Slavery didn't cause "strife in the black community"

Thomas Sowel, who is a very successful black man by the way, wrote a nice column explaining why people need to quit blaming slavery for "strife in the black community."

He wrote:

Were children raised with one parent as common at any time during the first 100 years after slavery as in the first 30 years after the great expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s? As of 1960, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent, usually the mother. Thirty years later, two-thirds of black children were being raised without a father present. What about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s. To many on the left, the 1960s were the glory days of their movements, and for some the days of their youth as well. They have a heavy emotional investment and ego investment in the ideas, aspirations, and policies of the 1960s. It might never occur to many of them to check their beliefs against some hard facts about what actually happened after their ideas and policies were put into effect. It certainly would not be pleasant to admit, even to yourself, that after promising progress toward “social justice,” what you actually delivered was a retrogression toward barbarism. The principal victims of these retrogressions are the decent, law-abiding members of black communities across the country who are prey to hoodlums and criminals. Back in the 19th century Frederick Douglass saw the dangers from well-meaning whites. He said: “Everybody has asked the question, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.” Amen.

It should be noted here that blacks are responsible for over half of homicides despite making up only 13 percent of the population.  It's a fact that despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa.  It's a fact that interracial rapes are almost exclusively black on white?  It's a also a fact that Barbary slave trade resulted in over 1 million white Christian Europeans being enslaved in North Africa until the middle of the 18th century.  The result of which did not result in an increase in crimes.

The creation and expansion of the welfare and nanny state has moved the nation away from an opportunity society to a dependency society.  This was when the government started sending checks to women who have children out of wedlock.  This did not work well for the back community, where the government became the dad.  When the welfare state started, 77 of black family homes were two-parent households, and today that number has shrunk to 25 percent, meaning that the government has replaced the dad.  One of the unintended consequences was that the government does not teach the morals needed to keep kids out of trouble, hence the increased rate in crimes.

It is a fact that the black unemployment rate for February was 10.4 percent, or double the overall unemployment rate.  The unemployment rate for black teenagers is a whopping 40 percent.  Either these kids aren't being educated, or they don't have the dads to teach them how to get a job and keep it.  Yes, that is something I learned from my dad.

I think it is clearly evident, that lacking a father, black teenagers turn to gangs, which encourage them to turn to guns and violence.  Another replacement for the father becomes the government, which does not teach culture the way fathers do.

Further reading:

1. Allen West: Five facts we must share with every liberal
2. Thomas Sowell: The scapegoat for strife in the black community
3. Human Events:  Black America's real problem is not 'white racism'
4. Wikepedia: Barbary Slave Trade

Must the GOP cave on social issues to win in 2016?

So it's 2 a.m. on a Thursday night at work.  I'm sitting with a couple nurses at one of the nurses stations.  This is a time when we are tired enough that we get loose-lipped; this is a time when we start conversations we wouldn't normally start.  But here we are overly tired, and so we get loose-lipped; we get brave.

So we talk about a variety of things, and the conversation, as it often does, segues into politics.  One of the nurses starts to talk about how she is tired of conservatives pushing their social agenda on the rest of us.  She said, "She is just sick of it."

As I so often do, I stay out of the conversation.  Surely sometimes I like to participate, but sometimes I just like to listen so I can get ideas for my blog.  The idea is that if I interject the course of the conversation will be impacted, and if I don't interject I can get a true feel for what other people think.

So I say nothing: I listen.  The conversation goes on to the modern world and the Internet.  The liberal nurse says, "Our parents and grandparents have old fashioned social views because they lived in a bubble; they didn't have access to all the information we do.  If they had access to what we do, they wouldn't be so old fashioned."

"Oh, yeah!" I wanted to say, "I can disprove your theory right here.  I have access to all the same information you do, and it only strengthens my religious believes; my social views.

And I also wanted to say, "Conservatives don't push social issues, that's what liberals do.  Conservatives defend, liberals try to change tradition."

"What do you mean," my liberal friend would have said.

I would have replied, "Conservatives want to conserve culture.  We want marriage to stay in the traditional sense of marriage.  We want to make Detroit better by encouraging men and women to not have premarital sex, and to get married before having children.  Then black children will enjoy the same benefits as the rest of society.  Statistics show that children born of a mother and father are 80% more likely to be productive members of society; they are 80% less likely to end up in prisons, and so on and so forth.  The studies are overwhelming in this regard."

