japan, it is highly likely they've learned some valuable lessons from the US' strategy of starting that war...
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.
This beat it to it
[Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor](http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299 "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor")
> like how the US started WWI
Well, if you read the US Senate's Nye report done after the war, the US gov't made a conscious decision to wage war against Germany. The Zimmerman telegraph is usually offered up as one reason, though we laughed at Mexico's "power". The Nye report notes how the US loaned much money to Britain and France and how that was a critical factor. The Germans were within their right to sink British ships with submarines, because those ships were carrying war munitions and were legitimate targets under int'l law.
> & WWII
Journalist and author Robbert Stinnett uncovered much new evidence in his book Day of Deceit including the famous McCollum memo which was written by a naval intelligence officer that med with FDR almost daily. That memo -- uncovered with a Freedom of Information Act request -- outlined 8 steps which the US had to undertake to provoke Japan into attacking the US; the US undertook all 8 steps and what do you know, Japan attacked.
Unless you've read and pondered the new, groundbreaking evidence presented in Day of Deceit, you cannot say you have evaluated all of what might have happened at Pearl Harbor.
> or stated the Korean war by invading South Korea.
In 1950 South Korean and North Korean forces battled each other along the 38th parallel and in the air above it. This happened for months and it was only when the South Korean dictator's forces crumbled and fell apart that the North was able to push deep into the South, prompting the US to rescue our puppet dictator.
> The Balkan, that as started by the US too I suppose.
No, actually most accounts have German influence as critical in blowing that up into a war. The US was happy to use Muslim fundamentalist proxy forces to wage war in Bosnia, much like we did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
> Oh and and in the 90 the US invaded Kuwait.
Have you read transcripts and reports of what the US envoy April Glaspie said to Saddam Hussein in meetings before he attacked Kuwait? Glaspie certainly not give him a red light...
Gulf of Tonkin 1967: McNamara knew it was a mistake before LBJ used it as an excuse to escalate. Daniel Ellsberg’s firsthand account from inside the Pentagon: http://www.pbs.org/pov/mostdangerousman/excerpt-ellsberg-memoir/2/
(Gareth Porter says Mac kept the truth from LBJ: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/05/how-lbj-was-deceived-on-gulf-of-tonkin/ )
Cold War’s End 1988-1991: CIA so busy lying about Soviet power under Casey and Gates, they missed the USSR’s fall. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21487-no-tears-for-the-real-robert-gates
Iraq War I: 1990-1991: Lied about Iraqi preparations to invade Saudi, Iraqi forces murdering babies https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
Kosovo: 1999: Lied about 100,000 Albanian Muslims slaughtered by Serbs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3
Afghanistan: 2001: Lied that Taliban wouldn’t give up Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
Iraq War II 2003: Lied that Iraq was making WMD, including nuclear weapons, was allied with al Qaeda https://medium.com/dan-sanchez-blog/16-articles-that-expose-how-they-lied-us-into-war-in-iraq-bedf2e47c0bc
Somalia 2006: The Islamic Courts Union government was not truly in league with al Qaeda as claimed https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback-somalia/
Libya 2011: Lied that there was an impending genocide in Eastern Libya https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/29/hillary-clinton-libya-war-genocide-narrative-rejec/
Syria 2013: No Slam Dunk on al Qaeda false-flag sarin attack, they finally admit much later
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/10/neocons-red-faced-over-red-line/
Iraq War III 2014: Yazidis on Mt. Sinjar did not need rescuing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2014/08/13/5fdd3358-2301-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?utm_term=.b2834d3b716b
Yemen 2015: Not really bad intel, but notably knew war would be “long, bloody and indecisive,” launched it anyway, just to “placate the Saudis.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-us.html
—Hasn’t led to war yet, but they’ve been lying for years about Iran’s intent and actions to make nuclear weapons, which never existed. https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338 https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/16/when-the-ayatollah-said-no-to-nukes/ CIA did finally admit this was so in 2007 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf —
Older phony casus belli:
1812: Impressment of sailors was the excuse when the Democrats really just wanted to seize Canada. https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/06/19/1812-the-war-partys-first-success/
1846: Mexico: U.S. invaded, called it defense from the Mexicans https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions
1861: Civil War: Keeping Ft. Sumpter open after South Carolina secession was a provocation. (Everyone’s got a different opinion about this one.)
1620-Current: Indian wars: Paid Napolean for the land. God says we can. And they started it anyway. http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/unit3/indians.html
1898: Spain: Remember the Maine was an accidental fire which spread to the magazine. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf
1898: Philippines: Must Christianize these Catholics. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/blackboard/mckinley.html
WWI: Lusitania was a deliberate provocation, Zimmerman telegram threat of German-Mexican invasion of U.S. Southwest was a ridiculous joke. https://www.amazon.com/Lusitania-Colin-Simpson/dp/0582127076 https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann
WWII: Pearl Harbor: FDR Knew. https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
Korea: Syngman Ree’s forces’ provocations preceded Northern invasion https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/07/28/who-really-started-the-korean-war/
> You seem to be implying that the US government is behind the attacks on mosques.
