Good post, Jim. I wasn't aware, or maybe I forgot, that you had joined this
group, but thanks.
I think you are progressive in the nice sense of the term but not in the
origianl early 20th century sense. You should look into what it meant back
then - e.g. Margaret Sanger, etc.
Roderick T. Beaman,D.O.
Board Certified Family Physician
Every government official should go to bed at night
afraid that when he awakens in the morning
that there will be an angry mob outside his house
waiting to shoot or hang him.
________________________________
From: Jim <bottomlinejim2...@gmail.com>
To: LibertarianExchange@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, October 28, 2009 9:07:45 PM
Subject: [LibertarianExchange] Re: An article
Rarely do I respond to posts here, I am mainly just observing and learning.
But...this post deserves a response from a progressive.
Jessie and Al always think they are the victims. They remain part of the
problem instead of being part of the solution. There are many like them...I'm
not sure if it is left-over anger from the civil rights era or if they are
actually trying to gin up some anger by playing the victim, but their
bitterness is always there.
Maybe it's nostalgia for the "good ole days" of anger spilling out in the
streets, but it is certainly not helpful. I cannot express how discontented I
am with people like this...especially when I hear someone call them
"progressive. " They are not progressive, they are left of the left liberals.
If you push them on their opinions a little, you will probably find out that
they still believe reparations are owed. I think that Affirmative Action has
provided adequate reparation. I believe that Affirmative Action actually gave
many, many, minorities a hand up at just the right time in our history. But it
has probably served its purpose and should be reviewed - just like all programs
should be periodically reviewed to determine their relevance.
Jessie and Al, et al, grabbed on to the liberal horn 4 decades ago and they
absolutely refuse to let go...the bull is shaking his head trying to get them
off but it only gets worse for them. Many, many liberals are now calling
themselves "progressive" when they really do not know what they are talking
about. I have been calling myself "progressive" since about 1984.
We believe in letting go of the horns and finding a away to go between the
horns...we are not marxist, communist, redistributers, or any thing like that.
As a small business owner, I can safely say that I am a capitalist. I used some
of my capital (savings) and invested it in the hopes that it will
grow...therefore, capitalist.
But I also believe in rules...some of those rules restrict what I can do (I
don't like these rules) and others protect my investments (I like these rules).
Sometimes it is hard for me to find that balance but equilibrium is always what
I shoot for. Many times I am wrong, many times I am right. But I always strive
to go between the horns of this dilemma.
I am the first to admit when I am wrong. But Jessie and Al can never do
this...they are so stuck in their anger and they are always trying to find some
kind of "injustice" to complain about. But that's all they do, complain,
complain, complain, without offering any solutions - except for more rules and
regulation. Always the victim and always because they are black. Hey,
dumb-asses come in all flavors.
Many of my so-called "progressive" colleagues frequently refer to Rush as a
racist. I am not ready to place that label on him. I don't know what racism is
because I have never been a victim of racism. I do have fun on my show using
satire but not once have I ever called Rush a racist. Doing this only serves to
further divide. Calling people "racist" without any real hard evidence is only
contributing to the problem - those friends of mine are still stuck in the
problem instead of living in the solution. I try to point this out to them in
the hopes they will understand how divisive and horrible their words can be.
I can go back in history and find many examples of many different people with
different ideologies (some I agree with, some I don't) calling themselves
"progressive. " But in my opinion (which has been my opinion since the mid
1980s), progressive means going through the horns of dilemmas as they come up
and working together for solutions. not every one will always be happy with the
solutions in any system or political party or ideology, but working to take the
good with the bad maintains necessary equilibrium for a vibrant, educated
society.
--- In LibertarianExchange @yahoogroups. com, "Roderick T. Beaman"
<crazylibertarian@ ...> wrote:
>
> The following is the text of an article of mine just published at
> www.libertyforall. net/?p=3262# more-3262Â .
> Â Roderick T. Beaman,D.O.
> Board Certified Family Physician
> Every government official should go to bed at night
> afraid that when he awakens in the morning
> that there will be an angry mob outside his house
> waiting to shoot or hang him.
>
>
> RUSHING LIMBAUGH FROM THE NFL
> NEVER SATIRIZE LIBERALS, NEVER QUESTION THE APPROVED AGGRIEVED
> 　
> 　
> Over the past few weeks it emerged that Rush Limbaugh was to be part of a
> group of investors in the St. Louis Rams. The firestorm was as intense as it
> was predictable.
> Weighing in were the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. It always
> amusing to see those two in action. They’re to politics what Nehru Jackets
> are to fashion. Bell bottoms and platform shoes may come back. Neither
> Jackson nor Sharpton can get over that their days have passed.
> Al Sharpton called Limbaugh divisive. This is a man who gave us that Tawana
> Brawley hoax and never apologized for it. He’s put himself at the center of
> just about every possible event that could even be remotely considered racial.
> Tawana Brawley was the teenager in Wappingers Falls, New York who claimed
> that she was kidnaped, raped and sodomized by a group of white men, among
> them a part-time cop who would commit suicide. Investigators found that, at
> the time of the claimed event, he was in the company of Assistant DA Steven
> Pagones and State Trooper Scott Patterson. Sharpton then accused Pagones of
> being one of the participants and that Pagones had murdered cop to silence
> him and that the report of a suicide was part of a big cover up. Nothing is
> ever below Al Sharpton.
> The case caused a media sensation and the usual suspects lined up to exploit
> it; Phil Donahue, Louis Farrakhan and Bill Cosby. Despite occasional lapses
> into reason, Cosby usually resides in the fever swamps of the lunatic left.
