@droppedit - I did not check your calculation, but I assume it is correct. The issue is that you normalized the value to an equally controversial number, so you may have helped to localize, but not eliminate the issue…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/18/ferguson-black-arrest-rates/19043207/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/26/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-blacks-more-likely-be-arreste/
To the parents who do not want your kid to go to a place like Middlebury, please remember that there were hundreds of kids not at the protest much less physically shoving the car.
We can’t paint the kids all with the same brush.
We can’t paint 'conservatives 'with one nor the ‘liberals’. Let’s not create an us versus them scenario on here.
I am moderately liberal. My best friend is republican. We agree on more than what we disagree on. We both have a desire to help our society.
Prevalence of Nazi acceptance was mostly in the Protestant areas of Germany. There were many Catholic officials who were persecuted and even sent to the death camps. Hitler was very deliberate about this in order to silence the pope completely.
Not sure about pogroms being organized locally by the Russian Orthodox church although it wouldn’t surprise me. They were certainly sanctioned by the tsar(s). Also, Church property was secularized in the 18th century and the church was really a function of the state thenceforth. Very different from the west, although I suppose you can draw an analogy to Henry’s VIII’s Church of England. In large part the communist gov’t of the 20th century did not consider the Russian orthodox Church to be a threat to its goals, which is why it allowed the church to continue (in truth, allowing some religious institutional existence helped keep the peace so might have been a pragmatic decision. Religion, after all,was antithetical to Marxism).
The history of the world is filled with shameful ethnic and ideological hatred. It’s important to distinguish whether the persecution is sanctioned by people who happen to practice a certain religious faith, or is part of the teaching of that faith. Plenty of Christians committed plenty of atrocities, but that doesn’t mean that Christian teaching actually encouraged such.
Just saying that it’s more complicated than thinking or concluding that religion tacitly or otherwise supported some atrocities. Obviously there were PEOPLE who tacitly or otherwise supported them. But then, when you look at the history of humans, you can find many examples where the better angels don’t prevail. Ethnic persecution is as old as humankind - it existed long before Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the prophets, Judas Maccabeus, and Jesus. It existed after these individuals walked the earth. It will continue to exist.
@marvin100 isn’t our political system supposed to circumvent violence? Voting booth, peaceful transition of power and so forth. Or am I misinterpreting this article?
@mastadon and @droppedit I found the following expert to be quite helpful in understanding black arrest rates:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/criminal-justice-system-racist-13078.html
Edit/update: This is more recent. Same author. The stats that WaPo collected are quite eye-opening: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myths-of-black-lives-matter-1468087453
@Mastadon – you can verify the calculations. Here are the population numbers:
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/publications.html
Whites = 223M, Blacks = 40M
Anyway, I figured that you would contest the arrest rates. Is the arrest rate distorted? Let’s see what the actual data says. From the FBI in 2015:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43
Look at just the violent crime rates (presumably less “biased” than those in your links, which include drug arrests). Blacks were arrested at 3.5X rate compared to whites. Are you going to claim that blacks are singled out for arrest in violent crimes, too? Maybe you will. So, let’s go to the most serious crime: murder. It’s not looking good for your side, as the numbers are worse. From the FBI table, blacks are a whopping six times more likely to be arrested for murder than whites.
Still, there’s some wiggle room on your side. Maybe the police simply refuse to arrest whites for murder … so let’s look at the victims:
Blacks are six times more likely to be murdered than whites. It’s shocking. You’ll notice that the arrest rate corresponds to the murder rate, mainly because murders are almost always within races (around 90%).
More crime == more police confrontations == more police killings. It’s that simple.
Well, it’s supposed to ensure a monopoly on violence. See Charles Tilly’s brilliant [“War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”](Redirect Notice).
(or the Encyclopedia Brittanica: https://global.britannica.com/topic/state-monopoly-on-violence )
@marvin100. Well, that’s true - the way this particular “monopoly” is supposed to work, however, is at the behest of the people. It’s not “gov’t vs. the people” it’s supposed to be “by, of and for”. You use “monopolistic violence” when the public good (safety, national security, and other positive externalities).
However, what we’ve seen in recent years is a monopoly-run-amok. Executive branch agencies like EPA, USDA, and so forth are militarized (bought the equip. for cheap) and ready to break down your door. That’s a bit of a controversy and constitutionally questionable, at best. Furthermore, every law passed by congress and upheld by the president has an implicit threat behind it concerning what could happen to you if you “break” that law. If the laws proliferate and become burdensome, then you are essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place. The problem in both these examples is that the public good is no longer being served; rather, gov’t is being served and using it’s monopoly power to terrorize and burden. Not good.