No, again, I don't know.
But what I'm saying is that such a course of action would not be beyond the US gov't. It is a blatant fact that the US Pentagon -- at the highest levels of our military! -- proposed to fake attacks in "Operation Northwoods" to start a war on Cuba. Thankfully, JFK's administration shot down such an idea, but the Pentagon still kept working on it.
And journalist Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy veteran who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, has uncovered multiple sources of evidence that the US gov't, again at the highest levels, had a deliberate policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US in the Pacific to start WWII. Stinnett wrote a book on this called "Day of Deceit". In it he claims FDR's administration planned this after France fell as a desperate way to enter the war with the support of the American people, as a backdoor way of declaring war on Germany through the tri-partite alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy.
Since 1941 some have claimed that FDR "let Pearl Harbor happen" but there has been only iffy evidence to support such a claim. But Stinnett not only uses first-hand interviews with WWII vets, but also used FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to uncover additional material, including an 8-point plan written by a US Navy intelligence officer who saw FDR on a near-daily basis and was born in Japan, a memo that was routed to high military brass and proposed 8 specific points to cause Japan to attack the US. The US then carried out all 8 points.
Whether Japan was deliberately provoked into attacking or not -- that is a question open to your own interpretation of the facts.
There is so much wrong with this article it'd take a book to explain it.
But wait, one journalist/author who served on the same WWII aircraft carrier as former president George Bush, and who has researched Pearl Harbor for decades, did write a book to explain it.
That author not only dug up key evidence from the federal government via Freedom of Information Act requests, but he also personally interviewed WWII cryptographers who said the US did break the Japanese Navy's code (something the US gov't said was not done until after Pearl Harbor).
Needless to say, there's more to this story than this article, which has a NSA historian as its key source.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.
> Everyone knows Germany attacked the USSR without provocation, to preemptively fuck up the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as you said. And preemptive knowledge of Pearl Harbor has never ever been established. You must cite something. It's basically the same old libel otherwise.
Sure, propaganda is a weapon both sides can wield. I'm more knowlegable in the latter field, so I will constrain myself to that one:
About the Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743201299/ (I would also like to include the diary of the US ambassador to Japan between 1932 and '45, Grey, but it has been out of print for a few years). There is tons of incidental proof, however, such as the order to build an 100 carrier two-ocean navy in September 1940, or the fact that to this date not all japanese decrypted messages have been released to the public record because they are considered a threat to "national security".
Disclaimer: I have majored in Japanese cultural studies and political sciences.
> NATO was designed to militarily defeat the USSR. That's gone and many Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO. I agree NATO doesn't know what NATO's purpose is, but NATO's original purpose is long gone.
NATOs purpose is to stand together if "troops, an aircraft or a ship of one or more of the undersigned nations gets attacked by a third party in the Mediterrean, the Atlantic Ocean north of the tropic of Capricorn or on its own territory." This purpose stands till today. This was not the case in both Bosnia nor Libya.
> I'm not saying Germany isn't still a part of NATO, just it's not still a great part of NATO.
And we are more than proud of not taking part in every military the US wants.
>> If the Libyan people are not strong enough to get rid of their leadership by themselves, what right do we have to interfere?
> I think this is irrelevant to the discussion but NATO is close to arming them and I'm sure it won't be Germany.
It is a sad day when we as a pact were to arm one kind insurgents against a dictatorship (Libya) while other very similar insurgents are ignored (Bahrain) or seen as terrorists (Palestine). It says something about our morality, don't you think?
>> It is likely that Gadhaffi will survive this episode, and we really don't want to be the target of libyan-sponsored state terrorism. Lockerbie anyone?
> this is your weakest argument. If your greatest defense against state-sponsored terrorism is to plea "not me, the other guy!" then I'm at a loss.
My point is you don't troll an aggressive dog. Europe has lived in peace with Gadhaffi for years, that guy even was more than helpful sometimes. No need to get bitten.
>> Excuse me for not honoring the heroes in the Golden Armors the US troops were back then, according to your thesis. The US, however, pledged MAD not for the sake of Germans, but for the sake of Britain, which would have fallen without a continental stronghold. The NATO plans for Germany were to transform it into a nuclear wasteland as soon as the first soviet tank touched our territory. We were to be destroyed by our American friends, not saved.
> Well you're absolutely right, there. No more germans. It's a shame, cause I love Spaten.
Eh, come on, Augustiner is way better. Ever tried their Maximator?
> I understand you're probably german, but you mean affect now. Germany is probably the most vital member of the EU, but now you've got France on your back. They're tired and they want to stop for wine a lot.