> Sharpton was eventually sued, successfully, by Pagones but he resisted paying
> anything until he was bailed out but some heavy duty black millionaires.
> Jesse is another case. Jesse is a part-time minister, part-time politician
> and full time publicity seeker. Knowing that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
> assassination would leave a leadership void, he embellished his role at that
> terrible event. Afterwards, I read several accounts that disputed his
> version, he somehow never got called on it. Nor does Jesse ever get called on
> anything.
> Particularly appalling were the events after the suicidal death of Raynard
> Johnson, a black teenager in Kokomo, Mississippi in June, 2000. The local and
> state police ruled it a suicide. The autopsy showed no signs of a struggle
> that would be expected from a lynching. The despondent parents turned to
> Jesse for help and he, of course, agreed to go to Mississippi to fund the
> truth.
> It was a majority white town and it turned out that he had been dating a
> white girl who had just broken up with him hours before he was found hanged
> with a braided belt that his parents said he didn’t own. A video from a
> convenience store showed that he was wearing a belt similar to the one he was
> hanged with.
> Jesse arrived to great fanfare and many cameras (I apologize for stating the
> obvious. Jesse always arrives to great fanfare and many cameras) and
> announced he’d find who were responsible for the evil deed. Jesse said the
> boy’s throat had been cut. It wasn’t. Jesse must have left the state in
> the middle of the night because he has never been heard from again regarding
> the unfortunate matter.
> I rarely listen to Rush Limbaugh although I have in the past. I used to find
> him interesting and funny but have come to find him annoying. I rarely listen
> to him anymore. But these were two of the people lined up to oppose Limbaugh.
> Sterling credentials, the two of them, don’t you think.
> Many liberals have called him racist, bigoted & sexist, saying that he
> ridicules blacks, minorities and women. I have never found that. He satirizes
> liberals and that is what has made him such a pariah to the Left.
> Bill Raspberry was always one of my favorite columnists. Black and liberal,
> he was never one to dismiss conservatives as bigots etc. He would always
> listen.
> One time, he referred to Limbaugh as a racist or some such. Someone
> challenged him and asked if he’d ever listened to Rush Limbaugh. He
> admitted he hadn’t and then tuned him in for a while. His conclusion, Rush
> Limbaugh was not a racist.
> He wrote that Limbaugh didn’t ridicule blacks, women and minorities. He
> ridiculed liberals. Raspberry went on to say that it was a reversal of the
> usual, where liberals would satirize all things conservative but that
> suddenly, when the shoe was on the other foot, the liberals showed that they
> could give it but couldn’t take it.
> Quite so. I have found that all of my adult life. The most intolerant people
> I have ever met have been liberals. The most judgmental people I have ever
> met have been liberals. Further, the most racist and bigoted people I have
> ever met have been liberals.
> When I went to college at New York University, the assumption was that if you
> even went to college, you had to be liberal. As William Buckley once
> observed, liberals feel that it is impossible to be simultaneously
> intelligent and conservative. He also once observed, liberal intolerance was
> exhibited by the astonishment that there even was another opinion.
> Judgmentalism was another matter. If you told a liberal you admired either
> Barry Goldwater or William Buckley, they just about handed you a set of
> sheets and a swastika armband to wear.
> Bigotry may be the most surprising to readers but it was there among
> liberals, far more than among conservatives. The very same people who were
> waving the flag for the various civil rights bills of the 1960s were the most
> upset when blacks moved into their comfy upper middle class enclaves of Great
> Neck and Manhattanville.
> The misrepresentations of Limbaugh’s statements have been equally
> appalling. O’Reilly has stated, repeatedly, that his researchers have been
> unable to find any record that Limbaugh ever said that slavery wasn’t all
> bad. Yet that persists.
> I can assure every reader, that I have seen personally, how things get
> distorted, in and by the media and by viewers and readers. I have been
> present when stories were planted and have been quoted with things I never
> said. (Even though the latter incident was in a college newspaper, it
> nevertheless is illustrative. For dramatic illustration of the problem, see
> the excellent first 30 minutes of the otherwise mediocre Paul Newman/Sally
> Field movie, ‘Absence of Malice’.)
> Rush Limbaugh has been a football afficionado for years. His problems really
> emerged from his remark as a football analyst about the Philadelphia Eagles
> and Donovan McNabb. He said that it was the defense that had been carrying
> the team and he wondered whether the accolades that were being heaped on
> Donovan McNabb were due to the media’s wanting an outstanding black
> quarterback.
> As it’s turning out, McNabb is a very good quarterback. It was a valid
> question but in these days of political ultra-correctness, such discussions
> aren’t permitted. Thus, we have now a black president and former President
> Jimmy Carter and others state that criticism of him arises from the innate
> racism at the heart of America. (Oh yes, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima
> culpa, Jimmy. In my heart, I know I’m a racist.) And no one is permitted to
> wonder whether some promotions of minorities are due to their being
> minorities and that maybe society should examine all of these programs.
> Somehow, it seems the answer is no.
> The Obama Administration is now waxing apoplectic over executive salaries of
> companies that took TARP money. Why can’t we raise the same questions about
> Affirmative Action?
> Can anyone of us entirely eliminate from ourselves racial awareness? I
> strongly doubt it. At this late date in my life, the first thing I notice
> when I meet a black person, is that he is black and it remains an issue
> throughout any exchange. I hate that about myself. Do blacks have the same
> problem? I don’t know but think so.
> But if we can’t view hold all politicians, sports figures and beneficiaries
> of public policies up to the light of critical examination, we are the losers.
>