I would have added, if given the chance, "As it is right now, 9 of 10 black children are born to single mothers.  Black teenagers are having sex, and they are having kids out of wedlock.  This means that these kids are growing up with no dads to teach them culture.  They are growing up with mothers who are too busy working to teach them culture.

"So these black kids don't grow up with the same advantages as kids born to a mother and a father.  They end up in poverty, and they end up in jails.  However, as a society, we enable impoverished blacks by giving them foodstamps and welfare and trapping them in their own poverty.  They cannot get out.  They are trapped.  It's a never ending cycle.

"Instead of encouraging marriage and tradition on the poor black communities, we enable them by saying it's okay to have sex before marriage, and it's okay to have kids out of wedlock.  So they never break out of the system.  They never get better.  So call black cities like Detroit go bankrupt."

Of course if I say this the liberal will get mad at me and the conversation would be over.  I would be called radical or old fashioned.  I would be called insensitive to poor black people, even though my actions would give them a better chance of improving their lot in life than anything a liberal would propose.

A similar discussion was started on the blogosphere when Business Insider published a post on June 13, 2015, by Linette Lopez, "Wall Street is getting tired of funding socially conservative Republicans running for president."  The article begins:

"For years, when it came to presidential candidates, Wall Street made huge compromises in order to support the Republican Party. The money men in New York City set aside their socially liberal views in order to support fiscally conservative candidates because that was the only way to get on the same page as the GOP base. The result has been a series of candidates Wall Street's big donors didn't really want.

"It seems those donors are getting tired of that outcome. Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman recently vented his frustration with this arrangement on an episode of Wall Street Week. 'I tend to be more Republican in my views, but socially very liberal. I'm going to have trouble with any Republican that does not disavow a fixation with social issues,' he said."

This is similar to members of the media claiming that the republican party cannot win in 2016 unless it changes it gives in on social issues, to give up our core principles, in order to win.  This is essentially saying that the republicans need to be the same as democrats on social issues to win.  It's poppycock!

The truth is that republicans must not cave on social issues.  They must continue to convince kids to hold on to traditional principles that are proven to work, as opposed to going with the consensus opinion of the times because that's the best way to avoid controversy.

Many of us on both sides of the aisle would agree that our culture is rotting.  It's not rotting where traditional views are held on to; it's rotting where liberal social views have grown roots.

Further reading:

• Wall Street is getting tired of funding socially conservative Republicans running for president
• Media wrong about 2016 GOP prospects
• Fiorina supports civil and traditional marriage

One should resist voting on social views

My wife and I both agree that we do not vote for people just because of social issues.  What I do vote for are people who are constitutionalists, or anyone who has a track record of supporting the Constitution.

I believe if a leader is someone who defends and protects the Constitution, it shouldn't matter what their personal views on social issues are, because their personal opinions shouldn't matter so long as they obey the law.  

This is the argument I made when Rudy Guliani was running for President even though he voiced pro-choice opinions when running for New York Mayor.  I said that if he obeys the Constitution, or the law, we shouldn't have to worry about his personal opinion about abortion.  

I am a strong pro life person, as I believe it is wrong to kill babies.  On the other hand, I am a strong supporter of the 10th amendment, which states that anything not covered in the Constitution is left for the states, the people, to decide.  

For this reason, if the Judges decide Roe-v-Wade had followed the law and not their opinions, abortion would have been left to the states to decide. Barring a new amendment, that is the law of the land. 

If you want to change the law, be it that you are a conservative like Rick Santorum who wants to force people to accept the pro life argument, or a liberal like Nancy Pelosi who wants to force people to accept pro choice argument, you will have to convince the people that your argument is the best.  

So, you see, I vote for people who have a strong track record of defending the Constitution as it was written by the founding fathers, and not based on someones social issues. I vote based on fiscal issues, not social issues.  

Now, I'm not implying that I don't hold strong opinions on social issues, because I do.  I'm just saying that, so long as the law is followed, the people will be happy. All Roe-V-Wade did was tick off half the nation and create a social divide and partisan divide.