Trust me, France is not concerning us. We see other EU members to be a bigger problem, such as - for instance - Portugal. France will do whatever it takes as long as we subsidize their farmers.
It wasn't exactly a false flag. Japan was trying to attack covertly, the U.S. happened to be able to intercept their encoded radio transmissions. There are numerous sources on the USA's knowing provocation but this book has some of the best examples of messages we intercepted that clearly described an attack on Pearl Harbor.
So, if FDR knows its going to happen, and conceals it, because he wants the American people to want revenge. Is that a false flag? I'm going to lump it in with one because it serves the same ends.
It won't help much in terms of differentiating all of the variants, but The Gun by CJ Chivers is an absolute must read.
Uh, no. A whole design/manufacturing team produced the AK and Comrade Kalashnikov was given the majority of the credit for propaganda purposes. He was possibly the most important contributor, but one of many.
source: the Gun by C.J. Chivers
I recommend a book called 'The Gun'.
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
Surprised I didn't see one comment about "The Gun" by C.J Chivers. Very interesting and comprehensive book about the AK-47 and it's variants and how they have shaped the world. Anyone really interested in the weapon and it's history should check it out.
If you like more modern stuff, The Gun by C J Chivers was an enjoyable read. It focuses heavily on development of the M-16 and AK-47, but I thought the most interesting bits were on how the automatic rifle has changed battle tactics over the last century.
Recommended gunnit books?
May I suggest:
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734
and
https://www.amazon.com/War-Flea-Classic-Guerrilla-Warfare/dp/1574885553
American Rifle is a good introduction to US military rifles. The Gun is a fantastic introduction to automatic weapons (Chiver's blog is worth a read too). Wolfe Publishing has a deal where you can get PDF copies of their three Magazines for about the price of subscribing to one for physical copies. They are a bit old fashioned but aren't extended ad copy like G&A is. Shooting Times is worth looking at online.
> what do you do with your creations?
Never made a thing.
I was bad at carpentry when I was a kid - the birdhouse and flowerbox I made fell apart quite quickly.
> do you destroy them or sell them?
Nothing to sell, or destroy.
> if you sell them, who do you sell them to?
Cant' sell something that doesn't exist.
> who is aware of what you are doing
Uh, most of my professors have actually taught me what I know. One of them is good friends with CJ Chivers, a renowned, Pulitzer-winning weapons expert - he's written a great book about the AK. My professor's specialization is nuclear weaponry. She's very good at wargames, she went to Cornell, and she's taught at Harvard and Stanford.
> and what is the security level on your workshop?
I have no workshop.
I have the internet, mainly Library of Congress links, or JSTOR documents for uni.
There's so much information on youtube, alone, that you can just use it to learn how to do anything.
If you haven't ever googled/searched on youtube for something you want to learn, then you really should - it's a great learning tool.
Oh, and Forgotten Weapons is an excellent youtube channel, that has a wealth of info about antique weaponry. I highly recommend it.
US Money versus Corporation Currency (1912) - Alfred Own Crozier.
Peoples History of the United States. - Howard Zinn
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism. - Sheldon S Wolin.
The Nazi Hydra In America -- New America's right wing politicians are plunging the country into a fascist police state - Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins.
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America - Chris Hedges.
The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism - Robert A Brady
The Comming of the American Behemoth: THe origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940 - Michael Joseph Roberto (2018)
Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became "People" - And How You Can Fight Back - Thom Hartmann (2010)
The Holy Reich - Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919-1945 - Richard Steigmann-Gall (2004)
That should give you someplace to start to form your own opinion.
I also STRONGLY recommended memorizing and applying reason against fallacies, especially appeal to prejudice and all of them on http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com AND https://yourbias.is
I suggest that you read this, and then come back and say the same thing with a straight face:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
I highly recommend this great book by Rev. Chris Hedges.
Read this. Its an eye opener. Might be especially helpful for you to read and share with your fellow churchgoers.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
There are more, but I forget them at the moment, and I really can't speak highly enough of the ones I've listed already. Nixonland is more a study of the conservative movement in general, and damned thorough one too. The rest are more focused on the religious right proper. I'd start with Eternal Hostility and The Family and work your way from there.
https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X
It's a pretty recent advent that Jews are considered white: http://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417044202&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+jews+became+white+people
The Irish weren't considered White for quite a while either.
[Not until recently though] (https://www.amazon.com/Became-White-Folks-About-America/dp/081352590X)
A source
"Jewish whiteness became American whiteness after WWII."
Many American Jews check off "white" on boxes, though that's a fairly recent phenomenon and most Jews (such as myself) have a sense of cultual identity distinct from a default American white one (we talk differently, eat different foods, etc). There is a book on the subject that I hear is good.