It isn’t supposed to work that way. If gov’t is perceived as something that exists separate from the people, it ceases to exist as their instrument to help them live free and in peace. This is obviously a significant disordering of the relationship. We aren’t a monarchy, and our gov’t shouldn’t act like one.
Not really.
Many Catholic areas of Germany also supported the Nazis such as Bavaria which was a stronghold of the Nazis from their earliest days.
Austria also had a large Nazi following before the Anchluss and is majority Catholic…not to mention Hitler himself was baptized as a Roman Catholic and never officially renounced his Catholicism nor was he officially excommunicated.
That’s not to say there weren’t Catholic clergy who resisted the Nazis. However, there were also a few Protestant Clergy who also resisted the Nazis and died for their troubles as well and both were extreme minorities compared with the rest of their respective co-religionists who ardently supported the Nazis or were swept along once the regime was in power.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/dietrich-bonhoeffer.html
@Snowball City, “To the parents who do not want your kid to go to a place like Middlebury, please remember that there were hundreds of kids not at the protest much less physically shoving the car.”
Good point to remember.
However, this raises a broader issue that is not really brought up in college applications discussions–the overall political and social ‘feel’ of the college. We often speak of diversity in appearance and culture, and these are very important. However, they’re also fairly obvious.
What’s not so obvious is diversity of opinion and thought. In practice, how conformist in thought is the campus? Is there an unspoken orthodoxy that’s encouraged in classes and dorms? Are students encouraged to disagree with the professors or they encouraged to echo the professors? Are there litmus test statements that are supposed to prove your credentials, and if you don’t say these statements, or object to them, are you automatically labeled as an outsider at best?
This sort of environment definitely exists on some campuses. Bear in mind no college - unless they are openly idealogy-driven, such as a religious college - will recognize that their climate is conformist and authoritarian in thought; that is not going to be how they see themselves. But it exists; my kids have experienced it on multiple occasions. But it is also deeply personal (and it probably also depends o your major)–what makes one person feel like an outsider, makes another feel welcomed; what one person considers rigorous discussion, another person can consider authoritarian. You can’t go by word of mouth or reputation, and you certainly cannot go by one incident in the media.
The only way to really gauge the political/thought atmosphere is to visit, talk with students, go to a class or two, and stay overnight preferably. I would very much encourage prospective students to do so when considering a college.
To try and get this thread back to where we started, here is an interesting article from the Washington Post I saw this morning.
And yes, this is classic begging the question. Two people could say that they would not permit a racist to speak. One could be thinking of Donald Trump or Charles Murray, and the other David Duke or Louis Farrakhan. And obviously it would be nice to have the research questions themselves, but in general I found this interesting. Basically although college students are becoming relatively less tolerant, there is still a majority or close to it who profess to tolerance. If that is the case, then Murray may be correct and what is happening is that a minority is being allowed to bully the remainder of the community into if not acquescence then at least silence. That may mean that there is a chance that some type of significant discipline being meted out, and a consistent show of coherent leadership may blunt this trend.
We will have to see, but maybe these last events were the bridge too far that the girl screaming at her professor at Yale, or the professor shouting for “muscle” to remove a photographer, or the professor attacking a pro life demonstrator at UCSB (I think), et., etc was not, and maybe some serious consequences will land on the aggressors here.
President Patton confirmed on Monday that an investigation of what occurred inside the hall will take place and that disciplinary action will follow. The Middlebury Police have also been requested to investigate the incident involving Professor Stranger. I fully support that response and frankly think given the circumstances they really have little choice but to do so.
https://vtdigger.org/2017/03/07/college-discipline-will-follow-probe-speech-protest/
In the sixties, cops had billy clubs and we were warned not to make trouble with the Pole-Leece. We would hang out in the alley and bop each other with clubs. Ouch! Consequently, I never messed with the Pole-Leece.
Thanks for getting the thread back on track. In addition to identifying and punishing the specific individuals that can be identified, I would also recommend, if there is one scheduled, cancellation of a speaker that the protesting students might have supported. A group punishment, to encourage the community to self-police.
I think that kind of tit for tat would be a very poor idea. The equivalent of keeping the entire class in for recess because one or two people misbehaved.
I thought the point of the thread was that silencing those with whom you disagree is very wrong and very scary.
It seems to me the punishment works against the ultimate goal, if the goal is all sides get a platform.
It reminds me of biting a biting child to teach a lesson. It may work. I am not a fan of this type discipline.
I don’t believe all speakers deserve the platform. Where I draw my line is personal, I guess. I was absolutely in favor of a safe space campus for my own kids. We sought it out.
@MomofJandL Do you often punish J for things L did?
Cancelling a speaker that the protesting students might have wanted punishes all those students who protested peacefully. A peaceful demonstration is speech that should be allowed.
Riots, blockades, and assaults, on the other hand . . .