Challenge Accepted, Sheetwise (What Democrats Believe)

[Cyrus]

You got anything to do with the turtles ?

[SheetWise]

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You're also way off base attacking the "Great Society" and the "War on Poverty".

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Really? Let me repost your link to Washington Monthly. Note there is no mention of the relative changes in the black population. But other people did chronicle changes. You might want to read Sharp Reduction in Black Child Poverty Due to Welfare Reform, or how welfare benefits have contributed to the number of single parent black families since the 1960's .



You can draw your own conclusions (link) from the chart above.

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Modern conservatism in the Republican party has little resemblance to the Party before 1960. Both parties had liberal and conservative members within their ranks, Barry Goldwater polarized the party and modern conservatism was born.

So regardless of which party they affiliated with, "fat white guys who hate change" have always been the problem.


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So let me see if I understand your defense. Pre-Goldwater Democrats and Republicans did not represent liberalism and conservativism. Democrats of today are not the Democrats of yesterday (without defending the Democrats of yesterday). Republicans of today are not the Republicans of yesterday.

That's one helluva program you bring to the table. Let's not talk about past events, experience, or associations -- let's just talk in platitudes about the future.

And if I understand you correctly -- This is why you're a Democrat?

I'm still looking for core beliefs (and that shouldn't include "I believe this because it makes me feel good ...")

[SheetWise]

The musical group? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
No.

[Autocratic]

You know, the rise of illegitimate births, and the decline of legitimate ones, seems to be mostly steady throughout that chart, not sharply adjusting to the Great Society legislation.

[SheetWise]

I'm not sure how you're reading the chart.

I'm going to take it on faith that the sum of legitimate and illegitimate births = 100% of all births. Now you can calculate the numbers.

In 1940 it appears Legit vs. Illegit > 4:1, and in 1975 it appears to be 1:1. After that, illegitimate births are the majority.

[Autocratic]

Right, what I was saying was that the rise of illegitimate births seems steady well before Great Society.

[nokona13]

[ QUOTE ]
So let me see if I understand your defense. Pre-Goldwater Democrats and Republicans did not represent liberalism and conservativism. Democrats of today are not the Democrats of yesterday (without defending the Democrats of yesterday). Republicans of today are not the Republicans of yesterday.

That's one helluva program you bring to the table. Let's not talk about past events, experience, or associations -- let's just talk in platitudes about the future.

...

I'm still looking for core beliefs (and that shouldn't include "I believe this because it makes me feel good ...")

[/ QUOTE ]

You write like you have a clue, so I'm going to assume you're simply suffering from the normal conservative blinders disease that's running rampant in this country. Since you seem to know some history, you'll know that, on the whole, in the 20th century, the Republican party has been the more beholden to the interests of the business elite and large corporations, and there has been a larger, though not always dominant, economic populist voice within the Democratic party.

Now, since you know that history, you're only kidding yourself if you can't admit there was a dramatic sea change in the posture of the two parties with relation to civil rights and cultural issues in general in the 1960s. There's clearly no argument that in the 19th century, it was indeed the Democratic party that was the bastion of racist whites, especially in the south. It's also quite clear that ALL of those people (or their physical or political descendants) have now switched parties and are now a dominant faction with the Republican party. The Democrats decline, in fact, has been linked to the flight of working and middle class white voters to the GOP, starting with racist whites in the south in the 1960s.

Is it abandoning history to recognize that this massive change has occured? No, it seems more a twisting of the historical truth to try to claim any of the mantle of Lincoln's emancipation for the modern Republican party, whose resurgence was kicked off by the attraction of racist whites from a Democratic party that had come to vote for civil rights for minorities.

Now for core beliefs, if you want a pithy response to the Republican "God, guns, no taxes, and death to the fags", how about "Reason, opportunity, enough taxes, and love your mother earth"?

[nokona13]

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...and so FDR started a small, wildly successful program called Social Security.

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All Ponzi schemes are "wildly successful" to early "investors".

As natedogg observer earlier;
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Being opposed to Social Security legislation does not mean you want old people starve. It means you don't think the legislation is very good.

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For an alternative view of Social Security, read the Galveston model. This is not a hypothetical. It is a real, working model that Republicans support.

But of course, a system that worked this well would disempower liberals. It would remove one of the favored weapons from their war chest of political division.

The President has made a bold offer -- if you really believe the current system is better, you're welcome to hitch your wagon to that horse.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't resist this one either.

If you're going to reference a website, don't quote one with bald-faced lies on it. The statement, "The social security trust fund will be exhausted by 2029" is a lie. Even the GOP intimidated social security actuaries estimate it at 2041, and that's assuming historically unrealistically pessimistic forecasting of the growth of the economy, the rate of immigration, and some other indicators. In fact, if the economy continues to grow at the rate it has in the 20th century, there will be NO shortfall. That's right, with current payroll taxes and historically average growth, there IS NO CRISIS. If the growth figures used to come up with the 2041 exhaustion date ARE correct, then privatization won't help at all, because none of the private investment schemes that have been proposed would outperform the SSA in that case. Not only would the average worker not be better off, but that worker would be trading the extra risk of having a much lower retirement pension for the the added gain of... NOTHING.

Get over your fuhrer complex and actually examine some of the things your dear leaders advocate. Unless you're a CEO or a wealthy investor, none of it's going to help you, I promise.

[SheetWise]

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... the rise of illegitimate births seems steady well before Great Society

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And that is a trend in all of Western society for those years. What is not a trend outside the black community is the sharp decline in legitimate. As I said in the previous post, look at the composite. No other tracked group ever hit a 1:1 ratio (1975), and then exceeded it.

While it's impossible to create a causal link to the observed trends -- it is interesting to note that the trend is 180 degrees out of sync with the intended outcome of the social policies enacted -- and it is further worth noting that the trend was predicted by opponents of the "Great Society". This was not done in a vacuum.

[Autocratic]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
... the rise of illegitimate births seems steady well before Great Society

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And that is a trend in all of Western society for those years. What is not a trend outside the black community is the sharp decline in legitimate. As I said in the previous post, look at the composite. No other tracked group ever hit a 1:1 ratio (1975), and then exceeded it.

While it's impossible to create a causal link to the observed trends -- it is interesting to note that the trend is 180 degrees out of sync with the intended outcome of the social policies enacted -- and it is further worth noting that the trend was predicted by opponents of the "Great Society". This was not done in a vacuum.

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The fact that there is no noted causal relation - at least by you, and the fact that the trend was merely continuing as it had since the early 40s (at least), means that you don't have much of a case here.

What's more intriguing to me here is that after Roe v. Wade, the trends didn't substantially alter, as conservatives I'm sure predicted.