You make an important point about distinguishing between 'white' and 'jewish.' But, here's an article that discusses that concept:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/
There's also a book about the disappearing lines between the two groups:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/081352590X
Historically, the Irish, Italians, and others, like the Jews, were not considered 'white' in the US but eventually, due to various sociocultural and economic factors came to be included under the standard of 'white.' The problem isn't that people are white but what some people who identify as white do with that identity. Aaron Schlossberg is important, because his 'white privilege' is evident even in how he treats other Jews (with whom he disagrees).
See more on his various public rants:
https://heavy.com/news/2018/05/aaron-schlossberg/
Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc are free to believe what they will, but to identify oneself based not on one's actions or words, but rather how one looks (skin color, gender, body type/shape, etc) can be problematic since such things aren't controllable (yes, there are instances where they are but that doesn't mean that in all instances they are).
Schlossberg might have a Jewish name and claim to be Jewish but he doesn't appear to be following the Talmud or Torah. Whatever Mr. Whitey Kentucky is following must be the cult philosophy of white: I am white therefore I am great (i.e. uncontrollable factors such as to whom one will be born make him great) and at the same time that P.OC. are not equal to him.
I'm not sure where you are getting the numbers for 95% control of trade and 60% of the slaves. These ideas seem to come from anti-Jewish rhetoric, not facts (although a fairly liberal site, useful facts):
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-labour-s-latest-blaming-jews-for-slave-trade-1.5390569
It appears the facts that you note regarding Jews are drawn from a 1994 academic study that has proven to be quite flawed:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/09/slavery-and-the-jews/376462/
Here, the reviewer (Winthrop Jordan) of that flawed study, the reviewer being a famed professor and scholar of slavery and black American history, debunks all those myths.
In any case, thank you for the support. I do appreciate it, but I would like to emphasize that only those who have done wrong (or benefit from wrongs) should be held responsible (insofar as they are guilty). Everyone has done something wrong somewhere; it's not about being perfect, but rather about accepting responsibility instead of shirking it for self-perceived superiority.
You could read a book on the subject and maybe stop arguing from ignorance: https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
My bad, I forgot to list the 5% link.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530134-300-ancient-invaders-transformed-britain-but-not-its-dna/
"Anglo-Saxons, whose influx began around AD 450, account for 10 to 40 per cent of the DNA in half of modern-day Britons."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0719_050719_britishgene.html
"Isotope analysis has begun to be employed to help answer the uncertainties regarding Anglo-Saxon migration. However, the number of studies is small. Strontium data in a 5th–7th-century cemetery in West Heslerston implied the presence of two groups: one of "local" and one of "nonlocal" origin. Although the study suggested that they could not define the limits of local variation and identify immigrants with confidence, they could give a useful account of the issues.[98] Oxygen and strontium isotope data in an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Wally Corner, Berinsfield in the Upper Thames Valley, Oxfordshire, found only 5.3% of the sample originating from continental Europe, supporting the hypothesis of acculturation. Furthermore, they found that there was no change in this pattern over time, except amongst some females." - Wiki
Also on white slavery in the US:
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
Anti-Irish sentiment. Irish slavery.
Keeping a culture going by participating in it is a choice. It doesn't matter where that culture came from; it matters whether it persists when there is no actual reason for it to persist. Plenty of people have abandoned that culture and done quite well for themselves. So the obvious conclusion is that if you don't act like a thug, make better choices, and stop acting like a whiny, entitled retard, you'll be just fine.
It's not genetics. I don't believe anyone is inherently more or less capable of success based on their ethnic background. It's bad choices and a lack of personal responsibility. If you can't manage those two things, don't fucking live in America. Because this is not a society that shields people from their decisions. If you fuck up, you're going to feel it.
And before you go into the whole, "rich people don't feel the consequences of their fuckups as hard" line, duh. Wealth is power. It just so happens that the people with the most wealth are the people whose cultures aren't based on being a bunch of criminal-worshiping degenerates. Racial superiority isn't a thing, but you can bet your ass cultural superiority is. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking liar.
You're not absolved of your responsibility to make sound life choices just because you don't have as many do-overs as someone else.
All of the pages I can find that talk about this seem to be using this book as their primary source. I havn't been able to find any detailed reviews of this one, nor much about the authors.
do you know much about american history between the civil war and world war II? some pretty serious shit went down just eighty or so years ago. I feel sick when I read the word nigger not for a moral outrage reason but because I remember all the shit I read about.
recommend this book
It's on Amazon
That was a great read and I agree with most of it! Doesn't change the fact that you're repeating fox news rhetoric and trying to convince everyone that you're somehow politically elevated above everyone else (and failing at it).
Also, here another works by that same author you might be interested in.
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284461/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_i8-yDbXGFXS14
>Irish, Italian, or Jewish
All of whom went through an extended period of not being considered white.
They weren't as "pure" as other whites, and were ridiculed in America for quite some time - some even being used as slaves alongside african slaves. If you played the recent game Bioshock Infinite you may have noticed how the Irish were objectified alongside blacks in the depiction of Columbia.
Also see:
"Irish Americans were not always considered white."
and
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
Edit: The marginalization of the Irish really began during the Plantation of Ulster by the English, where King James stole Irish land and gave it to wealthy brits. Also, the Potato Famine wasn't because there wasn't enough food, but because the English stole it all.
An informative read on slavery in general:
https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370
I agree with this. A great pair for general American history is A People's History of the United States and A History of the American People - the former will give you a liberal perspective and the latter a more conservative one.
Are you asking a question, or making a statement? Would you like to define what you mean by "other stuff"?
If you want to know where I derived the ideas that I formed my comment from. It was mainly from reading these three books -
Security Analysis, 6th edition, by Graham & Dodd
The Intelligent Investor, by Graham
A People's History of the United States, by Zinn
All of it, hence the line:
Frantically starts flipping through pages, "oh oh. oh no. no no no. oh oh."
But if you really want to know specifics: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346
"Smart" people learn to deal with boredom. Being educated takes rigor and a drive to appreciate things for more than just the plot.
This means you will be frequently bored sifting through some painfully tedious prose, but the payoff is that your brain will get some practice at synthesizing information and not just regurgitating surface-level stuff than any rube can pull out of a novel or a popsci book.
That said, I can't recommend the r/askhistorians booklist enough. This list was assembled by people who are experts in their fields and the books are mostly scholarly in nature, so they can be pretty dense, but they are highly informative and well-researched. You can be assured that these are people who follow the sources so the information is
I also recommend reading Moby Dick and following along with NYU's recorded lecture. It's slow and difficult to follow along with at times but it's a seminal work of American literature. Many would argue that it's America's first modern novel.
Plus it's just a manly fucking book. And after you finish reading it, you can follow up with In the Heart of the Sea for historical context. This is one of the few pop history books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Philbrick is an excellent writer and his sources are accurate.
Final recommendation would be The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ginsburg translation).
Both Master and Margarita and Moby Dick are novels with philosophical themes, but I would say that Master and Margarita is more readable on its own, and Moby Dick is better if you follow the lecture that I linked.
I know, but it's fun to talk about these things. Plus I want to get this saved somewhere so I can use it on my Libertarian friends.
Everything about the war was about slavery. What you had was a pervasive, white-superiority culture (that generally pervaded the nation at the time, but especially slave states) that believed that white men were freed to be wealthy, productive aristocrats who could be thinkers, intellectuals and equals to European courtiers by being given the free time they needed to pursue these things on the backs of black slave labor. By given white men the freedom to not be "wage slaves," as they claimed northern men were by working in factories, they were given the chance to truly pursue their superiority. Even poor whites agreed this was a goal, either through loyalty, racism or just conformity to local culture. Everyone sought to protect this at all costs.
State sovereignty was a defense of the right of slave states to continue to own and exploit slaves. This neo-Confederate belief that it has to do with states rights is a construction to water down the fact that these states' citizens, almost uniformly, extolled the virtues of slavery every chance they got. It became such a contentious issue that every time a new state was admitted into the union, it had to have another state of opposing view on the matter added as well to maintain balance. In the case of Kansas, Missouri (Which had a much lower slave ownership rate than even Texas did - 8 percent to Texas's 28 percent at the time of the war) mobilized men to cross the border and stuff ballots to ensure the state entered the Union pro-slavery. Blood was shed in the process. This inter-state war can be considered the first major fight of the Civil War.
Further, after the start of the war, it was an express objective of Southern leadership to eventually establish a pro-slave empire across the Americas, beginning with Cuba. Cuba had experienced a number of invasions of these American military expeditions before the war. Invaders were called filibusters.
I think the strongest evidence of this is in the way Confederate forces treated black prisoners of war: They were usually enslaved, sometimes executed, on the spot. This treatment spurred outrage from Northerners, even back then.
I'd recommend the Battlecry of Freedom, by James McPhearson. The first half is devoted to the political situation and motivations of the war. It's well documented that the South had slavery and belief in the value of slavery as a primary motivator, and this was true across the board. Few Southerners would have denied this at the time. Any claim they weren't is after-the-fact revisionism. The rest of the book is a narrative of the battles, which is fun to read.
Primary documents in isolation of context that flame the passions of your position is confirmation bias. The position I stated is in agreement with the community of professional historians, including a former professor of mine who is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. If you would like to actually educate yourself on the subject, you can read the book for which he won a Pulitzer Prize on the topic: http://www.amazon.ca/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1372219567&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=james+mcpherson
But it's historical revisionism because it doesn't sync with your little-boy, pop-culture, history by feeling opinion.
In the history world, there's a trope about the Civil War causes.
People who know nothing about the CW: It was about slavery.
People who know a little : There were many causes.
People who know a lot: It was about slavery.
If you don't believe me get a copy of James McPherson' s Battle Cry of Freedom, basically the go to classic for single volume history of the war. The first 250 pages are all fights over slavery before the first bullet was even fired. I recommend reading the book anyways, cause it's awesome. Plus, it's like 4 bucks on [Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/019516895X/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=all)
You're right. I got nothing! https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5
Not https://ssaa.org.au/assets/news-resources/research/2008-08_the-australian-firearms-buyback-and-its-effect-on-gun-deaths.pdf
A https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality-murder-homicide-rates
Single https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/the-assault-weapon-myth.html?referer=http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/11/10/hand-over-your-weapons/6IxJLanMKGak7RvCLipwbN/story.html
Fuckin https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/
Thing https://www.amazon.com/dp/082236123X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TGzWAbT97R1RG
In short: get dunked, you gaslit tool.
I want a gun because I have visions and nightmares of being raped. I'm a trans woman and if a man were to try to rape me he'd find that I don't have a vagina and would likely kill me after he finishes. This frightens me and protecting my life is more important to me than the other stuff.
We have many stories of self defense here in America.
Read this book.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/082236123X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1502948180&amp;sr=1
As a black trans woman I have the right to defend myself.
Ah, reminds me of all the stupids in Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.
I decided to read this book about every documented incident of people falling over the edge at the Grand Canyon just before vacationing there myself. Worst decision ever. Did the same as the OP.
That's been debunked...
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X
NO, why don't you READ SOMETHING. Why don't you use Google and do some research?
Niels Harrit has been Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, for 37 years. This is a translation of a feature article printed in the Danish Newspaper, Information, on 31 March 2007.
http://www.911truth.dk/first/en/art_Harrit.htm
Direct Evidence for Explosions: Flying Projectiles and Widespread Impact Damage http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/GrabbeExplosionsEvidence.pdf
High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/Ryan_HVBD.pdf
Some Physical Chemistry Aspects of Thermite, Thermate, Iron-Aluminum-Rich Microspheres, the Eutectic, and the Iron-Sulfur System as Applied to the Demise of Three World Trade Center Buildings on 9/11/2001 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JLobdillThermiteChemistryWTC.pdf
Conspiracy Theories, Myths, Skepticism, and 9/11: their Impact on Democracy http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/LeggeConspiracy&amp;Myth7.pdf
Faulty Towers of Belief Part I http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/FaultyTowersofBeliefPart_I.pdf
Faulty Towers of Belief Part II http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/ManwellFaultyTowersofBeliefPartII.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire-Intellectuals-Speak/dp/1566566592/ref=sr_1_1/104-7818252-4773562?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1188480023&amp;sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/9-11-Synthetic-Terror-Fourth/dp/0930852370/ref=pd_sim_b_4_img/104-7818252-4773562?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1188480023&amp;sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X/ref=pd_sim_b_1_img/104-7818252-4773562?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1188480023&amp;sr=8-1
Can there be just one single day where I don't have to read ignorant white fuckery? Since you obviously don't read books or know how Austin works, I'll tell you.
Nobody let their neighborhood "go to shit". Blacks literally were not allowed to buy housing except for redlined areas. White housing was subsidized via the GI Bill (which Blacks were not eligible for), and low/zero down payment FHA loans. Neither the FHA or VA would back loans for blacks in general or in any redlined area. (Almost the entire Crestview/Rosedale/Allandale neighborhoods were built for returning GI's, which essentially built the white middle class.) Blacks could only buy in areas where private lenders made loans at higher interest rates and bigger down payments which caused defaults and created a renter class, especially since many cities had more black residents than available redline zoned property.
Whites would buy property in the redlined areas and let the properties go to shit. Blacks couldn't bring suit against whites and white attorneys wouldn't represent blacks in court so there was no recourse. Then cities used zoning laws to zone all of the failure in black neighborhoods, e.g. liquor stores, the goddamn east side landfill, etc. This was literally the law and happened in virtually every city in the country.
Flash forward until today. Some blacks were able to own their homes and get decent terms starting in the 70's. Now some of these people have paid off their mortgages but now have to compete with millennials with Mommy and Daddy's money they got from their subsidized housing that has now appreciated. Then they have to deal with racist white attitudes like "don't let your neighborhood go to shit" and entitled whites acting like they are doing everyone a favor by forcing longtime residents out. Sometimes people don't want to cash out, they want to keep the asset to pass to their heirs like whites were able to.
You also fail at basic reading comprehension. I said that you cannot explicitly zone by race. (Zoning did originate, however, based explicitly on race.)
But you can get 90% of the same effect by zoning out poor people by banning housing types that poor people can afford.
Here is basically an entire book on the subject, if you would like to go down the rabbit hole.
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https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853
The Popular Mechanics "debunking" was discredited.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461
https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Brain-Science-Science-Reality/dp/1118094514
https://www.amazon.com/Insane-Clown-President-Dispatches-Circus/dp/0399592466
https://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926153
https://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/0465046762
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Without-Manifesto-Secession/dp/145161666X/
https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Conservative-Daniel-Kurtzman/dp/140226576X
It took me less than 2 minutes to find all of these
haha. Actually, i'm African-American. Why does it matter though? I'm not pushing an agenda. I'm not a trumpet here trolling, i didn't even give an opinion about slavery, just commenting that there seems to have been white slaves. It's not just Irish people either. Here's an excerpt from its page on amazon. I thought you'd want to be privy to this information since you're saying it isn't true and there is documentation that disagrees with you.
"White Cargo is the forgotten story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain’s American colonies.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.
Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.
This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface."
https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
Howard Zinn would say you're wrong. The Gilded Age was full of riots, protests, strikes, and other events that corporate colluding police and national guard broke up. The most famous of which being the Battle of Blair Mtn that brought in the army.
A People's History of the United States of America should be required reading.
no one has a right to property and in order change that, you're moving away from our most fundamental principles, all men created equal and what not, and moving toward the the imperialistic hierarchies that we fought against. we'd create a california class that would make it even harder for someone to be a part of. when purchasing goods and services, we're all equal. anyone out of state with the money and resources to live here has just as much of a right to do so as you do. i get it, life isn't fair sometimes, but is there a more fair system that doesn't restrict the opportunities and rights of others?
> I have never even had the chance to visit another state so I don't know where I would go.
unless you're native american, the vast majority our ancestors, so most likely yours too, had never been to the U.S. before moving here but they did it without the internet or any of our modern conveniences yet here you are.
> The state has more than enough room to support everyone
room, maybe... but resources? have you looked into our water issues? you might want to check out the book Cadillac Desert. there's indicators that show the potential is maxed out.
I've spent a lot of time dealing with this question and have even written on the subject. I believe a "good" piece of historical writing needs to be able to capture the mind and attention of common people and historians alike. Pure scholarly historical work serves a purpose and has to be inherently accurate, but it does nothing to further the field and bring it to a wider audience. A balance needs to be struck between keeping the information accurate and the story line intriguing. Check out Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson if you haven't already. It is known as one of, if not the best historical books in terms of accuracy and reader interest. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/019516895X
If it wasn't for WWII blacks would still be swept off the street and forced to work in mines .
http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1370658624&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=slavery+by+another+name
You have no idea how poorly minorities are treated in this country by whites and the ruling nb g ckass. You should read this book.
this one
Yes, read that if you want to be fooled and lulled back to sleep. Maybe follow it up with something from popular mechanics to really knock you out.
Or read a book and see how these "skeptics" pull the wool over your eyes: https://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X
AS A BRIT it's still tragic to see so many of you dismiss so confidently the notion that 9/11 was an inside job.
I know it's not because you're stupid, but it is DEFINITELY because you are ignorant of the facts, and also because you are scared. Scared to face the truth. The EASY way out, which I am sad to say most of you have taken, is to conform to peer pressure, side with the pack, and angrily dismiss the idea with a snort of derision and some insults.
All I can say is you are definitely wrong, and you will one day be forced to confront the truth. If it helps, the truth is not THAT big a deal in the grand scheme of things. People with power and money fall into temptation sometimes and do horrible, dirty things. Like faking 9/11 so as to get the country behind the war on terror, and use that to prosecute multiple wars, and curb the freedoms of the American people.
When I first came across the idea that 9/11 was an inside job, I reacted angrily and with derision too. And I'm not even American. But then I took the step most of you have not done, and took an impassioned and objective look at the evidence. And no, I'm not talking about a couple of youtube videos like 'Loose Change'. I mean a proper in depth read of who and why and what and where and when.
And it is GLARINGLY, BLINDINGLY obvious - the most obvious thing really, that 9/11 was most definitely an inside job. Not by "the government" but by a limited set of military industrial complex insiders. If you look at the VAST amount of evidence, there is no other explanation I'm afraid.
And if you're clinging confidently to claimed debunking of all the alleged facts that 9/11 was an inside job, then I urge you to read "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" by Professor David Ray Griffin which clears away the smoke and mirrors, and lies, and sets the record straight. http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1299410694&amp;sr=8-1
I often see people write "well, I think the official version needs looking into, it didn't feel right", or some sort of half hearted response like that. You know, no need to go over the top, don't want to look like kooks do we!?
Well, have some guts. Look like a kook. Except you won't. One day the people that fought for 9/11 truth will rightly be lauded across America as TRUE heroes, far more heroic than even those who go to fight in war daily.
And you will admit it to yourselves. And somewhat like Germany after WW2 will recognise with contrite hearts, that you were, mostly through no fault of your own, taken advantage of by evil, and seduced by it.
You can start the healing process now. Take a fresh look at 9/11 and ask yourself "was I wrong to dismiss the truthers?"
Until I read the OP's post I couldn't reconcile the news, having never seen or heard a verfiable instance of an AR that could shoot more than 30 rounds w/o jamming severely and requiring minutes to unjam.
In Vietnam the AR killed a lot of men because it jammed. The AR is one of the reasons we lost the war. It is tough to fight when you're lying on your back trying to clear a jam with a stick down the barrel of your new M-16 (AR-15) and your enemy is blazing away with ultra-reliable AKs. C. J. Chivers' book, The Gun, and his article in Esquire tell the story. The article is titled "The Gun: A Violent History of the AK-47" but it's about the M-16(AR) too, and the difference between how the two guns came to wars. It's a good read and one necessary to really understand what happened in Vietnam and the limits of blind greed and power.
M-16s (ARs) jammed because they were a poor design, one that never did work properly. Even to this day the AR is far less reliable and less powerful than the AK on a battlefield.
In Vietnam it wasn't the ammo and it wasn't the training that failed, although the manufacturers and military brass would like you to think so - it was the gun that failed our fellow men. Read Chivers' book or read the article to find the ugly truth.
Chris Hedges
The Communist Party Themselves
Jason Stanley
Eric Zuesse
Although, granted, my statement was more hyperbolic, I was surprised I found as much as I did. I probably could have found more if I kept digging. . However, plenty of the left who are not educated claim any conservative or right of center view is fascist. See: Antifa protests.
Edit: heck, I even spaced on this element, even though I've taught it, but some on the left even called FDR a fascist, though that criticism had a different connotation than it does today.
>separate race
"Race" is a concept that doesn't exist. Jews are a panethnic ethnoreligious nation, and are typically not considered to be white.
Here's a very interesting book on the topic: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
Pearl Harbor attacks were a setup. Highly recommend reading this: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Of-Deceit-Truth-Harbor/dp/0743201299. The only reason they actually entered the war was to expand the military complex. As a result (due to the high level of taxation at the time) many social programs were implemented that put people to work and improved the quality of life in America. WWII put America "on top of the world" because of strategic military and economic planning...and since then, their politicians have engaged in endless war because they believe that is the only way to remain "on top of the world."
The SPLC is an anti white hate organization that specializes in promoting non white victimhood. Read this book. https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
Its not a myth. If you compared the documented numbers of irish slaves brought here to african slaves. There is less than a 30,000 head difference in people brought here against their will.
As for the "land" argument.
Again you are ignoring almost totally that all that land was grabbed up before most of the immigration took place at the turn of the century.
Immigrants came here to new york and developed their own communities. They had no land. No money. but they did have brutal discrimination.
Vietnamese people came here after saigon fell. They had nothing. Many of them literally coming her from a helicopter airlift. That was only about 40 years ago and vietnamese americans now own nearly 93% of nail salons.
They had no "land" to generate wealth when they got here.
The black problem is not racism and a nasty history of slavery. The people alive today never met a slave. and neither have their parents. Its a mix of low iq , high testosterone , and hyperdysgenic welfare dependency.
I posted this once before, but it seems that there's a moderator here who sells ARs but not AKs:
The AK-47 is legend for it's reliability.
The AK-47 and the AR15 are likely the reason we lost the Vietnam War: the AK because it worked so well, and the AR because it malfunctioned so quickly and so often that it's user died. Read this article at Esquire magazine. Try to imagine lying in the dirt facing a line of advancing NV troops, your very first shot jams, and the only way to clear the jam is to push a stick down the muzzle:
The Gun: A Violent History of the AK-47
Don't believe what the revisionist AR posers and fanboys say here and elsewhere - the AR was the fully documented jam-o-matic of the Vietnam war, caused the death of countless men in battle and was then, over years, brought to a minimal level of reliability while both DOD and the manufacturers denied that anything was wrong, both to governmental inquiries and to their own men. The story of the AR is one of corruption and denial at high levels of government administration.
You can read about it in C.J. Chivers' book The Gun from which the above article is excerpted.
Yes, white Irish were involved in the slave trade as much so as black Africans.
A good book on the subject is White Cargo - by Don Jordan. Irish slave trade started when James II in 1625 made it so for political prisoners to be traded. The majority of early slaves to the New World actually were white. In part because the Irish were Catholic, which in some eyes tainted them. They were cheaper than African slaves, and Don suggests even the Africans were treated better.
Irish people were actually the first slaves in america, before black people.
The reason why it's racist for an irish person to do that though is because attitudes changed from irish people being the british people's slave to black people being white people's slave. The US was extremely against irish people even as late as the 1920s but attitudes changed! an irish person was president at a time when Obama's father couldn't even sit in the same restaurant as a white person. The fact is there is still very strong racial biases against black people from people and institutions in america